partsofspeaking

We have all heard of Murphy's Law: If anything can go wrong it will.  The corollary:  Murphy was an optimist.  I invented Tucker's Law:  If anyone can find a way to misunderstand you, he/she will.  The corollary:  This is doubled in online classes. The Law of Unintended Consequences is also one of my favorites, since we can't foresee everything that will result from an action or decision. Then there is the Law of Attraction (Oprah's pet), which is nonsense, the Law of Knowledge doubling every however many periods of time, and the Law of 29 (I just learned this one);  "A belief held by some marketers that on average a prospective customer will not purchase a good or service until they have been exposed to a marketing message 29 times. While the number of messages can differ a great deal when courting prospective clients, advocates of the law of 29 believe that a constant, "in your face" approach to marketing is the best way to sell a product o

My Franklin Covey Planner never ceases to amaze me with its quotes of the day.  Today I read, "You are responsible for your life.  You can't keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction . . . Life is really about moving on." by Oprah Winfrey Oh, my word. Where do we begin?  Yes, to sentence 1.  Maybe to sentence 2 (if we take all the blame, we are just control freaks and are saying others get off the hook for their contribution to our dysfunction--dysfunction involves relationships, and taking all responsibility can be as wrong as taking no responsibility). But I am really, after Parkland, Florida, bothered by the last sentence (to say nothing of who this is coming from, the woman the media says to embrace as our next president). Less than 48 hours--much less--this tragedy is politicized, polarized, media-ized.  These families couldn't even bury their children without cameras in their faces.  So, I guess moving on after losing your child is now supposed t

I came home from a work trip last night and needed to relax and found this film on Netflix.  I was aware of it when it came out.  While I can't recommend it per se, since I rarely if ever recommend films, it was thought provoking.  At least, I think, for older people.  I don't think younger people, say in their 20s, would understand it. A retired couple is coming up to their 45th wedding anniversary. (They are in England but they could just as easily be North American.  Nothing screams UK other than driving on the "wrong" side of the road.)  They are childless (I think that is very important to the plot.)  However, the husband had a girlfriend before he met his wife named Katya.  She and the husband had been hiking in the Alps in the early '60s and she fell into a glacier and was lost. At the beginning of the film, the Monday before their 45th anniversary party, he gets news that her body has been found because the glacier has been melting (due to climate chan

I don't have an answer.  I'm just asking. I got a good answer from a colleague who is writing his dissertation on social media and virtual communities.  "Screaming into the abyss." That said, I go through period of Twitter flurry, like today, where I tweeted 11 times already.

Yesterday was a rainy day, and I finally finished The Moonstone, the excellent (and very long) novel by Wilkie Collins that defined the detective fiction novel genre.  So I will turn to the other masterpiece, The Woman in White , wherein he writes in preface to the second edition: "I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story." That might seem obvious, but novels are written for other purposes, where the story and characters are subsumed to another purpose, usually a moral or political point.  Some good novels have done that, but I find that when I just let my characters be themselves, I'm much better off. Anyway, I recommend The Moonstone to anyone willing to invest several months in its reading.  I loved it, but I started a while back and read a chapter or two at a time.  It's 380 dense pages, but the writing is spectacular.  

You can't get long in seriously teaching the New Testament, especially Acts and some of the epistles, without running into my favorite subject (not) circumcision. Let me add that a Bible teacher also has to address the issue of eunuchs. It does make one wonder about the fascination and meaning with that body part in the Jewish culture, with one of the big obstacles for the early Christian being those who wanted to mess everything about grace up with this insistence on the circumcision rite being performed on grown men. Thus, again, (as I post below) I was teaching Acts 16 this morning and we read that Paul circumcised Timothy (a grown man, and technically Jewish) but not others.  (He does something similar in Acts 21 to appease some Jews, but it doesn't work and ends badly.)  I questioned why Paul would do this after the Acts 15 council drew a line in the sand, but John Piper points out that Paul was not appeasing Jewish Christians (who would need to know better now) and

