Reflections from the Dartmouth Chaplaincy

The Mind of Christ - Richard R. Crocker

2012-10-01T11:40:00.003-04:00

Richard R. Crocker

The Mind of Christ

Rollins Chapel

September 30, 2012

Philippians 2:1-8

We are considering in chapel this term what it means to love God with our minds. Today’s scripture passage encourages us to “let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” The passage brings us directly to the mind of Jesus as an example for us, who are to have the same mind as Jesus.

That, of course, is a tall order – that we ourselves should have the mind of Christ. I am using the term mind tonight to refer not strictly to the way we reason, but to the way we think. Reasoning is one form of thinking, no doubt, but it is not the only kind of thinking. Often our thoughts are formed at a level that is more powerful and primitive than our reason. Indeed, we frequently use our reason to provide support for thoughts and positions and ideas that we hold for emotional reasons. This is why the world has never been able to agree on many very important matters. Our emotional reasons are often primary, and our intellect is secondary. So I am interpreting the word mind to mean that part of ourselves by which we make decisions and commitments - the whole part, encompassing both intellect and emotion.

I am encouraged to take this broad view of mind because of the context in which Paul uses the word. Notice that in the scripture passage the word mind occurs three times. Verse two; “be of the same mind”, “of one mind”; verse 5: “let the same mind be in you….” But it is obvious when Paul uses this word that he is speaking broadly about the basic attitudes that govern our behavior. It is, after all, a highly emotional passage which is intended to offer encouragement to a church, a congregation that was oppressed, written by a man who was himself in prison. Listen to the emotionality of the passage:

“If there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete….” These are all emotional words, which preface Paul’s admonition that his joy will be complete if his hearers have the same mind, the same love, and are of one mind. Then he explains what kind of mind he is advocating: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” Uh-oh. Here is where we begin to squirm. And it continues: “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” And here we see that we are in another world, for what Paul is describing is the mind of Christ, whose mind should also be our own. “Let the (this) same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”

There is so much that comforts us and challenges us in this beautiful passage. But if we take it seriously, as I hope we do, we must confront the immediate fact that the mind that Paul describes as the mind of Christ – a mind that does nothing from selfish ambition or to pursue our own advantage” is not the mind that we have, or that we are encouraged to have, or, indeed, that many of us want to have. Indeed, this passage confronts us with the basic discrepancy between the Christian ambition, which is to have the mind of Christ, and the kind of ambition that most of us have been taught and that we have absorbed throughout our education and that has brought us to Dartmouth.

For if we are honest, we must admit that in our time at Dartmouth, we, most of us, most of the time, are strategizing on how to maximize our advantages in the world. Instead of asking the question, “What must we do to be saved?”, we are much more preoccupied with the question “What must I do to succeed.” Now, don’t get me wrong. All of us want to succeed in the sense of accomplishing a goal. But it makes a great deal of difference what our goal is. If our goal is to distinguish ourselves by our wealth and cleverness, we are hardly seeking the mind of Christ. If, on the other hand, we devote our minds to understanding the minds of others, to understanding what it is like to be needy, to fail, and to love, then our goal is quite different. The fact is that, with our whole being, most of us spurn the mind of Christ. We have a different goal.

But not all of us, and not all the time. There are occasions throughout our lives, and even now, when the fact of vulnerability breaks through the protective shield of privilege, when our failure teaches us much more than our success, when suffering cannot be avoided, when we recognize that needs of others are more important than our own. Those experiences, if Paul is to be believed, bring us closer to the mind of Christ.

Let me illustrate by telling you two stories. They are hypothetical, composite stories that are not about any particular person – because I do not want to betray any confidences – but they are nonetheless true stories because they reflect many true events. The first begins with a student who comes to my office, often referred to me by a dean or someone else, because they are experiencing a deep disappointment. Let’s say that this is a very ambitious student who, through a mistake like plagiarism, is facing suspension from the college. Not only is the student feeling guilty and ashamed, but she also feels that her chances to be admitted to medical school, or law school, or to work in a hedge fund, have been ruined. Her whole life plan has been shattered.

What words of reassurance can I offer? I can’t say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter. You’ll still get into law school.” Depending upon the offense, that is not likely to happen. What I can say is: This experience is a very valuable part of your life. It can re-orient your ambition. It can help you think differently about what really matters. This time away from Dartmouth is a time to change your ambition. I can speak from my own experiences of loss and disappointment – fully acknowledging the pain, but also the acknowledging the growth. And, if the student is a Christian, I can point to the deep paradox of what it means to have the mind of Christ – a mind not set upon one’s own self-interest, but a mind that knows how frail we are, and knowing that, loves and lives and hopes in a very different way.

The second story is about a student who decides to take a term off and do an intense service experience in a place he/she has never been before. Whether it is in a poor urban area or a rural reservation or a clinic in Africa, the student is apprehensive, because he has never been there and done this, and doesn’t know if he will fit it. Some of these students return simply relieved to be back in the privileged comfort of Dartmouth. Others, however, return with transformed ambitions. They find that their whole mind has been changed, and they have a vocational direction that they never anticipated. Or even if they continue to go through corporate recruiting, their ambition has been tempered by their realization of the needs of the world.

What these stories have in common is the discovery of vulnerability in ourselves and in others. Discovering our mutual vulnerability is the first step in having the mind of Christ. Amen.

Kurt Nelson

2012-10-01T11:31:00.004-04:00

Kurt Nelson has now become Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life at Colby College, where he has started his own blog. You can access Kurt's blog at this link:

Web.Colby.edu/kdnelson

Yom Kippur - Harry Enten '11

2012-09-28T11:07:00.002-04:00

Harry Enten '11 writes for The Guardian. This reflection can be accessed at:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/26/twitter-yom-kippur-harry-enten ...

It's Yom Kippur – the most religious holiday on the Jewish calendar. I'm here at the office acting like today is just like every other day; I'm supposed to be atoning for my sins in synagogue.
I haven't been to temple, as some call it, in many years. I found it excruciatingly boring and mentally unstimulating. I went to Hebrew school for two days before refusing. The only reason people might confuse me with a religious Jew is because I had my bar mitzvah in Israel. I only did so because it meant I had to memorize less. I can to this very day recite my Torah portion with the correct inflections flawlessly, but that is more because of a good memory than any connection I had to the experience.
Still, I feel some unexplainable connection to my past. Hard as I try, I feel that I have to recognize what my ancestors went through so that I can be here today. I feel the need to commemorate Yom Kippur in some fashion.
Yom Kippur is all about self-reflection: about understanding what I've done in the past year and what I can do to make myself better in the next year. Perhaps, it's not complaining as much during the Guardian's morning meeting. Perhaps, it's compromising a little bit more when it comes to familial relations.
So, I've decided that in order to self-reflect, I can't share my thoughts on Twitter for the day. Twitter is almost all about self-indulgence for me. Yes, I read what other people write, but it's really more about hearing myself talk that keeps me on the site. I get a thrill up my leg whenever I see someone prominent respond to say something I say or retweet it.
I know I'm not alone. People like sharing on Facebook because they somehow feel that if they share something on the internet, it's truer and more important, in some sense.
During my darkest hours, when I didn't have a job, it was these social tools of communication with others that kept me going. They were a way for me to say to myself, "I'm still important. People still care what I have to say."
When the Torah was written, and for many years after, we communicated with others by going to work or meeting up in the local town. Once at work or at, say, a local eatery, we saw our friends and shared a word and/or a bite to eat.
It's not that we don't go to work or eat out with friends, but these exercises just don't pack the same punch that they used to. The reason is that we talk with our friends online, and many of us would probably eat online if we could. I know that I usually eat with my laptop beside me.
But I wonder sometimes if I don't lose something by almost never logging off Twitter. With constant tweeting, I lose the ability to look within myself. I often find myself cursing at the screen when I see someone write the same article I was thinking or writing. It's worse when I feel that I published a piece just like theirs, but theirs got more retweets for some reason.
Instead, I might be a better person, and maybe better writer, if I stopped caring about others' work so much and concentrated on my own.
So, for one day, I'm going to be by myself. It's certainly not perfect in the religious sense: I'm still using a computer to write these words. But not writing on Twitter is my own way of keeping my faith alive.
Others are going the whole nine yards (synagogue, no electronics, no eating, no bathing, etc). I'm happy that they have found a way to connect with God in their own way. But with self-reflection, I'm also secure with my own means of acknowledging that today is Yom Kippur.

Keeping God in Mind - Judy Williams, Temporary Assistant Chaplain

2012-09-27T08:17:00.000-04:00

September 23, 2012

"Keeping God in Mind."

Sing the Shema. :Hear, O Israel, The Lord is one God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:4-5)

That was the Shema. Every night, when I put my children to bed, I sing this to them. The Shema articulates the heart of the Jewish faith: a bond between the Divine and a people called to be in relationship with that One God. The practice of singing or saying this prayer at bedtime is based on the idea that the Shema should be the last conscious thought in one's mind before falling asleep, and the first thought in one's mind upon waking.

Ideally, the last thought before death should also be the Shema. There are moving stories of Jews enacting this practice, including that of Rabbi Akiva, often called the father of rabbinic Judaism. According to legend, he died at the hands of Roman torturers while speaking this prayer (for them as well as for himself). Akiva ben Joseph is said to have sought to love God "with his whole soul." Therefore, it is said that in his death, he fulfilled his deepest spiritual desire.

I sing the Shema to my children because they're Jewish. Most of you are not. Why am I speaking about this traditional Jewish practice at a Christian chapel service? While the practice of the Shema itself may not be relevant to your faith lives, there is something relevant about this practice that is vital to Christianity, and is related to our theme for this term.

As many of you know, the theme of this term's Chapel explorations is "Mind." We are approaching a text, present in slightly different forms in both the Hebrew and the Christian scriptures, that admonishes us to love God with every part of our being. Our Chaplain discussed the theme last week in terms of the phrase, "Loving God with your mind," and I'm going to continue that theme today.

As a generally over-educated bunch, we are prone to think of "mind" as delineating the intellect. But, there is more to the mind with which we can love God than just our cognitive faculties.

Now, don't get me wrong, I do love the intellect! There are great delights in contemplating the mysteries of existence and meaning with those capacities. It is certainly an important part of what we are here in this academic environment to do.

High intellectual approaches to Christianity have produced great things. The Scholastic movement was responsible for enfolding the wisdom of the great Greek philosophers into Christianity, bridging the gap between the Classical Era and the second millennium of the Common Era. The techniques of analysis and of teaching developed by the Scholastic movement made an immeasurable contribution to the development of every field of academia.

But Scholasticism is also known for its excesses. The somewhat hackneyed joke about the movement is that, at its worst, it encouraged discussions about "how many angels could dance on the head of a pin." Getting caught up in theological minutiae, while it may make for a great Ph.D. thesis, is not, in my opinion, a good way to have a fully-realized life of faith. To do so, I believe that it is also necessary to also have another kind of knowledge of the Divine. Without it, we risk pursuing God with only a part of the "mind" which we have been given by our Creator.

A very different thread from Scholasticism is that of mysticism. I come from a mystical tradition, myself. As Scholasticism was waning, there was a great flowering of Christian mysticism, and my small sect arose at the tail end of that era. The purpose of mysticism is to come to "know" God in a different, transformative, and inherently non-intellectual way, that of the experience of communion with the Divine being.

That thread has been far more prominent in the Eastern Orthodox tradition than in Western Christianity. To pursue theosis, or union with God, is considered a prerequisite for all subsequent pursuit of religious knowledge. This is not to say that mysticism need be inherently anti-intellectual. The idea is that knowledge that is not informed by revelation and grace is lacking. The Quaker tradition asserts that one cannot know the Scriptures without a familiarity with "the Spirit which gave them forth."

Okay, so why am I banging on about mysticism, when it may seem incompatible with the whole idea of "mind"-based knowledge? And how does all this relate back to the Shema?

The title of my talk tonight is, "Keeping God in mind." With the practice of the Shema, the first thought, and the last, is of God. The alignment of one's mind toward God is intended to create an experience of closeness with the One which is both thoughtful and mystical.

While you are here at Dartmouth, deeply immersed in the pursuit of knowledge, where is your mind? How can we keep God in our minds, despite all that is going on in our lives?

Without being monastics, we are unlikely to have God at the forefront of our conscious thoughts at every moment, and that is not a condemnation of us. But can we have God "in mind," despite our need to concentrate our attention on many thoughts and activities that may not seem related to faith? Can we ground our intellectual pursuits, whatever they may be, in our spiritual being? Is it even possible to obey that overarching commandment?

Despair not! I do believe that it's possible. (There are many practices related to prayer that can be a part of this, but that's not what I'm talking about tonight.) I'm talking tonight about something far simpler. There is a simple act of choice that has the capacity to align us with God in all that we think and do. I'm talking about devotion. By electing to devote ourselves to God, all of our thoughts and actions can become grounded in our faith.

With devotion, we see our lives, and all of our gifts, as being given to us by God. They are not owned by us, but held in stewardship. The purpose of our lives is to serve God, obeying His leadings to us, which are revealed to us through Christ, our Inward Teacher. As God's servants, whether we are healing the sick or exploring the movement of the earth's plates or participating in the flow of commerce, all that we do can be part of the flow of Divine Love.

Of course, the choice of devotion isn't a one-shot deal. It's something that we need to constantly renew. We are distractible, forgetful beings, and so we need to keep our commitment in mind, one way or another. Find ways of doing that for yourself, and you will find yourself living a life that fulfills God's requirements.

Like all growing things, turn towards the Light that gives life, and your own will be whole, and real, and as it should be.

