Happy 80th Birthday, Marion!

Marion is an emeritus professor of government and has been part of our community for … decades (?). She is fond of quoting Bette Davis: “Old age ain’t for sissies.”

Marion is no sissy. We can learn something from her every day about how to live life: never stop asking questions. Notice the small things. Appreciate what you have while you have it.

Marion went to grad school at Penn in the 1950s over the objections of her father. She was one of the first American women to do research in Africa and was a Fulbright scholar. She still follows politics in Africa (and the United States) with great passion. Most days you can find her at one of the computers at Shain library, reading The New York Times or checking out the latest scholarship on Kenya or Uganda.

Forty of us celebrated Marion’s birthday after mass tonight with supper and luscious cake from Motta's in Columbia – actually two cakes, one chocolate mousse and one vanilla with strawberry filling. You can see photos at the right. Or view a full-size slideshow.

Faith and Learning: It's in the process as much as it is the content

I have been reflecting since my last post on how I have tried to forge the connection I described between cognition and embodiment of faith and cognition and embodiment of the ideas, concepts, and facts we encounter in our learning experiences at  college; and I have added to that introspection what Barb mentioned in her most recent post, about framing work as a pathway towards a kind of existential fulfillment. Too often I (and maybe others) are guilty of seeing the current work/tasks/people with whom we must work as a means rather than as both a means and an end. Although the work that is done as a student is often times advertised as a stepping stone (and I believe much of it is), what we do in "the now" does define us--we don't become defined only after we have completed the preparatory work as a student awaiting the professional world or as an adult awaiting retirement. Thus, the process of connecting faith and cognition is, it seems to me, just as integral to having purpose in life as is the actual connections we make between the content of our work and the work we seek to do for God. 

Maybe this emphasis on process will help in making the toughest, or the most aggravating, work more doable. Even still, it remains a task to apply this thinking in the midst of a hectic day; but I suppose it is important to remind one's self that it is the struggles that define and shape us most!...

Happy Labor Day

It’s Labor Day, and I am thinking about work.

I’m thinking broadly: work is everything I do that gives me a sense of having accomplished something when I’m finished. That could be making a summer-veggie pasta dish, drafting text for a web site, folding laundry or serving cake at the 227th anniversary of the Battle of Groton Heights on Sunday. (Notice that two of the four have something to do with food? Hmmm….)

Work is a gift although I certainly don’t always see it that way. I was starting to feel like a servant at the cake table on Sunday, and when deadlines loom or work piles up, I get frantic. I need to do a better job of managing my commitments.

But when I think of what work does for me, I understand its value. To do something creative, to be productive, is fulfilling. It gives my life purpose. What I do during my life is my legacy, and so much of that is tied to how -- and how well -- I do my work.

Who was it that said something like, “Your work is to discover the world and then give yourself to it”?

Gotta go – the laundry is waiting.