Silver Cup Blessing

Today at 4:21 AM, earth’s north pole was tilted furthest away from the sun during its annual trek through space. For thousands of years people have been marking the winter solstice, noting (in the northern hemisphere) when the place of the sunrise and sunset reached its point furthest south before moving back toward the north and its place at the spring equinox. It was a time when people looked at the sky and (ironically in our scientific age) knew the motions of the heavens much better than we do. Unlike those living centuries ago, we keep our time in our pocket or on our wrists. The solstice was significant because it was a visible marker of being in the depths of winter but also a reminder that, even when all is darkest and coldest, spring is on the way. I live in Florida now, so this connection to the seasons is less pressing than it was when I lived in central Kansas or western Michigan. For people who did not have central heat or electricity, warmth and light were at a premium at...

  Photo Credit: ESA/Hubble “I wonder as I wander out under the sky how Jesus the Savior did come for to die for poor or’nry people like you and like i I wonder as I wander out under the sky.” It’s not a song that I hear a lot during Christmastime, but some years ago I had a meaningful musical experience singing it, and this year it has come back to me. The origins of the song are in a small bit of music that a composer (John Jacob Niles) heard in the late 1800s in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Its lyrics resonate with the earthiness and poverty that characterized that region of the country. Imagining Jesus as being born in the North Carolina backcountry, in a barn filled with animals, does not seem too far-fetched. He did not come as a pristine baby, brow shining with angelic light, to adorn the crafted mantels and beautiful trees of the upper-middle class. Instead, the song flattens the dirty straw at the foot of the manger to remind us that those who believe all ha...

  https://www.livegodspeed.org/home When I was twenty-five I felt lonely. I felt perhaps that the visions of the world that had once driven me to find my purpose, to find that great mission, had failed me. I was less convinced that I mattered. I was not entirely sure that my path would lead me to a place that I wanted to be. And one night, I lay in bed and listened. I listened to a crowd of voices in my head. But these were not the voices of anxiety or obsession. Instead, I listened carefully to the people of my life. I heard each of them, as they, in turn, said my name. I could hear the intonation of each one. In some it was serious, in some teasing, in some compassionate, in some challenging. There were dozens of them at least and many more that surely spoke that name in my dreams as my conscious mind faded into the darkness of the night. It is then that I think I caught a glimpse of what it means to be known. I realized that the longings that I had were not longings for proposit...

 Last September I wrote a blog in which I reflected on the potential negative effects of hypothetical moral dilemmas on ethical decision-making. I was at that time in the beginning stages of teaching a college course on the history of the Holocaust. As I did, this idea was processing in the back of my mind and surfaced in two quite different modalities. During the class we reflected on the lives of those who intervened or spoke out on behalf of Jews. We considered what it was about these people – their backgrounds, their personalities, their thinking – that enabled them to make that life-giving decision. And we discussed the question of why it is that more people did not do the same. One of the reasons that students often stated, echoed by some of the sources that we read, was that people believed that there were two and only two potential outcomes that were linked to the decision that they made about the Jews. First, they could take a step to save others, perhaps through harbor...

  I listened to a podcast today on “Radiolab” ( https://radiolab.org/podcast/driverless-dilemma-0923 ) that dealt with research on the so-called “trolley problem.” Briefly, it is an ethical dilemma in which someone sees a trolley in the distance bearing down on a group of five people. If they throw a switch at this minute, they can save the five people, but there is one person on the part of the track to which the train will switch who will die if you do it. Do you hit the switch? The podcast considered brain research that has been done on what parts of the brain activate during this problem and what parts activate when asked the same problem but one is required to push someone onto the tracks. The show then applied this to questions about AI in driverless vehicles. The whole thing just didn’t sit quite right with me. I got to thinking about it and realized that what I didn’t like was the whole idea of creating an ethical dilemma. At the heart of a dilemma is that you have to ch...

  I suppose that a lot of people who know me would describe me as a rational person. Some who are mere acquaintances might even perceive me as relatively unemotional. I value thinking carefully and deeply about life and situations. Whether by nature, by practice, or by both, I tend to be highly analytical and this means that I also surely err on the side of calculation and caution. I’m sure it’s been maddening to more than one person or significant other. Lately, though, I have been watching some epic and dramatic films – specifically the Harry Potter movies. In them, at key moments, the soundtrack rises, often with the distinct sound of French horns soaring with the building tension and into resolution. And as I have allowed myself to be absorbed in these sequences, I have consistently been moved nearly to tears. In one sense it is the music and the connected film that does this. But it is also something more. I spent the years of my adolescence learning to play French horn and p...

  Today is the 400th birthday of Blaise Pascal. I could go on and on about the different ways that Pascal has helped me to think about the world that have made a significant difference to me. For anyone who knew me during the years from 1999-2008 when i was actively researching Pascal for my master's thesis and dissertation i am sorry for the many times that i said something in conversation like, "Pascal said something about this . . . " But i won't apologize for trying to give people a reason to read something that he wrote. If you have never taken the time to read the Pensées ("Thoughts"), put them in your digital library (you can probably find them for free) or buy a second-hand copy to read through at times when you have a moment to be reflective and thoughtful. The Pensées is essentially a set of snippets and sections of writing reflecting on human nature, culture, God, Scripture, and many other topics. Most famously he fashioned an argument for givin...