Category: Stanford/Ministry News

I got to hear the Dalai Lama speak at Stan­ford on Fri­day. I was actu­al­ly a few min­utes late because I was walk­ing up from a non-stan­dard direc­tion and so I was trapped on the oth­er end of his motor­cade and the accom­pa­ny­ing secu­ri­ty detail. At one point I was about 15 feet from him.

A few thoughts in no par­tic­u­lar order:

• A stu­dent asked me why in world I would want to hear the Dalai Lama speak since he’s a leader of a rival reli­gion. And then I read an arti­cle describ­ing how some sci­en­tists are hav­ing the same reac­tion to the Dalai Lama’s sched­uled appear­ance at a neu­ro­science con­ven­tion: This merg­er of seri­ous neu­ro­science with a par­tic­u­lar reli­gion is a prac­ti­cal joke because the very recog­ni­tion of the Dalai Lama relies on the belief in rein­car­na­tion,” said Yi Rao, a neu­rol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty. (source). I always find it fun­ny when I see a sci­en­tist get­ting all fun­da­men­tal­ist. This is the flaw in that crit­i­cism: to say some­one is wrong about one thing is not to say that they are wrong about all things. Of course I think the Dalai Lama teach­es a lot of absurd ideas. That does­n’t mean none of his ideas are good ones. Plus, I fig­ured I’d prob­a­bly get a ser­mon illus­tra­tion or two out of the mix. I was right, too–check out the next bul­let point.
• The talk was about non­vi­o­lence, and the Dalai Lama is a well-known paci­fist and a recip­i­ent of the Nobel Peace Prize, so I was fair­ly shocked when I heard him say that the jury was still out on whether or not the Iraq war was jus­ti­fied. I am not tak­ing this out of con­text at all–this was in direct response to a ques­tion whether or not war was ever moral. I don’t think the audi­ence knew what to do with that at all. I was laugh­ing pret­ty loud­ly on the inside.
• He has a won­der­ful lack of deco­rum. In the midst of one ques­tion he took off his shoes, rubbed his feet, and tucked his legs under­neath him.
• He con­tra­dict­ed him­self quite a few times, but it could have been a byprod­uct of not being flu­ent in Eng­lish. He was talk­ing about some sub­tle things and he may have used a few words impre­cise­ly.

update 11/7/2005: the Stan­ford Dai­ly just released an arti­cle about his vis­it echo­ing many of my points above (includ­ing the Iraq war thing).

Yes­ter­day was our last day of tabling on cam­pus for the fall kick­off, and it was worth every minute for one real­ly unique expe­ri­ence: I actu­al­ly saw a Jew­ish open-air preach­er on White Plaza. Unex­pect­ed, giv­en that Jew­ish adher­ents are rarely not­ed for their evan­ge­lis­tic fer­vor. He had a bull­horn and every­thing.

It was a bit hard to make out what he was say­ing, giv­en that con­cur­rent­ly:

• about 160 stu­dents and work­ers were hold­ing a rather loud protest ral­ly. “What do we want? Jus­tice! When do we want it? Now!”
• a hip-hop group was blar­ing tunes from their turntable set up about 15 feet behind the afore­men­tioned preach­er.
• two acapel­la groups were also pro­ject­ing music (although less thumpi­ly than the hip-hop­pers).

Still, it was inter­est­ing to spec­u­late about the con­tent of his mes­sage. I do know that at one point a dozen Jew­ish stu­dents were blow­ing kazoos while Rab­bi Mychal Copeland blew a full-on sho­far. I also was able to hear the occas­sion­al Hebrew phrase and a few Eng­lish words like “inner bro­ken­ness.”

All in all, a most sur­pris­ing devel­op­ment.

We had a wel­come brunch today for new stu­dents that we called, Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things, which I thought was a rather clever play on words.