Judy Anne Williams

2012-09-24T12:49:00.001-04:00

Prayer at the appearance of Vice President Joe Biden
September 21, 2012
Richard R, Crocker, College Chaplain

Almighty God:

We pause amid busy-ness to ask your blessing on your world and our nation.

We pray that we may always be a nation blessed with peace, prosperity, and the promise of justice, and a force for good in the world.

Bless our leaders, we pray, with wisdom and compassion. Inspire and sustain all who seek office with a sincere desire to serve. In this election season, we pray for all candidates, that they may help us, by their conversations and debates, find our way forward, toward what is best, for everyone. Amen.

Loving God with All your Mind - Richard R. Crocker

2012-09-17T13:15:00.002-04:00

Loving God with all your Mind

Richard R. Crocker

Rollins Chapel

September 16, 2012

Mark 12:28-31

I have suggested that our theme for chapel services this term be the question: “What does it mean to love God with all your mind?”

The scripture passage today poses the question. When Jesus is asked by a sincere questioner “Which is the greatest commandment?”, he replied by quoting, from Deuteronomy, a central text of the Jewish tradition, known as the shema: “You shall love the God your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” That’s what the text says in the Hebrew scripture. But when Jesus quotes it, according to the passage today in Mark and also the similar passages in Matthew and Luke, he adds the phrase “with all your mind.” It is an interesting addition. Loving God with all your heart and soul and strength means loving God with all with the center of your being – with your emotional life, with what is at the very center of you, and with all your energy. While we could examine each of those in turn, let us be content to ask tonight, and perhaps in future chapel services, what it means to love God with all your mind.

This is a question that seems appropriate in a college chapel. After all, you who are students are here, aren’t you, to develop or minds – not so much your heart or your soul or your strength – though I think Dartmouth students, and students in general, are often far more interest in issues of the heart and the soul and the body than in “intellectual questions.” But all of those are secondary to the primary purpose of the college. The purpose of college is to cultivate the life of the mind.

And the purpose of this college chapel service is thoughtful worship. That’s how we advertise ourselves: a brief thoughtful worship service is what we say. Thoughtful means we are trying to love God with our minds.

So, what does it mean to love God with all your mind? When Jesus said “mind”, whatever he meant in Aramaic was translated into Greek by the word dianoia, which means reasoning. Love God through the way we reason. What does that mean? I suggest that it means at least these three things.

First, it means that we reason our way back to mystery. Life is mysterious. Our very existence is amazingly, wonderfully, incomprehensibly mysterious. We are here. That’s really all we know. We don’t know how we got here. Now, scientists of all kinds can give us some clues about how things have developed, but inevitably, the pursuit of our origin, our evolution, takes us back to fundamental mystery. So our reason takes us to mystery. That’s the first step in loving God with our minds: acknowledging the wonderful mystery of existence.

Second, loving God with our mind then means asking questions and trying to answer them. If you enter a class with no questions, you will learn little. The essence of learning is asking questions and considering answers. We ask questions with our minds. Some are trivial questions, some are logistical questions, some are existential questions. Sometimes we ask questions according to our temperament. For example, you may be interested in asking questions about how things work. If so, you may become an engineer. I am not so interested in those questions. When something is wrong with my car, or my body, I am glad that there are mechanic and doctors who have studied how cars work and how bodies work. They are important questions. But the questions I ask, by my temperament, concern what things mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? These are commonly called spiritual or philosophical questions. But we must use our minds in answering all kinds of questions. That is what our minds are for.

Third, loving God with all our mind means not only trying to answer questions that arise in our own minds, but also taking seriously the questions that others pose to us. Sometimes we think that having faith means that we don’t have to think about things or try to answer questions. We can even become defensive when people ask us why we believe a certain thing, such as: why do you believe in God? Or Why do you not believe in God? Or why do you believe that abortion is wrong, or why do you not believe that abortion is wrong? Often we are more comfortable when we are around people who do not ask us such questions. But loving God with all our minds means, certainly, that we take the questions that others pose to us seriously, that we try to answer them, honestly and thoughtfully, using the tool of reason.

Loving God means loving the mystery of life and loving others. Loving God with our minds means, at least, taking questions seriously. It also means, for those of us in every particular faith, learning about answers that constitute our own particular tradition. That does not mean that we adhere to a tradition uncritically. Far from it. But if a tradition is not questioned, it is not alive for us. Only when we answer the questions for ourselves, using our minds, do we feel that it is really ours.

At Dartmouth, I hope that you will take questions seriously. Do not fear the questions? Trying to answer them, in humility, but doing your best, is part of what it means to love God, and it is part of the greatest commandment of our faith. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Opening Convocation Prayer

2012-09-13T10:03:00.003-04:00

Richard Crocker
Convocation Prayer
September 10, 2012

God of Truth and Hope:
We are here to seek truth.
Sustain us in that task.

Help us not to be distracted by trivia,
or the fickle tyranny of college rankings,
or the foolishness of harmful traditions,
or illusions of self-importance.
Sustain our search for truth.

And sustain our hope
that this search is a human blessing,
not to be feared, but embraced with joy and perseverance,
and that it will lead us to a better life,
not for some, but for all.
Sustain us, O God of truth and hope,
in our common life,
this year and always.
Amen.

Baccalaureate Benediction - Kurt Nelson

2012-06-09T23:42:00.000-04:00

A prayer especially for graduates:

You have been told for four years,

that you’re the best and the brightest.

You’ve been told countless times that "the world’s troubles are your troubles."

And if - by the end of this weekend -

you can count the number of times you've been told to,

"Go out and change the world,"

I'll be surprised.

But I might humbly suggest,

in the midst of the whirlwind that is this weekend,

that you take a moment to Pause,

and let your blessings catch up with you.*

That you take a moment to notice,

that family and friends, loved ones, teachers and mentors,

are all here, in this moment, in the same place.

Take a moment to notice that you would not be here without them.

Take a moment to be grateful.

Grateful, for them,

and for those who cannot be with us.

Grateful for the gift of education.

And, if you’re so inclined, grateful to God -

the source of life and learning.

And may you go from this place, knowing that you are indeed smart and talented.

But fear not, for you’re not that smart.

And you’re certainly not yet wise.

So may you go, open to much more learning to come.

And may you go, surely, fired up to help make the world a little better.

But go also knowing that you have limits.

and that you need to sleep.

And that you are not alone.

But most of all, may you go from this place in the spirit of gratitude.

Knowing that you are lucky. And blessed.

And may you go, thus hoping, that you might be a blessing to those around you.

And as you go, may God bless you and keep you.

May God's face shine on you and be gracious to you.

May God look upon you with favor and grant you peace.

Amen.

*Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks said something like this line at a conference I attended at Emory University, October 2010. I can't find the text, but the inspiration comes from him.

Courage and Success - Kurt Nelson

2012-06-04T11:53:00.001-04:00

Rollins Chapel. 6/3/12

Jeremiah 1:5*
Philippians 4:4-9*

This concludes our chapel series for the year,

as well as our month-long discussion of courage.

Courage was really Richard’s topic.

And I don’t think I’m alone

in thinking that he’s probably shirked his duties a bit,

by really only offering us half a sermon on the subject.

But, we carry on…

And I will say,

I’ve come to understand,

as you’ll soon see,

that the idea of courage

really resonates with me.

And I’m certainly glad to be able to offer

something of a farewell sermon,

as I prepare for the next step.

Though it was made immediately clear,

as I sat down to write,

that I can’t do justice to the value and learning

of this place and people to me,

over the past five years.

In these 8-10 minutes.

So I’m not really going to try.

But fear not.

I still have some thoughts.

Those of you who know me well,

likely know

that I carry with me a good number of questions.

And one of those questions,

is about what I should really be doing with my life,

professionally speaking.

I love the work I do,

and especially the people I work with.

But still, I feel pulled in many directions.

A slight tug toward a more purely academic life:

Teaching, writing, grading, judging,

creating knowledge.

All that business.

But more often,

I feel pulled toward the world of direct action,

Direct engagement.

Feeling like my life is not lived fully enough,

radically enough in response to the challenges of the world,

and the call to serve the least of these.

And that tension –

a productive one I hope -

between academics and action,

between faith and intellect,

has led me comfortably,

but questioningly,

to where I stand,

and where I’m headed.

But I still sometimes ask myself,

“why am I here?”

Here with these bright, talented, driven young people.

Who are pretty likely to succeed,

with or without me.

Every so often, I’ve noticed,

life,

or God,

or the universe,

offers a moment of clarity.

A moment of renewed zest and zeal,

for the work before me.

I pray and I hope for these moments,

but, if you’ve ever experienced one,

I suspect you know,

that they are not nice or easy.

Rather, they come -

at least in my experience –

in the face of some wrong, or challenge,

so stark,

that it becomes clear that lived response,

is the only answer.

So I had such a moment this week,

in a relatively innocuous context:

in the Tucker Foundation’s living room,

at a session of the weekly program,

What Matters to Me and Why.

I’ll offer a few details of the talk,

so you know where I’m coming from.

but I don’t want to dwell on them too long.

Because it seemed like such a perfect distillation,

of a much larger problem.

This particular faculty member spoke about

how professional excellence mattered to her.

Essentially, she spoke about success.

And how that success was a function of hard work,

not talent.

She called it the “Michael Jordan principle,”

which means,

working harder than everyone.

Giving up on sleep,

any semblance of balance,

and other aspects of life.

It means constant striving,

and naked competition with other would-be professors,

both real and imagined.

all for the purpose of success.

It was a troubled image.

Laden aptly with sports imagery,

drawing comparisons of course to Michael Jordan,

who while tremendously successful,

was so driven

in his career

by spite

as to recall

in his hall of fame acceptance speech,

the coach who cut him from his Freshman High School Team.

Even more troubling was the comparison

to Junior Seau,

Hall of Fame Linebacker of legendary work ethic,

who, just last month,

not 5 years into his retirement

took his own life.

But indeed these men are paragons of success.

They achieved, tangibly.

Measurably.

And we love them for it,

even if they go so far as to sacrifice their own well-being.

And we must, I think, pause,

and truly wonder

Are these the kind of lives to which we aspire?

But most troubling for me,

more than any singular detail

or metaphor of success

was that when asked explicitly,

“What Matters to You and Why.”

The response was “Professional Excellence”

with not a single “And why?” in sight.

Which is, of course,

the whole point.

And this really suggests to me,

the crux of one of our great societal challenges:

We don’t know why we’re ambitious,

or to what end we ought be.

We just know that we are.

We know we must strive,

simply because success

is who we are.

Period.

There may be fleeting glimpses of ideas,

like wealth or influence,

comfort and stability,

a better life for our families.

But I honestly think these are secondary,

To the fact that there is no “and why.”

We are essentially defined by this narrow,

hollow vision of success.

I see it dripping from so many friends and colleagues.

I notice it working within myself.

But so too it’s larger than that,

as one student reminded me.

For this is at work in our basic, economic self-organization.

We seek growth in GDP

for no greater reason,

I would suggest,

than that’s what we define as good.

We have become so committed to a model of growth,

says Archbishop Rowan Williams,

that “we have long since stopped asking, ‘what for?’”

And so naturally,

we give up on Sabbath.

we give up on balance or perspective or pause.

Because if we do not succeed,

then we are not us.

And as I sat there,

hearing this distilled version of our view of ourselves.

I couldn’t help but think,

that this is why I’m here,

(to be fair,

a lot of me was also thinking,

“please can I leave.”)

but indeed there are so many problems with this worldview.

Because, to put it bluntly,

that’s not who we are,

and that’s not success.

But it’s the idea we set forth.

And it causes manifold problems for us,

and for the world around us.

We could reasonably conclude

that the problem is thus Ambition.

Or success itself.

That perhaps we could just relax.

Leave success to the wind,

And go with the flow.

But I’m not sure that’s right.

Because there is, I think,

a really necessary tension,

in life,

between being driven and being satisfied.

Between feeling like something is missing,

that we need to solve,

and feeling like we are fine the way we are.

I suspect we all know people who have swung too far

in both directions.

Those whose ambitions define them.

And those who never put their talent to good use.

And I think the problem probably isn’t ambition,

but rather lack of courage.

Now, I don’t mean to get too Lutheran on you,

but I do think we have the answer before us.

That who we are is not success,

or satisfaction.

Rather, who we are is loved.

And who we are is also always flawed.

Unable to achieve our own perfection,

but also fully justified.

And if we dare to believe that,

A whole world of possibility is opened.

because knowing that we cannot “succeed”

in the ultimate sense,

we can begin, perhaps, to seek the good,

for those around us.

And thus our ambition leads us not to define ourselves,

but to ask,

To what end?

Why am I on this path?

Where am I being called?

What if, like Jeremiah,

God knew me before I was formed,

and set before me a task or a direction?

This text dares us to wonder,

if there’s not something more to it all.

Dares us to wonder,

what we are being called to, and why?

And make no mistake,

that’s a scary set of questions to ask.

Because while the answer may very well be medical school,

or Teach for America,

or even – God help us – corporate recruiting,

the answer may very well be none of those things.

So often,

our education has become about that narrow success.

And is thus not about the question, Why?

But the question, How?

So we focus on knowledge and skills and experiences,

to achieve.

But really, what I think education needs,

is a boost of courage.

For there is no success without asking, “and why?”

There is no success without at least pondering,

where we might be called.

And thus there is, I think,

no success without courage.

Because it takes courage to really ask, “and why?”

And it takes confidence to forge those unusual paths,

that the world so needs.

“It takes courage,”

ee cummings said,

“to grow up and become who we really are.”

And I find myself wondering if Courage comes really,

from simply knowing why

we are doing what we are doing.

