Palmtree Contemplations

The past semester has been a journey of discovering more about me and what God desires me to do. Coming here to John Brown University has forced me to ask myself important questions. Who am I? Who does God want me to be? How can I use what I am passionate about to change the world? Who am I? I was born on November 24 th , 1991, in the beautiful, old, grimy, modern city of Manaus, Brasil. I grew up at an American boarding school twenty miles outside of the city where my parents work. My early childhood was filled with swimming in the Amazon, building forts in the jungle, and reading any books I could find. My father has been collecting books for years, something he passed onto me. He taught me everything I know about good literature by giving me good books from the time I could read. When I think of home, I see myself sitting at the table with him, both of us reading.   My mother passed on a lot of things to me, among them her love and gift for music. Even when I was little, I was the o

       Our lives are incredibly fast-paced these days. We have so many things that we tell ourselves we must do everyday.  The Narrator in Zen understands this and he believes many people go through life like ego-filled mountain climbers. This kind of person will miss the little things in life like "a beautiful passage of sunlight through the trees," and "rejects the here, is unhappy with it." An ego-climber is always looking ahead instead of experiencing and taking joy in his surroundings.  (p. 267)         In contrast, the Narrator believes that, "Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire...You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion...To live only for some future goal is shallow." (p. 258) Instead of being ego-filled mountain climbers, we should be self-less climbers, aware of what is happening around us and enjoying the moment.      I was inspired by this idea of becoming a self

       In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Phaedrus is plagued with doubts about his ability to teach. He works at a college in Montana and, one day at the office, is asked by one of his colleagues about his teaching the right way. That is to say, he is teaching the way the book teaches. As he puts it, he is teaching "rationally." "He felt there was something wrong with it...The wrongness was in the old ghost of his dreams-rationality itself. (p. 228)"       It becomes clear that Phaedrus does not believe in what he is teaching. This brings up an interesting question: should teachers believe in what they teach? Even more importantly, should this be the goal of education?      I think that teachers should teach what they believe. It's obvious that Phaedrus suffers because he cannot teach what he believes is important. He is trying to combine his beliefs with his profession. He wants to fulfill his calling. We are all looking for our calling, somethin

The real University, he said, has no specific location. It owns no property, pays no salaries, and receives no material dues. The real University is a state of mind.         This is a quote from Robert   M. Persig's book, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance." The Narrator reveals to the reader how Phaedrus, a former teacher, feels about education. Throughout the book, the Narrator presents gives his and Phaedrus's thoughts on education, motorcycle maintenance, and zen. It's an intriguing book. Even more intriguing is how Phaedrus embodies the discerning aspect of wisdom.       In my previous blog, I discussed Caroline Basset's article on wisdom. She puts forth the idea that wisdom can be divided into different dimensions. Discerning is one of them. The chief characteristic of discerning is objectivity, meaning the ability to look at a situation from the outside. Someone who has this ability will ask questions like "What's really going on?&quo

          When I think of wisdom personified I usually imagine an older person sitting in a rocking chair dispensing advice and nuggets of truth. I don't think I have ever heard someone in my generation being called wise. The term isn't used to described very many college experiences, either. I can't think of a single college that listed "gaining wisdom" as one of the benefits of their program. It was always, "Come here and you will learn how to be a good scholar," or something like that.          And yet, wisdom is incredibly valuable. When he was given the choice of anything in the world, King Solomon asked for wisdom. According to Provers, wisdom is of the same value as silver, will keep us living in safety, and enable us to preserve knowledge. Wisdom is so valuable because it cannot be created by man. Rather, it is God who gives it to us.         Wisdom has many different aspects. In her article, "Emergent Wisdom: Living Life in Widening Circl

       In the Honors Program, knowledge is encouraged and cultivated the way a tree is cultivated by a gardener.I'm not talking about just any kind of knowledge, though. There are three types: foundational, disciplinary, and interdiscplinary.          Foundational knowledge involves basic facts and concepts. Knowing how to add and subtract is foundational knowledge.         Disciplinary deals with in-depth facts, concepts, and methodologies of at least one subject or discipline. My class in musical theory is teaching me the specifics of my major, music, so I am gaining discplinary knowledge from it.         Interdisciplinary knowledge connects different academic disciplines in different settings. If I take what I am learning in my musical theory, Celtic Christianity, and voice classes and then apply it in a chapel setting I am employing interdisciplinary knowledge.         But how is all this knowledge going to help me in the real world? Just because I can do these things doesn

