Intellectual Hospitality: A Way to Rebuild Trust

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The theme of the current issue of Comment magazine (Winter 2021) is rebuilding trust in each other and within communities given all that has happened in recent months and years to break down that trust. I encourage you to read the piece by Cherie Harder, president of the The Trinity Forum, titled, “Reviving Intellectual Hospitality.” The essay discusses ways to “disrupt this vicious cycle” we have gotten ourselves in of attending only to what we already think is true and only to those who agree with us. The practice of intellectual hospitality is about being open to each other again, to discussing with and learning from each other. It’s a path of humility and camaraderie.

"How to disrupt this vicious cycle? A society of diminishing public trust in both institutions and each other—riven by difference we seem unable to bridge, and marked by malice and misinformation—calls for creative means of rebuilding a shared sense of the common good. Vital to such renewal will be the reinvigoration of what might seem a modest practice: the extension of intellectual hospitality."


Harder outlines multiple ways to practice such hospitality, including: read widely, particularly to learn other perspectives; pursue friendships with those who think differently; cultivate curiosity; ask questions; and many others. I hope you’ll read the article for all her suggestions. In fact, read the entire issue. During this time of Covid, the publisher of Comment (tagline: "Public Theology for the Common Good") has been generous in opening up many of their issues to online reading without a subscription.

Harder also points out that a key corrosive to trust is over-reliance on social media. (For more on the need to reduce the over-reliance on social media, not just for reasons of intellectual hospitality but also to free up leisure time for many other pursuits, let me also recommend Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport.)

~~~

[Photo: Beauty beneath the Ford Parkway Bridge, which connects Minneapolis and St. Paul.]

The gift of a friend

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A week ago today, my best childhood friend died suddenly. There we are in the picture above, sitting on a deck at our first summer camp–the two girls intentionally wearing identical bathing suits. She moved next door to me in the middle of grade school, and we were nearly inseparable after that: walking to school together, having sleepovers, attending the same church, jumping on our neighbor's trampoline, making clothes for our Barbie dolls and later for ourselves, learning to knit, writing and putting on plays, riding our bikes to the library and coming home with the baskets full of books, and so many other things. When my family later moved to Florida in the summer between eighth and ninth grade, we wrote letters nearly daily that first year–actual letters, on paper, by hand, sent with stamps. She came to visit, sometimes for weeks at a time. We were in each other's weddings.

But then adult life set in with work and families and budgets and we rarely saw each other, the last time about 12 years ago. There have been Christmas cards, the occasional but rare email, and Facebook. A couple months ago, though, she and I had a lengthy and meaningful private FB message conversation and as quickly as those messages could be sent, the friendship–always there but buried by time and distance and the changes that add up over time–flared and burned bright. Her funeral was yesterday, far from me, and I think of that conversation, which took place with her death no where in sight, as a gift.

As you've been reading this, if an old friend has popped into your mind, and he or she is still living, think about reaching out to them today and tell them they mean something to you. Tell them they had a share in shaping who you are for the good. Tell them they brought you joy.

~~~

[Picture: Can you spot the two girls with matching bathing suits? From a brochure for the summer camp we went to, Covenant Pines.]

Gathering 2015: a review of this year's posts

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[NOTE: The links in this post are no longer correct]

I spent a couple hours this morning reviewing my blog posts from 2015. In The Art of Thinking, Ernest Dimnet wrote, “To keep no track of what one learns or thinks is as foolish as to till and seed one’s land with great pains, and when the harvest is ripe turn one’s back upon it and think of it no more.” I agree with Dimnet and so look back at posts, journals, book notes, and other evidences of – and learning from – this life journey, this blog being a piece of that. I believe in being a student of one's life.

But I also reviewed my posts in order to gather them together in one place with some kind of organizing structure for readers' use. New subscribers have come on throughout the year and may find this a handy list of posts, and even regular readers miss posts or may like to revisit posts. Here they are – well, most of them – grouped into categories. 

