AZ State Uni Commencement, and Convocation!

On 15 Dec Brenda and I flew out to Tempe to attend Andrew's Ph.D. graduation. I served as Marshall for scores (literally) of UA graduations, but this was different.  On Mon., at 1330 we witnessed the commencement ceremony for all graduating Graduate students at ASU. We were a bit surprised, that unlike UA, ASU has all the Doctoral hooding simultaneously whilst the students and their mentors are at their seats. Then, like UA, every student has their name called, gets their "diploma" (really an empty cover, with diploma mailed later) along with a handshake from the ASU President.

     As I have written, Andrew and his parents were not sure he was ever gonna finish his degree, right up until October. The prayers of many, and a benevolent G^d brought this to pass. It was a JOY to see this celebration. This was Andrew's mentor's FIRST time to ever hood a student. This was great surprise to me. Out of my 52 Ph.D.s that I chaired, I think I only missed one or two hooding ceremonies.
     On Tuesday at 0900, the same ceremony, called convocation this time, was essentially repeated, without the hooding. This was Undergrads and Grads from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Andrew's name was again called and he walked across the stage and got another diploma cover and shook hands with the Dean. We were a bit surprised at how similar the two ceremonies were.
     After convocation came two nice things. We had about an hour to kill, so Andrew gave us a walking tour of the campus. The grounds are beautiful, with many mimosa, pines, bougainvilla, and most surprising, lots of citrus fruit trees bearing fruit. We saw several varieties of organges, and a grapefruit tree. We then had a nice reception that included a full meal, dessert and a very tasty large cake.

Life Review: Loving Fire II

Last post I began the story of my love for fire with the unlikely history of nearly dying from fire. But, for whatever reason, I love fires. I love an open fire at the old hunting camp, in the fire pit, or wherever it is. Now I can burn a fire any time it is cold enough to justify it.

You really have to justify a fire, because it takes a lot of work. As soon as I knew I was going to have a wood-burning insert, I began collecting fire wood. One of my neighbors, Bob, gave me a couple cords of very well-aged wood. Some of it was a bit too aged, but the convenience and abundance, and dryness made it valuable indeed. Many folks don't realize that wood must  be aged about 18 months before being burned. Green wood has too much moisture, so Bob's wood was a super blessings.

Bob's wood, plus a little bit of dead wood I cut in a few locales, wood be the 2019-2020 supply. I needed to cut wood NOW, 2019, to have wood dry enough for 2020-2021. Fortunately, one of my church friends Ben had a bunch of trees cut out of his backyard and he needed to get rid of the green white oak and water oak. I was happy to drive the 9 miles to get truck-load after truck-load of green wood. Then I had to cut it to length (under 20 inches) and split it to make it usable. I get satisfaction out of cutting wood and stacking it to dry, and looking at a year's supply (I hope) accumulated for the following year.

I took me a little practice to work out a way to store the wood, move it to a good location to burn and to figure out a way to get it into the house without making a mess. It took practice to learn to operate the new stove and even to start a fire in it. Our first attempt resulted in a living room full of smoke, because the installers had made a mistake and inadvertently blocked the vent pipe.

But now, it's all worked out and aaaaaaahhhhh, how nice!

Thank you L^rd!

Life Review: I love fire

When I was almost 5 years old, I was burned badly: 3rd degree burns over about a third of my body. At least that was what I was told later. I have no recollection.

In those days, people often burned their own trash, because there was no civic trash service. My family read a lot, so much of our burn barrel was made up of paper. Paper does NOT burn well, so stirring it up a bit with a stick would help incinerate it. As I stirred the trash in early March, the wind blew some of the burning paper out, and it came to rest on my clothing which immediately caught fire. As a kid, I ran and fanned the flames until my Grandad ran me down and threw me to the ground and finally extinguished the flames. A big chunk of my right trapezius muscle was lost, as was the hair and skin behind my right ear. The surface of my back burned mostly down to my belt. In my small town in those days, there was no plastic surgery, so all I had to endure were the frequent changes of the bandages, which apparently was quite painful.

Having experienced this, it is a bit surprising to me that I love fires. In Lexington, VA we burned a pot-belly stove to heat part of our house, and I ran it for three years all winter. In GA we had the pot-belly and a large black heater in a back room. I burned those for 4 years, harvesting a lot of stove wood off a section of land that UGA cleared for campus expansion. When we moved to AL, I hoped to burn wood, but our living room fireplace was so old it had no lining, so burning wood was totally unsafe. I never got around to getting the fireplace fixed, though I did get a bid of $6000 to get it redone. We moved to Allums which had an unvented gas heater that I enjoyed, but when we moved to Lakeside Pl, at last I had two safe fireplaces. We quickly removed the old gas logs and installed a high-tech top-of-the-line QuadraFire wood insert.

