partsofspeaking

I did a walk with Compassion International this morning to raise money to children in poverty, specifically for basic needs like food, water, and immunizations.  As the advocate told me after she filtered some nasty water for me to drink through an $80 filtration system (no bigger than a hand) that cleans 1 million gallons, "Compassion works."  Fewer children are dying from poverty.  Children actually do grow up, get educated, get jobs, and get out of poverty through Compassion programs. I was very angered that this country in embroiled in some sort of "who can virtue signal more" contest (and who can be stupider in response to a ridiculous president) rather than looking at real poverty and doing something about it, in this country and around the globe.  A child starving is more important than your blasted NFL game.  Turn off the TV, take the cable bill money or ticket fees, and do something useful with it.  I don't do enough myself so I'm not pointing ...

When we come to the point that a librarian refusing Dr. Seuss books from the First Lady because they are "racist," I don't know what to think.  (By the way, the revered Michelle Obama read them to children, so there.) Theodore Geissel was one of my heroes.  He wrote his books about racism and intolerant attitudes.  He once said about children's abuse and poverty, "We can do better."  That is one of my life mottoes.  We can do better about those issues. As one tweeter said, it was a short trip from Robert E. Lee to Dr. Seuss. I am going to come right out and say racism is not the problem.  It is a symptom, a bad symptom, but not the root. The root is much deeper.  Don't preach at me about racism, tell me to repent about the things in my life that cause racism.  Pride, mainly, and superiority based on, well, what?  Melanin in my skin, or lack thereof?  Indifference.  Fear of difference.  Not trusting the Heavenly Father....

--> (Bible Study Lesson for October 1) The other day I was walking my dog (or she was walking me) and I saw something shiny in the dirt on the football field of the school where I walk here.  I reached down and saw it was a small, less-than-inch gold-colored crucifix.  I picked it and put it in my pocket.  I found it the other day while doing laundry.  I can't help but think that is how we treat the cross sometimes.  I am not equal to teaching about the cross, but at the same time I welcome the opportunity to teach about it.   What greater theme could we address? At the same time, the cross has created a number of personal perceptions about it.   That is the lesson today.   First, how the wider world sees it, and second, how did the people around the cross that day see it. The wider world sees the cross in different ways today: Martyrdom:   A good person standing up for a good cause and being executed for it. This igno...

A touching scene.   “They held Jesus by his feet.”   Why?   Well, why not? They wanted to know he was real and they weren’t seeing something hallucinatory.   They wanted him to stay.   They were frightened and perhaps thought the soldiers would be coming after them, and they wanted protection from a man. What did he say to them?   First, rejoice.   Rejoice!   Perhaps that is what we should great each other with every time we see them. Perhaps we would then get out of ourselves and the force of gravity that this world exerts on us.   My husband said today that he was feeling depression come on, and I tossed my hair back and said, “How can you be depressed when you are married to me?” which of course elicited a well-deserved eye roll from him. I said that depression is not really from circumstances; only a certain type that is short-lived.   I do not suffer from depression, perhaps because I am too shallow. ...

They went out quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to bring His disciples word. Some things demand us to run.   This was one of them.   Because it is exciting, because it was urgent, because haste was commanded, and because the disciples in their despair needed the word as soon as possible.   We say commonly all hell broke loose.   That is sort of what happened on Friday; here, all heaven broke loose.   Most things do not demand us to run, yet we do.   I don’t run any more.   Telling others the gospel is run-worthy. The speech of the angel here in Matthew is concise but full.   Prophecy is fulfilled; Jesus told you this would happen.   Do not be afraid.   Here is physical proof he’s gone, and you will see him in physical form very soon.   Women were the first to get the news.   Not the only, just the first, because they were there to hear it.     Do women put th...

