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Kent Annan

Lent brings me back to reflections on loss, grief, suffering

2012 Lenten Reflection Series

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus” by Owen Gingerich (Walker Publishing Co, 2004)

Last week I began the 2012 series with Entering Lent: “I Want” in Higher Education. As you may remember, Kent Annan’s  After Shock saturated my 2011 Lenten reflection. With Kent’s recent visit to South Central PA and the deep chord which “I Want” struck not only with me, but also a number of the students with whom I watched it, I wondered if my 2012 reflections would largely draw from his earlier book Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle (InterVarsity Press, 2009). Although this may still occur, on Friday I began reading a new book.

I picked up a copy of The Book Nobody Read: A Closer Look at the Book that Moved the World by Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, at Hearts & Minds Books when dropping off materials from Scot McKnight’s Christian Scholar Series presentation en route to have dinner with and then hear Owen present on the fascinating adventures related in The Book Nobody Read. But that’s not the book I’m referring to 😉

As occurs in gatherings of Christian scholars and students, I connected with a number of people.* At the conclusion of the lecture sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science and Messiah College’s Center for Public Humanities, my friend Ted Davis (who directs the Forum and is Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College) introduced me to Paul Nisly. Paul is a retired Professor of English at Messiah College with a specialty is Southern literature. He particularly appreciates digging into William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. In addition to being an academic, Paul serves as a bishop in the Mennonite Church.

“Sweeping Up the Heart: A Father’s Lament for His Daughter” by Paul Nisly (Good Books. 1992)

When introducing my work with the Emerging Scholars Network in South Central PA and the Christian Medical Society (CMS)/CMDA at the Penn State College of Medicine, I related the various speakers which we have hosted over the past twelve months. Messiah College alumnus Janel Atlas was among those whom I mentioned. As some of you may know, Janel presented at both the Medical Center and the Elizabethtown Public Library on They Were Still Born: Personal Stories about Stillbirth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Paul responded to Janel’s story and the work at PSU-Hershey by sharing some of his own loss. [Read more…] about Lent brings me back to reflections on loss, grief, suffering

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Entering Lent: “I Want” in Higher Education

2012 Lenten Reflection Series

During his presentation at PSU-Hershey Christian Medical Society (CMS)/CMDA’s lunch lecture, Kent Annan shares Enel’s journey through the Haitian earthquake and the “after shocks.” For some of Enel’s story visit http://www.intervarsity.org/blog/just-earth-shook.

During his After Shock tour in South Central PA, Kent Annan played I Want on a number of campuses. The video is based upon the beginning of Chapter 3: Giving Up and Finding (Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle. InterVarsity Press, 2009). In this section, Kent struggles with desire as he seeks to follow Jesus through the eye of the needle in the transition to serving God/following Jesus in Haiti. As you watch the piece, reflect upon your journey in higher education, repent of your wants, ask how God desires to transform you more and more into a little Christ, a new creation blessing/care for others through your vocation — reaching fulfillment in the new heavens/new earth. Hmm. . . . I’m getting ahead of myself and the liturgical calendar, but it’s hard not to!

[Read more…] about Entering Lent: “I Want” in Higher Education

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What gives Kent Annan focus as he shares on campus?

Kent Annan shares a brown bag lunch with students, faculty, and InterVarsity staff at PSU-Harrsiburg.

As Kent Annan, co-director/co-founder of Haiti Partners and author of two InterVarsity Press books, wrapped up his visit to South Central PA, I asked him to share a brief reflection of his campus tour. Below’s what he shared. Thank you, Kent!

———

Kent Annan speaks as part of the Spring 2012 Christian Critical Thinking Series at the Elizabethtown Public Library, Elizabethtown, PA

All week I’ve been speaking with university students (undergrad and grad), faculty, and staff on six campuses in South Central Pennsylvania. My public speaking schedule has increased a lot in the past two years, with two books coming out. At first when I went to campuses, I was unsure on what to talk about; it had been seventeen years since I graduated from college.

I told my stories, what I was experiencing and thinking about, in Haiti, with development work, and in the life of faith (and doubt). But I also loved listening to them, hearing what was on their minds. One element that I needed to integrate quickly became clear because it was almost always the first question that came up: vocation.

Of course. Should have thought of that.
[Read more…] about What gives Kent Annan focus as he shares on campus?

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A few minutes with Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

— John Updike. Seven Stanzas at Easter. 1960. Accessed at http://www.iserv.net/~stpats/Updike.htm (4/21/2011).

While reading Kent Annan‘s After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken (InterVarsity Press. 2011), I came across selections from John Updike’s Seven Stanzas at Easter.  On Easter, as he wrestles with faith in the face of “scientific modernity’s assault on faith in the resurrection,” Kent appreciates reading Seven Stanzas at Easter:

John Updike
Kent Annan

I can identify with these doubts, but he [Updike] asserts they shouldn’t embarrass us into unbelief. The stanzas of the poem articulate the kind of faith I need in response to Haiti, where so many died (by comparison, a similar-intensity earthquake in Los Angeles in 1994 killed only seventy-two people) largely because they had been left behind by poverty by the modern world. [Read more…] about A few minutes with Updike’s “Seven Stanzas at Easter”

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Lenten Wrestling w/God, Natural Disaster, Suffering, Good, Evil

The Doors of the Sea cover

The Doors of the Sea: Where Was God in the Tsunami? (David Bentley Hart. Eerdmans. 2005) came to my attention at last week’s national staff meetings for InterVarsity Graduate & Faculty Ministries.*  I’ve found the reflections of the Eastern Orthodox scholar and First Things contributor a timely Lenten follow-up not only to After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken (Kent Annan. IVP. 2011), but also an extended discussion of How Could A Good God Allow Suffering (Chapter 2 of Tim Keller’s The Reason for God: Belief in An Age of Skepticism. Dutton/Penguin. 2008).

Below’s an excerpt of The Doors of the Sea, posted by Eerdmans:

I said at the beginning of this book that silence might have been the wisest response in the days following the Indian Ocean catastrophe. And here, after (at this writing) two months and many thousands of words, I remain uncertain whether what I have said is proper or even remotely adequate. These rather desultory reflections were occasioned by what happened on that day, but I have clearly ventured far from any direct discussion of the sufferings of those who fell victim to that horrendous paroxysm of nature at her most murderous; and I do not know if I ought to have done so. This has not, obviously, been a book of apologetics, in large part because I still find myself less perturbed by the sanctimonious condescension of many of those who do not believe than by either the gelid dispassion or the shapeless sentimentality of certain of those who do. Neither has it been a book of “technical” or “philosophical” theology, though I have at points touched upon “technical” elements of Christian philosophical tradition (too lightly, I fear, to be entirely convincing and too heavily to be entirely lucid). Much less has it been a book of consolations. Rather, my principal aim has simply been to elucidate — as far as in me lies — what I understand to be the true scriptural account of God’s goodness, the shape of redemption, the nature of evil, and the conditions of a fallen world, not to convince anyone of its credibility, but simply to show where many of the arguments of Christianity’s antagonists and champions alike fail to address what is most essential to the gospel. [Read more…] about Lenten Wrestling w/God, Natural Disaster, Suffering, Good, Evil

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