beware the H1XA virus

I sent this email out to my stu­dents last night and received such pos­i­tive feed­back I thought I’d share it here for my fel­low cam­pus min­is­ters to adapt for use on their own cam­pus.

In case you just stum­bled upon this through some ran­dom inter­net search, I lead a min­istry called Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship which is abbre­vi­at­ed with the Greek let­ters XA. That should be all you need to know in order to laugh/groan/hurl toma­toes at the below email.

Mem­bers of the Stan­ford Com­mu­ni­ty,

In addi­tion to the H1N1 virus — the so-called “swine flu” — sweep­ing
our cam­pus, there is anoth­er and more insid­i­ous infec­tion to beware.

I speak, of course, of the H1XA virus — the so-called “divine flu”.

The H1XA virus is extreme­ly con­ta­gious. Symp­toms include joy,
friend­ship, and a pro­found sense of spir­i­tu­al cen­tered­ness. Car­ri­ers
can be iden­ti­fied by their cheer­ful coun­te­nance, their moral
lifestyle, and occa­sion­al­ly by their styl­ish t‑shirts. Should you meet
some­one already infect­ed, know that there is no cure (espe­cial­ly if
they already have a t‑shirt). Avoid them lest you your­self be seized
by divine pur­pose accom­pa­nied by rap­tur­ous joy and immer­sion in
mean­ing­ful com­mu­ni­ty.

There will be a pub­lic meet­ing tomor­row (Wednes­day) night at 7:30pm in
370–370 to dis­cuss this dis­ease in more detail. Please know that
epi­de­mo­nolo­gists are avail­able to help pre­vent this dis­ease from
spread­ing. Bring every­one you know who is not already infect­ed.

Do not despair. It will be tough, but we can pull through this togeth­er.

Should con­di­tions on cam­pus become unbear­able, we can all flee to the
woods Oct 17–18. Get your escape tick­et at http://xastanford.org/events

Sin­cere­ly,

Glen (a con­cerned mem­ber of the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty)

Hope you find it use­ful. Or at least amus­ing. I’ll even set­tle for mem­o­rable. 😉

And if you’re a Stan­ford stu­dent who did­n’t receive this lit­tle charmer, sign up for our mail­ing list at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/chialpha-fellowship!