Be Informed and Persuaded

One of the assignments in my speech class is for students to present an informational speech. So this semester I have learned about immigration and naturalization, ADD, humor, practical jokes, speech pathology, political conventions, world cup soccer, and computers. For their second speech, students need to persuade us to do something. I have been persuaded to recycle, go on a semester abroad, share my faith, boycott fast food, have my pet spayed or neutered, and get more sleep.

Pretty normal topics, eh?

But there are two persuasive speeches in particular that stand out. One was to persuade us to not be ashamed to, uh, well, "pass gas." That's not how the student phrased it. He also used the more crass word as the organizing acronym for the speech. The other students had a hard time figuring out if he was serious. He was. It was easily the most memorable speech of the semester.

The runner-up was a speech on smoking. A speech to persuade us TO smoke. It was like a visit to opposite land. The speaker cited medical research showing the benefits of smoking--if you have Alzheimer's, for example, smoking may help with memory. (Plus, if you already have Alzheimer's, lung cancer is not a large concern.) Since none of my students have Alzheimer's, though, that point was lost on us--they remained incredulous that this was his speech topic. The student wore a "smoking jacket" and a Marlboro baseball cap. He wrapped up the speech by inviting any of us to go and smoke with him over the break.

I stood up for the discussion time and said, "If anyone takes up his offer, you lose your chance at extra credit." They thought that was hilarious.

Never a dull moment in my classes.....

With Thanks

"Every single inch of ground that woman stands upon today has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past."

--Susan B. Anthony

www.synodcloudofwitnesses.org

The Six Million Dollar Woman

My laptop is back! But it's naked, which means all of my quirky little personal features are absent. I'm reloading software and clicking installation icons one after the other. I've accepted all sorts of legalese just to be able to print. Until I load on my own stuff, I'm limited to the pictures, screen savers, and desktop images that come with the system (generic red sunset, anyone?).

I find I'm doing things by instinct, only to be told by my computer that it doesn't know how to do that. Or it asks for a particular disk. Or I look at the desktop for a full minute until I realize that the shortcut icon I'm looking for isn't there. And I get online (after a 13 minute service call to Comcast) only to realize that none of my favorites are there anymore and I can't remember all the snazzy addresses my clever friends came up with to name their blogs (an underscore or a hyphen? his name or hers goes first? does the 1 come before or after the m?).

Heh.

We're all bionic in a way, relying on these technological gadgets as extensions of ourselves. All the Blackberries went dead last week for 12 hours, causing some people to, in the words of the fine humorists, actually have to pay attention to the person they were talking to. (Blackberries, for those of you blissfully unaware, are little portable wireless email centers that clip on to your belt/purse, etc.) One person described feeling phantom vibrations when the Blackberry was no longer on his hip. He knew the feelings were phantom because he was in the shower at the time.

While I am by no means a tech junkie (I have sent about 4 text messages in my whole life), I do feel a bit out of sorts when I can't access my computer. Saturday I wanted to check the weather and it took me a minute to figure out how to do that without being able to go online (Hey! I think there's a whole station on TV devoted to the weather!). If I go longer than a couple of hours without checking email, I worry that I've missed something. But here's the rub: I don't. I don't miss anything. In fact, I was completely sans home computer for the second half of last week which meant I could only check email maybe twice a day and you know what? That was plenty. I missed nothing, no one was desperate for a response, and the world continued to spin.

So I'm pondering all of this as I load and reload and type in nonsense letters (HYRid3RttX) and come up with passwords and read error messages and . . . wonder if this is all worth it.

"4-16-07"

It's been a sobering week to be a college professor.

On Monday early afternoon I received an all-campus email from our chaplain, inviting us to a time of prayer in response to the horrific events at Virginia Tech. Since I had been busily working at home, I had no idea what he was talking about. I walked into the den and turned on the TV. I spent the next hour glued to the set.

And then I turned it off and prepared to go and teach my night class. But I did so with a heavy and, I'll admit, fearful heart. I had never thought of my current occupation as in any way dangerous. I had never considered the possibility that one of my students would intentionally harm me or any one else. But as I walked to class that night, I thought about all of the profs at VT who gathered their notes and books and lesson plans and walked into a classroom expecting that the worst thing may be sleepy or hungover or unprepared students. Like me, they may have been anxious about presenting their material well. Like me, they may have wondered if they could have done a little more to prepare. Like me, they were probably grateful that the academic year was winding down. Like me.