A couple preliminary comments: 1) this is the year that Finding Livelihood came out so that category got a heavy weighting; 2) these categories are fluid and artificially narrow - for example, most of the posts could be under a single category of "paying attention to your life" or "living with intention" or "living a meaningful life," and the posts for books could be distributed under multiple categories, and the posts "on hope" could just as well be listed as "on love" or "on pilgrimage."

I offer this list to you as a place in which to dip in and read, to peruse at random or with strategy, in the hope that whatever words you choose to read or re-read may come alongside you as you wind up your 2015 and launch whatever is next.

On astonishment and gratitude:

On pilgrimage and choices:

On love and community:

On leisure, rest, sabbath:

On books and the ideas they contain:

On writing and creativity:

On hope:

On Finding Livelihood:

On work: 

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About this blog:

[Photo: taken of the Christmas day landscape. True color, no filter.]

In praise of high school reunions

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I went to a public high school in coastal Florida. It was early-to-mid 70s, and the cutting edge of education theory and practice looked different than it does now. I'd always heard – although I have no actual proof – that the state of Florida used my school as their experimental site. Try it there first.

We started the day at 7 something and ended at 12:30. Our dress code, as I remember it, prohibited only bathing suits and midriff exposure. We had modular scheduling and open campus, which means we could go to the beach or out for breakfast if we had a long enough open period between classes, which there often was. (We also could use the open periods to study, the model's initial hope.) We could be done for the day by mid-morning if we scheduled our classes tightly in the early hours. But we had good teachers with high academic expectations and lots of opportunity for civic involvement. An interesting combination of rigor and laxity.

I just returned from a weekend-long high school reunion. My fortieth. I've been gone a long time – we all have – so I didn't know what to expect. The points of commonality with old classmates fade with the years, after all, and forty years is substantial. I figured if I only spent time with a couple of my closer friends and some time on the beach, the trip would be worthwhile. I was wrong because the weekend was so much more.

When I was in high school I had a lack of imagination about who people were inside and about what people could become, about the ways we could succeed and the ways we could be broken, about the ways that many already had been broken, even at 16. I didn't yet comprehend the complexity of human life.

Maybe that's the nature of being a teenager. Thankfully the nature of being mid-to-late 50s is that we've all lived a lot of life by now. The complexity of human life is no longer hidden. We are each of us, all of us, making our way.

Old friends and new-old friends, we talked late into the night (OK, early morning). We laid on the beach. Joked about our middle-age bodies and swimsuits. Bobbed in the Gulf. Reminisced. Prayed. Spoke of the future. Confided. Laughed. Laughed. Laughed. We spoke into each other's lives. Maybe that last thing is what surprised me most: that people who have been apart for decades have the power to speak into each other's lives by virtue of the fact of knowing each other growing up.

It felt sheer privilege to be back among these men and women I came of age with, to see such sparkle and verve, to feel a crazy inexplicable bond and love, even with those I hadn't known well, to witness what people have become and overcome.

Being in the presence of people I knew at the age of 13 or 15 expanded me. My life feels longer than it did last week, as if a thread that had been twisted to a knot at its end was untwisted and laid out straight again to reflect its true length, end to end.

