Tomorrow is my birthday. You get one guess for how old I’ll be, with these two clues to help you. It is a prime number and if I live to be 100, tomorrow I will have lived exactly 2/3 of my life. I doubt I’ll live to be 100, but I did have a great-grandmother who lived to be 98, so you never know. When I look in the mirror, I definitely look my age. I look my age so... Read more
This coming Sunday’s gospel gets us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to remember the 70s and 80s will recall that a regular occurrence at baseball or football games either in person or on television was, when the camera panned the stands, to see a person—often wearing a colorful fright wig—holding up a large homemade poster board sign with a cryptic reference that made sense only for initiates: John 3:16. I often imagined the confusion that many might... Read more
Almost three decades ago when I was a new, junior, untenured faculty member at my college, my classes were observed at least two or three times per semester by one or more members of my “peer review committee.” One’s peer review committee, appointed by the department chair, consists of three tenured faculty colleagues who, after observing what you are up to in the classroom, meet with you at the end of the semester, individually or ganging up on you, to... Read more
Today is the first Sunday of Lent; the gospel reading is Matthew’s account of Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness. This story happens also to be the centerpiece of one of the great passages in all of literature, Dostoevsky’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. The Grand Inquisitor story is on our “Faith and Doubt” syllabus next week. What if, the Inquisitor asks, Jesus had succumbed to one of the temptations? Wouldn’t things have been... Read more
This is the third day of Lent. Are you one of those people who give something up for Lent? I’m not–I’ve written a number of times around this time of year about why I think that at its root Lent might be a bad idea, simply because anyone can give up anything for 40 days. Certainly the challenge of following Jesus demands more than that. Beauty for Ashes, or Why Lent is a Bad Idea But if you did give something... Read more
One Wednesday last winter, the student in front of me in line at the little on campus coffee shop in the building next to mine plopped what looked like a pre-packaged chicken Caesar salad on the counter. While fumbling for her card to pay, the cashier said “that isn’t chicken, you know. It’s tofu.” “WHAT?” the student cried. “It’s Ash Wednesday. We aren’t allowed to serve meat on Ash Wednesday or Fridays during Lent.” The exasperated student left her no-longer-wanted... Read more
It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, supposedly giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these [scientific] topics, and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people reveal vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. One guess as to who wrote the above. Most likely a progressive Christian denying the authority of the Bible, right? How about this one? Darwin taught us... Read more
Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Each of the synoptic gospels, including today’s lectionary reading from Matthew, tells essentially the same story. Jesus takes his inner circle of Peter, James, and John to the top of a mountain where suddenly Jesus has a conversation with Moses and Elijah, while “his face shone like the sun and his clothes became dazzling white.” The disciples are understandably frightened, but Peter still suggests that... Read more
As I continue early preparation for the book on the teaching life that I hope to write during my upcoming Fall semester sabbatical, I find myself considering many of the misconceptions that people outside of academia have concerning professors. One of these misconceptions, one that has become more and more prevalent over the past decade or two, is that although they present themselves as “experts,” academics are generally far more impressed with their knowledge and expertise than they should be.... Read more
On Valentine’s Day I am always challenged to think of something new to say for that year’s blog entry. I could say nothing, of course, but I’m a romantic at heart, so I always want to throw something into the mix. This year I’m thinking about something that is a challenge for many–the human soul. What is it? Is it anything at all? And if the soul does exist, how does one engage with it? In the spirit of Valentine’s... Read more
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