And, I love it. More about that next post.

Confession: I am a HYPOCRITE!

I have a long history of hypocrisy. I have always said things and then lived in opposition to my claims, but I have just recently recognized one of my MOST BLATANT hypocrisies. And, without further ado, here 'tis:

I, along with many other Christians, say "Come quickly L^rd!" Certainly that will be a great day and all of this world's problems will "grow strangely dim, in the light of His marvelous grace."

On the other hand, I confess to ruing the rapid progress of time. I have written about "tempus fugit" previously and I won't belabor the point. As we age time passes more quickly. Most of us fight death as hard as we can.

See my hypocrisy? I want Christ to come, but not too soon--really. Most Christians, especially in the wealthy west, are none to anxious to leave "the good life" we enjoy in the here and now. Now, don't protest. You are, with very few exceptions, wealthy, and you do enjoy a pretty sweet life in the here and now.  BUT, I digress. I am NOT confessing for you, I am confessing for me.

I am repentant and want to change my ways. I want to say "Come quickly L^rd, and mean it earnestly. I want to eagerly look to the day when I am united with Christ, and with the many loved ones who have gone before.  And there is good news in all of this--time is moving more rapidly with each passing year.

Life is short, and we need to remember that. Perhaps that is why I blog that thought so often, I want to remind myself. We are but guests here on earth. If we live to be 100, our time is short. No one escapes death, and neither will I.

Fortunately, in Christ, we have NOTHING to lose, and EVERYTHING to gain.

Come quickly L^rd! (And I mean it this time.)

The Inaugural Graduate Student Expo

It is still a long drive from Forrest City, MS to Dallas, TX, so we didn’t get to big D until late Thurs. afternoon. We soon were in the throes of preparing for 20 Graduate students to arrive from: Penn State, U of Washington, U of MI, U of FL, Rice U, U of NC, and more. Our goal was to make these students feel honored and loved, and to encourage them to participate in the Summer Graduate Mission at PSU. At that meeting they would be equipped and encouraged to return to their campi and begin Christian Graduate Student Fellowships.

            Graduate school is often an “odd” era of life. Mostly Grad students are paying their OWN tuition. Some are married, and a few have kids. Sometime their spouses are working to support them and the family. They have been out of their birth home a while now and are finding their own way in life. They have picked a specialty and are serious about school. They are learning and doing research which results in them discovering NEW knowledge, known only, initially, to their research group. Often, they are learning to teach, but they should also be learning to publish academic papers and write grant funding proposals to potential research sponsors. Some of these folks have worked after their undergraduate studies, but some have only known life as students. Many of them, and this is the foundation for most of our interest, will become the next generation of Professor. In my view, this makes these folks super valuable to the Kingdom. IF, and that’s a big IF, we can build into them a heart for ministry as a Prof. If we can inspire and equip them, each one can impact thousands of their own students for the Christ.  Wow!

            As you might expect, this is a lovely group of young scholars. Many are engineers, and all but about 3 are from STEM- Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. All but 2 or 3 are in Ph.D. programs. There are about 8 of us Faculty Commons Staff who are meeting them, trying to get to know them and encourage them. As I said earlier, this can be a stressful time of life, and there is seldom an abundance of ENCOURAGEME

NT in this world.

            We try to quickly learn everyone’s name. There is something special about your name, and we want to be able to call it often. Ritz stands out for his name, his energy, and his excellent sense of humor. Liz stands out for her sincerity and passion. We only have a few hours together, and we want to make the most of this opportunity. The schedule is packed, but wisely there is some time set aside for socialization. I give one forma talk on getting the MOST out of your graduate experience. This is a particularly poignant topic to me, for I see many grad students who do NOT have an optimal experience in school. I spent the majority of my life working with grad students, so I have some notion of what they need.

            At the conclusion of out time, one of the students comes up and thanks me, catching me a bit off guard. She explains that the message she has gotten from the church is< “Get married, have children raise your kids, stay at home- chiefly.” She got the message from me that she could be a Professor and impact her colleagues and student for the Christ. I am thrilled at her gratitude and hadn’t even realized at the time that the off-the-cuff comment would impact her so deeply. 

            Our prayer is that the L^rd would impact these students and call them to His work for them. Only G^d knows the path for each of us. Only He has bought us with a price (I Corinth 6:20; 7:23). My heart is that many of them will be committed to using their education, their opportunity, to touch the students spiritually.  L^rd make it so!

