Threads

Last Friday, there was a dessert banquet for all the Montreat students who achieved the Dean's List and Distinguished Scholar. I had wondered what that "Distinguished Scholar" blurb meant at the bottom of my GPA summary. Apparently, it means any student with a GPA of 3.9 or higher. I'd gotten perfect grades in all my classes last semester, so of course I made the list. (Uh-oh. Where did I put those ego pins?)

At the banquet, Dottie Shuman gave a little speechy-thing on the integration of faith and learning at Montreat. I started to think about my own faith and learning experiences.

"All knowledge is interconnected," Brad Daniel said today in class. "We just organize it into groups for our own convenience." New Testament class goes with biology goes with English goes with history goes with environmental studies. Maybe it's just me, but I can see how everything I'm learning fits together. Sometimes I get mixed up about which class I learned something from. It seems just as likely to have come from Chaplain Steve's class as Dr. McCarthy's. It all just matches so well in my mind.

Faith is just one of the many continuous threads in my studies. In history, we examine how human nature and religions have led to the shaping of the world as we know it. We see how worldviews affect how people treat the environment. We study the spiritual veins in the literature we read. And, perhaps most of all, we marvel at the complexities of the human body. How can you read Pride and Prejudice and think the words fell into place by accident? No one claims that. How can you look at a tree or a cell and say it came about by chance? God has embroidered his authorship all over creation. If we ignore the title page and the writer confronts us about copyright, what can we say? We are without excuse. And so men are without excuse when they ignore the handwriting of God.

Christians and the Environment?

One day last week, in my introduction to environmental studies class, Dr. Brad Daniel brought up the fact that, oftentimes, Christianity is not mentally connected to the environmental movement. We just often don't display that much interest in what happens to the world around us. We'll fight for unborn children and the sanctity of marriage, but we seldom show concern for the creation we inhabit.

Many are surprised to find that Montreat, a tiny little Christian college in the backwaters of western North Carolina, is very environmentally aware and active in the environmental education movement.

This is really a sad fact. Many non-Christians find our apparent lack of interest in the environment a turn-off to our beliefs. We contradict ourselves. "If you say that God made the whole world, why don't you care more about it? I mean, it's the work of his very hands, if what you say is true! So why don't you take better care of it?"

I, for one, want to break this mold. I am both an English major and an environmental studies major. I may want to be an environmental educator later, or an environmental lawyer. Tonight, I saw "Kilowatt Ours" for the kickoff of the Dorm Energy Competition. It gave me some ideas for living an environmentally sound lifestyle once I graduate from college (and probably grad school). But I've also got ideas for living in a more "green" fashion while I'm still here at Montreat, and the energy challenge is a good start. Also, I want to keep on top of things. I want to learn about God's creation-- how it works, and how best to care for it.

I'm a gardener. Have been for almost as long as I can remember. I have a beautiful and extensive flower garden in front of my house in New Hampshire. I love birds, too. They are the tiny little passions of my life, next to words and punctuation. But some day, the birds might be gone. That won't be for hundreds of years if it happens at all, but still. I don't want that to happen. And, as demonstrated in several episodes of Star Trek, if you alter the course of something by just a few degrees a long distance from its target, it'll end up lightyears off-course. If I can make a tiny little dent today, it might someday have enormous reverberations. The same is true of living in an environmentally injurious fashion. Your small action could even mean human lives in later centuries. A sobering conviction.

So how 'bout it? Are you ready to break some stereotypes? 'Cause I sure am!

In Memoriam

I never knew Howard Fisher. I probably I saw him around campus-- I don't think I could have missed him, from what I've heard-- but I don't remember ever meeting him. The first time I really remember anything about Howard was at the end of winter break. I got an email. Some kid named Howard Fisher was sick, and needed prayer. I kind of brushed it off, but then another email came. And another. And another. Howard just kept getting sicker, his situation became more dire.

Eventually, I discovered that many of my friends knew him. He was the captain of the Montreat soccer team, and well-loved by every person who'd ever crossed paths with him. I thought back, but couldn't remember this person who everyone described to me: tall, black Jamaican, always smiling, often laughing, very loving and loveable.

And then, last Wednesday, I came into the biology classroom and saw one of the athletes just leaving. He didn't look so good. I wondered if he was sick. One of my friends, John, hugged him and gave him an encouraging pat on the back.

"It'll be okay," John said quietly.

"Yeah," the athlete whispered, and slowly made his way out of the room.

I looked at John questioningly. "Howie died," he murmured.

Howie... Howard? Howard Fisher? But we'd just prayed for him in New Testament class the day before! He seemed on the road to recovery! That... that wasn't fair! My eyes threatened to fill with tears.