And perhaps we can thus draw inspiration from Paul,

who wrote even as he was imprisoned

and nearing the end of his life:

Whatever is just and honorable

Whatever is true and commendable and pleasing.

Think on these things.

Do these things.

Succeed in these things.

Because they are good,

because they are right,

because they are true.

And thus perhaps,

we can with courage and confidence,

go forth to build communities.

To teach and listen and heal.

To offer bread to the hungry,

To comfort the afflicted.

And afflict the comfortable.

And seek to make the lives of those around us,

just a little better.

These things are,

I think,

worthy of our ambition.

Worthy of our thinking and our doing,

worthy of our courage and our confidence.

Worthy of being called,

Success.

Not only in our professions,

but in the fullness of our lives:

with family and friends,

at work and play.

And so we go from this place,

you and I,

I hope,

wondering:

Where am I being called?

and putting before ourselves and others the question,

“and why?”

Knowing we are imperfect and loved.

And hoping that we are called forth,

to a fuller, realer vision of success.

Amen. Amen.

*Jeremiah 1:5 (NRSV)
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.

*Philippians 4:4-9 (NRSV)
⁴Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. ⁵Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. ⁶Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ⁸Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.

The Courage to Be Mortal - Irene Kacandes

2012-05-30T11:34:00.005-04:00

Rollins Chapel
Sunday May 27, 2012
John 13:36-14:7*

I felt honored and a bit nervous to have been asked to speak at one of these ecumenical Sunday services of the Dartmouth Christian Chaplaincy. I became even more nervous when I read the homilies that had come before me in this series on “courage.” Like Grace Johnson, I started from the point of view that I didn’t know anything about courage and was not myself particularly drawn to the idea of courage. When I read her remarks, she helped me warm up to the idea of speaking about courage through her connection of courage to trust and faith. I was similarly very moved by Michelle Domingue’s comments about the courage to love and the portrait of Mother Henriette DeLille he shared with us. I found myself continuing to shake my head in agreement as I continued on to read Kurt Nelson’s remarks on courage and ambiguity. All these great speakers left me in the position of not being sure I had something worthwhile to add to this exploration. With exemplary Christian charity, Kurt urged me to speak from experience and to widen the topic’s scope if I felt I wanted to. This opened up the deep desire in me to share with you something of the extended thinking I have been doing about mortality. Once I got on this track it felt like the appropriate one, even more so when I realized that Dartmouth and in specific Rollins Chapel have been the backdrop for some of my most difficult encounters with mortality. However, I get ahead of myself. Let’s go back to Peter.

Many of you will have recognized this passage as beginning where Michelle’s reading ended and you will remember the larger context for both as the Last Supper. John 13 begins with Jesus’ decision to wash His disciples’ feet; Simon Peter exclaims “you shall never wash my feet” and is immediately chastised by Jesus that “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” Peter then requests to be washed all over. After the washing, Jesus tells His disciples many things concerning what is about to happen, including that where He is going they may not come. It seems important to me that it is precisely with this separation in mind, that Christ gives His followers the new commandment (verse 34): “that you love one another as I have loved you”; He makes the connection for them: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I’m not sure if Peter heard what His master was saying or not. He seems to be focussed on the announcement of a separation and hence where we picked up the scripture today, he wagers the question about where Jesus is going. This leads to some of the most beautiful and comforting verses of the New Testament, those about Jesus preparing places in His Father’s house for us and Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. What I most want to observe about the passage we read today is that one of Christ’s most direct statements of the promise of eternal life occurs in a context that I’d like to suggest is imbued with our denial of our human mortality.

To help you understand why I believe this, I’d like us to stay with Peter rather than with the promise of immortality. Peter does not want to be separated from Jesus; he wants to know more about where Jesus is going. He wants to follow Him now, promising that if he’s allowed to do so, “I will lay down my life for Your sake.” It would be very easy to hear Jesus’s response to Peter’s vow with the ears of our contemporary world; His tone would be sarcastic: “Hah! Will you lay down your life for My sake?” However, I don’t think that’s the tone Jesus used at all. I think with great sorrow He informs Peter that he will deny Jesus. At the same time, I would wager Jesus’s voice had a hint of joy in it, for Jesus knows that with God all things are possible. After the Resurrection, Peter will be given an opportunity to “undo” his betrayal (remember John 21:15-17) and he will indeed die for Christ’s sake eventually.

But again, I get ahead of myself. I want to stay with Peter a little longer. At this point in the Gospel of John, Jesus continues to instruct His disciples at length; if we had time to review it all here, we would notice that the Evangelist makes no further mention of questions or comments of Peter in the remainder of their time at supper. Rather, Peter is next mentioned in the scene in the garden where he draws a sword and strikes the high priest’s servant, cutting off his right ear. Jesus must rebuke him again, saying “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?” In the passage which follows the garden scene, Peter’s three denials are intimately interwoven with John’s narration of Jesus’s questioning by the high priest (18:12-27).

Having reviewed in brief this long and complex passage of Scripture, I am sure there are hundreds of lessons we could learn. I think what has most often struck me is the plausibility, the uncanny familiarity of Peter’s behaviour. He follows Jesus from the garden when it is clear that it is dangerous to do so, in other words, when Jesus is brought to the high priest. And yet, the Gospel specifically states that at first Peter stands “at the door outside.” Even when he is brought inside through the intervention of another disciple, thus having the opportunity to be close to the Master, to follow Him, as he had said he wanted to just a few hours earlier, he then denies his status as a follower of Jesus, not just once, but three distinct times. To look at this larger sequence, then, every time Jesus or Peter gets close to death, even by talking about it, Peter does something to put distance between life as he knows it and the cessation of that life. He simply does not (yet) have the courage to be mortal, the courage to face death. Of course extraordinary events are about to happen that will enable Peter to acquire that courage. I refer to Christ’s Passion, Resurrection, the time Christ spends with Peter and the Others until His Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost that lead to Peter’s profound knowledge of Christ, to the level of knowledge that will lead him not only to proclaim Christ with his words: “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29), as he has already done, but also to act on that knowledge, to indeed lay down his life for Christ’s sake.

Why am I sharing these thoughts with you on this holiday weekend? What does it have to do with us? If Peter eventually learns to face mortal death, why review the moments when he could not?

As our other speakers in this series have pointed out so convincingly, it takes courage to be a Christian for sure. Even in our pluralistic society or on our open-minded diverse campus, it is not easy for most of us to answer the question asked point blank of Peter: “You are not also one of His disciples, are you?” (John 18:17).

I’m going to switch tracks now and tell you that one of the hardest things about getting ready to speak with you today was figuring out how to keep my focus. In doing this exercise, I realized how intensely intertwined the tenets of my faith are and how difficult it is to speak about one without mentioning its relationship to all the others. But time demands it. So, I’m going to skip over dozens of steps in my thought process to tell you why it felt right to talk about this topic with you today. Come to think of it, it is Memorial Day weekend, when we do theoretically anyway, say we want to consider the topic of death. But it wasn’t really the secular holiday that propelled me toward this topic. It was rather my experience of time. When you get to be my age, it is downright scary how quickly time passes. An academic term used to seem like a long amount of time and now it goes by in a flash. I feel like I still have a lot to learn about being a true Christian and not much time to do it in, and similarly, I feel obliged to try to pass on to others as quickly as I can whatever it is I might think I sort of do know or understand.

One of those things that I think I know, is that even an average-length lifespan can go by very fast. Based on this, my hope is that you will feel the desire to learn as much as you can as quickly as you can and to put that knowledge into action immediately, that you will “be” the person you want to be starting right now. Another of those things I think I know is that we can’t be sure that we will have a “normal” lifespan to work with; we never know when we will be called to face our own mortality. This brings me very specifically to Dartmouth and even Rollins Chapel. In the course of one ordinary weekend in January 2001, I got a phonecall that would literally change my life, indeed how I think about life. That phonecall announced that two of my closest friends, Susanne and Half Zantop, both also professors at Dartmouth, had been murdered. It was about a week later that the larger College community came together to try to memorialize them here in this place, a place that has remained linked in my mind ever since to losing the Zantops.

One would of course prefer not to have tragedies, than to learn lessons from them, but given that tragedies are inevitably part of our experience on earth, I do believe one can and should learn from them. One lesson from that awful time for me was the forced confrontation with the reality that one minute you can be with someone and the next minute, they can be gone. I had a lovely conversation with Susanne on Friday afternoon and less than twenty-four hours later, she and Half were dead. What to do with that knowledge?! To be afraid, like Peter at the high priest’s? to deny that you love others, that that love connects you irrevocably to them, as Peter denied being connected to Jesus? Or to realize that our very mortality makes loving others now all the more imperative?

Let’s go back to today’s Scripture one more time: Jesus announces His separation “for now” from His disciples to them and the very next thing he does is give them a new commandment “that you love one another, as I have loved you.” Jesus knows that Peter loves Him. I think God gives us this story, so that we are not afraid when we feel like Peter, because one other thing I think I know is that we are all bound to feel like Peter at some points in our lives. Knowing we are like him in our fear can also help us emulate him in the courage he eventually finds to affirm, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You” (John 21:15-17). Then it’s just up to us to make sure we keep feeding His sheep, with our love, our actions, our words, and our knowledge.

Praise Be to God for all things!

*Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, where are You going?” Jesus answered him, “Where I am going you cannot follow Me now, but you shall follow Me afterward.” Peter said to Him, “Lord, why can I not follow You now? I will lay down my life for Your sake.” Jesus answered him, “Will you lay down your life for My sake? Most assuredly, I say to you, the rooster shall not crow till you have denied Me three times. [14:1] “let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; and from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”

It’s Not About Courage - Grace Johnson '11

2012-05-21T11:55:00.000-04:00

Rollins Chapel, 5/20/12

Matthew 14:22-32, Matthew 16:24-25, Acts 4:13

I am finding courage to be rather scary to talk about. When Kurt first asked if I might be interested in speaking in the chapel series on courage, my first thought was, “Courage?! I don’t know anything about courage -- I don’t actually think about courage that much -- it’s not a virtue I’ve found particularly captivating in the past, like love and truth and beauty -- and I definitely don’t feel like a particularly courageous person. What on earth could I say about courage?” But I decided to think about it a bit, and thinking about Jesus and the stories about him seemed like a good place to start, and as I looked through the gospels I began to notice that people seemed to do a lot of courageous things when they crossed paths with Jesus. And yet it seemed to me that something more than courage was the key to their brave actions. What do you suppose it was?

Think about it a moment as we look at a few of the stories. The one we just read is a big one, as getting out of a boat in the middle of a very windy lake clearly requires a great deal of courage. There’s also the woman who suffered from bleeding for twelve years – she crept up behind Jesus in a crowd and touched His cloak and was healed. That was an audacious thing to do, and she trembled with fear as she fell at His feet to confess what she’d done. But she had the courage to do it. Then there’s the disciple Matthew, another good example. He was sitting at his tax collector’s booth and Jesus saw him and said “Follow me,” and Matthew got up and followed him. What courage that must have taken, to get up from his livelihood – walk away from the familiar – and go after Jesus.

Undeniably these people had courage. But do you know what the “something more” is that I think gave rise to their courage?

I think it was trust – that they trusted Jesus. Look back at the Peter story. Before he got out of the boat, he had to be certain that it was Jesus there, and that Jesus was telling him to do this thing. “Lord,” he said, “if it’s you tell me to come to you on the water.” Only when he was certain that the one he trusted was there and was calling him did he climb over the side. And when he stopped looking at Jesus and began to think of himself and the wind and saving his own life, and he began to sink, did Jesus rebuke him with, “You of little courage, why did you fear?” No. Instead it was, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” The key thing, the part Jesus seems to care about here, was not how courageous Peter was but that Peter trusted Jesus.

This seems to be the case in story after story. Several other people are like the woman who was healed of bleeding –audacious, persistent, and brave in begging Jesus to help them even when everyone else is telling them to shut up. Again and again Jesus says to these people, “Your faith [not your courage] has healed you.” (As a side note, let me say that I’m using the word “trust” rather than “faith” as the focus because I think in these cases – and indeed in most – they are virtually synonymous. And with the word trust we are more likely to hear its real meaning as opposed to hearing it as a synonym for religion.)

To return to the main idea, I doubt Matthew could have had the courage to walk away from his safe livelihood if the courage hadn’t been based somehow on trust in Jesus, conviction that following Him was going to be worth it. It’s the same with the disciples Jesus sent out to preach about His kingdom and heal in His name in towns throughout the area – he told them to set out on this journey without a staff or a bag, without extra clothes, without money. How many of us would have the courage to do that? But for them, the conviction that He wanted them to do it and He was trustworthy and so somehow they would be all right – this gave them the courage to set out, like lambs venturing into a pack of wolves.

It seems that what courage means when it comes to following Jesus is trusting Him enough to stake your life on His words. The life we are called to as followers of Jesus is definitely a scary one, a courage-requiring one. I am afraid to stop storing up treasures on earth – I am afraid to really follow the teaching to not defend myself but offer the other cheek to one who slaps me. I am afraid to make life decisions without my own happiness as the priority. And I am definitely afraid to let go of preserving my own life above most anything else. So instead, I live with safety nets. I’m in effect saying, If the Jesus stuff weren’t true, my life would still be worthwhile because I do these other things that are not directly dependent on Him. Or, okay, let me hang onto things enough that even if God providing for me isn’t a true thing, I’ll never be in need. But I don’t think that’s what we’re called to. In fact I think that people find God when they live in such a way that if he weren’t there and active they’d be dead and their lives would be a waste. This denying yourself, setting out to follow Him and not looking back, putting all your eggs in His basket, if you will – that seems to be what Jesus said to do. That’s what Peter and John were doing at the time of the third scripture on your bulletins, when people were amazed at their courage, realized they were ordinary men, and took note that they had been with Jesus. They had just been put in jail because they healed a crippled man and then kept “teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection of the dead.” They’re brought before the rulers, elders, and teachers of the law for questioning. I think many of us in this situation would consider it a time for being tactful – maybe saying the truth but not saying everything, not saying the more dangerous parts – a time for not being too inflammatory – a time for getting out alive. But that isn’t their response. They have thrown their lot in with Jesus body and soul and they will say nothing but that. They’re not looking at the wind and the waves; they’re looking at him, and though they are only ordinary men, their courage shows that they have been with Jesus.