There is a poster on our CAS billboard promoting the grad program in Communications at Virginia Tech. It's up there with a bunch of other schools and has been up there for months. The stone building on the poster looks like the stone buildings that have been flashed before us on the news all week. Today I stopped and read the list of faculty names.

When you live and move and have your being in an academic community, you have natural solidarity with others who do the same. I listened to bios of the faculty members who died, learned about their research, heard about their children. And I heard that some of the faculty members who survived would very much like to get back into Norris Hall. Their books are there, one commentator explained. Their research projects. Dissertations that need to be read and reviewed. Papers that need to be graded. Life. Life is in that building. For all that the space has witnessed, for all the walls have heard, there is still life in that place. Ideas will be born there, concepts explained, a fire for learning stoked and fed.

I do not know what the shooter's motive was. It seems no one really does. But if his intent was to stop life, he did not succeed. He ended lives, to be sure. He took his own. But life--not only life of the mind, but institutional life, relational life, creative life, human life will go on in that building, on that campus, in the world.

Tomorrow our campus is wearing maroon in solidarity with the students, faculty, and staff of Virginia Tech. In each of my classes this week I have prayed with my students not only for those at VT, but also those among us who struggle under burdens we can't see and who feel isolated and alone. I have prayed that those of us in positions of leadership in dorms and in classrooms will be sensitive to those who need our compassion and care. And I have prayed that the family of the shooter will also receive expressions of comfort and mercy. Tomorrow we will wear maroon. But more importantly we will continue to pray--for them, and for us, and for life. Join us.

One More Reason to Get Cable in Calvin's Dorms

"A new survey of 1,502 adults released Sunday by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that despite the mass appeal of the Internet and cable news since a previous poll in 1989, Americans' knowledge of national affairs has slipped a little. For example, only 69% know that Dick Cheney is vice president, while 74% could identify Dan Quayle in that post in 1989.

Other details are equally eye-opening. Pew judged the levels of knowledgability (correct answers) among those surveyed and found that those who scored the highest were regular watchers of Comedy Central's The Daily Show and Colbert Report. They tied with regular readers of major newspapers in the top spot -- with 54% of them getting 2 out of 3 questions correct. Watchers of the Lehrer News Hour on PBS followed just behind." (Source: HuffintonPost.com)

Did you need a reason? How 'bout 10?

10 Reasons to be happy:

1. It's Friday.
2. It's sunny!
3. I'm preaching on Sunday. (I know, I know. This is why my friend Aric calls me a "God-nerd.")
4. It's payday (well, for me it is!).
5. Easter candy is 50% off.
6. Did I mention that it's sunny?
7. Did I mention that it's Friday?
8. I have great friends. Every now and then I realize how many really, really great people are in my life. Shout out to my friends!
9. I'm staying on top of my grading.
10. Hey! It's sunny!

Dog-inspired God Thoughts

Anne Lamott writes this about her dog:

Lily ran off with her stickes, bounded up the steep hillside, then doubled back to check in with me. She loves me the way I love Jesus, falling into a trance of despair when she can't feel me. My brother says that whenever he stays with her in the car when I go into a store, she stares at the store as if it were on fire, and then at him, desperately, like, "Can you please take me in there?" (Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith, pp. 168, 169)

The sentence fragment that got stuck in my skin was "She loves me the way I love Jesus..." And I, reading this piece in front of the fire with my beloved dog on the floor beside me, thought, "Jeez. Do I love Jesus the way Meli loves me?" I've often considered things the other way around: I love Meli because in so many ways she reminds me of divine love--unconditional and forgetful of all the crappy things I do and so delighted when I move in the slightest direction toward her. Golden Retriever as Exhibit A of incarnational love.

But do I love Jesus the way Meli loves me? That kind of true and limitless delight? That brightening up in the presence of the other? That hunger for the other when she's away?

The answer, in case you haven't figured it out yet, is no. Or maybe, not yet. But it's not a yes.

I'd like it to be a yes. But I'm also kind of a stickler for telling the truth. So the truth is, I let the angst of my life haze over my vision of Jesus; I kind of lump him in with all of my general, God-directed frustration and anger and in some odd and, well, heretical expression of the Trinity see Jesus as the nice guy with less power. The one who, like me, is vulnerable to the whims of God the Father who can order us to do stuff we don't want to do just because it will be good for us or, you know, like, save the world or something.

