Gina Marchetti

August 30th marked the first day of classes for the 2012 Concordia University, St. Paul school year, and to commemorate, the Festival of Beginnings was hosted in the Buetow Auditorium. It began with the triumphant hymn "A Mighty Fortress is our God," which represents the theme of the year: "God is our refuge and our strength," which comes from Psalm 46. President Ries shared different translations of the words "refuge" and "strength" in all different languages, which not only gave the terms deeper meaning, but stressed the importance of last year's theme "We are ALL God's People." He explored the contrasts between refuge and strength. He defined refuge as the safe places that God provides in times of need, and strength as the courage that God gives us when a refuge is not an appropriate solution to the problem at hand. 

I am excited to be able to write this now, in my own format, before I have to use the D.I.E. format. Not that I have anything wrong with the D.I.E. format, as it can be very useful for keeping my blogs concise and it acts well as a guiding structure when I am trying to write a blog in a short amount of time. But every now and then I enjoy the freedom to express my thoughts in my own way and my own structure. In this case, I am blogging about the summer reading for Honors: UnChristian, What a new generation really thinks about Christianity, and why it matters, and I wanted to discuss the order of reactions that I experienced while reading it. 

Last Tuesday, April 24th, Concordia St. Paul had its 11th annual Poehler Lecture. Instead of having a single speaker, the lecture was given as a team by brothers Rev. Dr. Tomas Trapp and Dr. Dale Trapp. There was an interesting dichotomy of subjects as Rev. Dr. Tomas Trapp teaches in the theology department, and Dr. Dale Trapp teaches in the science department. Their title was "Head to Head! Heart to Heart!" The two brothers took turns talking and discussing different aspects of "the academic pursuit" which all universities have, and "the spiritual pursuit" which is special to Christian universities. They each played to their strengths - Rev. Dr. Tomas Trapp shared much of what he says to the students that take his classes. Similarly, Dr. Dale Trapp shared some demonstrations with magnetism, and showed a slideshow of life as it stretches from the smallest unit of life to the entire universe. Both of the brothers were sharing the best of what they know, as if to show how science and faith meld together, not oppose each other as the world knows them to. 

Last Thursday I went to go see Concordia St. Paul's performance of the musical Pippin. The story was of a young man that wanted to find his "corner of the sky." His father was a king who loved battle and war. Pippin was the educated type, and never had any experience with fighting, but he wanted to try it, figuring that if his father so enjoyed it, it could bring him the fulfillment he was looking for. So he went to battle with his father and won, but he felt awful afterward for what he had done to his opponents. He decided he wanted to take his father's place as king, but after realizing how hard it was to be the king, he resigned, feeling like a failure. He met a widow, Catherine, and her son Theo, who took him in and asked him for help around her home. At first he was resistant to the idea, but when Theo was upset about his sick duck, Pippin helped out by praying for him (although his duck died anyway). At this point he began to feel attached to Catherine and Theo. The whole time, however, the Leading Player had been acting as an antagonist, trying to steer him away from Catherine and Theo, and trying to get him to be "great" and "wonderful" by fighting in wars and trying to become the king. In the end, the Leading Player convinces him to leave Catherine and Theo to try to get him to participate in a great finale. She tries to coax him into believing that it will fulfill his deep desires, but to no avail. In the end he chooses Catherine and Theo over trying to find his "corner in the sky." 

A few of the readings for the Honors class a couple weeks ago were written by John Wesley, an original member of the Methodist church. Pastors would refuse to let him preach in their churches, but he would just go preach to the poor in the fields. One particular sermon that we read for Honors was written by John Wesley, called "Sermon on the Mount-8" based on Matthew 6:19-21. This part of the sermon on the mount speaks to not laying up earthly treasures for ourselves. He discusses what is and what isn't okay. Since it is a command from Christ to not reserve anything for ourselves, we as Christians very specifically should not do so. However, he says we are not forbidden to provide for ourselves and our families in order to satisfy our needs. All of the instances where earning a profit is acceptable are laid out so that by knowing these, we can determine whether or not a particular behavior in regard to money is acceptable. Essentially, the ideal that John Wesley implores is one in which we have no earthly possession other than what is absolutely necessary for life. 

