Here's what I said...

Earlier this week, I posted about how I was given the opportunity to deliver the invocation and benediction prayers at my university's faculty recognition dinner. I appreciate the feedback and prayers that so many friends supported me with.

Below is the text of what I prayed. The invocation is mostly selections from Ecclesiastes; I wrote the benediction as a response to the question, "What do I want to pray for?" After writing them, I realized that they are almost exactly what I would have prayed at a Christian event, which encouraged me that I was being genuine. I received a lot of positive feedback and thanks from my colleagues afterward, which encouraged me that I had served them and honored them. (Of course, if anyone was offended, I doubt they would have said so right at the end of the event!)

Invocation:

A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own work. This, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

What do workers gain from their toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on the human race [and university faculty in particular]. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. I know that there is nothing better for people than to be happy and to do good while they live. That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their work—[all their teaching, all their scholarship, and all their university service]—this is the gift of God.

And so, God, I pray that tonight would be a time of encouragement, rest, and renewal, so that we could bring to a satisfying finish this academic year of opportunities that You’ve given to us. Amen.

Benediction:

God, I thank you for all of the reasons we have to celebrate tonight.

Thank you for colleagues like Captain Terrell* and [new POY]** who exhibit such care for their students and enthusiasm for their fields.

Thank you for our administrators and staff who guide this university.

And thank you for the opportunity to interact with the world you have created and the students that you have brought our way. Give us a weekend of good rest and the strength and passion to finish this semester well. Amen.

*2010-2011 Professor of the Year

**2011-2012 Professor of the Year, named just minutes before the benediction

What would you say?

This week, I was asked to deliver the invocation and benediction at my university's faculty recognition dinner (taking place Friday, 3/25). This honor typically falls to a Dean/VP/someone-way-higher-up-than-a-pretenure-faculty-member.

Such an activity always presents an interesting choice (for people of all faiths or no faith): If I pray specifically after my own faith, I run the risk of alienating and/or offending others; however, if I make a vague "catch-all" prayer, I feel personally insincere (and run the risk of alienating and/or offending those of my faith).

To describe it another way, I have to ask myself the questions: Have I built up enough trust with my colleagues that, if I pray specifically to my own faith, they will trust me to not be proselytizing? Or do I still need to build up their trust by not running the risk of offending them?

I have an idea of how I'll take this opportunity to "be all things to all people;" please pray that I'll have a clear sense of how to do so and deliver honor where honor is due.

I'd also like to see what the blogosphere thinks. (Yes, this is a can of worms, but you need those to catch fish.) So, what would you say?

Writing Season

("Wighting Season," for Elmer Fudd?)

For me, this semester has been the Semester of the Paper. Not the Semester of One Singular Paper (if only life were that simple, anymore), but the Semester of the Idea of the Paper. I am teaching a Physics Seminar course, with the goal of publishing an article with the students; I have worked on two versions of a paper (one addressed to a research mentor and one written with that mentor as a coauthor) about the same project (whose pilot study I haven't yet finished); I have reviewed a paper (on a completely different type of topic) from a collaborator in another state; I've written & submitted a grant proposal about a third project and am preparing a paper proposal about that same project; and, the Monday after Spring Break, I have to submit an abstract (and oversee a student's abstract) to a summer meeting. If you take a look at my whiteboard at home (well, one of my whiteboards at home), you'll see an even longer list of writing projects for the summer.

It always amazes me how the writing process does not necessarilly mirror the research process. A project that failed miserably at each step and was salvaged at the last minute by switching around research goals can sound like a masterpiece; on the other hand, a project that was well planned, well researched, and conducted exactly as scheduled can still come to a screeching hault at the very end and prove to be unsalvagable and unpublishable.

We as Christians base our faith on the result of many individuals' writing processes; no Christians I know of believe that the Bible's authors were somehow mystically guided through some perfection-inducing trance. It would seem that the biblical authors were very much themselves when they wrote these texts. What was Paul's planning & revision process (either on paper or in his head) like when he wrote his letter to the Romans? (Or, given his predeliction for interrupting himself to venture onto tangents, did he not plan & revise at all?) How often did Luke have to revise his outline & thesis as he interviewed witnesses? What kind of sifting process did Solomon go through to pick out & organize Proverbs?

It's amazing to think that, in all of these different writing styles & personal approaches to writing, God crafted together a set of materials for us to base our faith & lives on.

Broadening our sympathy to deter hopelessness

Last week, I posed the question of what motivation leads to withdrawal (and ultimately dissipation), based on the thesis of The Fabric of Faithfulness that a burden of responsibility leads to engagement (and ultimately multiplication).

The answer (as usual) was to keep reading...

[T]he years between adolescence and adulthood are a tumultuous time, anywhere and everywhere. Many students, perhaps most, emerge from their university experience ready to take on the world; the idealism of youth, we call it. But then somewhere along the way the reality of life in the fast lane of adult responsibility hits--sometimes like a ton of bricks, sometimes like acid rain. In a thousand ways they see how hard it is to be faithful to family, at work, in politics. Day in an day out they experience disappointments in every part of life--every part of life--and see how hard it is to be hopeful (and therefore responsible) actors in human history as they try to be neighbors to those next door and to those around the world. --The Fabric of Faithfulness, page 33 (italics is Garber's; underlines are mine)

So, it would seem that disappointment (bred by hardship) leads to hopelessness which induces an abandoning of responsibility--AKA withdrawal.

And it seems to me that we make the disappointment more painful and the hopelessness bleaker when we are sensitive only to hardships that are similar to those with which we are familiar. How often do we hear of someone's struggle in life, only to respond with, "Well, you're not as far along as I am, so you've got it easy?" (And how many times have we used that response on a student!)

Garber says that cultivating responsibility requires a community who cares. So, how can we expand our range of sympathy to include those in our community whose struggles seem foreign to us?