Bot­tom line: it went great. Our return­ing stu­dents did an awe­some job of wel­com­ing and host­ing new stu­dents. This year is real­ly look­ing sol­id, and I can tell that our return­ing stu­dents are get­ting excit­ed about it as well.

Plus I just got off the phone with two fresh­men who want to go to church with us tomor­row who weren’t even at the brunch. How cool is that?

Pre­sent­ed with­out any con­text what­so­ev­er:

I’m from Malaysia–the big­ger the rat the bet­ter the food.

Stu­dent: What’s a sphinc­ter?
Me: I will spare you the gory details–suffice to say that the ques­tion was answered
Stu­dent: You say that so mat­ter of fact­ly. Is that com­mon knowl­edge?

Stu­dent A: You know, it took me days to real­ize that call­ing our brunch Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things was a pun.
Stu­dent B: Oh my God–I just got it.

Me at the afore­men­tioned brunch: Some of you may not have real­ized that Bagels, Donuts, and Oth­er Holy Things is a play on words.
1/5 of stu­dents: Oohh­hh.…

Also, I should men­tion that the sun­bathing sirens were at their sta­tions again yes­ter­day. Reflect­ing on the avail­able data, I’m offer­ing three con­clu­sions:

1. They real­ly want to be noticed.
2. They may actu­al­ly be frosh (note that this is a rever­sal on my part).
3. At least one is Cana­di­an, judg­ing from the white maple leaf on a red back­ground that cov­ered the left­most por­tion of her rump.

Which leaves me with one burn­ing question–why do they make biki­nis in Cana­da? Don’t they own ther­mome­ters?

Stats at the end of the third day of New Stu­dent Ori­en­ta­tion:

• Hours on cam­pus: 12
• Num­ber of new stu­dents who have expressed inter­est in Chi Alpha to the extent of giv­ing us their email address: 39
• Num­ber of mod­els who have signed up: 1 (real­ly)
• Num­ber of athe­ists I’ve had pro­longed dis­cus­sions with: 3
• Athe­ists who have helped me work the table and told those who walked up that Chi Alpha was real­ly cool, if reli­gion is your thing: 1
• Num­ber of Ph.D. can­di­dates who have helped me work the con­tact table: 2
• Num­ber of stu­dents I have told we are a trans­gen­der group: 1
• Num­ber of stu­dents I have told that sac­ri­fic­ing chick­ens is what makes us dif­fer­ent from the oth­er min­istries on cam­pus: around 10
• Num­ber who laughed: 9
• Sun­bathers I have mocked from a dis­tance: 3

Today while work­ing our con­tact table I saw a great t‑shirt:

My friend went to Iraq look­ing for weapons of mass destruc­tion, but all he found was this crum­my t‑shirt.

I don’t care what your polit­i­cal bent is–that’s pret­ty fun­ny.

As I was work­ing our con­tact table today on cam­pus, a fresh­man gal walked up and asked if we were a soror­i­ty (which makes me think I should wear some­thing less frilly tomor­row).

As we are not, in fact, a soror­i­ty I tried to muster the nec­es­sary words to com­mu­ni­cate that we wel­come both males and females.

The obvi­ous word is coed. What I should have said is, “No, we’re a coed Chris­t­ian min­istry.”

But I had one of those sud­den inabil­i­ties to remem­ber the appro­pri­ate word. My brain fran­ti­cal­ly raced up and down the halls of my mind to seize a word that would help her under­stand that Chi Alpha was both male and female.

I set­tled on trans­gen­der.

As in, “No, we’re a trans­gen­der group.”

Not my finest ver­bal hour.

As my brain slow­ly began to process the words that had come out of my mouth (which, dis­tress­ing­ly enough, appear to be the over­flow of my heart) I become less and less coher­ent as I tried to throw more words into the ensu­ing silence, not unlike try­ing to repair a bul­let wound with more rounds of hot lead.

In the end, I think she under­stood.

I sus­pect she also thought I was a sad, strange lit­tle man.