Last Wednesday the convocation was cancelled, and so we had an opportunity to attend an event on Thursday instead. I wasn't told much about the event before hand, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew it was an activity and that it had something to do with diversity. The activity was held in a classroom - all the students sat in three different circles of chairs. We were told at the beginning that where we were sitting then didn't matter much. We were going to play a game that involved trading chips. Each color of chip had a different value, and there were different combinations of chip colors that would add up (for example, a blue chip was worth 2 points, but if someone had 5 blue chips, the total was 16). During each round of trading, two people would lock hands, and negotiate a trade. We weren't allowed to leave each other until we had agreed upon a trade, and we weren't allowed to trade a chip for an equal chip. Once the trading round was over, we recorded our scores based off of our highest five chips, and were separated into three separate groups: triangles, circles, and squares. Triangles were the lowest and squares were the highest. We then had a round where in our groups, we had 3 chips each worth 3 points, and we were to decide, unanimously, who in our group would get them. My group (the circles) flipped for it. Then we repeated the two rounds, shifting into different groups as appropriate according to our scores. The squares formed a clique really quickly, and when someone new moved up, they would vote the new member out. I started to notice that the woman running the game was showing some partiality to the squares, and this suspicion was confirmed when she announced that since the squares were doing so well, they would now be allowed to change whatever rules they saw fit. When she announced this, the triangles and circles (which I was still a part of) formed one big group. We were allowed to send suggestions for rules to the squares, but we decided to wait and see what the squares were already planning. The squares decided that their new rules were going to be that we had to trade with them whatever they wanted, and it quickly escalated to anarchy. We circles and triangles devised a plan to not win them over - we were going to be "stuck" in trades among ourselves so that they could not force us to trade. This round was awful - the squares forcibly took our chips away from us. After that trading round, the squares decided that the game was over. 

One of our readings this past week was from Ignatius of Loyola. This reading was called, "The Spiritual Exercises." It is a very succinct guide to decision-making. Ignatius starts by writing that it is crucial, in any decision-making process, to remember the end, which is to give glory to the Lord. Any option being weighed in any decision is simply a means to that end, and the object is to choose whichever option is the best means by which the end is achieved. He then differentiates between types of choices, describes all of the occasions in which a decision may possibly need to be made, and then gives two sets of instructions for how to best think through these decisions. In his conclusion, he mentions that if anyone is not currently in a position in which he or she needs to make a decision, he or she should then evaluate his or her current life and consider possible improvements that could be made and decided through the decision-making processes he suggested in this piece. 

For part of our reading this past week in Honors, we had to read two letters written by Bernard of Clairvaux. He was a very influential member in the Cistercian order. He wrote many letters, but the two we read were meant to reprimand. The first was sent to a man, Walter de Chaumont, who stayed home to care for his mother rather than go off to join the monastery. The second was written to a young man named Fulk, who had previously been a part of the monastery but left, after being persuaded by his uncle.Bernard of Clairvaux writes from the perspective that the monastic life is the only means by which one can achieve salvation. He makes a lot of scripture references, many of which are misinterpreted or taken out of context. The writer, of course, lived too early to read anything Martin Luther had to say about the grace of God. ;) 

Last Wednesday, we Honors students were able to have dinner with JoBe Cerny. He started out by talking about his success and the means by which he arrived at it. He then invited us to share some of our dreams, so that we could help process and develop ideas for making them happen. This quickly morphed into another Q&A session, in which students asked questions seemingly to give Mr. Cerny continuing opportunities to talk about himself and all of the great things he's done. He gave a lot of very quotable tips that I wrote down in my notebook, like, "Think of ways you can make it happen," "Sometimes in my dream state I find my answers," or "You have to think bigger dreams." He also talked a lot about his daily life - six hours of sleep on average, with 16 hour work days. (Interestingly, this leaves two hours of free time every day...) Overall, our dinner was, for the most part, a testimony from Mr. Cerny of how to create your own success.