I have not the time nor energy to write a full, detailed account of anything that I have been wanting to for the last few weeks, and so I will have to settle for an abbreviated version of various musings (this might be more palatable for you).
• School has begun – it is one of the greatest oddities known to man, or at least me; twice a year I begin a new semester, and twice a year I am surprised at the busyness of it. I have heard, though I know not from whom, that the body blocks out trauma as a defense mechanism. I heard this in the context of people birthing multiple babies. The logic was something to the extent that if women’s bodies remembered the pain of labor they would never do it more than once. I have applied that same strangeness to the phenomena of semesters; let me use this last one for example.
When I last left the corridors of the University of Dallas in mid-December I was sick with what can only be described as a precursor to the plague, I was stressfully agitated to the point of snapping at friends, family and most assuredly my students, and I would have welcomed death as a sweet relief from enduring any more of anything. (disclaimer: yes, I realize the overuse of hyperbole in most of my statements, and, no, I do not think I would have actually welcomed death, nor do I believe I contracted any mediaeval disease, but you get the general idea) Most certainly, I decided with 100 percent resolve that I could not, nay, I would not take 9 hours again while trying to teach and coach; physically, I did not count myself capable of such a feat again. Sometime in the next month all of those firmly entrenched feelings and memories faded, being replaced by false memories of semi-enjoyment with only slight irritations and tiredness along the way. Fueled by these pseudo-memories, I once again signed up for a full-load, and 1 week in, this sucks, and I hate my body for convincing me otherwise.
• Darwin’s Origin of Species – part of the so eloquently enunciated “this sucks” is that my first reading assignment for one of my classes was to read Darwin’s tome. I have griped in jest for the last week, but, truth be told, I was thrilled for the opportunity to finally read this seldom any longer examined book. It is well written despite its scientific nature, and, though I was forced to read very, very quickly, I quite enjoyed it.
A professor of mine last semester made several statements to the effect of, “If you are a Christian who does not believe in Evolution (or Darwinism, I cannot remember), you are an idiot (he was a fun guy).” I will not claim to understand it on the basis of one reading, and I honestly have no interest in the scientific per se, but I can at least get a glimpse of what he was talking about. For the entirety of my life Darwin has been rated as such a villain and God-hater that I would never have thought that Christianity could coexist with Darwinian Evolution, but I less steadfast in such a belief now. I fear that too many generations of those who have sermonized against him have not even read him. There are, believe or not, some very pious statements made by Darwin in the book. He acknowledges God and his creative abilities, but he makes the fundamental error of many philosophers: he made God too rational.
I suppose many think it makes God less fun to strip him of the ever-miraculous. It is not sexy enough to have a finite number of creations that mutate over time and form other species ad infinitum; we need our God to, with hammer and chisel, construct anew each and every variation of every animal in existence through all of eternity. That is a very romantic view of God, but what is wrong with a hybrid of the two? Is God’s creativity so constrained when he builds the clocks, sets it in motion and then allows it to run?
Julie and I heard a sermon/study on this last Sunday night from our pastor that spoke in part to this same thing. His argument was that if one believes in anything approaching Naturalism we lose a personal God. I agree that Darwinists, Rationalists, Naturalists, Calvinists, and ____________-ists of your choosing, have perverted and exaggerated the beliefs upon which they were founded, but we are not therefore constrained to throw out the baby with the bathwater (score!, cliché). Is God really so personal as such a statement alludes to? As I walked to my car at lunch, the wind blew my hair into a greater mess than it even was previously. Should I believe that God grabbed each individual strand atop my head and moved it from one spot to another, and if so, to what purpose does the wind blow, or is it okay to assume that God did indeed create hair, he likewise created wind, and that the one in interaction with the other caused the lunchtime incident? Perhaps I am sacrilegious, but the absurdity of the former belief over the latter is more than I can handle.
• Teaching? – I am a glorified hall-monitor at this point. If I spent nearly as much time preparing, grading or teaching my allotted subjects as I do having to take people’s hoodies force them to the bathroom to comply with dress code, I would be Mr. Holland. Yes, Mom, I know that he is the dream-teacher, but it is about as realistic a depiction of education as Batman is of law enforcement. Let us see how well he would have inspired those young minds had he spent half his time taking away cell phones and ipods and having to literally chase kids through the hallways to get them to even go to the principal’s office, which you have sent them to each day. America is doomed.
• Derek Webb – yes, boys and girls, the white-t-shirted-wonder has done it again. While I usually bristle at the idea of re-releasing previously recorded music in new packaging “One-Zero” is something I can get wholly behind. There are no new songs exactly, but he took his most controversial songs and did acoustic reinterpretations of them a la Alanis Morisette’s remake of “Jagged Little Pill” (also very good, by the way). I really love this guy, and if you have never given him a listen, this might be a good place to start; he is thoughtful and poetic, and I believe at the very least these songs allow for the opening of dialogue concerning the gospels’ role in politics and society within the life of the believer.
• Jane Austen – I attended my first class this last Monday, and I must say, I really enjoyed it. Dr. Kenney is truly a great professor, and she opened up, even in the first 3 hours, a depth to Austen that I would not have ever guessed. The best part, though, is that she brought in a bottle of rum and scones. Apparently this is a weekly occurrence, and so I greatly look forward to 13 weeks more of eating, drinking and Austen. Sipping rum makes any novel, even if they turn out bad, pretty readable.
