Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

Christine Sine

ESN’s Peek of the week

Anna Lee-Winans, InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries (GFM) Area Director for Greater New York City, presents at 2013 GFM Staff Team Meetings.

Introduction

The past several weeks have been rich with prayer, conversation, and even some planning regarding next steps for the Emerging Scholars Network. One particular piece of feedback has been the desire to renew the Week in Review. As this week I will be engaged in InterVarsity’s Graduate & Faculty Ministries (GFM) Staff Team Meetings (March 18-20), I offer you a Peek of the Week. But before you choose various links (below) to follow (and possibly share, comment upon, add to the collection of . . .), pray for our staff team as we gather. Pray for us . . .

  • to delve into how we may continue to grow in Christ-likeness. In particular that we may truly be a blessing in the midst of the rich diversity of the people with whom we labor (and collaborate) on campus. Our pre-conference Bible study and reflection has focused upon . . .

‘After Shock’ as a resource for wrestling with the crisis in Japan

“After Shock Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken” Cover

How long will you hide your face from me?
— Psalm 13:1

How does one Search for (and embrace) Honest Faith when

  • your world is shaken?
  • you’ve watched the world of others being shaken?
  • you serve, minister to, walk with those whose world has been shaken?
  • colleagues, family, friends bring the challenging question of where was your God?

At Jubilee 2011, I had the opportunity hear Kent Annan (author of After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken and codirector of Haiti Partners) and Enel Angervil (Haitian co-worker with Haiti Partners) share about their journey with God in Haiti.

Below’s a video drawn from Kent’s Annotated Wish List (After Shock. InterVarsity Press. 39).  Take a few minutes to prayerfully consider/wrestle with it.  Maybe watch it more than once as part of your Lenten devotions.

Breathe.

Then take a few minutes to read Enel’s story about surviving the collapse of his University classroom building.  Be challenged by and rejoice with me in Enel’s call to serve God in faith with hope (in God) in the midst of crisis.  Pray for Enel (& Kent’s) continued renewal, strength and perseverance in their work in Haiti as it no longer receives front page attention.

In my next post, I’ll share from Kent Annan’s After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken, but for today, let’s … [Read more…] about ‘After Shock’ as a resource for wrestling with the crisis in Japan

Lent begins today: Ash Wednesday

“The Business of Heaven” cover

What cannot be admitted — what must exist only as an undefeated but daily resisted enemy — is the idea of something that is ‘our own’, some area in which we are to be ‘out of school’, on which God has no claim. … I do not think any efforts of my own will can end once and for all this craving for limited liabilities, this fatal reservation.  Only God can.  I have good faith and hope He will.  Of course, I don’t mean that I can therefore, as they say, ‘sit back’.  What God does for us, He does in us.  The process of doing it will appear to me (and not falsely) to be the daily or hourly repeated exercises of my own will in renouncing this attitude, especially each morning, for it grows all over me like a new shell each night.  Failures will be forgiven; it is acquiescence that is fatal, the permitted, regularized presence of an area in ourselves which we still claim for our own.  We may never, this side of death, drive the invader out of our territory, but we must be in the Resistance, not in the Vichy government.  And this, so far as I can yet see, must be begun again every day.  Our morning prayers should be that in the Imitation:  Da hodie perfecte incipere — grant me to make an unflawed beginning today, for I have done nothing yet. — Ash Wednesday reading in The Business of Heaven:  Daily Readings from C.S. Lewis (C.S. Lewis, Walter Hooper. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 1984). From C.S. Lewis’ last sermon, “A Slip of the Tongue” (Oxford in a small chapel in Evensong. Jan. 29, 1956), available in full in Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis. HarperCollins. 2001).

In the beginning of 2011, I picked up The Business of Heaven with a men’s discussion group at my home congregation. Thank-you John!  I pass along this resource as a recommended reading, join me any time of the year and feel free to share your thoughts on Facebook or via email :-)  By-the-way, the first paragraph of the Lewis quote in Lenten Preparations: A Time of Contrition serves as the February 23 reading in The Business of Heaven.

PS. Ash Wednesday Prayer 2011 (Christine Sine. 3/4/2011) and Another Prayer for Ash Wednesday (Christine Sine. 3/8/2011).

Week in Review: Copying Lots of Books Edition

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. What’s a book? How do you prefer to read? Verlyn Klinkenborg in Further Thoughts of a Novice E-Reader (NY Times Editorial, 5/28/2010) weighs in with some negative thoughts on digital reading, even with the I-Pad! Is this generational or do we loose something when not being able to page through pages of text? Might digital reading be fine to accomplish certain readings?

2. How do you define plagiarism? How do you deal with departmental conflict? Do you think Is It a Sin?” (Jack Stripling, Inside Higher Ed, 6/2/2010) has more to do with plagiarism or departmental conflict?

3. Have something to share about The Kingdom is Here, Where do You See it or Sustaining Small Not For Profits – How Do We Move Forward? — then swing by Blog with Me – An Invitation to Participate (Christine Sine, Godspace, 6/3/2010). Note: Tom will be participating in the first series. He would love to read a story about what you’re seeing and a part of. (3/10/2011): MSA’s site has been under attack as such I deleted the above link. Praying for full restoration of MSA’s valuable on-line resources.

God is at work, God is moving in our world transforming renewing and restoring and we want everyone to know how and where we see that happening. There is still time to participate. What seeds of hope do you see as you look out onto God’s world – it may be through the work of small seemingly insignificant ministries that are quietly changing your neighbourhood. Or it might be through movements that highlight concerns about child slavery, environmental degradation or poverty. — Blog with Me – An Invitation to Participate (Christine Sine. Godspace. 6/3/2010)

4. A few posts that Mike has been reading from Alan Jacobs’ Text Patterns blog:

  • The past, present, and future of commonplace books
  • 10 books that influenced Jacobs at various ages [happy to see one of the books was one of my own favorites, W. H. Auden’s The Dyer’s Hand – Mike]
  • Jacobs shares his personal method for capturing quotes, links, etc.

Books

ESN member Robert Velarde (whose Conversations with C. S. Lewis we featured a while back) has a new book coming out on a topic dear to Mike’s heart: The Wisdom of Pixar. Be sure to check out this Christianity Today interview with Pixar’s Pete Docter about the way his faith informs his work and art. [Hmm…I wonder if anyone has a book deal for The Gospel According to Hayao Miyazaki…]