Weekly Meanderings, 14 June 2014

Last updated on: June 14, 2014 at 12:13 am by Scot McKnight

Weekly Meanderings, 14 June 2014 2014-06-13T12:42:29-05:00 Scot McKnight

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These are some very cool summer drinks.

I’m glad Jack and Priscilla were at SPU in the aftermath of the shooting:

Is it callous to say I found consolation in desolation on that grassy quad with students I admire and cherish? These students were so reflective, comfortable in the silence, mature in their prayers for the shooter, the victims, our community. I didn’t mean to or want to, but I felt hopeful. In four short years, just 120 weeks, these students, most of them seniors, had learned to live into ambiguity, had garnered a textured faith free of trivialities.

I tell my students I teach for when they’re forty, when they’re black and blue. I’m honest with them about ambiguity and doubt and worries that pierce the hollow night. I’m honest with them, too, about faith. I’m still believing, still hoping, still laughing as I weep, weeping as I laugh, dancing as I mourn, mourning as I dance.

Well, yesterday our campus turned forty. All of us. In the split seconds of text alerts and booming shots. In the sirens. In the cameras and news trucks. In the grassy quad. In the evening light. In prayer.

A canal runs near the SPU campus, just on the other side of Otto Miller Hall. I’ve walked with countless students along that canal, talking about boyfriends and grammar and grad school and summer plans. Not far down the canal, you can watch the salmon return home to spawn. They’re scarred, every last one of them, with scales missing, totems of hooks and bites engraved on their bodies. And they’re still swimming. These are the salmon that survive, the ones that make it, the hope of the future.

I’m not quite ready to talk hope. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus, yes. I believe in the life everlasting, as the creed puts it. But for now I grieve, as sad at dawn this morning as I was at dusk last night. Sad for the mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, and friends grieving a lost son, urging a daughter back to life. But I confess, too, to a certain deep consolation–maybe it is hope after all–lying somewhere inside me next to that ball of grief, as I recollect the faces and faith of my students.

If you haven’t seen these “then and now” pictures take a look — fascinating and each tells a story.

Are evangelicals anti-intellectual? From John Fea’s site:

Is evangelicalism anti-intellectual? As many of our readers know, Mark Noll answered this question twenty years ago with a resounding “yes” in his book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

Do evangelical churches contribute to this kind of anti-intellectualism? Last October, Stephen Mattson of the University of Northwestern in St. Paul, MN, writing at Sojourners, answered this question with a resounding “yes” in a piece entitled “Do Churches Alienate Intellectuals?” Mattson believes that there are three primary reasons why churches tend to alienate Christian intellectuals.

Wonderful story about Detroit’s Cristo Rey schools.

From USA Today:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A 10-year-old Sacramento boy has become one of the youngest students to ever graduate from high school.

Tanishq Abraham received his high school diploma Sunday in front of family and friends at a private ceremony at the California Auto Museum. He even received a letter from President Barack Obama congratulating him on his graduation.

The home-schooled prodigy successfully met the state requirements to graduate and earned a 4.0 GPA.

Now this is truly sad to learn, from Niraj Chokshi:

Tuesday’s school shooting in Oregon is at least the 74th instance of shots being fired on school grounds or in school buildings since the late-2012 elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to a listmaintained by the group Everytown for Gun Safety, which advocates for policies it believes limit gun violence.

There have been at least 37 shootings on school grounds this year, which is just barely half over. All told, there has been nearly one shooting per week in the year and a half since Newtown. Everytown identifies a school shooting as any instance in which a firearm was discharged within a school building or on school grounds, sourced to multiple news reports per incident. The data includes assaults, homicides, suicides and accidental shootings.

Never knew the story about the wooden spoon … seems reasonable to me.

Asian adoptions and their stresses, and you can go to this link to watch it:

Marissa Martin was adopted from South Korea when she was 6 months old. She was raised by the Martin family in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, standing out as one of the few Asians in her town. She recalls growing up struggling with her identity and where she fit in.

“One thing that I have heard and also experienced is just your own internal identity and racial struggle of where do I fit in,” she said. “It was, am I Korean enough, am I Asian enough.”

Martin is one of thousands of Asian adoptees, adopted by mostly White families in the 1970s. Between 1971 and 2001, more than 250,000 children were adopted from other countries — a majority were adopted from Asia.

Martin is now vice president of Also-Known-As Inc, a New York City non-profit that provides support services to adult international and national adoptees.

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