need to waste some time at work today?

So a couple of my Teach For America colleagues got a shout out in the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce Magazine. Actually, it’s an article talking about TFA in St. Louis while highlighting a couple of corp members. I had the pleasure of co-teaching with Navneet this summer in Atlanta. We share tons of laughs. And Elsie, an ‘08 corps member, is my Lou Crew Leader which simply means that she has taken me and a few others of us ’09s under her wings. She’s got a year’s experience on us and so she shares her wisdom with us. Check out the article here.

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Who knew my former Brooklyn landlord was famous? The New York Times has been doing this very cool feature for a while now titled, “One in 8 Million.” It takes regular New Yorkers and tells their unusual stories. My landlord, Jack, digs in people’s backyards. Specifically, he digs where outhouses used to be. Funny, right? Check out this NY Times feature here.

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After having severed ties with the Southern Baptist Church years ago, Jimmy Carter recently wrote a piece saying more explicitly why it is that he left the nation’s biggest denomination. These are the words that open his essay:

Women and girls have been discriminated against for too long in a twisted interpretation of the word of God.

I find comfort that others – like my sisters, President Carter and many more – have left churches and maintained, not only their faith, but their practice of faith. Check out Pres. Carter’s essay here.

Filed under: Brooklyn, New York Times, faith, teaching

hotlanta

My kids are on winter break and so we called my sis and said, “Can we come hang out with you guys in Atlanta?” It was really a rhetorical question because we were coming whether she liked it or not. That’s kinda the way it works with my sisters. “Hey, I’m coming over.” Thank goodness they have husbands who are down with our no-invitation intrusions.

We’ve only been here one evening and already my sister and brother-in-law have helped Laura and me process some of what we’re going through. The conversation last night alone was worth the fourteen hours in the car. I thank God for my sisters and what they mean to me.

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We finally told Sophia and Ira that we’re moving. We chose our words carefully and thoughtfully as we knew that Sophia would get it; would understand. After we told them Sophia’s face went blank. After several moments of silence I asked her, “What are you feeling?” “I’m scared,” she replied. “About what?” “I’m going to miss my friends.”

I looked over at Laura and her eyes were welling up with tears. Mine too. Sophia just stared out the window. It was obvious her mind was spinning.

Filed under: Ira, Laura, New York Times, Sophia, family

to shop or not to shop

From the NYTimes article, Our Love Affair With Shopping Malls Is on the Rocks, regarding our current economic crisis:

In other words, shopping was part of the problem and now it’s part of the cure. And once we’re cured, economists report, we really need to learn how to save, which suggests that we will need to quit shopping again.

So go shop. And then stop shopping. And then shop again. And then stop again. Dangit, get up already and get to shopping. And if you don’t stop, by golly!

sigh…

Filed under: New York Times

olympic countdown – five days

I love the New York Times. Love it. Once every quarter they issue a magazine in their weekend papers called PLAY. It’s all about sports. This particular issue was all about the Olympics. In an article titled, True or False: China Is Fit to Play Host, Tom Scocca, a journalist who has lived in Beijing for the past four years, contemplates the complexities of the politics surrounding this year’s Olympics.

In sum, Scocca recognizes that things have gotten better in China but uses this analogy to think about that improvement:

…the Olympic preparations are like tidying your house in a hurry before company comes over. The clutter gets stuffed into cabinets or under the bed; you wipe down the bathroom the guests will be using; you hide the dirty dishes and dig out matching forks and cloth napkins. This is not the way you live every day.

Are you defrauding your guests? Or are you showing them how you would live, if things were different?

Filed under: New York Times, sports

definition of evangelical

What are the marks of an evangelical? What is the criteria that one should meet to be considered an evangelical? I personally think it all centers around how one views, reads and interprets the Bible. Is the Bible inerrant and infallible? Is every word in the Bible inspired by God? Is every word of God? If the answers to those questions is an unequivocal “yes” then one naturally falls into the category of evangelical and leads to a set of particular beliefs and convictions. If the answer to those questions is at all nuanced then one immediately finds him or herself outside the evangelical camp.

But maybe I’m being too narrow in my understanding of who’s an evangelical and who’s not. As Nicholas Kristof noted in his most recent editorial, evangelicals come in all shapes and sizes and should no longer be chided by those on the left for holding fast to beliefs and convictions. Instead, Kristoff suggests, liberals would do well to attempt to make allies of evangelicals who are working hard in humanitarian efforts all over the world, and often leading the way in those efforts.

I guess the question remains, would evangelicals welcome liberals as partners in their humanitarian efforts?

Filed under: Bible, New York Times, ethics, faith

a sampling from the mag

Once upon a time Rev. Gene Carlson was a big deal among Christian conservatives. Now he second guesses how fanatical he once was regarding his politics. In the New York Times Magazine article titled The Evangelical Crackup Carlson admits, “When you mix politics and religion, you get politics.”

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Valerio Mezzanotti interviewed Pierre Bayard, a professor of French literature. Bayard wrote a book called “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read.” In the interview, Bayard said that “it is not so easy to say that you have read a book” which led to this question: If we read a book and forget that we read it, is that the same as never having read it?

Great question. So, what do you think?

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James from New York wrote to The Ethicist and asked, Is it ethical to order food for delivery during a thunderstorm? If I’m doing it to avoid going outside and getting wet or struck by lightening, isn’t it wrong to have somebody else (with little agency to refuse) do it in my place?

So what do you think? Remember, Laura and I delivered food for a local restaurant a couple of years ago to help pay the bills so I’ve got an opinion about this.

Filed under: New York Times, books, church, ethics, politics

impossible interpretation

The August 12 issue of the New York Times Magazine featured an article titled Can This Marriage Be Saved? It was an in-depth look at a couples-therapy group in Philadelphia. The author, Laurie Abraham, sat in on a group for a year and so throughout the article she references specific couples and their stories. It’s pretty intense but by the end, I was impressed with the psychologist leading the group, the direction the group was headed and the hope I felt the article instilled in what it means to fight (and fight hard) for marriage.

However, two weeks later selected letters to the editor were posted and I soon realized that others did not share my interpretation. One reader said it was evident that some of the couples mentioned in the article should no longer “delay the inevitable” and just get a divorce in order to get on with life. Some looked a bit deeper and bemoaned how this kind of therapy (along with most therapies) is only available to those who have the means to pay for it. Another reader was exasperated over the change of behavior techniques the psychologist employed. Only one letter published echoed my sentiments – hope for these couples, marriage is worth fighting hard for even when it seems that all is lost, blah, blah, blah.

My first reaction to the letters published was one of confusion. Hadn’t we all read the same article? Then I remembered how difficult, even impossible, it is for people to read the printed word and come to the same conclusions. And my mind drifted to the most obvious example of this: reading The Book. Yep, that one.

We can’t help but bring our current circumstance, our life story, our cultural influences into view when reading the Bible. So it’s no wonder that for so many years simply reading the Bible has caused so many rifts, so many divisions, so much hatred. But here’s the thing, when reading the Bible we need to think about our circumstances, our life stories and our cultural influences. Without these we can’t be so sure that God is up to anything here and now. In other words, our circumstances, life stories and cultural influences aid us in reading the Bible.

However, they can also get in the way, overwhelm or overpower. So here are the questions I attempt to keep in mind when reading the Bible: When does my circumstance get in the way of The Way? When does my life story overwhelm The Story? When do cultural influences push aside the influence of God’s Word?

Filed under: Bible, New York Times, interpretation