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'Breathing Space' author and urban pastor to appear

By Amy Gage
November 15, 2004

Author and Lutheran minister Heidi Neumark -- called "part Dante, part Emily Dickinson, part George Orwell and all pastor" by one admirer -- will be in residence at St. Olaf College Nov. 16-18, for a series of public conversations and meetings with students.

The author of the 2003 book Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx, Neumark served for 20 years as pastor of Transfiguration Lutheran Church in the South Bronx, a congregation in an impoverished neighborhood populated mainly by Hispanic and African-American people.

She will speak in Boe Memorial Chapel for daily chapel at 11:10 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 16, and read that evening at 7:30 p.m. in Viking Theater in Buntrock Commons from her book.

Professor of Religion John Barbour calls Breathing Space the "story of a church and a community creating space for new life and breath in a place where children suffer the highest asthma rates in the nation. It's also the story of a young woman -- working, raising her children and struggling for breathing space."

Neumark will lead a discussion of her book during Community Time on Thursday, Nov. 18, at 11:30 a.m. in Buntrock Commons room 143. Her visit to St. Olaf is sponsored by the Religion Department, the Office of Church Relations, the Boldt Chair in the Humanities and the Lilly Project on Vocation.

All events are free and open to the public.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.