--> The passage is unclear as to whether the two women saw the resurrection here, but I don’t think so.   They would probably have passed out too. They might have been on their way early but it was before they got there because they were greeted after the fact by the angel. It has to be admitted that the eyewitness accounts, while multiple and credible, are fragmented; not contradictory but incomplete by themselves.   Like a jigsaw puzzle, some of the pieces are so small in the big picture that one wonders if they fit, but in the larger view they do.   Each gospel writer did not interview or get information from every character involved.   The running facts are:   before dawn, the angel rolled the stone away and Jesus emerged, bodily; the guards fainted; the women had interludes with the angels that told them to talk to the disciples immediately. The women went with “fear and great joy.” That is a contradictory combination to us, but it really sho...

I am reading Alvin Reid's Sharing Jesus without Freaking Out.  He quotes Tim Chester and Steve Timmis: God is great, so we don't have to be in control. God is glorious, so we don't have to fear others. God is good, so we don't have to lok elsewhere. God is gracious, so we don't have to prove ourselves. That will encourage me for a while. 

My husband found this British series on Amazon Prime movies after watching some of it on PBS.  The opening title sequence got me interested, so over the past week we have watched the six episodes in the series.  That is time I will never get back again, and the only really good thing I can say is that when the prices come down on the original books, which seems to be spiking in popularity, I will have a go at reading one of them.  In that way perhaps I can feel somewhat better about the Durrells, who in this series are portrayed as just about the most unlikable family ever. I can think of three ways that this was disappointing.  The first it's hearsay; the other two are from my direct experience. First, according to reviews on IMDB, the series bears little resemblance to the family in the real book.  They did live on Corfu, there were four children, the youngest loved animals and became a naturalist, and he wrote about them.  I realize a film version ca...

--> One has to wonder if the whole town of Jerusalem was aware of the strange happenings.   As it says in Acts 26 (Paul to Agrippa) these things were not done in a corner.   Other places it is stated that the events were widely known:   Earthquakes, sightings. It is not a private revelation, or a private gospel.  

I was privileged to teach last week on Matthew 21.  This is one of those portions in the gospel for people who thought Jesus floated around for a few years saying ambiguous happy things about loving children and helping others until some mean people misunderstood him.  Uh, no. CS Lewis' line in the first Narnia story about Aslan not being safe but being good is often cited in this regard.  We want to put Jesus in our own mold and be comfortable with him, and then, for goodness sake, he goes and does these confrontational things!  What are we to do with him? (I hope my irony is evident.) The first incident is the "triumphal entry," although I am not sure why it is called that, since he would be dead six days later. The event is full and ripe with Jewish symbolism, either prophesied, cultural, or historical.  Solomon came into the city on a donkey.  The palm branches were used for royalty.  The use of the colt was in prophesy.  Military conque...

I like this line.  It was the last line of a news story in New York Times by a writer named Ahmari, who confesses to being a Catholic convert. The story is about how Diane Feinstein and Al Franken (Father, help us that he is a senator!) went after a Notre Dame law professor who is up for a federal judgeship because she had written some things in the past about her faith.  Shame on them.  The constitution says "No religious test."  They would not do that to a Muslim (because of fear of reprisal).  They think they can pull it on a conservative Catholic or Protestant (which Bernie Sanders tried to pull a few weeks ago).  I thought Feinstein had some sense but she just proved me wrong.  I also knew Sanders and Franken had no sense.  

The drama of Passion Week is so wonderful.   Intrigue, evil, “The last deception will be wore than the first.” What a line.   The two Marys watch the tomb.   The hatred toward Jesus is remarkable.   I am reading THE INSANITY OF GOD, and that hatred is so hard to understand.   Where does it come from?   Fear, difference, pride, superiority? But Jesus predicted it. How does someone get millions to follow him when he promises hatred from the masses of the world.  Oh, yes.  He dies for them and then rises from the dead, what is referred here as the last deception. 

--> I was invited, or should probably say, had the opportunity, to speak and sign books and schmooze at a local authors' event this morning.  It was at the local library.  I wore myself out with it.  I spoke for a few minutes and this is my text.  I really stand by these ideas.  Of course, no one but the librarian heard, but as a college professor I am used to speaking and no one listening.  1.   You must read.   You must be familiar with the look of words on a page, the sound of them. You must know what other people are writing. If you say you want to write but don’t like to read, you’ll have two problems:   you won’t know good writing, and you won’t reciprocate with others whose writing you need to critique as well. 2.      You must write what you know but that is not the end of it.   You must do research. 3.      You must be around people who will be honest about your writin...