This morning, being Sunday, I heard preachers on the radio on the way to and from church and to do my Sunday errands of visiting my disabled brother and, unfortunately, shopping at Sam's Club (a disaster on any day). This famous pastor, a godly man, was "going off" on the older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son (which, by the way, means wasteful son, not wild and crazy guy son).   But the word prodigal is not used in the text anyway.  I have others go in this same direction, saying scandalous things about this man about whom the text really says little.  Preachers seems to go in one of two directions--they stress how awful, culturally, the younger son was (and he is--if you've ever had anyone in your family like this, you know).  The other direction is to say how wicked, evil, demonic, legalistic, unthankful, judgmental, etc. etc. the older brother is.  Rhetorical flourishes become the point rather than Jesus' point--that the Father accepts both.  We

I taught Acts 16.  After we read about Lydia, I said, "You go, girl!"  In the Roman colony of Philippi (named after Alexander the Great's dad, Philip of Macedon), there were not enough Jews to have a synagogue (ten families needed), so Paul couldn't follow his usual routine of going to the synagogue on the Sabbath.  He encounters some God-of-Israel-worshipping women, and one of them (perhaps all) are strong women.  A freeborn woman in Rome who raised four children could become a citizen.  Lydia also owned a business and a large household.  Perhaps a widow, perhaps married to a husband who didn't care, she offered her home to Paul and Silas before and after they land in jail. I can't help but conclude, when I look at the strong, sacrificial women of the New Testament, like Lydia, Dorcas, and many others, that we women are not given the place of leadership we should in the church.  Not pastorship--just leadership, just influence, just voice.  Especially olde

I am working on a "theology of Donald Trump" and "a theology of immigration policy."  I think many "Christian leaders" who make pronouncements about immigration policy don't live in the real world.  They don't deal with immigrants on a daily basis (I pretty much do).  I am speaking of those on both sides of the issue. As to the first, it disheartens me that leaders in the denomination of which I am a member "kiss up" to Trump. I am also working on a short study on the Samaritan woman ("The gospel according to the Samaritan woman" is the working title).  Also a research article on student expressions of gratitude toward teachers, and finishing up a mystery novel, my first.  Then a book on using high impact practices in teaching, and on and on. I have 20 ideas for books.  Consequently, my blogging will be less frequent, but I invite you to look through the archives of over 1800 articles. Thanks to Amazon, I can engage in m

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/january-web-only/place-freed-slaves-made.html This is an interview with Eric Motley .  I deeply appreciate his words about community. He speaks of a woman who " pulled me aside and said, 'Motley, God has something he wants you to do. I don’t know entirely what it is, but I know he has something he wants you to do—and your job is to figure it out.'” I have heard Denzel Washington say he had the same experience as a young man.  It struck me that every teacher should say that to every student.  I know a student I should say that to the next time I see him.  He might not get it--he's rather a pill--but he needs to hear it from someone.  We all need to hear it. Mark Twain said that the two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. The article is good for other reasons, too.

I grew up watching "Leave it to Beaver."  The show was actually tongue in cheek funny.  Wally, the older son, had a dead pan delivery.  The parents were not stupid about their son's devices.  Eddie Haskell was hilarious.  He would come in and say, obsequiously, "Hello, Mrs. Cleaver. Hello, Mr. Cleaver," and then go to Wally's room and say to Beaver (Theodore), "Hey, punk."  The total kiss-up.  His parents were low-key and oblivious to what a twerp he was.  So, somehow over the years, that show has come to symbolize what the 1950s were like.  Nothing could be further from the truth. I say this because I was at an Honors Students Conference this weekend doing some fact-finding, and I sat in on some papers/presentations by students.  One was about the dystopian family of the future, but in the process she made some assertions about how the families of the '50s were like those of "Leave it To Beaver." I commented to a colleague that I