O'Reilly and Dugard found Jesus!

Bill O'Reilly and Michael Dugard have just published Killing Jesus, another in their series of history-making deaths.I am amused and glad.
While the promotional material does not provide any information about their scholastic qualifications for such an effort, they have certainly captured popular imagination. I am amused because O'Reilly is giddy over revealing "new" information about the circumstances leading to and the technique of Jesus' crucifixion. Real scholars have been studying and writing about this for over two hundred years. They have been talking about the lost tomb of Jesus' family first discovered in the 1980s. O'Reilly ignores the latter and insinuates he has new information and insight about Jesus' intentions and the "facts" around the death. His sources are a literal harmony of the canonical gospels and lip service to scant extra-canonical material. He dabbles with confirming Jesus' actual words like the Jesus Seminar has attempted to do with sound scholarship but subjectively chooses what to include and what to exclude. For example, he claims Jesus actually said "Father forgive them" while on the cross, but O'Reilly leaves them out of his reconstruction because NO ONE COULD HAVE HEARD HIM SAY THEM IN THE CHAOS OF THE SITUATION!
I am glad they published this book if it will create conversation around a very significant historical event and encourage people to study and search responsible scholarship. This has been my personal and professional passion for years. I offered my own interpretation in a religious historical fiction entitled Jesus: A Would Be King available on Amazon.
Fundamentalists will be outraged. Liberal scholars will cavalierly dismiss it. Responsible scholarship it isn't, but that never stopped the sale of books. Read it. Read mine. Let's talk!

Reunion

I remember as a child (5 and 6 years old) going to family reunions in Salem, South Carolina. It was always on the grounds of the Salem Baptist Church. There were long, wooden tables that just about buckled with heavy loads of coconut cakes, fried chicken, potato salad, green beans, macaroni pie (that's cheese and macaroni for those of you who didn't grow up in the south), sliced tomatoes, homemade biscuits, etc etc Uncle John was the residing patriarch for many years. In recent years it has provided the opportunity to stroll through the cemetery, revisit ancestors, relive family history, and always pay homage at Great Grandfather Daniel's rock monument ( he built it one rock at a time down in the pasture when he went to pray; I always wondered what he was thinking about: state of the world? state of his soul? those months he spent as a prisoner after the Battle of the Wilderness?)
Most recently the reunion has moved to Devil's Fork State Park right outside Salem. Most have died, so it's Uncle Roy's children and offsprings. It is time to renew acquaintances, retell stories for the hundredth time, embellish and even lie a little, and still enjoy good food. Every year is a little sadder for us old timers now----one or two less relatives, new aches and pains, reality of knowing it will be the last time you see a certain loved one. This year my dearest cousin managed to screw her courage to the whipping post and show up. Her body is riddled with cancer; her spirit is strong and undaunted. We simply kissed and hugged. Words were unnecessary.
The highlight of the day was meeting a "new" relative. Only one cousin knew he existed, born 57 years ago and reappearing only last February. Mother and son met for the first time in July, he came to the reunion, and promised to return Christmas. Any fear or embarrassment was wiped away in the joy, love, and acceptance expressed by everyone.
REUNION WAS REAL AND PERSONAL!

Enough to make a teacher cry

It was the first night of the new class--Business Ethics for Mars Hill University--and the preppy, young man was anxious to share his viewpoint with everyone.
"I don't want to be here. I don't want a college degree." All this despite the fact that his employer required it AND paid for him to be there!
"Why would you not want a college education?" I asked.
"Because I might learn something and have to change my opinion about what I think and what I believe. I do not want to change my opinions."
I admit I was momentarily speechless. Isn't that the purpose of education? to grow? to learn about a world of people, places, ideas that I did not know? If I knew everything I needed, then, yes, an education would be useless. But I am finite, limited in experience, fallible. As I tell my students, I am white, male, bald, southern, WASP. How can I possibly understand black, female, Indian, etc etc.
I go on to say that if we don't stand for something, we will fall for anything. So I invite and encourage students to suspend judgment, at least for a time, listen to the voices of strangers, check your sources before you swallow what anyone says hook, line, and sinker. Verify from multiple sources the "information" and "misinformation" that floods the news waves everyday. And just because it is in a book and claims to come from "God," doesn't mean it is so. Books are only humans opinions, and everybody has one.
I always remember that young man. He happened to be an avowed ultra-right wing Republican, proud fundamentalist Christian, and very chauvanistic. His ethics were Libertarian. He could just as well have been ultra-left wing liberal, atheist, bleeding heart. The mind sets are the same---closed, arrogant, egotistical superiority.
I'm a teacher and proud of my profession. I humbly wake up everyday excited about offering alternatives to untested viewpoints and know I have been intrusted with an awesome responsibility.
It is the thirst for knowledge and responsible use of it that makes us different from the rest of the animal kingdom.

Every little step

I often tell my students, when they complain about the length of a reading assignment, that they should tackle it in the same way that they would eat an elephant-----one bite at a time. I try to apply the same principle when it comes to the overwhelming challenges of life. At times issues, challenges, problems, and opportunities seem so huge, so complex, so daunting as to almost stop us in our tracks. Being someone who wants results yesterday, I have to remind myself of the necessity for patience, and with patience comes hope.
Daughter Shanon has completed her regime of chemotherapy. It began with 4 treatments scheduled at 3 week intervals. One step, one bite at a time, painful, trying, frustrating, that part of the journey to wholeness is completed. Now the next phase. This will be 6 weeks of radiation, 5 days a week. She and we will tick the days and weeks off one at a time. Each day will end with a sigh of relief, and each new day will begin with resolve and determination to endure and grow. The goal, the desire, the hope reminds us all never to take the gift of life casually. Every day is a gift shared, enjoyed, held close, and filled with gratitude.
You know the old addage: the past is over, the future is always in front of us, that leaves the present. It is all we have----what a blessing!