This trusting-God-to-the-utmost-and-laying-down-your-life idea has to affect all facets of life, but one that has been on my mind a lot recently, especially as a recent graduate earning my own living for the first time is money. Money and stuff. When Matthew the tax collector trusted Jesus he courageously left his profession and therefore his financial security; when the early Christians trusted Jesus they courageously sold their possessions. I don’t want fearfully clinging to money and things to hold me back from a life of fully trusting God. The common Christian mindset, though, seems to be that aiming for financial security is normal, and saving money for the future is just common sense and being a “good steward.” Maybe that is right. Deciding that I didn’t believe in saving money would be very scary. But I’m not sure how the way most of us currently relate to money and possessions fits with the teachings to not store up treasures on earth and not worry about what you will eat tomorrow. No doubt there are relevant considerations that I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just that I’m young and foolish and have only nine months’ experience of working for my bread.

In any case, you can tell I have more questions than answers. I think I’m supposed to put all my eggs in Jesus’ basket, but I don’t think I know how. Partly this is because I am still ignorant and learning and don’t know what I’m doing. Partly it’s because this trusting God totally might look different for different people. Some followers of Jesus, I think I think, need to actually physically give up everything, leave everything behind, and risk their lives and not save for retirement. Some followers of Jesus, as author Shane Claiborne says, will stay tax collectors (or doctors or mail carriers) but will become a different kind of tax collector (or doctor or mail carrier). Either way, though, there is a daily dying to self and living for and with others and God. And in either case I believe we should hold our lives and possessions in open hands, not fearful of losing them but ready to lay them down to follow Jesus. Trusting Him that if we did lose those things, all would not be lost. It would not be the end. But you can only have the courage to lay down your life at His command if God is good for His word and you are convinced of that.

Imagine trusting Him enough to put all your eggs in His basket. What would it look like – what might a beginning look like in your life? Throwing in your lot completely with Him. Staking everything on his trustworthiness. Sacrificing everything. Putting everything you are and everything you have into this one thing. Committing yourself to Him -- rolling over onto Him, putting all your weight on Him. You walk away from your safe and profitable tax-collecting job -- you set out on a long journey without knowing how exactly you’re going to eat -- you step over the side of a boat into a windy lake at night. If the one who told you to do it isn’t reliable, you’re dead and that’s the end. But you’re convinced. So you do it. It’s courage, but even more than that, it’s trust.

I begin to conclude, then, that maybe, though we want to be courageous people, we shouldn’t focus on courage; we should focus on Jesus. Maybe we shouldn’t look for courage, but should look for God. It seems to me that it often works that way, in following Jesus. Whatever the virtue is, it isn’t the point – Jesus is the point. It’s like the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, kindness – all these things are to be fruit, blossoming out of having the spirit of God in you. The virtues are to be a side effect of the main point: God in you. Maybe we should approach courage like that. And when we know Him, we will trust Him, and when we truly trust Him we will have the courage to put all our eggs in His basket, to pour out our lives in love for God and neighbor. May the courage in our poured-out lives point to one conclusion: these people have been with Jesus.

The Courage to Love - Michelle Domingue II, '12

2012-05-14T12:53:00.001-04:00

St. John 13:34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

2 Timothy 1:7

for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

Back in 2000, Vanessa Williams starred in a film, entitled The Courage to Love. I actually hadn’t watched the movie until last year when conducting research on the woman she portrayed in the film—the Venerable Mother Henriette DeLille. The film provided a general overview of DeLille’s life, making known her piety, devotion to God, but most of all her courage to love all people, regardless of their status—as enslaved or free, of African or European descent, man, woman, American or French.

There’s a lesson to be learned from this saintly woman’s life. Her commitment to the teachings of Christ, virtually summarized in the passage from St. John 13, enabled her to radically love despite the ridicule, the humiliation, and the antagonism she encountered from others. DeLille knew that her salvation was bound up in that of others, so she dedicated her life to loving others, and thereby she shared her experiences with Christ.

Before committing her life to the service of others, DeLille penned a prayer she created in her journal, in 1836. It read, “I believe in God. I hope in God. I love. I wish to live and die for God.”

Notice how no prepositional phrasing or no direct objects followed one of those statements: I…love. DeLille understood the universality of that concept—love. She loved God. She loved her family. She loved the enslaved Africans. She loved the schoolchildren she taught. She loved the sick she cared for. She loved. Not for the gratification of anyone or anything, but she loved. That takes courage BEYOND any measure imaginable. She loved wholeheartedly, much like Christ. It takes the same amount of courage and strength and plain ol’ guts to even consider relinquishing a selfish thought for the edification of the community of which you’re all included—no matter what—God’s kingdom.

When we profess ourselves as Christians, we do not merely adopt another label to be tossed in the trunk of our conceived selves. We are orienting ourselves in a worldview in which love rests comfortably at the center, with its axis aimed at Christ. The love I speak of is not solely a gesture performed for the gratification of one’s self, nor is it a superficial declaration of a perceived connection between two or more people. The love I speak of is an ethereal, nearly uncomfortable initial experience. It’s an unspoken connection you have to others, if you so choose to divest yourself of “just dealing” with folks and start honest conversations with each other.

It really bothers me when people talk about tolerating someone else for the sake of “togetherness” or “unity.” I don’t apologize for my candor in saying, “You ca’ keep ya tolerance! I really don’t want it.” The term’s imbued with contradictions and exudes nothing but a spirit incompatible with that of Christ. You can’t tolerate and love. Toleration of others is a tool of COWARDS to evade conversations of understanding seemingly disconnected, distant, and ultimately different experiences of all of God’s children.

We see this attitude of displaying a daring love in 2 Timothy. It says “for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but a spirit of power and love.” Do you even know your own strength? Have you forgotten what you all are made of? The Divine essence constantly burning within in you was a part of God gifted to you in form of spirit. Some of the most powerful things in this world aren’t tangible to the human senses, but they’re felt in the very depths of these fleshy vessels. The power of love and its strange revelations may provoke fear in some of us. And, honestly, that’s okay. Moving blindly in the darkness of superficial love for so long gets you accustomed to that way of life. However, what’s holding you back from stepping into the Light of Love that has the ability to flood every crevice and crack covering our broken, wounded bodies? Do yourself a favor and step out on faith to activate that unchanging, ever-present and omnipresent Love that your spirit, your heart, your Body’s been craving for.

Today, I challenge you to make it your mission to love others, like Mother Henriette DeLille did. Love your God. Love yourselves. Do so with the same fervor as you commit to whatever it is that pleases you. Just love. If you’re afraid, just know that God’s love is power enough to embolden you with the courage to break outside of those confines of comfort and strongholds restricting you from plunging into that swelling sea of immensely powerful, eternal love.

May God bless and keep each and every one of you is my prayer. Thank you.

Courage and Ambiguity - Kurt Nelson

2012-05-09T15:53:00.000-04:00

Rollins Chapel, 5.6.12

Romans 14: 1-8

Courage is something of a second-rate virtue,

if you think about it.

It’s not like love.

Not like beauty.

Or wisdom.

Which are all rooted entirely in the good.

But there’s no courage without fear.

No courage without the possibility of failure.

No courage without the possibility of

bad things being true,

or real.

Courage necessitates a shadow side.

It is, as I said,

second rate. And ambiguous

as virtues go.

And there are, of course,

many ways around it.

Three in particular come to mind:

We can simply deny the good,

and succumb to the idea of nothing,

or of nothing mattering.

We can go the way of Nietzsche,

or nihilism,

and simply try to get what we can,

while we can,

for little else matters.

And thus make courage unnecessary.

On the other end of the spectrum,

we can, and do, try to deny the negative.

We can pursue adamantly,

ideas like security,

and comfort.

And we can distract ourselves to the extreme.

If you’ve not read,

or haven’t read recently,

Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopia,

Brave New World

I would certainly commend it to you.

(Or, if you can’t quite stomach that one,

perhaps Lois Lowry’s The Giver.)

Both weave incredibly poignant tales,

of societies so bent on security, pleasure, comfort,

stability and safety,

that they give up entirely on things like

love, passion, freedom and memory.

They are compelling tales,

because they speak to our impulse toward,

a kind of hollow happiness.

And I’ll admit,

they hit a little close to home,

sometimes.

Given our persistent illusions of security,

and stability,

and our willingness to sacrifice much for them.

Not to mention our appetite for comfort at great cost.

And the increasingly efficient science we’ve made,

of distracting ourselves.

Thus, making courage largely superfluous.

Finally,

and more common in my experience,

at least in the Christian world,

we can seek to deny ambiguity,

particularly through the lens of faith.

Significant amounts of ink

(and whatever the web-based version of ink is)

have been spilt trying to convince us,

that the church,

or the bible,

offer us an easy, achievable,

unambiguous connection to the good.

A connection which justifies all pain,

all suffering as connected,

to the ultimate source.

We need only open our eyes,

read with the right spirit,

and surely all will be made clear,

and all ambiguity wiped away.

One pastor writes (K. McDanell, blogozomai.com):

One’s view of Scripture is a gospel issue. So though there is great reason to be concerned regarding the rejection of Scripture’s perspicuity [note: perspicuity means clarity, ironically enough], it is imperative that the reader be reminded that this is not a mere debate about semantics and dogma, but about the gospel itself. If Scripture is unclear then the gospel itself remains a mystery. And if the gospel is a mystery, then God help us all!

Now, I recognize

that there are many kinds of people in the world.

And in those many kinds,

there are people who love certainty.

Who long for a kind of solid-ground,

especially in faith.

And then there are people like me.

Who can’t help but live in ambiguity.

Who yearn for questions.

And, dare I say,

learn to love them from time to time.

If you are the kind of person who loves the certainty of faith,

I hope you’ll listen and come converse later.

But you may also want to just

spend some time with the hymntext today.

Or zone out.

Or pray for my mortal soul.

Because I think neither life nor faith,

nor indeed our scriptures,

are a matter of certainty.

But rather call us to live with the courage

of ambiguity.

And I think courage,

second rate as it may be,

is all too important

and indeed necessary to the life of faith.

And will say, honestly,

that while I can understand the appeal,

I find that sort of Christian security

neither true, nor desirable.

It after all,

an odd collection of texts,

we call scripture.

And they form not an easy, single story,

but a rich,

and if we’re being honest,

sometimes confusing tapestry of narratives.

The scene opens, you’ll recall,

on a formless void.

And a separation of waters,

and creation of all that is,

light and earth and all creatures.

And all of a sudden,

in the middle of a verse,

we have a dry and barren earth,

and Man created out of the dust.

This seems to me a signal and sign,

that this is not a simple kind of story.

Following that,

we have hundreds of pages,

of honestly pretty mediocre people.

Abraham,

the grandfather of us all,

was ready to sacrifice his son.

Moses was a stutterer with a temper,

and a penchant for making excuses.

David was lustful, violent, and overly passionate.

These seeming “heroes”

and many more,

weave a tale of deceit and violence,

all while representing the one true God.

The stories span millennia,

and multiple literary genres.

Meanwhile the upstanding ones,

like Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos and the like,

spend much of their time critiquing the religious leaders of the day.

And all of that is somehow brought into clarity,

in the grand vision of Word made flesh.

The divine living among us.

Told not once,

but four different times.

With subtly difference tropes and nuances,

emphases and details.

And the living embodiment of the divine,

speaks most often in parables,

which place the emphasis of interpretation

far more on the hearer,

than on the speaker.

Add to that a grand finale collection of letters and writings,

from all over the early Christian map.

Many of them with varied stories and visions to tell.

And I find myself wondering,

from whence is our certainty supposed to come?

Or perhaps more often,

wondering how we’ve convinced ourselves,

even a little,

that this is a tale meant to be about certainty.

But indeed, it seems to me,

nothing less would be adequate,

to tell the story even of creation,

or of humanity,

let alone God’s work with and for humankind.

Because life is uncertain and insecure,

much as we might like to convince ourselves otherwise.

John Polkinghorne,

Theologian and physicist writes (in Testing Scripture):

The tapestry of life is not coloured in simple black and white, representing an unambiguous choice between the unequivocally bad and the unequivocally good. The ambiguity of human deeds and desires means that life includes many shades of grey. What is true of life in general is true also of the Bible in particular. An honest reading of Scripture will acknowledge the presence in its pages of various kinds of ambiguity.

Nothing less would do.

A scripture that mirrors the tapestry of our lives,

is ultimately far more timeless,

far more beautiful,

far more significant.

I would suggest,

that a monolithic witness to all that is.

And scripture thus meets us where we are,

with all its clues,

and all our questions.

And we can, I hope,

love it for that.

And though we may not have certainty,

we have a number of important things,

pointing us to a robust,

if complicated vision of God:

We have the text.

And make no mistake,

it’s a good one.

We have our experience, and faith, and reason.

We have our living tradition.

And we have community.

We have tools to make and discover meaning.

And we know that this is work not meant to be done alone.

Courage is much easier to build,

and insecurity much easier to bear,

when surrounded by friends.

And thus we come at last to our friend Paul.