If He is the King of Israel, [ i ] let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him. [ j ] 43  He trusted in God; let Him deliver Him now if He will have Him; for He said, ‘I am the Son of God.’” “If. . . let him. . . , and we will believe him.” This is often passed over, but it is an important phrase.   The world throughout history has said, “If God … then I’ll believe.”   God is given a test that is not what God does, not in His plan, and mankind feels able to reject God because God doesn’t meet his test.   There is a dark humor in this argument.   If God did what man said to prove Himself sufficiently to man, would God be God?   Would God subordinate Himself to man?   This is the one time when God did subordinate Himself to man, for mankind’s salvation, and it still didn’t meet mankind’s standards because they wanted to call the shots.   If Jesus had jumped down, would they have believed?   I doub...

Why the hatred?   The people calling for Jesus’ execution were so set on it.   What had he done to the masses?   Were these people who had heard of him but didn’t get the benefits, the bread miracle, the healings?   Or had some of them but couldn’t or wouldn’t follow?   Did they really believe he was a heretic and blasphemer?   Were they afraid of something, or being ostracized from the community?   Were they being paid off?   (the temple made a fortune from the sacrificial system and money changing, so there was plenty.   Thirty pieces of silver was nothing to them, and that was our equivalent of—well, it’s hard to say. An Internet search gives it at any thing from $60 to $12,000.   It was a good bit for them, either way.   If they paid everyone in the crowd a couple of days’ wages, it would have been worth it for them.   We don’t even know if the crowd was all Jewish! Were they then just rabble ro...

--> One must read all four accounts of the passion, and many scholars have made concordances or harmonies of these passages to show the complete time line.   Matthew leaves out some of the trial’s going back and forth.   John tells more of the dialogue between Pilate and Jesus.   Matthew says that both thieves reviled Jesus, although Luke tells us one repented, in his own manner.     That does not eliminate what Matthew says; undoubtedly the one thief started by reviling but the hours on the cross changed his mind.   Pilate is responsible for the sign over Jesus’ head, which the religious leaders did not like.   Still, we only get the facts of the cross as God would let us have, and the historical fact of it must be placed in theological and prophetical context; otherwise it’s just a tragic story of a person being unjustly killed by the Romans, who were brutal.   That’s why I balk at movies or depictions that I “just have to see” (a...

Many of our modern ills would be addressed (not fixed entirely, but mitigated) if we practiced, truly, the Sabbath Rest. From a book review on Christianity Today about the new book:  Practices of Love: Spiritual Disciplines for the Life of the World by Kyle David Bennett, Brazos Press.  Review by Kristen Deede Johnson.  (Quotation starts here. Sabbath for Others To look more closely at this way of life, consider the spiritual discipline of Sabbath. Bennett describes how we can practice Sabbath rest in ways that actually hurt our neighbor. One pitfall is equating rest with laziness. When we think of Sabbath rest as vegging out (perhaps as an occasion to binge-watch a favorite show), we are practicing a selfish, malformed version of rest that gives no thought to what our neighbor needs. Another temptation is what Bennett calls “otherworking,” as in substituting one form of work for another—when, for example, we physically leave our workplace but bring work...

Yes, that is my title.  It is my firm belief, too.  Read the whole thing before getting mad. And it may seem strange from someone who has worked in higher education for forty years and has three graduate degrees. I don't write this post because I am against higher education or because it hasn't had a place in my life.  It's central to who I am (but not the core).  I love what I do, where I work, the blessing of working with my students and colleagues, and the exploration of ideas. I believe in  higher education's promise for America and for individuals.   But I still believe in the advice in the title, and I will deal with this topic in two parts: First, don't send your kid to COLLEGE. Second, don't SEND your kid to college. First.  College is not for everyone.  It's definitely not for everyone at 18 years of age.  In my 40 years in the classroom and as an administrator, in all types of institutions, I have seen two phenomena....