Mom’s Visit

I haven’t been updat­ing the site much late­ly because my mom has been vis­it­ing. It was a good visit–we went to some beach­es, ate at some restau­rants, and relaxed.

Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to my father (who stayed back in Louisiana) will be the fact that not only did we eat Dun­ge­ness crabs, but we cooked them our­selves (as good Cajuns ought). Here they are in the bath­tub await­ing their fate!

Another Little Way Stanford Is Changing The World

I was recent­ly informed by one of our XA stu­dents that 2 of the new 15 appointees to the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board are Stan­ford grads: Philip Taub­man (deputy edi­to­r­i­al edi­tor) and Andres Mar­tinez (Eco­nom­ics, For­eign Affairs & Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­to­ry Issues).

You can read the full bios at http://nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html.

Why does this mat­ter? Because every­one in pol­i­tics reacts to and com­ments on what’s being said in the NY Times edi­to­ri­als.

Unexpected Support For An Obscure Biblical Aside

I noticed some­thing odd when I was read­ing some news recent­ly: [in response to claims of nigh-immor­tal­i­ty for humans in the near future] Out­side the con­fer­ence, many sci­en­tists who spe­cial­ize in aging are skep­ti­cal of such claims and say the human body is just not designed to last past about 120 years. Even with health­i­er lifestyles and less dis­ease, they say fail­ure of the brain and oth­er organs will even­tu­al­ly con­demn all humans.[source]

120 years? Inter­est­ing…

Then the LORD said, “My Spir­it will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mor­tal flesh. In the future, they will live no more than 120 years.” Gen­e­sis 6:3, NLT

Noth­ing con­clu­sive here (we’re not talk­ing about data pub­lished in a peer-reviewed jour­nal or any­thing), but I did think it was wor­thy of com­ment.

A Living Legend Has Passed

I just learned that Bill Bright died yes­ter­day. Even though he and I would have prob­a­bly dif­fered quite strong­ly on some points had we talked in per­son (one of the rea­sons I min­is­ter with Chi Alpha instead of Cam­pus Cru­sade), I still held him in the high­est esteem pos­si­ble and would like to pub­licly hon­or him.

In case you aren’t famil­iar with him, Bill Bright found­ed Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, wrote an extreme­ly influ­en­tial book­let called The Four Spir­i­tu­al Laws, and was respon­si­ble for the cre­ation of The Jesus Film–arguably the most effec­tive evan­ge­lis­tic tool in his­to­ry.

Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ is a tremen­dous min­istry, and the fact that it will con­tin­ue strong is a tes­ta­ment to Bill Bright and his lead­er­ship.

May the peace of God be with his fam­i­ly and friends…

Moral Confusion

I’ve had a nag­ging thought for a while now, some­thing about how our soci­ety is begin­ning to view risk (or lack there­of) to be a cen­tral part of moral­i­ty (and how this is not a good thing). I’ve nev­er been able to artic­u­late it as well as I would like, which is why I was so pleased to run across this essay by Den­nis Prager: Would You Rather Your Teenag­er Smoke Or Cheat?

.

Here are his open­ing para­graphs, I encour­age you to read the whole thing: Decades of lec­tur­ing around Amer­i­ca and of speak­ing with par­ents on my radio show have led me to an incred­i­ble con­clu­sion: More Amer­i­can par­ents would be upset with their teenage chil­dren if they smoked a cig­a­rette than if they cheat­ed on a test.

How has this come about? This is, after all, an entire­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Almost no mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a mem­ber of any pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, could ever have imag­ined that par­ents would be angri­er with their teenage child for smok­ing than for cheat­ing.

There has been a pro­found change in Amer­i­can val­ues. In a nut­shell, health has over­tak­en moral­i­ty. Or, if you pre­fer, health has become our moral­i­ty.

Read the whole essay.