Romans is, as we’ve discussed before,

Paul’s magnum opus.

Written not to hypothetical early Christian communities,

but to real ones.

The evangelism has been done.

The uncircumcised are welcomed in.

The community built.

But still questions arise,

about the intersection of gentiles and Jews,

trying to follow Jesus.

Questions about when to worship.

Questions about what to eat.

And his advice is

Not to go unquestioning back into the text.

Not to quote laws or rules.

But to set forth an ethic of welcome.

An ethic of hospitality,

grounded on love.

Paul’s last word is not

inerrancy or legalism.

But thoughtful, lived community.

faith and hope.

“Welcome one another,” he writes a few verses later,

“just as Christ has welcomed you,

for the glory of God.”

Weak in faith, or strong?

You are welcomed here.

Vegetarian or meat-eater

(and note that I am one of the weak non-meat eaters)?

Questioners or certainty-seekers?

We can find space for you.

Scientists, artists, activists -

even economists,

you are welcome into this place for hope.

And I think those of us here have a special call.

To remind the world

that we can hold all these things ambiguous things together.

Faith and uncertainty.

Hope and the possibility of death, darkness and failure.

Love of neighbors and enemies,

and the burning call toward justice.

We stand in the midst of this,

saying not that we are certain,

but that we believe.

Saying that we hope,

even amidst the messiness of real life.

This is, I think, courage.

And the world needs it,

and I think our faith,

our scriptures and our lives demand it.

It may be hard news, for some,

that our faith is not about certainty or security.

But the good news is that our faith is about so much more.

About joy and hope

and about courage to live in that ambiguity.

And about God among us,

encouraging us to love and hope.

And as we ponder the courageous road ahead,

I leave you with these words from the 15^th Chapter of Romans:

“May the God of hop fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”

Amen. Amen.

The Wisdom to Know the Difference - Richard R. Crocker

2012-04-30T14:39:00.002-04:00

The Wisdom to know the Difference

Richard R. Crocker

Rollins Chapel

April 29, 2012

Psalm 27

This is the last word on wisdom and the first word on courage. I will try to speak about both of them, briefly. My comments are intended to provoke thought and discussion, so I hope many of you will be able to attend the dinner discussion following worship.

I may surprise you to know that while the word “wisdom” (Sophia, logos) occurs very frequently in the Bible, the word courage (ometz) occurs very rarely. We might well wonder why? Is it that wisdom is more important than courage? I think not. I think, rather, that wisdom is a larger category; that one who is wise is also, necessarily, courageous, but that one can be courageous without necessarily being wise.

Perhaps the most common conjunction of these two words occurs in the prayer written, we think, by the very famous 20th century theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr. I am sure you have heard it. It is also called the Serenity prayer, and its popularity shows how deeply helpful it is to many people. It is: “Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” This prayer has penetrated into many lives through the agency of Alcoholics Anonymous – a group that has made the recitation of this prayer a part of almost every meeting. It is both popular and profound. Indeed, it speaks to every one of us.

The prayer warns us of two errors: the error of accepting things that we can and should change, and the error of trying to change things that we really cannot change. I think the first error is rare at a college like Dartmouth, which is full of young people who have been told that they can change almost anything, that they can in fact change the world. And this is good, because we do need courage to change things that we can in fact change. But disillusionment often sets in when we discover that it is not easy to change things, or when we discover that some things simply cannot be changed. And so, while we need courage to try to change, and serenity to accept what cannot be changed, we need, most profoundly, to know the difference.

To explore this issue more deeply, let us look for a moment at Jesus, our Christ, who is for us, as we have established in these last few weeks, the wisdom of God. Now it is interesting to ask ourselves: what was there about Jesus’ life that he could have changed, and what could he not have changed? Such a question puts us right in the middle of profound theological questions: Jesus as God, Jesus as human, etc. If Jesus was God, surely he could have changed anything and everything? But Jesus as human faced the limitations of being human, so there were things he could not have changed? It is too deep a mystery to sort out. But we are given one profound moment when the issue became focused: it is the moment in Gethsemane when Jesus pondered his coming crucifixion and prayed that such a death might be avoided. You know his words, reported to us in the Gospels of Mark and Luke: “Abba, father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want but what you want”, or, in an earlier translation, “not my will but thine be done.” (Mark 14:36) Here we see the mysterious union, as Jesus prayed, essentially, that something be changed which could not be changed. And so Jesus faced his agonizing crucifixion with courage, and serenity and wisdom.

We learn from this passage that Jesus did not want to die. He did not want to be crucified. But, in the will of God, it could not be changed. He could not simply be a great moral teacher who lived a happy life, married, become prosperous, worked for Goldman Sachs, and started a foundation to support good deeds. For it was by his death, Paul tells us over and over, that he became for us the wisdom of God. And his death and resurrection have indeed changed the world. There is an old joke that Jesus proclaimed the kingdom of God, but what he got was the church. And we know that the church is a very human institution, devoted, far too often, to its own privilege and self-preservation. But there is another side as well. As disappointing and wrong as it has sometimes been, the history of the Christian church, overall, has made a profoundly positive difference in this world in how we think of people, how we treat people, and how we hope for the future. Hospitals, charities, fairness, compassion – while the church has certainly not had a monopoly on these ideas, it is true to say that the church has promoted them throughout the world, not always consistently, but persistently, and our world has been changed fundamentally by our vision of Jesus not as a worldly potentate, but as a crucified savior.

But let us think of ourselves. Throughout the Kim administration, Dartmouth students have been told explicitly and repeatedly that you have been selected to change the world. And many of you have responded to that call. The Tucker Foundation, especially, is full of world-savers who, after spending ten weeks in a needy part of the world, become devoted to changing the world. I, of course, applaud such energy and such idealism. But I also note a comment in Thursday’s Dartmouth, from a student who reacted to the news that Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, has been selected as the commencement speaker. The student reportedly reacted by saying she hopes that the address “does not take on a… sermonizing tone”, because although “This is a serious time in our lives, … I don’t want to hear ‘Go save the world.”” (The Dartmouth, 4/26/2012, page 5) I too am somewhat tired of sermons, and of the expectation that we are anointed to save the world!

But at the same time, we are aware, aren’t we, of things in ourselves, and at Dartmouth, that need to be changed? We are aware that, despite all the hype surrounding Dimensions, we are inviting idealistic young people to join a culture that is often depraved and cynical? We are aware that we are part of a culture that promotes false visions of success. We are aware, inescapably, that unhealthy and harmful things happen here. There is an attitude that I sometimes hear that excuses these things by saying, “It’s not just Dartmouth. It’s worse at many other colleges, It’s unfair that we should be singled out. It isn’t as bad as here as it is elsewhere.” Well, you know what? We do not have the capability of changing any other college. But we do have the capability of changing Dartmouth. And we do not have the capacity to change any other person. But we do have the capacity to change our own attitudes and our own behavior.

I was very encouraged when I heard, from a student who works with the Facebook page of the entering class, that a prospective student, after reading the Rolling Stones article, wrote: “We are now 25% of the Dartmouth student body. We can change this place.” And many others added notes of affirmation and support.

So, will the entering class in fact have the courage to change the things they can? Or will they be lulled into a fall sense of serenity that accepts drunkenness, hazing, sexual promiscuity and sexual assault as inevitable and unchangeable? What about you and me? Have we been lulled into that serenity? Do we lack the courage to change the things we can? Do we in fact pray for the wisdom to know the difference?

You all know also the statement attributed to Margaret Mead: never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Dr. Meade was not talking about the church, probably, which is a shame. She should have been.

Sustainability Matters, Still - Kurt Nelson

2012-04-23T11:25:00.002-04:00

Delivered at the 2^nd Annual Sustainability and Social Justice Dinner at Dartmouth College. Dedicated especially to those born in or after 1991…

My sincere thanks to the organizers of this fine event,

it’s a pleasure to be back.

Thanks to the panelists so far.

And thanks especially to all of you for listening.

I want to tell you a story,

because I think it’s relevant.

But it’s also perhaps a bit odd.

So I’d like those of you who were here last year,

to take a minute,

and explain to your table mates,

just how great and trustworthy I am.

We’ll wait...

So I went down to Washington DC this summer,

and I was one of about 1300 people arrested,

in front of the white house,

for participating in civil disobedience,

around the keystone XL pipeline.

Which was, I’ll admit,

a pretty awesome thing to participate in.

In a few short months

we went from public ignorance

and “no brainer” approval,

to massive media coverage,

a widespread movement,

and complicated victory.

It’s a pretty amazing – if imperfect –

story about the efficacy of demonstration and organizing.

But I’m not going to tell you that story tonight.

I’ve told it many times,

in many places.

Inevitably,

as I told my Keystone story,

a single question would come up.

Again and again,

in meetings

one on ones,

the comment section of articles,

at Happy Hours,

you name it.

more than any other single question, I think.

It wasn’t, “What was it like to be in jail.”

It wasn’t, “Why Keystone and not Mountaintop removal, or some other issue...”

those came up,

but the inevitable question was,

“But didn’t you have to burn fossil fuel to get down to Washington DC?”

It was a hostile question.

Sometimes meant as an earnest rebuttal.

more often meant as a joke,

but a pointed one.

I came up with what I think are three apt responses to this question
      1. I took the train. I do my best to live into my rhetoric of sustainability whenever possible.
   2. Some version of, maybe you should just shut up.
       3. Are we really so cynical? Is this really how we’re going to engage?

I have a working hypothesis,

that you – especially those of you born after 1991 -

(author’s note: an informal show of hands revealed this to be about 3/4^ths of the audience)

represent a transition in generations.

And the story I really want to tell you tonight,

is about you.

Like all generational stories,

I’m speaking broadly about trends.

So if you’re sitting there thinking,

“Well that doesn’t sound exactly like me.”

I would kindly request that you take a breath,

Stay with me.

And Listen.

Because as I’m sure your table mates told you

I’m pretty much always right.

And the first thing to note,

in this story,

is that you’ve been lied to.

Not by me of course,

but pretty consistently.

You’ve been told that you’re millennials.

But you’re not really.

I’m a millennial. About 10 years older than you.

And I can smell millennialism.

And you smell a little like millennials, but not really.

Millennials, of course, have a story too.

We came of age

from about 2000 to 2008.

And we looked around,

at the sexual politics,

expanding wars,

and what amounted to a war on environmental regulation,

and thought,

‘Our values are not being lived out in our public life,

and we need to do something about that.’

So we did.

We opted in.

We organized.

We’re a generation of opter inners.

We took over organizations,

and started new ones,

and ran for political.

And in 2008, we turned out in force.

For the crowning achievement of our generation so far,

the election of Barack Obama.

And – sorry if this is news to you -

but it didn’t solve everything.

And honestly, I think we feel a little lost.

And that’s where you come in,

coming of age,

in the midst of that messiness.

You know, deep down,

that narrow electoral politics,

won’t solve everything.

And you’re right about that.

But it’s hard now,

to find another thing that’s big enough.

So the crowning achievements of your generation so far,
are Occupy Wall St.

And Kony 2012.

(This is the moment to breath and not give up on me.)

Two things make Occupy and Kony similar.

And they’re devastatingly important to notice,

as your generation’s story unfolds:

First, you can organize better and faster,

than anyone ever.

And second, you can (and do) just as quickly turn around,

and tell the world why that way of organizing is stupid.

You are, in short,

a generation of skeptics.

And I think that’s a good thing.

My generation wasn’t skeptical enough.

You’re right to stay so.

The problem,

is that skepticism has an ugly little step brother.

And his name is cynicism.

And I’m worried about him for you.

Skepticism asks hard questions,

wonders about the most effective way to seek change.

Cynicism, on the other hand,

cuts down.

And makes a joke out of efforts to make change.

Skepticism seeks progress,

While cynicism seeks self-protection.

And it’s easier, honestly,

in the face of truly challenging stuff,

to be cynical.

But hear me when I say to you,

You’re too young

You’re too smart,

too talented,

And the challenges

facing us are too large,

for you to become a generation of cynics.

And I honestly don’t know how this story ends.

But here’s what I think:

I think your generation needs an issue.

An issue large and multivalent and important enough,

to embrace the skepticism,

and the many different ways to seek change.

And here’s what I hope:

That this business we’re dealing with tonight.

Environmental Justice.

I hope, that this is it.

It is, dare I say,

your call as a generation,

to help us all connect the dots,

between and the use of resources,

the degradation of the planet.

and real, human injustice.

People are already hurting.

This isn’t some future oriented issue.

And environmental degradation is unjust

in its punishment.

People like us do the damage,

but it’s the poor who are already hurting.

Urban communities,

and indigenous peoples.

Developing nations.

Children, the elderly, women.

Pretty much everyone but me.

And the privileged, like me,

are already, as Wendell Berry says,

“condemned to moral and spiritual loneliness.”

(from The Art of the Commonplace)

It is an issue worthy of you,

And we need you,

to build the umbrella,

of the manifold small scale solutions

to change our direction.

We need organizers and policy hacks.

We need educators and activists.

Artists, Scientists, Religious Leaders.

And I desperately hope,

as your story unfolds,

that you will prove more worthy of these challenges,

than all those who came before you.

But it will be a struggle.

not only against injustice

not only against environmental degradation,

but against despair and cynicism.

And I want you to ponder three tools,

that I think you’ll need for the road ahead.

The first is Purpose.

The easiest one.

Our purpose is to seek a more just and sustainable world,

at the same time.

Grounded in duty to the people of the earth,

and those still to come.

The second, is hope.

It’s harder.

But we must find it where we can,

and honor it where it’s found.

In faith.

In community.

In telling the small stories of success again and again.

And the third is friendship.

We cannot do this alone.