Dr. Daniel was very grave at the front of the classroom. He had us come to the front of the room and stand in a circle. He said the Native Americans had a tradition when they received bad news. They would gather the tribe in a circle and place those most concerned in the middle, so they could receive the news and immediately have loving support all around them. We did that then. Sarah, a girl also from New Hampshire, and a boy I didn't know well came to the center of the circle. They had obviously already heard the news, because there were tears in both their eyes. Dr. Daniel related the news for the benefit of the ignorant: Howard Fisher had passed away at 7:10 that morning. More eyes filled with tears, including mine.

The people nearest Sarah and the other boy came out of the circle and held them and laid hands on their shoulders, and the rest of us held hands as Dr. Daniel prayed for Howard's family and for those left grieving at Montreat.

I started to cry then, tears sliding down my cheeks. But that didn't make sense! I hadn't even known Howard-- I couldn't possibly be crying because I'd just experienced a loss. And I don't just cry at everything. I almost pride myself on my relatively homeostatic emotions. So... why? But then I looked at Sarah and the soccer players in the classroom and knew why I wept. Somehow, inexplicably, though I could never pick up on my friends emotions at any other time, I was empathizing. I wept for Sarah and the soccer team, for Howard's friends and those who had been touched by him, the people he had to leave behind.

"Weep with those who weep; mourn with those who mourn." I subconsciously acted upon this verse that day. I embraced my roommate as she wept for the sunshiny young man who'd always had an encouraging word for her.

I put my arms around another girl who sat in the chapel pew, her shoulders shaking. There was literally a puddle on the floor between her feet, where her tears fell.

"He... he was just too young!" she gasped. Tears spilled down my own face at that. It just wasn't fair.

The girl calmed down soon after I came to her, while I was left relatively distraught. I began to wonder if my spiritual role that day was an emotional intercessor. It made sense: I had no emotions of my own really attached to this tragedy, so I was able and willing to alleviate the grief of others by taking some of their pain. It was an interesting idea, and I still haven't figured out if that was really the case.

The pain at Montreat has dulled a little, I think, and celebrations have been held to remember Howard and his enormous smile. Every now and then, though, I still get tears in my eyes. I'm still empathizing. It's a novelty, but I'm willing to get used to it, if that is how I can best serve the body of Christ where I am now. I am reminded of the words to a song I like to sing sometimes:

"Here I am, Lord. Is I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart."

Ego Pins

I left my snowpants and heavy winter jacket at home in New Hampshire. "It doesn't snow here," I said, with a derisive snort. "You southerners have no idea what winter is." I would eventually eat those words.

I mean, sure it snows. Like, two inches at a time. And then it melts. And then we wait a month. And it snows two more inches. And then it's spring. Another North Carolina "winter" over and done. That was how I saw winters at Montreat. Nothing like the sometimes four feet of snow accumulation I was used to in New England.

I boasted all through the fall semester about how much snow we get at home. I assured my friends that it was like nothing they had ever seen. And then, just before break ended, a few of them came up to visit for a few days. Temperatures hovered at a relatively mild 27 degrees, and we had about five inches of snow on the ground.

It was embarrassing, to say the least. "Huh," my friends mused. "I thought it would be a lot colder. And more snowy. It's been just like this in North Carolina for weeks."

Still, we played in the snow and goofed off until it was time to return to Montreat for the new semester. And then, ten days after being here, it snowed. And it snowed good. Even I was impressed. We got some ten inches, which is the best I've seen at once this year.

"Hey, Audrey, what's that white stuff all over the ground?" my friends jabbed. "Is that snow? But wait, I thought you said it didn't snow! Were you wrong?"

I like to think I took it all with relative grace. I deserved it. Man, have I got an ego, and sometimes it gets away from me. My friends know me, and they correctly assumed their teasing wouldn't be taken the wrong way.

But I didn't just pay for my proud assumptions in some humiliation from others. I also paid a price personally. Like I said, I'd left my snow gear at home. I didn't think I'd need it. So here I was, wanting to play outside, but having none of the usual outdoor gear I'd been using since I was a toddler. No winter jacket, no snow boots, no snow pants, no sled. I was an embarrassment to New Englanders everywhere.

Pride comes before a fall, I remembered ruefully. Take it like man (or whatever) and get over it! So, I improvised. I put on fleece pants and rainpants over them, layered two coats, and pulled on my hiking boots.

I had a great time that day. We sledded, and explored our wintry landscape, and buried each other, and threw snowballs, and generally had some good, old-fashioned snow fun.

"It snowed!" I entered in my Facebook status later that day. "Like crazy! It's awesome! Embarassingly enough, I came ill prepared for snow like this. But that's okay. I need pins in my ego bubble once in a while."

I'm glad God keeps throwing things at me to keep me humble, or at least prevent me from being too egotistic. It's a real challenge at times, and I think it will always be something I struggle with. I just have an extremely high (though not at all unfounded) opinion of myself. I have a lot of great talents and gifts. I just need to remember where they all come from, and give glory to the Source, instead of hoarding it for myself, which is and forever will be a temptation. Just keep chucking those ego pins, Lord!