In an interview with CNN a few Easters ago, Barbara Brown Taylor said this about many of her fellow Christians: True believers are among the meanest people I’ve ever met. I cannot think of anybody of another faith who has wounded me like Christians. Judged, condemned to hell, cast out of the body of the faithful — look me up online. I had first hand experience of exactly what she is talking about this past week. A week ago today,... Read more
A colleague from the history department with whom I have team-taught several times over the years sent me a text on Monday with a picture he had taken of an advertisement on the wall in our student center. The text said “I saw this walking through Slavin and thought of you!” Anyone who knows me well knows of my obsession with penguins and either texts me or Facebook messages me random penguin pictures, videos, and memes on a regular basis. ... Read more
One day several years ago, Jeanne said “I want a fish.” This was a rather random request, but Jeanne very seldom asks for anything, so within a few days we went to the pet store and purchased a Betta fish. Jeanne named him “Ezekiel” (more randomness), and he lived on the counter between our kitchen and dining room for over a year (longer than usual for a betta fish in captivity). Google “Care of Betta fish” and you’ll get all... Read more
A few days ago at an important faculty/administration meeting on campus, I found myself sitting next to a colleague who was hired into a tenure-track line in my department last year. I am on her peer review committee–she’s a superstar in the making. As we waited for the meeting to begin, she took a picture of the large crucifix hanging on the wall behind me. There is a crucifix in every classroom on our Catholic campus–my colleague has been sending... Read more
It occurred to me a couple of days ago that the spring semester is ending in a bit less than a month. Amazing. If you are thinking that as a college professor I should not be surprised by such things, you’re right–but things tend to sneak up on you. This means that my teaching colleagues and I have to start thinking about final papers and exams. They’ve been on the syllabus since the beginning of the semester, but now they... Read more
RMy baseline criterion for whether a particular class has gone well is to answer the question “Did I learn something new today?” in the affirmative. By that standard I have had a number of excellent classes in my Montaigne honors colloquium this semester. Michel de Montaigne frequently writes about how much hubris and pride it requires for mere human beings to claim anything with certainty about the personality traits and preferences of God, as in this passage from one of... Read more
Today is tax day. As the familiar saying goes, just like death taxes are inevitable. According to a recent New Yorker cartoon, it’s an open question as to which is worse.Permit me to state the obvious: No one likes paying taxes. I put off doing our taxes until no more than a week before the deadline each year, not because I need to wait that long to gather all of the necessary information, but because filing taxes is right up... Read more
Voltaire once wrote that if God did not exist, we would have to invent him. In truth, we invent God all the time, often with seeming disregard as to whether the God we have invented actually exists or not. Anne Lamott suggests that we can be pretty sure that we have created God in our own image if it turns out that God likes all the people and things that we like and dislikes all the people and things that... Read more
The list of authors whose work has been most influential on my spiritual growth over the past couple of decades is lengthy (and almost exclusively female). The list non-exhaustively includes, in no particular order, Rachel Held Evans, Sarah Bessey, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Marilynne Robinson, Sara Miles, Joan Chittister, Kate Bowler, Kathleen Norris . . . I’m sure I’m forgetting someone. But the first and perhaps most impactful writer on my recent spiritual journey is undoubtedly Anne Lamott. Her... Read more
I learned a couple of days ago on “Hidden Brain,” one of my favorite podcasts, that Nobel laureate psychologist Daniel Kahneman died a couple of weeks ago. Kahneman’s work in behavioral economics was groundbreaking and changed the field. This is not my field, by Kahneman’s 2011 book Thinking, Fast and Slow has implications that reach far beyond psychology into philosophy, theology, and real life. When my sons were young, one of the most important distinctions in their estimation, when food... Read more
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