Buried Hopes

Our senior's have been busy working on their "capstone" project this semester. A bit like a mini-thesis, they are required to choose a topic and research it thoroughly through conducting interviews, library research, etc. All the teachers were asked to sign up to mentor two or more students in their project, and I was assigned two girls: one is researching raw foods and the other a new cancer drug. These girls were required to run their rough draft by me before submitting it, so I have been waiting for them to find me this week to show it to me. As the week went by and I hadn't heard from them (one is in my mentoring group, so I figured she was waiting to see me during that, but the other was a girl whom I don't know), I thought about myself during my senior year of high school and how I would have handled this situation. For others, this would be the simplest of tasks. But for me, it would have seemed insurmountable. To find a teacher whom I did not know, interru...

What the distinction between the [kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world] does imply, however, is that citizens of the kingdom of God need to take care to distinguish between their core faith and values on the one hand and the particular way they politically express their faith and values on the other. While the way of the kingdom of God is always simple, straightforward, and uncompromising, the way of the kingdom of the world is always complex, ambiguous, and inevitably full of compromises. Hence, kingdom people who share the same core faith and values can and often do disagree about how their faith and values shoud inform their involvement in the kingdom of the world --Greg Boyd , The Myth of a Christian Nation It is Thanksgiving Break, and I actually have some time to read! This book has been sitting on our bookshelf for quite some time. Though it was largely based on a sermon series directed toward the "Religious Right" during the 2004 elections, it is just as appli...

On Fall: My memories are contained in the seasons. Even more so than in music, the seasons have the ability to transport me to another time and place. Particularly the Fall. California has more of a Fall than I thought it would. I don't need much of a Fall to be affected; a little cold weather and a a smidge of new color in the trees is enough to do it for me. The leaves have not changed here, but one tree in the back has grown tons of beautiful fall-colored berries. And it has been breezy and cold, much like a Texas Fall. During the Fall, I am transported to my freshman year of college. I am 17 (almost 18) years old, and I am living on the campus of Louisiana College. Fall transforms LC into heaven, and I spent the majority of this semester outside on a swing, bench or picnic table. I was taking Old Testament, and this class was stretching my mind in ways I had not expected, causing me to question both my faith and my view of the Bible. This was not ok with me, and my time outside...

When Tom and I got married, I was introduced to the West Wing. I was not the least bit political at this time. I understood very little (I still don't understand very much), and I spent most of each episode struggling to follow the fast-paced political happenings of the show. I ended up becoming quite enamored by each of the characters, finding President Bartlett to be one of the most endearing men to exist on television. And then, during the last two seasons, there was Santos. I loved this man, and as the series came to an end, I found myself wondering aloud over and over again why someone like Santos didn't run for president (so much that I drove my husband crazy--because "you can't get all of your politics from the West Wing!"). A year or so later, Tom was watching Meet the Press, and Tim Russert(may he rest in peace) was interviewing a man I had never seen before. But I figured that he must be important, with the way the he talked, the intelligence in his deme...