And don’t let yourself be convinced,

that relationships are anything other than central,

as we pursue this messy business of change.

Thus equipped,

with purpose, hope, and friendship,

I think we can push through the challenges,

through the cynicism.

We can remind ourselves that ultimately,

we are seeking to sustain the good.

We can stop asking the question,

“why don’t more people care?”

and instead ask,

“where do we need to go,

in order to help people connect,

to a more just, more sustainable future?”

I pray this story will end happily.

I’m eager to see it unfold.

And as self-appointed representative of millennials everywhere,

I’m confident that you won’t have to go it alone.

Thank you.

Now let's make it happen.

Old and Foolish … Young and Wise - Steve Swayne

2012-04-23T09:31:00.001-04:00

Steve Swayne

22 April 2012

1 Kings 3:3–15

Wisdom has long been associated with age. Many believe, to shorten the oft-told joke, that it takes lots of bad decisions to garner the experience that leads to good decisions, which, in turn, ripens into wisdom.

Yet we also know that age is not guarantor of wisdom. Each one of us can name people in our lives — relatives, friends, perhaps ourselves — for whom age has not brought an increase in wisdom. Evidence exists all around us that it is possible to be old and foolish.

The evidence is less apparent that it is possible to be young and wise, in part because of the association I mentioned at the outset. We are inclined to believe that being young and being wise is oxymoronic.

Thinking of things oxymoronic makes me think of my own college years, not because they were oxymoronic but because they took place at Occidental College, affectionately known as Oxy. I majored in music, focusing on piano performance and composition. In my senior year, I wrote a series of songs on poems from the 1896 collection A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman.

Some of you have heard this poem before:

When I was one-and-twenty, I heard a wise man say:

“Give crowns away and rubies but not your heart away.

Give pearls away and rubies, but keep your fancy free.”

But I was one-and-twenty; no use to talk to me.

When I was one-and-twenty, I heard him say again:

“The heart out of the bosom was never given in vain.

’Tis paid with sighs a-plenty and sold for endless rue.”

And I am two-and-twenty, and, oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.

It is remarkable how Housman’s narrator goes from foolishness to wisdom in just one year. Perhaps the path to wisdom is paved with broken hearts and shattered dreams and, as a result, the young can travel farther along the path than any old codger can.

Our Scripture lesson, however, suggests that the path to wisdom can also be paved with overflowing hearts and fulfilled dreams. The young king Solomon did not ask for long life or riches or for the life of his enemies. He asked for the understanding to discern what is right, which the chronicler of 1 Kings credited to him as wisdom. And indeed, the next passage in this chapter provides evidence of Solomon’s wisdom. Perhaps you recall it.

Two women came to Solomon. In that day, parents and their infant children often shared the same bed, sometimes with tragic results. One woman had accidentally suffocated her infant during their sleep, and in her grief, she stole the infant of another woman. Both women came to Solomon to claim the infant as their own, but no judge could tell by sight which woman was the rightful mother. Solomon asked that a sword be brought and dictated that the infant be rent in two, with a half-infant given to each woman. One woman eagerly supported Solomon’s ruling; the other insisted that the whole infant be given to her rival. Upon hearing these disparate responses, Solomon commanded that the child be given to the woman who wanted to spare the life of the child, for she had to be the rightful mother.

That passage ends by telling us “all Israel … stood in awe of [Solomon], because they perceived that the wisdom of God was in him, to execute justice.” Solomon, the relatively young monarch, gives evidence that it is possible to be young and wise.

But note: He asked for the ability to discern between good and evil, between right and wrong. In the words of the hymn we sang earlier, we shall all encounter hardships. By themselves, they are not curses. And in our lives, we shall all encounter blessings. Indeed, our lives here at Dartmouth are teeming with blessings that most women and men in the world cannot begin to imagine. Riches and blessings are not signs in and of themselves of God’s favor, nor are hardships signs in and of themselves of God’s displeasure. But if we fail to understand the reasons why hardships and blessings come our way, we are not wise. More to our situation here: if our blessings come as a result of injustice we have perpetrated, we may be heralded as intelligent and cunning, but we are not wise, not as God measures wisdom.

In our passage, the chronicler tells us that Solomon’s request and God’s answer was all a dream. Let me close by saying: Wisdom is not something we dream about, nor is it something we wrest from God or use at will to impress others. It is a mindset, an orientation. One must seek to master the ability to discern between good and evil, between right and wrong. One must find the path that finds us doing justice and loving kindness and walking humbly with our God.

One need not be old to walk down that path. Indeed, it is better to start walking down that path before one reaches two-and-twenty.

1 Kings 3: 3-15 (NRSV) Solomon loved the Lord, walking in the statutes of his father David; only, he sacrificed and offered incense at the high places. The king went to Gibeon to sacrifice there, for that was the principal high place; Solomon used to offer a thousand burnt offerings on that altar. At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night; and God said, ‘Ask what I should give you.’ And Solomon said, ‘You have shown great and steadfast love to your servant my father David, because he walked before you in faithfulness, in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart towards you; and you have kept for him this great and steadfast love, and have given him a son to sit on his throne today. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David, although I am only a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of the people whom you have chosen, a great people, so numerous they cannot be numbered or counted. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?’

It pleased the Lord that Solomon had asked this. God said to him, ‘Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.’

Then Solomon awoke; it had been a dream. He came to Jerusalem, where he stood before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. He offered up burnt offerings and offerings of wellbeing, and provided a feast for all his servants.

Nietzsche and Christian Wisdom - Peter Blair '12

2012-04-15T19:53:00.002-04:00

1 Corinthians 1: 26-30

Rollins Chapel, 4/15/12

Frederick Nietzsche is often considered one of the most able critics of Christianity ever to have put pen to paper. I personally do not find his arguments compelling. But for all his faults, Nietzsche understood much about Christianity that many contemporary people— both Christian and non-Christian—fail to understand. Nietzsche disliked Christianity so strongly in part because he believed that Christianity had initiated what he called "a slave revolt," in which the weak and powerless of this world rose up against their naturally strong, intellectually superior, aristocratic masters. This slave revolt, he thought, was to be regretted.

Much of Nietzsche's actual historical speculations are wrong, but he captured the spirit of the Christian message better than many. He understood that Christianity was radically opposed to the logic and wisdom of the world. Not that Christianity holds the world to be evil. Christ said, "I have not come to condemn the world, but to save it." The world is, at root, good.

But Christ's words presuppose that the world needs to be saved. In the fallen state of our world, deformed by sin, our natural tendency is to seek above all our own selfish ends, and to rationalize this selfishness. We seek power to serve our ends, we seek knowledge to manipulate things to our advantage. Christ came to save us from this double bondage of our mind and our will. In doing so, he preached a message, and lived a life, that is radically subversive of our natural tendencies. We naturally praise worldly wisdom and worldly power, but Christ inverted this.

Blessed, he told us, are the poor, the weak, the sorrowful. These are not the words of the world; instead they stand in profound contradiction to the values of the world. The passage from Corinthians that I choose expresses this sentiment: God choose the weak, the foolish, the unimportant, the lowly to spread His message of Love. As St. Martin put it: "salvation was preached to the world not by orators, but by fishermen." That God choose fishermen—a low, despised class in Christ's place and time—to spread his message was profoundly radical and subversive of our notions of wisdom.

"Where," St. Paul asks elsewhere in First Corinthians, "is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" Christ did not do what we, in our worldly wisdom, would expect. We would expect Him to come in His glory, but he came in meekness. He was born in a stable, and preferred the company of the ignorant masses to the company of the philosophers and he wise scribes of the law. In so doing, He, so to speak, identified Himself with the weak, with the powerless, with the ignorant.

Nietzsche, as I said, essentially understood this. In his work The Antichrist, he wrote “What is good?—Whatever augments the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself, in man. What is evil?—Whatever springs from weakness. What is happiness?—The feeling that power increases—that resistance is overcome. Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency. The weak and the botched shall perish: first principle of our charity. And one should help them to it. What is more harmful than any vice?—Practical sympathy for the botched and the weak—Christianity....”

But he was wrong about one thing. God did not come to pit the weak against the strong and the ignorant against the wise. He came to show that worldly weakness is strength and worldly foolishness is wisdom. He redefined these concepts for us. It is in the fullness of our finitude, in the limitations that we run up against in daily lives, in our weakness, our sinfulness, our foolishness, it is in these that we meet God. Our finitude becomes the nexus for our meeting with God: it is in embracing our finitude that we attain to the humility that is at the heart of God's wisdom.

What this means is that finitude takes on, for the Christian, a positive value. We are able to see weakness and foolishness not merely as something shameful to be avoided or something distasteful to be enslaved by Nietzsche's ubermench, but as a condition charged with meaning and transcendence.

David Bentley Hart, the contemporary Orthodox theologian and one of my favorite writers, got to the heart of Christian wisdom in his book Atheist Delusions. It’s a long quote, but it's much better to listen to him than to me, anyway.

"The essential victory of Christianity lay in the strange, impractical, altogether unworldly tenderness of the moral intuitions it succeeded in sowing in human consciences. If we find ourselves occasionally shocked by how casually ancient men and women destroyed or ignored lives we would think ineffably precious, we would do well to reflect that theirs was-- in purely pragmatic terms--a more 'natural' disposition towards reality...In the light of Christianity's absolute law of charity, we came to see that formerly we could not: the autistic or Down syndrome or otherwise disabled child, for instance, for whom the world can remain a perpetual perplexity, which can too often cause pain but perhaps only vaguely and fleetingly charm or delight; the derelict or wretched or broken man or woman who has wasted his or her life away; the homeless, the utterly impoverished, the diseased, the mentally ill, the physically disabled; exiles, refugees, fugitives; even criminals and reprobates. To reject, turn away from, or kill any or all of them would be, in a very real sense, the most purely practical of impulses. To be able, however, to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored, is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls.”

When God came and showed us that foolishness is wisdom and weakness is strength he upset everything. The question is whether we, as a post-Christian society, can continue to look at a disabled child or criminal with love, whether we can continue to allow a place for weakness. I tend to think we can’t. We already see the equivalent of exposure—the cruel ancient practice of leaving unwanted babies in the wilderness to die, endorsed by the wise of the world, including Aristotle—returning in our society. Two Australian Academic philosophers recently published a peer-review article in a journal of medical ethics arguing that infanticide is morally permissible.

We have a stark choice before us between Christianity and a Nietzschean nightmare: which will we choose? I have no answer to this question, but I hope and pray that we may again allow Christ to dwell in us and teach us about foolishness and weakness. I pray that we in the academy realize that our legitimate attempts to pursue scholarship must bow down before a wisdom that the world knows not.

I think of Blessed Pier Gorgio Frassati. He was an Italian lay Catholic in the 20^th century, who died in his twenties. By the wisdom of the world, he would have been judged harshly: he was not a very good student and constantly struggled in his studies. And yet he was rich in the wisdom of God. He came from a wealthy family, but when he would ride the train, he would always go third class and give the leftover train fare to the poor. His friends once asked him why he did this. He answered, "Because there is no fourth class."

That is the wisdom of God. It is wisdom that I do not know, but that I pray I will one day learn.

1 Corinthians 1: 26-30

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.

Even if it doesn't feel that way... Kurt Nelson

2012-04-10T16:23:00.000-04:00

Easter Sunrise, 4.8.12

Mark 16: 1-8

One of the wonders of the social media age,

is that so long as wisdom is less than 140 characters,

it comes to us easily.

Here's a bit, that has come to me often this week

from Clarence Jordan, a theologian and activist:

“The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship; not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.”[i]

It’s a lovely sentiment, which resonates with me,

in many many ways.

The only problem, and it’s a significant one,

is that I don’t always feel spirit-filled or carried away,

or that my heart is full.

Sometimes I’m tired.

Or grumpy.

Or angry or despairing.

Maybe you are too?

And when I am,

the idea that the hope of the resurrection rests in me,

in us,

isn’t joyful.

It’s burdensome.

And thus, even harder to grasp,

grumpy, and tired as I already am.

Speaking of which,

it’s cold out here, isn’t it?

It’s kind of dark still,

wasn’t this supposed to be a sunrise service?

I thought spring was supposed to be coming…

And what’s with all these barren trees,

and brown plants,

Who planned this service?

But of course,

spring is coming. The sun is rising.

We know it is, even if we can’t yet see it or feel it.

And,

love is working in us,

even if it doesn’t feel that way.

Our hearts are full,

God is working,

Christ is risen.

Even when we’re sad, mad, tired or grumpy.

Thus, we can have faith,

take heart,

and be hopeful.

Because what we are,

is free.

Free to engage with a world which is truly troubled.

Free to love,

as best we can,

as deeply and radically as we can.

Because God is already at work in us.

Love is already at work in us.

This is the hope of the resurrection,

and the proof that it is real.

Because we,

these disheveled, troubled, tired people,

are called forth to something so great,

and not left to do it alone.

Christ is risen.

Spring is coming.

Love is already working.

Even if we don’t always feel it.

[i] Clarence Jordan Essential Writings

“Partly Prepared” by Aaron Colston, ‘14

2012-04-10T16:11:00.000-04:00

Easter Sunrise

4/8/12, Dartmouth College Green

Text: Mark 16: 1-8

When the women came to the tomb to anoint the body of Christ, it dawned on them that they were partly prepared. They have brought the anointing oils and spices but have forgotten the stone that must be rolled away. Yet the women don’t turn around and end their journey toward Christ; despite their lacking, they go on.