My gratitude for the good that came from a high school operating on a misguided educational model is deep. My imagination over what people can become and what we can overcome and the ways that God works in all our lives is bubbling.

~~~

[Photo: a yearbook picture taken of me senior year by Bobby Whitlatch, copied now with my cell phone; evidence that I studied – usually – during those open periods. I still remember what I was wearing in this picture; you can't see them, but I was wearing burgundy and white plaid pants, which I sewed myself. Yes, burgundy and white plaid.]

Life advice from Earthlink Customer Support

Granted, I'm too attached to my internet connection, but I think that's excusable when the people who give me my paychecks and to whom I deliver my work are half a country away. Not to mention the friends with whom I stay in touch. So it's not unexpected that I become displeased–even agitated–when my internet connection fails. Even more so if it seems a computer problem. Thankfully, my internet connection seldom fails. It did fail, however, a week or so ago and I'm still thinking about it. To be more correct, I'm still thinking about how it came to be fixed.

It stopped working about midnight, just as I was shutting down my computer. I tried everything in my meager repertoire of computer problem-solving strategies, but I couldn't figure it out. What's more, a couple never-before-seen ominous error messages appeared on the screen. I went to bed worried that something bad had happened deep inside my new computer system, or at the very least, something was going to take a lot of my time to get it going again.

First thing in the morning I called Earthlink customer service. A very calm voice came over the line asking how he could help me. I spilled the scenario of events surrounding my computer internet "crisis." His response, "OK, here's what we'll do." Then he proceeded to tell me what to do. "First, turn off your modem. Now, unplug it." Step-by-step, he guided me. At each point, he assured me "I'll wait" as I searched for the right button or cord. After methodically going through each step, the problem was solved. I watched with relief as a web page loaded. He received my profuse thanks and was about to hang up when I said I'd like to make sure that my e-mail worked. Instead of disregarding this unnecessary check and hurrying on to assist his next caller, he said, "Yes, let's do that. I'll wait." Of course, all was well.

Why am I still thinking about this incident a week or so after it happened?

Maybe it's because it is such a blessing and relief (and rarity) to ask for help from a customer service line and then be helped so quickly, effectively, and graciously.

Maybe it's because I wish all problems could be resolved this way--a call to someone who sees the way out of the problem and will wait with you as you follow his or her directions from point A to point B, from point B to point C.

Maybe it's because I think there's a model here for how we could be more helpful and patient with the people in our lives who are trying to navigate difficult issues.

Maybe it's because the solution to the computer/internet problem may be a bit more universally applicable than just within the arena of hardware and software. What the Earthlink support technician had me do was turn off and unplug everything. Wait a few minutes. Then methodically–one thing at a time–plug everything back in, turn everything back on. He explained that all the components needed were to be reset and to do that they all needed to be shut down. I'm thinking that's not bad advice for system overload and malfunction in people....Time to reset....Unplug....Be still....Bring everything back to core position....Start up again, slowly, with order....Have someone nearby waiting calmly.

Furthering an interest of a friend

While on a work-related trip to Barcelona a couple years ago, I fell in love with the mosaic tilework in the architecture of Antoni Gaudi. The picture you see here is a close-up of the tiles in the curving benches of Park Güell.

Fast forward to last week.

My friend and I went to an open house at a center for artists. I'm not sure what to call the place exactly. It was a large warehouse sort of building that is being refurbished into separate artist studios. During the open house, people could roam from one studio to the next looking at each artist's work and what he or she had for sale. The studio that most intrigued me was that of an artist who decorated tables, frames, pots, and bowls with mosaic tiles. She told us how she scours flea markets and yard sales for dishes with interesting features and desired colors and then breaks them up with a hammer.

As much as I like mosiac tilework, this is not the point of this post.

The point of this post is what just arrived in my mailbox. My friend, with whom I'd gone to this artists' open house, sent me an envelope in which she had included an article on mosaic tilework. How to do it. Specifically, how to transform an old table or pottery pot into a mosaic masterpiece. She had written a quick note on the article, something to the effect that she knew she had seen an article on this recently and here it was. This isn't the first time this friend has done this. She has often sent me articles or copies of something that she knew I'd be interested in. What a gift, to get a tangible piece of paper in the mail that acknowledges and furthers a personal interest. That's part of friendship, part of the concept of "iron sharpening iron" between people.

Six things I learned/relearned at my college reunion

I had a wonderful time at my college reunion. The main attraction: old friends! Lots of talking at parties and late into the night, actually into the early morning hours. The parents of one of my college friends have a house a couple blocks from the school and were kind enough to vacate the premises, turning it over to a large group of us for the weekend. My high school senior son groaned at the thought of a slumber party for moms.

Coming home yesterday, I thought about key things that stood out for me from the weekend. Here they are.

Six things I learned/relearned at my college reunion:
• Everyone eventually grows up.
• Everyone has amazing stories to tell.
• Everyone has problems and a complex life to live.
• It is very hard, if not impossible, to predict with accuracy the path of a person's life, especially from the starting point of age 18 to 22 years.
• Friends that share a common spiritual faith can go to deeper levels faster than friends who don't share a faith.
• Deep friendships that stand the test of time are rare, precious, and worth holding on to.