Snakes Alive!

I am pretty old, which means I have experienced 69 Christmases. One of them was in the Middle East, and I was airborne for another one, with one in New York, Houston. The rest have been in Georgia or Alabama. This Christmas distinguished itself especially in that on Christmas day, Andrew caught a brown water snake in our back yard.

Today, while walking to my deer stand, I encountered a pine snake that was almost 4 feet long. It was in the 60's, so the snakes on both occasions were active and seemed pretty comfortable. In fact, all 6 of the kids enjoyed playing with the snake more than any of their toys.

In my marveling, I am assuming all my readers understand that snakes are NOT cold tolerant being cold-blooded. I cannot recall seeing snakes, but I probably have seen the occasional lizard, who although they are also cold-blooded generally stay mostly on branches and limbs well above the cold ground--unlike snakes.

Well, snakes at Christmas are just another joy of living in the Southern USA!

The Problem, no, the VALUE of Pain

One of the biggest questions in life has been, The PROBLEM of pain. I have written about it, and feel it is foundational for why many bright people reject G^d. I do NOT find the argument valid, but I do respect it.

Just recently it dawned on me, that whereas pain can be extremely problematic, the LACK of pain can be even worse. it is said that those with Hanson's disease (leprosy) lose their ability to feel pain in their extremities.  Consequently they get burned, or injured, without realizing it and stopping it.

G^d gave us pain for a purpose, and PAIN may be MUCH more valuable than I have realized. For example, for our 5 children, we intentionally inflicted MILD and momentary pain to get their attention to persuade them to comply with our directions. Many modern experts condemn corporal punishment, but in my view it was quick, non-residual, and effective. (Side note- I am NOT referring to your child or grandchild) I do NOT see kids' behaviors improving with the demise of corporal punishment.

So, pain can be good for us all. It tells us: Something is wrong, and we need to do something. In James 1 it tells us to "Count it all joy when you encounter various trials, for the testing of your faith produces ENDURANCE and let endurance have it's work, that you may be PERFECT and COMPLETE, lacking in nothing."  So trials, a form of pain, is to be welcomed.

If I do NOT experience pain, what will I learn?  Possibly nothing. If I were constantly PROTECTED from PAIN, I would not be encouraged to learn. When we protect our friends from pain, we may be hurting them, with our love.

Pain hurts, which is WHY it gets our attention.  And that's not ALL bad.

So, maybe we should be discuss the VALUE of pain, as often as the PROBLEM of pain.

Just a thought...

Some Questions for A New Year

If you know we very well, you likely know that I LOVE questions. I tell students, even still, to LEARN to ask good questions. We all meet interesting, knowledgeable, wise people and it is a shame to not have any questions. And, we have to LEARN to ask questions. In my view Randy Newman's book on evangelism, Questioning Evangelism, is the best there is.

I just read a short essay by the Colson center on asking good questions. Here are six questions they shared that might be helpful in conversations: 

A great beginning question is, What do you mean by that? He who has the power to define words, can always end any argument. And, people will use words differently, so agreeing on what the key words mean is clearly crucial. What is "marriage"? What is self-esteem? What is "fairness".

One of my favorite questions is, "How do you know that is true?"  We believe some things without really considering our basis. Passion sometimes leads us astray. We sometimes draw our information from UNreliable sources. The news media, the www, and sometimes even our friends can be sources of misinformation. Thomas Jefferson once said, "...I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them." And it is attributed (sometimes disputed) to Mark Twain, as having once said, "If you don't read the newspaper, you are uninformed, if you DO read the newspaper, you are misinformed."

Another good question is, "Where did you get this information?" This is a follow-up to the previous question. Be prepared for responses like: "I don't remember." and "It is common knowledge". Neither of these are helpful answers, so be patient.

"How did you come to this conclusion?" This question gets to the heart of the matter. Often people's positions have gradually evolved, and you sometimes get unsatisfactory answers to this question too. For this type question, the question may be more useful than the answer. Like the frog in the pot of gradually warming water, we sometimes wind up in places without be conscious of how it happened.

Two questions which can be asked as a pair are, What if you’re wrong? and What if you’re right? Some issues are merely hypothetical, but most ideas do have consequences, so thinking through the consequences is important. Here's a short example that just occurred to me. Taking transgenderism to it's obvious conclusion, men will soon hold most women's physical performance (e.g. sports) records. How does a feminist handle this? Fortunately, I don't have to resolve this one, I just watch with interest.

One more question, with another question as a follow-up is, "For what are you thankful?" The follow-on question is, “To whom are you thankful?”