Just as the women lacked the preparation to roll the stone away, we too, lack. We lack rest, time with our friends and families, time to study. When we feel we should have one we lack the right answer to a good question, and more often than not, we lack a kind word. We lack the will to trust, and--when we need to most--the will to love our neighbor. But the women teach us, as they carry little else but their oils and spices, that just because we know we lack doesn’t mean we should stop where we are. If anything, it is a calling from the other side to keep going.

We may think that giving the little we have--whether time, word, or love--is giving the “partly prepared.” But look at what happens when the women came to the tomb “partly prepared”: the stone is rolled away, they learn that Christ is risen. It is as if someone tossed their voice into the canyon and the canyon bellowed back, or as if someone has planted that mustard seed, and it has burst into a full tree; in light of what happens in return, giving little is hardly “little” after all.
Not to say that, despite the possible returns, we won’t be tempted to stop our own searching in life. “But why give in,” the women of the first Easter ask us, “when lacking is not where the search ends, but where it begins? When, of all places, it is in our lacking where Christ is found?”

All of this from bringing oils and spices. The act of kindness of the women, though small, is returned by an encounter with the Truth of the risen Christ; they may not have prepared for to roll the stone away themselves. They have seen Christ beaten and mocked; they watched him perish on the Cross; what use is there in going on? In the war in good and evil, light and dark, it is plain to everyone that darkness has won. Yet these women, carrying their oils and spices to the tomb, set themselves apart from everyone.

When it seems that the darkness has won, the hearts of these women called out, even if they were unsure whether anyone would call back. They are carrying with them a little seed of hope that Christ, would rise after his death after all. When they discover that the stone is rolled away and the angel tells them that Christ is risen, it is as if the shout in the canyon gets a booming cry in response; as if the seed, once planted has shot up into a full-grown, fully aged oak tree. The immense contrast between the Cross and the Resurrection, the then and the now was so extreme that it astonished them.

Wisdom and the Resurrection - Richard R. Crocker

2012-04-09T10:46:00.000-04:00

Richard R. Crocker
Wisdom and the Resurrection
Easter, April 8, 2012
Rollins Chapel, Dartmouth College
I Corinthians 1:18-25 (26-31)

I am attempting, in this sermon, to address both the theme of our term’s services, which is wisdom, and the occasion, which is Easter Sunday. Wisdom and the Resurrection, I’ve called it. And it certainly is not a stretch to connect these two subjects, especially when we look at these powerful verses from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”(v. 23)

There can be no stronger statement: what the world counts as wisdom has been shown in Christ to be foolish, and what the world counts foolish has been shown in Christ to be the very wisdom of God.

Now there are several things to explore about this passage. First, for those of you who were here last Sunday and heard Kurt expound upon a similar theme, using other verses from this same epistle, you will remember that Kurt confessed dislike for Paul’s contrast. He does not want to give up on worldly wisdom, and he is suspicious of any who disdain worldly wisdom in a too eager embrace of religious foolishness – foolishness which does not turn out to be the wisdom of God but is simply foolishness. And, heaven knows, there is enough simple foolishness in the world – foolishness that is not simply entertaining, but foolishness that has very harmful consequences. So, if we want a test to distinguish wisdom from foolishness, perhaps we should look at the consequences of our beliefs.
What once passed for wisdom in the world is now revealed as racism, or sexism. What once seemed wise in political policy has led us into foolish wars. Many beliefs propounded as wise have been revealed as foolish. But, one might ask, has anyone ever come to harm by believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Now, I know that the resurrection, which Christians celebrate today, is seen by some as foolish. People die and that’s it, many say. Or we recede in some semi-spiritual way into the elements of earth where our constituent elements eventually contribute to new life. Such are the beliefs that are considered wise by many people today. But, in my own experience as a person who has conducted many funerals, some of them for quite secular people, I know that the human heart rebels when a loved one dies, and there is no hope beyond the grave. There is something wired into us that is ready to receive the wisdom of resurrection, as mysterious as that may be, rather than to settle for the wisdom of stoicism or nihilism. Now, I readily confess that there are many foolish Christians, who ignorantly or willfully adhere to many distortions of Christian thought. But I ask again: is there anyone who is harmed by belief in the resurrection of Christ? Well, of course Marx thought so. And Freud thought so. And Christopher Hitchens thought so. They thought that belief in life beyond death led people to false hopes and foolish illusions. But I ask: have the materialist hopes of Marx or the psychological cures of Freud provided a better hope? Do they really satisfy the yearning of the human heart? I have yet to hear Marx or Freud or Hitchens read at a graveside.

We could also ask, of course, what good comes from a belief in Christ’s resurrection? And the answer to that question is obvious: it gives us faith to live, hope and endure – whatever may come.

But let’s step back a moment and realize that I have somewhat misrepresented Paul’s argument. Paul does not say that the resurrection is foolishness to the Greeks. And certainly the resurrection would not have been foolishness to the Jews, for it was they who first brought forward this hope. Rather he says that the cross is foolishness to the Greeks. And a stumbling block to the Jews. It is the cross which is foolishness to many, but is to us the supreme wisdom of God. The cross. How, people asked then and people ask now, can Jesus’ execution on the cross signify anything but disgrace, defeat, desolation? How can it possibly represent wisdom? However we Christians may disagree in our answers to that question, we all agree that it does indeed represent the wisdom of God. And it is not hard for us to believe: Jesus’s death somehow shows God’s union with us in death, so that death is no longer to be feared as final destruction. When we say that Christ died for us, we mean – or at least many of us mean – that he died for our benefit, to show us that even this ignominious execution could not defeat God’s love for us. And so we hold onto that old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame, as the emblem for us of God’s transcendent, unfailing love. That for us is not foolishness, or a stumbling block, but the wisdom of God.

At a college like Dartmouth, even though it was founded to proclaim the cross as the wisdom of God, we often settle for the wisdom of the world as somehow truer, safer, more reliable. And by the wisdom of the world, I do not mean the kind of knowledge that scientific inquiry provides. Knowledge is know-how. Wisdom is an attitude that guides what we do with our know how. So, by worldly wisdom, I mean a certain skeptical attitude that is a defense against the disappointment of faith. I have known students in my career as a college chaplain at Bates and at Dartmouth who have felt called to ministry, sometimes much to the consternation of their families. A couple have even decided to join religious orders, where they take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Can you imagine three vows more contrary to the wisdom of our age? To embrace poverty, chastity, and obedience – add to that a vow of abstinence from alcohol and you have a perfect storm - the absolute summation of what most collegians would see as foolish. Can you imagine parents sending their children to Dartmouth to embrace poverty, chastity, and obedience? What foolishness! But what is the opposite of poverty, chastity, and obedience? Why, wealth, sexual libertinism, and unrestrained freedom. Is that wisdom? Really? Or foolishness?

Today we poor foolish Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ – the one who was executed, for us. We find in his death, not despair, but hope – hope not just for us, but for the world. For in him we believe that God has acted to affirm that even our human foolishness cannot destroy his wisdom. Death is not the last word. Cruelty and injustice will not triumph. For that, we say Alleluia. Thanks be to God.

Foolishness – Kurt Nelson

2012-04-02T15:24:00.000-04:00

Rollins Chapel, 4.1.2012
1 Corinthians 3: 18-23

I think it’s fair to say

that I have hated this passage for much of my life.

“The Wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.”

It’s so direct.

So simple.

So troubling.

And has so often struck me as wrong.

For you see, I’m an unabashed fan of worldly wisdom.

Not an uncritical fan, mind you.

But still, Education. Science. Evidence.

I’ve always been rather comfortable with these things.

And think them rather important.

And so I’ve blamed, in particular,

this passage,

- and I’d say justifiably -

for a good measure of our contemporary troubles.

Seeing evidence of it in Christian anti-intellectualism.

In bad sermons.

And bad-faith politics.

And especially in undermining science and psychology.

It’s a favorite passage to preach on,

for seminarians struggling with

scholarly criticism,

of theological stuff.

Or maybe just struggling with their grades.

It’s a favorite allusion,

of those seeking to undermine scientific consensus,

about human choices’ effects on the environment.

I think it’s behind accusations of

“false theologies”

which seek to balance love of God

and care of Creation.

And I think it’s behind our ability to deny many people,

access to the full life of the church,

simply by virtue of their sex

or sexual orientation.

Despite all we’ve come to learn,

about the nature of gender, sex, and sexual orientation.

I have, in short,

blamed this passage for our collective, Christian myopia,

And thus, I have wished this passage away.

I’ve desired to excise it from the text.

I’ve ignored it.

I’ve challenged it.

But still,

there it is.

A thorn in the side of worldly wisdom.

And like many such passages,

at some point,

it challenged me.

It spoke to me.

And reminded me that there is indeed a wisdom

in our faith,

that cuts much deeper than we might sometimes like.

And as we begin our inevitable march,

to good Friday and then Easter,

This passage reminded me,

that wisdom is far more,

than the trivial squabbles we make of it.

Many of you know that I spent my spring break in Washington DC,

with a group of terrific Dartmouth students.

We were focused on homelessness and service,

and learning and interfaith understanding.

I’ve done something like this for many years, now.

And it’s always affecting,

always troubling,

and I always learn quite a bit.

We wandered the city,

serving meals,

packing lunches,

building homes,

organizing donations,

and especially hearing stories.

Stories of those who have lived on the streets for years.

Stories of those cast out by bad luck,

or bad health,

or a bad spouse.

Stories of those overcome by addiction.

And stories of those swallowed up by a system,

of endless work and paperwork.

A system which spawns phrases like “permanent temporary housing”

which is even less sensible,

and less glamorous than it sounds.

And since we were in DC,

we had the chance also to meet with national leaders,

organizers, and policy advocates.

And one of our meetings,

with representatives from the National Coalition for the Homeless,

helped me connect the dots,

in a way I hadn’t before.

He described a large part of our policy,

regarding poverty and homelessness,

as an attempt to narrow the doors,

of entry into getting services,

and widen the doors

for those on their way out.

In essence,

we’ve decided that the real problem with poverty,

the real problem with homelessness,

is that it’s just too darn easy to be poor.

And so, we need to make it hard,

to receive services.

Thus, we’ve systematically reduced the amount of money,

for subsidized rent for low income families and individuals.

We’ve passed laws making sitting on a sidewalk a ticketable offense.

We’ve added,

you may have noticed if you’ve sat in an urban park in recent years,

a small row of spikes in the center of park benches,

so it’s not possible to lie across the full bench.

We’ve made sure that temporary shelters aren’t too glamorous.

Too safe.

or too clean.

Because really,

the problem,

is that it just seems too nice and too easy,

to get something for nothing.

That’s the best wisdom,

from our best policy makers,

on how to reduce poverty.

And to the God who said,

Woe to you who trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth,

and turn away the afflicted (Amos 2:7)

that wisdom must ring like foolishness indeed.

And then upon returning,

Airwaves and newsfeeds were crammed,

with more voices of ‘worldly wisdom’

suggesting quite explicitly that the killing of a 17 year old black kid,

armed only with iced tea and skittles,

by an armed, self-appointed neighborhood watcher,

is not so much an opportunity to examine

the deeply racist tendencies within ourselves,

and our society.

Tendencies borne out not only in violent acts,

but in the unintentional complicity,

of living in systems and structures and mindsets,

which perpetuate racial injustice.

Rather,

it’s a chance to talk about whether it’s appropriate

to wear a hoodie.

an opportunity to defend our access to guns.

and to take justice into our own hands.

And indeed,

the wisdom of that world

is probably foolishness to the God who speaks:

No more is there Jew and Gentile,

Man and Woman,

Slave and Free.

The God who seeks to remove all barriers.

And indeed the list of terrible worldly wisdom could go on.

From our endless consumption,

to our poisoning of lands, and air, and water.

to our endless cycles of violence at home and abroad,

much of the wisdom of the world,

must indeed seem foolish to God.

And so it should to us as well,

Bid forward by that sometimes subtle voice of wisdom,

bid forward by Paul’s writing to the Corinthians,

calling us to name and challenge such foolishness.

And, we must note,

especially if we are fans of worldly knowledge,

that wisdom is not the same as knowledge.

and not the same as evidence.

Rather, wisdom is more akin to the basic truths,

the basic narratives of our lives,

that we know deeply,

(and sometimes know uncritically)

and which we live out daily.

And in the face of the true and ultimate wisdom,

of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus,

we must rightly ask of ourselves and one another,

if our daily, lived worldly wisdom,

is not indeed foolishness.

Foolishness in the face of love overcoming hate.

Foolishness in the face of grace casting out fear.

Foolishness in the face of truth, and light, and hope, and peace.

And thus we must wonder,

what is the place of worldly learning?

I think it would be a mistake to cast it off.

And I don’t think that’s what Paul was saying…

Indeed, those who read this as a critique of all worldly knowledge

make two big mistakes:

First, they seem to assume,

that when it Paul says,

“the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God”

that that also means “foolishness in the world is wisdom with God.”

But that doesn’t hold.

And it’s not true.

Indeed, foolishness in the world is often simply foolishness.

And it’s not something to celebrate.

And second,

they pluck up that single line,

and don’t make it to the end of the story.

This section ends with:

“All things are yours…

The world, life, death,

the present, the future”

All things including

learning, and technology

politics and community,

all these things are ours.

They matter.

They’re real.

But,

they aren’t ultimate.

For we are Christ’s and Christ is God’s.

And in that,

is, I think, true wisdom

which offers us the freedom,

the ability,

and the call to hold together,

the knowledge of the world,

and the ultimate truth of God’s word to us in Christ.

The truth and wisdom of God,

which ought, I think, to form the substance of our lives,

breaks the back of worldly wisdom.

Does so in a way that challenges the ways in which we’ve gone astray,

but doesn’t,

says Paul Tillich ("All Things are Yours" from The New Being),

leave worldly wisdom entirely reduce, emaciated or controlled.