• School has begun – it is one of the greatest oddities known to man, or at least me; twice a year I begin a new semester, and twice a year I am surprised at the busyness of it. I have heard, though I know not from whom, that the body blocks out trauma as a defense mechanism. I heard this in the context of people birthing multiple babies. The logic was something to the extent that if women’s bodies remembered the pain of labor they would never do it more than once. I have applied that same strangeness to the phenomena of semesters; let me use this last one for example.
When I last left the corridors of the University of Dallas in mid-December I was sick with what can only be described as a precursor to the plague, I was stressfully agitated to the point of snapping at friends, family and most assuredly my students, and I would have welcomed death as a sweet relief from enduring any more of anything. (disclaimer: yes, I realize the overuse of hyperbole in most of my statements, and, no, I do not think I would have actually welcomed death, nor do I believe I contracted any mediaeval disease, but you get the general idea) Most certainly, I decided with 100 percent resolve that I could not, nay, I would not take 9 hours again while trying to teach and coach; physically, I did not count myself capable of such a feat again. Sometime in the next month all of those firmly entrenched feelings and memories faded, being replaced by false memories of semi-enjoyment with only slight irritations and tiredness along the way. Fueled by these pseudo-memories, I once again signed up for a full-load, and 1 week in, this sucks, and I hate my body for convincing me otherwise.
• Darwin’s Origin of Species – part of the so eloquently enunciated “this sucks” is that my first reading assignment for one of my classes was to read Darwin’s tome. I have griped in jest for the last week, but, truth be told, I was thrilled for the opportunity to finally read this seldom any longer examined book. It is well written despite its scientific nature, and, though I was forced to read very, very quickly, I quite enjoyed it.
A professor of mine last semester made several statements to the effect of, “If you are a Christian who does not believe in Evolution (or Darwinism, I cannot remember), you are an idiot (he was a fun guy).” I will not claim to understand it on the basis of one reading, and I honestly have no interest in the scientific per se, but I can at least get a glimpse of what he was talking about. For the entirety of my life Darwin has been rated as such a villain and God-hater that I would never have thought that Christianity could coexist with Darwinian Evolution, but I less steadfast in such a belief now. I fear that too many generations of those who have sermonized against him have not even read him. There are, believe or not, some very pious statements made by Darwin in the book. He acknowledges God and his creative abilities, but he makes the fundamental error of many philosophers: he made God too rational.
I suppose many think it makes God less fun to strip him of the ever-miraculous. It is not sexy enough to have a finite number of creations that mutate over time and form other species ad infinitum; we need our God to, with hammer and chisel, construct anew each and every variation of every animal in existence through all of eternity. That is a very romantic view of God, but what is wrong with a hybrid of the two? Is God’s creativity so constrained when he builds the clocks, sets it in motion and then allows it to run?
Julie and I heard a sermon/study on this last Sunday night from our pastor that spoke in part to this same thing. His argument was that if one believes in anything approaching Naturalism we lose a personal God. I agree that Darwinists, Rationalists, Naturalists, Calvinists, and ____________-ists of your choosing, have perverted and exaggerated the beliefs upon which they were founded, but we are not therefore constrained to throw out the baby with the bathwater (score!, cliché). Is God really so personal as such a statement alludes to? As I walked to my car at lunch, the wind blew my hair into a greater mess than it even was previously. Should I believe that God grabbed each individual strand atop my head and moved it from one spot to another, and if so, to what purpose does the wind blow, or is it okay to assume that God did indeed create hair, he likewise created wind, and that the one in interaction with the other caused the lunchtime incident? Perhaps I am sacrilegious, but the absurdity of the former belief over the latter is more than I can handle.
• Teaching? – I am a glorified hall-monitor at this point. If I spent nearly as much time preparing, grading or teaching my allotted subjects as I do having to take people’s hoodies force them to the bathroom to comply with dress code, I would be Mr. Holland. Yes, Mom, I know that he is the dream-teacher, but it is about as realistic a depiction of education as Batman is of law enforcement. Let us see how well he would have inspired those young minds had he spent half his time taking away cell phones and ipods and having to literally chase kids through the hallways to get them to even go to the principal’s office, which you have sent them to each day. America is doomed.
• Derek Webb – yes, boys and girls, the white-t-shirted-wonder has done it again. While I usually bristle at the idea of re-releasing previously recorded music in new packaging “One-Zero” is something I can get wholly behind. There are no new songs exactly, but he took his most controversial songs and did acoustic reinterpretations of them a la Alanis Morisette’s remake of “Jagged Little Pill” (also very good, by the way). I really love this guy, and if you have never given him a listen, this might be a good place to start; he is thoughtful and poetic, and I believe at the very least these songs allow for the opening of dialogue concerning the gospels’ role in politics and society within the life of the believer.
• Jane Austen – I attended my first class this last Monday, and I must say, I really enjoyed it. Dr. Kenney is truly a great professor, and she opened up, even in the first 3 hours, a depth to Austen that I would not have ever guessed. The best part, though, is that she brought in a bottle of rum and scones. Apparently this is a weekly occurrence, and so I greatly look forward to 13 weeks more of eating, drinking and Austen. Sipping rum makes any novel, even if they turn out bad, pretty readable.
I think the point of Mr. Holland was not that he saved every student for 30 years of musical idiocy. Young people will be who they want to be and their hour in your class will not make a difference to most. (ala Michael Stone in CHS). The point is that your profession CAN be a calling, and you CAN make a difference to one or two students a year if God is willing. NO ONE can make more of a difference to some students than a good teacher. And, a teacher does not have to go to work every day in drudgery - he has that opportunity to reach SOMEONE - if God is willing. On the other hand, now you know why I chose nursing over teaching 10 years ago when I was redefining myself!