                                Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque. "I make free adults out of children by means of books and a balance."                 This is the motto for St. John's College, a liberal arts school that is dedicated to teaching students habits of thinking that will last a lifetime. They do this by requiring students to study the works of some of the greatest minds in history, including Homer, Galileo, Austen, Freud, Tolstoy, Mozart, and Augustine, to name a few. Basically, it's a college known for reading good books.        The program differs from John Brown in the fact that it is not a Christian university. It's focus is on providing a good liberal arts education, whereas John Brown is concerned with connecting the biblical idea of redemption with a liberal arts education. At the same time, it promotes a small, concentrated learning environment, something that John Brown also encourages.        Their educational program is also very dif

          "Hey Dad."           "Hey Rachel. How are you sweetheart?"           "Fine. Can I come walk with you?"           "Sure."       Walking with Dad always meant deep conversation over a wide spectrum of topics including faith, the media, forestry, creative writing, history, and sometimes boys. Essentially, we went on a journey together, not knowing if we would discover anything incredible, but open to the possibilities.        If you ask me to define quality education, I think of those walks with my father. With him, teaching was more about imparting wisdom than it was imparting knowledge. In fact, much of my education was like that. Don't misunderstand me. I had to memorize grammar rules, multiplication tables, and the whole Christopher Columbus story just like everyone else. But the staff at my school were more often concerned with preparing us for the world we would face after graduation. They taught us things we would need to k

         One of the first thing I learned in high school was that the next few years of my life would be spent taking notes and studying for tests with the notes I had taken. Taking notes became crucial, and eventually frustrating for me. I remember saying to my sister, "I see my whole life stretching out before me and it's just one endless stream of notebook pages filled with words that don't mean anything." I began to feel numb at the thought of school, and rebelled at the idea of belonging to a system that expected only consumption and regurgitation of ideas.         Paulo Freire, the author of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed , must have had a similar experience. In the second chapter of his book he describes two different kinds of education: the banking concept and problem-posing.        The banking concept works like this: the teacher is like a banker who presents information to the students, and then expects them to file all of it away as though they were identi

       It is one thing for me to write all these blogs about my gifts and strengths. It is another thing altogether to pick up the phone and call people who really know me, and ask them to analyze and picture me in the future. It was quite an experience, one that kept me up late making phone calls to high school friends, my two older siblings, and my dad. I asked them three questions:       #1. What do you think I am most passionate about?    #2. What am I good at?    #3. Where do you see me in ten years?        My top three responses for the first question were God, music, and books. I understand why the people I talked to see these things in me. Over the years they have seen me getting up in the morning to read my Bible, heard me practicing the piano in the early and late hours of the day, and watched me consume books on a regular basis. I would have thought it strange if they hadn't noticed all these things. It was encouraging to know that I was right in seeing these passion

       Most people might be musing over their day while they mop floors, but I was trying to figure out how my strengths are compatible with my spiritual gifts. At first I had them set up as two lists in my head. One was "Strengths," under which I listed Responsibility, Belief, and Learning. The other list was "Spiritual Gifts," under which I listed Faith, Poverty, and Celibacy. I tried to draw lines between them in my head, matching each one with another, and then redrawing the lines because they didn't fit. Then I realized I was looking at it all wrong. The way to do it is to imagine yourself going in circles, where each gift plays a part in each strength and vice versa.        For example, my Belief strength would not exist without my spiritual gift of Faith. At the same time, it is because of my beliefs that I have faith. It goes in a circle. If I did not have faith that Jesus Christ was the Son of God and that He has the power the save me from sin, I would

       Ever since I was able to think about what I was going to do in the future, I have also been pondering what my gifts are and how they can be used. I have considered my strengths, taken those cute quizzes in girl magazines with titles like "What Color Is Your Personality?", and tried to memorize acronyms for how to use my talents for God. In short, if ever someone was supposed to know their spiritual gifts, it would be me.       At least, that's what I thought before I took a spiritual gifts assessment test online and printed out the results. There, in black and white, my top three spiritual gifts were listed as Faith, Poverty, and Celibacy. These are definitely gifts, but I can't say I would immediately put those in the top three. After a lot of pondering, though, I realized that these are gifts I do have, I just never knew they were there.      Having Faith as a gift means that I will act with confidence on what God has promised to do. In my own life, especia

        Somewhere in my mind I have a list of books that I want to finish someday when the endless hours of forced reading, cramming, and writing are over and done. One of the titles on the list is a book by Mark Noll called The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. The little bit of this book that I did get a chance to read inspired me to really ask myself, "How can I redeem the culture for Christ with my talents? What can I do to honor God with my mind and talents?"       The first answer of how to go about that is through music. For as long as I can remember I have loved music. I love practicing it, performing it, listening to it; I love everything about it. I believe I have the talents required to become a good performer and also in time a great teacher. What will set me apart from my secular peers is why I play. I don't play just because I love it. I play because I love God, and I believe playing is one way that I can praise Him. Because it is an act of love, as all serv