But rather undercuts our strongly human urge,

to make of worldly knowledge an idol.

Make of them ultimate truth.

Rather, it puts such things in perspective,

and in service to the larger truth,

of love.

Marylinne Robinson wrote a terrific essay recently on

“reclaiming the sacred” in which she says:

"Science can give us knowledge, but it cannot give us wisdom, but nor can religion, until it puts aside nonsense and distraction and becomes itself again,"

And in this season where we wrap up Lent,

and march toward Easter,

we are called also to ponder our foolishness.

Our distraction,

both worldly and religious.

Called, as we are, to the freedom,

and ability,

to hold all these things.

Learning, and knowledge,

faith and reason,

for all these things are yours.

And you are Christ’s and God’s.

And we are being called always,

to a still deeper wisdom.

Back again - Kurt Nelson

2012-03-25T13:39:00.002-04:00

The group has returned to Dartmouth. Happy, tired, and more-or-less healthy. I'm a bit overwhelmed by the experiences we've had and the people we've met. And I'm consistently inspired by the passion, dedication and community of our group.

Without a doubt, I'm happy to be home. Ready for my nice, quiet bed. Delighted to see my family, and rest, and walk my dog. I'm excited to see spring unfold up north as we did around DC. But as we put the nation's capitol in our rear window, I couldn't help but feel a little sad as well.

On the one hand, I'll miss this group. They affirmed me in my calling and in the educational models we use. They inspire me to keep at it. And I quite simply enjoyed being around them for such long, focused, unadulterated stretches of time.

And on the other hand, I still wonder if I'm doing enough to counter the vast challenges of poverty in our nation and world. When I stay up at night, it's because I worry if my work is direct enough, bold enough, and radical enough. Given the immense problems of our country and world, is it okay for me to live such a comfortable existence?

And so as I drove home, in a van full of sleeping, brilliant students, I pondered my (and our) privilege.
Privilege is a complicated thing to discuss at a place like Dartmouth. For so many, it simply forms the backdrops of our lives. And for others, it's a spiritual evil, which needs to be rooted out

But the most compelling definition for me was spoken by a former colleague: Privilege is the ability to opt out. And that's what we were doing as we drove home. That's what we were doing when we waited to send Stephen to a doctor in a more affluent neighborhood. That's what we were doing each evening as we sat down to a warm, filling meal.

And indeed, it's this kind of privilege that in many ways, I'd wish for the people with whom we worked. The privilege of a modicum of autonomy and dignity and community. The privilege of an acceptable school and hospital. The privilege of not worrying where our next meal will come from. The privilege of having enough of a support structure - familial, communal, and civic - to know that the next health crisis or accident or job loss or recession won't leave one without a place to live.

There is much joy in the people with whom we work. Much love and community in the places that appear so bleak to the passer by. Make no mistake, this is not gloomy work we do. But for all the hope and possibility and love and community, it is these basic privileges that such people are lacking. And it's hard to see.

Love and compassion demand that we, at least occasionally, opt in. We saw homelessness and poverty. Not simply in passing. Not simply as a societal challenge. But in real people, and and we empathized. We worked on small projects to alleviate small challenges. And we were, I think, a little broken by it. A little changed. We'll think more carefully about our personal choices. We'll ponder our vocations and our avocations and how they're lived in response to the least of these.

But still, we packed up and drove away. To return to our work and our studies. Which is an inherently ambiguous act.

But it is our hope and our faith that convince us that our opting in can make a difference. We've, for better or worse, dedicated ourselves to this idea of education. Students for these four years. Me, for the longer haul. And education is necessarily oriented more toward the future than the now.

And that will still occasionally keep me up, and make me wonder if I'm doing enough. But today, there's little doubt in my mind that I'm making the right choice. Little doubt that these 14 students and the generations before them and generations to come will have much more to offer the world than I ever could myself.

Compassion bids us to opt in to the world's troubles. Privilege allows us to opt out. And hope keeps us working toward the broad picture. In our service, or communities, or education, and hopefully our whole lives.

So I close with thanks to the organizations and people with whom we've worked. Thanks for all those - staff, donors, and the Tucker Foundation - who make such experiences possible.

And thanks especially to this group of young people. My hope is well founded in you and your futures. I can hardly wait to see what happens next.

Interfaith service: What's the big idea?

2012-03-25T12:55:00.001-04:00

Parnian Parvin-Nejad '13

The phrase "interfaith service" itself sounds like a noble undertaking, but once you think about it, its meaning is not quite as clear. What exactly is so special about doing community service with a group of people of different faiths? Many faiths include service to the community as a component of putting their beliefs into practice, or in the case of Abrahamic religions, as a way to serve God. That's an easy answer for the "faith service" part, but the "inter-" part still remains to be clarified. Half of our ASB trip is focused on this idea of “interfaith” volunteering, but before the trip, it was still not entirely obvious to me why. Half What benefit is to be gained in bringing together people of different faiths to do service rather than drawing from a single belief system?
Thanks in part to the discussion we had with a representative from the President’s Office of Faith-Based Community Partnerships, I think I am on my way to an answer to this question. We started off our discussion with the representative, Clay, with his introduction to the initiatives organized by the Corporation for National Community Service (CNCS), such as AmeriCorps and Habitat for Humanity. He explained to us the difference between stupidity (a refusal to learn or a determination to retain incorrect assumptions) and ignorance (a willingness to fill in the spaces of incomplete knowledge).
It is difficult to remain “stupid” about a group’s beliefs when you see them actively engaging in good works as an expression of faith. This is one important facet to interfaith service, but not the only one
For me, the most valuable element of interfaith service is the structure that it engenders for interfaith dialogue and understanding. In the past few days of our trip, I have had so many deep conversations with my companions about the most fundamental values of our beliefs. We have spoken about the definitions of these values, their applications in our lives, and their similarities and differences. At one point, we even developed our own definition of love as it can apply to God and many other relationships. By exchanging parts of our faiths, we have been better able to understand each other— and better able to understand ourselves.

A Hopeful Cynic

2012-03-24T22:39:00.001-04:00

Geovanni Cuevas, '14

Inez is a homeless man who wanders around our nation’s capitol in despair. We met him on the first official day of our trip, and what a bizarre day to say the least. If I were to hand you a hot dog wrapped in foil paper, a bottle of water and an orange and then instruct you to wander the streets of Washington, D.C profiling every person you saw in an attempt to identify the one in the most need of the aforementioned food, how would you begin your search?

Words cannot properly express the guilty feeling in the pit of my stomach as I scanned the streets while pausing on every black and brown face to evaluate “how homeless they looked.” Imagine, if you can, the awkward situation of approaching someone on their smoke break and offering them some water---a seemingly innocuous gesture, but one where there is no denying the implications--- you think this person is homeless. And even if it’s true, is it not a humiliating experience to have someone explicitly acknowledge our destitution? The minute you meet the eyes of the person to whom you’re offering food, there is a mutual understanding that you’ve made an assessment about their well being, about their status as a person and about their ability to provide for themselves. I assume for most of us, accepting charity would imply a level of humility bordering on embarrassment. Not exactly the most dignifying of experiences. Nevertheless, we wandered from the shelter in Southeast Washington to Union Station, where we met Inez, randomly approaching strangers offering them food and attempting to offer them, as our guide put it, “some dignity.”

I have trouble with this interpretation of our service. Dignity is not something of which I ever thought as mine to give to another human being. I certainly do not expect to be dignified by any of my peers and have always considered dignity to be something one merits on their own accord and by their own standards. When we met Inez, I did not think of him as an undignified man. However, his need was evident. His clothes bore a filthy tint, he smelled of a bitter mixture of body odor and vodka and he limped from an injury he sustained a week prior. The man needed food, he needed shelter, he needed medical attention and he needed a shower. I don’t think he needed our pity. What he needs is agency. The agency to provide for himself, the agency to overcome his alcoholism, to seek better healthcare and affordable housing. Perhaps what he needs is dignity and perhaps dignity will enable that agency, but not the kind of dignity we can give to him with a hot dog and an orange.

We walked Inez, on an injured foot, to a shelter where he was rejected simply because they didn’t have to take him. I was told this particular shelter only “had” to take someone if the conditions outside were hypothermic. Eventually, we called an ambulance for Inez. I don’t know if he ever received the medical attention he needed or if he continued to drunkenly and aimlessly wander around DC until he passed out from dehydration. I do know, however, that there are many people like Inez in cities across the country. Wandering from place to place, bench to bench, park to park but never really getting anywhere. It hurt me to see Inez in so much pain. He suffered from pangs reaching far deeper than his physical ailments. It was clear to me that the man with whom I was speaking was a broken one, and it hurt to not know how to fix him. My encounter with Inez reminded me that pain comes in many forms and that the homeless do not benefit from our condescension. We have to come to terms with the fact that the pain of the homeless is our own as well. It hurts America to allow people like Inez to wander our streets without basic care and resources. His pain is our own and until we internalize this notion, the issue of homelessness will forever seem foreign and lack the civic engagement from those of us with enough privilege to make a difference.

Back to the concept of pain and its different forms. The pain from which Inez suffered is also historical. As an ecuadorian immigrant, Inez is a product of a troubled nation hurt by corruption and poverty. He suffers from the wounds of the historically marginalized, of the underrepresented and of the poor. He sustained an injury to his foot which caused him to drink excessively in an attempt to cope with the pain, but the pain with which he is trying to cope is also caused by the lack of hope afforded to all people in his situation. I cannot fathom how much it hurts to be ignored on the street as strangers overlook your despair and suffering. I cannot fathom that invalidation. Inez related to me his struggle with alcoholism which was something triggered by the depression ensuing the loss of his job just under a year ago. Inez’s story embodies the pains of our ailing country: depression, unemployment, immigrant poverty and the uninsured. It is an unfortunate reality that he is not an isolated incident of misfortune because to some extent, millions of Americans share his pain. It highlights the need for solidarity amongst us all and to alleviate destitution in this country. We need to work together.

It pains me to reflect upon this. I have felt exhausted the entire trip because witnessing so much need drains my spirit in a way that nearly disables any capacity for critical reflection. The inefficiencies within our system are too overwhelming. However, that’s when I remember what Kurt said about how we never know from whence hope will come.

This trip has been particularly inspiring in that respect: a collective of religiously, racially and intellectually diverse students at a leading institution have come together to think critically about all of these issues. That is what gives me hope. I am inspired by the compassion of each of these participants and am proud to witness the toll our experiences have taken on our desire to effect change. We will all leave D.C with a renewed sense of purpose. However, it is important to remember that we aren’t special. The solidarity that was formed over the course of our ten days of service, the passion that was sparked, the gut reaction to want to change things can be replicated across the nation. As participants of this great experience we must try to spread that solidarity and internalize the pain we have witnessed in order to better communicate the need for activism, the need for civic engagement and the need for collaboration. The only thing remedying my pain at the moment is the potential for change, and I am proud to say that this trip has no shortage of medicine. I write to share my rambles, but more importantly to share my thanks. You’ve given this cynic hope, and for that, I am eternally grateful.

The Luxury of Certainty

2012-03-24T22:34:00.000-04:00

Shweta Raghu '15

       When I removed my dust mask and returned to the hostel after our work at the Manna building site yesterday, I had a new nickname: The Stairmaster. No, it as not because of my love for the gym-machine-of-joy, but because I spent the whole workday scraping and sweeping mud, paint, and other debris off several flights of stairs. Yes, it may sound like extremely boring and repetitive labor. And don't get me wrong, it was repetitive (scrape, sweep, move down one step, repeat), and (dare I say) boring at times, but it made me think. About what we had been doing on the trip, and what I was hoping to learn.
   In fact, we had been doing repetitive tasks almost every day. For many of us, repetitive to the point of frustration- at least while we were doing the jobs and immediately afterwards. But during our daily reflections, I found that many of my most positive experiences were seemingly pointless and repetitive tasks.

       Last Sunday, several members of our group went to the National Cathedral for the service. I had never been to a Sunday service before, let alone one at the National Cathedral. I particularly remember the preacher's sermon about the God and the Israelites. The message was ultimately that people often lose sight of their blessings when they are faced with some sort of bother or adversity, but should strive to always remember what they should be thankful for.        I completely agreed with the preacher's message that Sunday, and never realized that the story applied to me. Just like the Israelites, I was losing sight of my blessings.

       It was easy to be annoyed about "pointless" tasks when we could not envision the result of our work. That's probably why most of our tasks seemed somewhat irritating when we were doing them. But later, I realized that I was losing sight of the future, of the bigger picture, and most of all, of how lucky I was to be able to contribute one small bit to a bigger vision.
      I was forgetting that it was a luxury it was to do the work that we were doing. And that we would all break in the middle of the day to eat our prepacked lunches and end as soon clean-up started at 4:00, even if the work was not done. The people we were trying to help did not usually have those luxuries. That seemed a bit ironic to me.
     When I returned to the hostel that evening, excited to wash off the layer of dirt that had turned my legs completely gray, I tried to remember and reflect. I realized that I was lucky to know that the repetitive tasks we were completing were definitely leading to a known result. And then I realized that for the homeless, every day could be a conglomeration of repetitive and unenjoyable tasks. But they did not have the luxury of relative certainty that we did. Even though so much is uncertain in our world, we are sure that our basic needs will be met, and that most of our actions would have a visible and relatively quick result. But not everyone can have confidence in this.
     The next time I smell the inside of a dust mask, I will remember this. The confidence that my project would probably be finished, and the confidence that I can get to eat if I got hungry in the middle of it. But I will also remember those who do not have that certainty and confidence. Perhaps this is a lesson we should all learn from that sermon.