College Matters

I just read this para­graph in the Ivy Jun­gle’s Cam­pus Min­istry Update and thought it worth post­ing here: In her recent book, Hillary Rod­ham-Clin­ton describes her­self as a Gold­wa­ter con­ser­v­a­tive pri­or to her col­lege years. The daugh­ter of a staunch Repub­li­can, it was in col­lege that she changed her polit­i­cal views. One cat­a­lyst for the change, she says, was the “MOTIVE” mag­a­zine pub­lished by the Methodist Church. The mag­a­zine, which ceased cir­cu­la­tion in 1968, was designed for col­lege stu­dents and helped her see the cause of social jus­tice. Regard­less of polit­i­cal your polit­i­cal views, this reminds us that col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Press on.

Talk About Your Good Days

Yes­ter­day was an astound­ing­ly good day: I got up at 5am to dri­ve to Sacra­men­to for a meet­ing to appoint a new col­lege min­istries direc­tor for our dis­trict. The meet­ing went well, I offered some opin­ions and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed one of my peers for the posi­tion, and then I recused myself from the meet­ing (it just seemed prop­er since I was tech­ni­cal­ly a can­di­date).

I wait­ed out in the hall­way for what seemed like an hour, and when I was invit­ed back in I was asked to take the helm in an inter­im capac­i­ty while we seek some­one full-time for the posi­tion!

To clar­i­fy: this does­n’t involve Paula and I leav­ing the min­istry at Stan­ford. This is an added thing.

Although I did­n’t seek the posi­tion (and I actu­al­ly mean that–this was­n’t one of those I won’t seek it to make myself a more desir­able can­di­date sort of things), I was very excit­ed to be select­ed. There are more than 500,000 col­lege stu­dents in this zone spread across over 40 size­able cam­pus­es (and many, many small­er ones), and I’ve got some ideas I’m eager to try out.

After that I drove back and dis­cov­ered that our min­istry had received a pledge from a church. Woohoo!

Fol­low­ing that I did some pid­dling work until the work­day end­ed and played my cur­rent video game, Brute Force, and beat a lev­el that was vex­ing me great­ly. Also a cause for cel­e­bra­tion.

Fol­low­ing that I head­ed into down­town Palo Alto to the Stan­ford The­ater to watch The For­bid­den Plan­et and the orig­i­nal Time Machine (two fine movies) with some of our Chi Alpha stu­dents. I just loved watch­ing those won­der­ful films in that cool old the­ater, and I was pret­ty sur­prised to real­ize that Leslie Nielsen was the star of The For­bid­den Plan­et. The whole movie I kept telling myself I’ve seen this guy in some oth­er films but I could­n’t place him. I was shocked at the end cred­its! In fact, I did­n’t even ful­ly con­nect the dots until Lynette Gar­cia said some­thing about it.

Final­ly, I came home and read very briefly from Daniel Boorstin’s engag­ing book The Dis­cov­er­ers. The only com­plaint I have about his book is the giant chip he seems to have on his shoul­der when he talks about reli­gion (any reli­gion). I’m very curi­ous to see if that theme con­tin­ues through the end of the book. Oth­er than that it’s excel­lent (and his com­ments about reli­gions and reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties are insight­ful).

Then I fell asleep–it was 11:00pm!

All in all an excel­lent day.

The Worst Haircut Experience Of My Life

If I may be per­mit­ted to vent for a moment, I just received the worst treat­ment I’ve ever received from a barbershop–namely the The Hair­cut in the Stan­ford Shop­ping Cen­ter.

Once I sat in the bar­ber’s chair every­thing was out of my control–my hair was not cut as I asked, my head was man­han­dled as though I were a fid­gety three-year-old child, and at the end the pro­tec­tive drape was ripped off my body and an indus­tri­al-strength blow­dri­er was run over me to remove any loose hair.

They nev­er even asked me if I was hap­py with my hair­cut. I had to remain seat­ed and ask if I could look in a mir­ror to see the results!

I still have stray hairs prick­ling my skin as I type this.

Most dis­ap­point­ing…

Sayings That Tickle Me

I’m real­ly get­ting into off-the-wall proverbs.

Two of my favorites:

1) Buf­fa­lo can’t see its own butt. (I’m told it’s from Kenya)
2) Dogs bark at what they can’t under­stand. (Her­a­cli­tus)

One Year Anniversary

July 1st was our one-year anniver­sary here in the Bay Area… a year ago our life was full of card­board box­es and lots of oth­er fun stuff.

Wow–a lot has hap­pened this year.