So if Jesus can't do anything except be the nice guy, why long for him? Why love him as my dog loves me? Slowly over the past few months I've fallen into this Unitarian-God-with-Backup-Singers model of the divine.

How messed up is that?!

Because, if you were paying any attention at all this past weekend, Jesus has got some game. Jesus has got the power. All the power, one could say. All hail the power. God's omnipotency isn't like a pie, split up and divided according to the members of the Trinity based on their daily agenda: "I'm creating the world this week, therefore, I get a big piece of the power pie." --God the Father. Nope. All three of them coexist in harmony in God's fullness all the time (and all were involved in Creation, btw). So Jesus has all the power--not just over Holy Week, doled out in extra portions along with his lamb and unleavened bread on Thursday night, but all the time. All the time.

Jesus emptied himself to take on flesh (Phil 2, of course), and much of that emptying we can only guess at (it's called Kenosis theory, for those of you taking notes). But he had the power--whether via his continual prayer life or his anointing by the Spirit at baptism or because he was fully divine--all the time (again, go to a library if y'all want to get headaches thinking about this some more, or just talk to this guy). The short answer is that Jesus is omnipotent just as God the Father is omnipotent just as the Holy Spirit is omnipotent (a little shout out there to Athanasius).

So if I'm setting the second person of the Trinity aside, even unconsciously, because I think that only the Big Guy is the one with the power to help/guide/rescue/etc., then I've got some work to do (not to mention how wrong a label "Big Guy" is).

God exists, at all times, in three persons. Those three persons exist in harmony with each other at all times (the social doctrine of the Trinity [jeez, this is like oral comps]). A full picture of each includes a full picture of all, or, uh, the One.

All this to say: I need to bring the Second and the Third Persons more into view, more into my thoughts, more into my prayers, more into my consciousness, more into my attempts to cultivate an awareness of the divine. To do any less leads me, obviously, to false belief and practice. To do any less leads me, obviously, away from love. To do any less leads me, obviously, to arrogance and ill-humor. And who needs that?

I bind unto myself the Name,
The strong Name of the Trinity,
By invocation of the same,
The Three in One and One in Three.
By Whom all nature hath creation,
Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

A blessed Eastertide to each of you. The Lord is risen!

FAQ's

Frequently Asked Questions about My Life

Q: Do you know what you're doing next year?
A: No, and for the love of Pete will all of you STOP ASKING! Okay, not really. I appreciate your interest and care and concern. More interviews and information about prospective jobs will be coming this month and I may have a decision to make by the end of April. Feel free to pray that I have clarity and a sense of peace. Right now I have neither.

Q: What is your dream job?
A: Senior God Expert on The Daily Show. I think it's time to bring back "This Week in God." I could also sub for Jon when he's sick. Regular guest on The Colbert Report. Spiritual counselor to Stephen Colbert.

Q: But seriously?
A: Oh. Uh...some job that allows me to preach regularly. I preached this past weekend at the LOFT and wrote a new sermon for it. Those hours spent writing were some of the most fun I've had in a while. I've got to get back on the horse. I also officiated at communion for the Festival of Faith and Music on Saturday morning (overseen in all propriety by the elders of Woodlawn CRC) and that was the first time I've celebrated the feast from behind the table in a while. Felt good and fitting, right and fitting; my joy and my salvation, one might say.

Q. How's the semester going?
A. Pretty well, I think. You should ask my students . . . I'm having more trouble keeping up with grading this semester, which I hate. But other than that I'm trying to change the things that didn't work well last semester. I am becoming a better teacher, and that's a good thing.

Q. How's Meli?
A. Great! Healthy and happy and has no signs of any cancer. She's healed well from the surgery and will have another check-up this month. But all is well.

Q. Anything else?
A. I just picked up the new Anne Lamott book and I'm only just in and already love it. Hope to savor that over the weekend. She's one of my faves. And I have to give a shout out to all involved in the Fest of Faith and Music. It was an amazing event, and the concerts I went to just blew my mind. Anithello. Sufjan Stevens. Neko Case. Emmylou Harris. Wow. What an experience. Oh, and I'm reading through some Billy Collins. Billy was Poet Laureate of the United States, and I really, really like his poems: accessible, funny, creative, thoughtful.
And here's your Holy Week trivia question: In my CAS 140 class we are reading through Exodus as our devotions (they are thrilled, as you can imagine). Today we read about the plague of darkness. Guess how long it lasted? Think on these things.

In Honor of All Those Traveling with Youth Groups this Spring Break