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Fragile Beauty
December to me means Christmas, and of all the elements of the Christmas story, the one that fascinates me most is the story of the magi. It astonishes me that learned individuals would set out and travel to another land guided only by a star, and that somehow that star would help them recognize a king who had no outward, worldly signs of his majesty. What was that “new star” and what did it mean to follow it? Learning more about what kind of astronomical event those Persian priest-kings saw only makes their quest more impressive to me. I know that some scholars have theorized the “star” was actually a comet,1a nova, an eclipse, or a planetary conjunction.2 The planetary conjunction theory is my favorite, since the conjunction of Jupiter and Venus that fits the timeline I like (spring of 2 B.C.E) occurred near Regulus (literally “little king”), and thus would have had the astrological implication of a king arising: “As the brightest star in the constellation Leo, Regulus has been almost universally associated in ancient cultures with the concept of royalty and kingly power.”3And if (though no one can be certain) the magi were familiar with the Hebrew texts, they may even have associated the Lion with Judah, an association that may have told them where to seek the king. I have frequent opportunities to look through telescopes, since there are four at my house currently (none of which is mine). I know I am supposed to be awed by the vastness of the universe and the beauty of the limitless stars, but my most frequent reaction is a deep awareness that I am far from understanding the...
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Aliens, Anchors, and How Words Still Matter
I was twelve years old and it was a school night. I was at the dining room table, carefully gluing together pieces of paper and cardboard as I tried to create a diorama on Beethoven for my social studies class the next morning. I had even made a miniature grand piano with stained music sheets scattered around the board. I smiled proudly to myself; this was going to be my greatest project yet. My mother was next to me, handing me each piece as I needed it. Her presence was warm and inviting. We had just eaten dinner, so the wafting smell of cooked onions and tomatoes still lingered through the house. My brother and sister were in the other room and I could hear them watching T.V. Then, a loud, abrupt knock sounded at the front door. We weren’t expecting anyone. My mother and I looked at each other, eyebrows raised, wondering who it could be. I went to the door. Through the window, I could instantly tell that there were two grown men, wearing dark colored jackets. My blood ran cold and I hastily called out to my mother. She spoke with them as I ran to the other room where my siblings were. When my mother closed the door, her eyes were red with tears and her voice shaky as she told us the news. The men were immigration officers. They had taken Dad. Unbeknown to us, they had waited outside our house that day until Dad had gotten home. When he arrived, they placed handcuffs on him and arrested him for his illegal status. They were going to deport him back to Colombia. The news...
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Learned Living
Regarding Hamlet, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”1 He was quick to outline that Hamlet’s knowledge did not consist of an overabundance of choices or possibilities, which then made it impossible to choose between them. Rather, Nietzsche surmised that “true knowledge, an insight into the horrible truth, outweighs any motive for action.”2 How disdainfully Nietzsche would have looked, then—if he had ever been given the chance—at BYU’s Office of Experiential Learning, or at the Humanities Center’s research group of the same name, or at the Humanities+ program. Many of these fairly recently developments at BYU have cited as their inspiration President Kevin J. Worthen’s 2016 University Conference call for experiential learning in a speech entitled, “Inspiring Learning.” In the speech, President Worthen offers various beneficial connections between learning and “experience” (a concept I think would fit nearly into Nietzsche’s criteria for “action”)—among them a connection between theory and application, which eventually “deepens our understanding of the truths we learn.”3 Experience is a kind of learning in and of itself, according to President Worthen, and lends to an attitude of learning that lasts throughout life and even beyond it. Contrary to Nietzsche’s claim that action exists disconnected from knowledge, President Worthen (and BYU more broadly) seems to take up the argument that action is a furtherance of knowledge, that understanding is bolstered by applying it through some sort of lived experience. Nietzsche might say that such a program would be specifically meant to remove students from knowledge, that grasping at experience is a way of buffering ourselves from the “horror or absurdity of existence.”4 However, BYU’s model hints that experience might actually connect us to reality...
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Imago Dei and the Elections
Never in my life have I been so joyous to see the return of a CGI lizard selling car insurance or numerous ads selling unhealthy carbonated and caffeinated beverages than on Wednesday, November 7th2018 after the mid-term elections. The onslaught of ads for and against candidates seemed particularly onerous this year both online and on the television. However, I was touched by one story, which became the impetus for this blog post. I stumbled across a story about two Vermont politicians running for the Vermont House of Representatives in rural Lamoille County. Lucy Rogers, a Democrat, and Zac Mayo, a Republican, both were vigorously campaigning to win the seat, with both of these candidates visiting almost all of the 2000+ homes in this small district. They both had significantly different views on the issues that they debated one evening in a small library in front of dozens of interested citizens. At the end of this vigorous debate, they both unexpectedly asked the moderator and audience for a few more minutes and quickly cleared out the tables to set up for something quite unexpected. Lucy on the cello and Zac on the acoustic guitar performed a duet together singing to the words of a song called “Society.” As their duet ended, the audience (and me at my computer after the event) were moved to tears by this act of civility in what has become an ever more contentious political world. This led me to reflect on one of the talks that I attended in September at the BYU Humanities Center’s Annual Symposium, “On Being Vulnerable: ‘Crisis’ & Transformation.” The speaker at one of the talks, Kevin Hart, mentioned the concept of...
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Events
Colloquium: Elliott Wise
When: Thursday, Dec 6, 2018
Where: 4010 JFSB
more event details ->
Colloquium: Scholarship & Activism Roundtable
When: Thursday, Jan 17, 2019
Where: 4010 JFSB
more event details ->
Colloquium: TBA
When: Thursday, Jan 24, 2019
Where: 4010 JFSB
more event details ->
Humanities Center Blog
Fragile Beauty
December to me means Christmas, and of all the elements of the Christmas story, the one that fascinates me most is the story of the magi. It astonishes me that learned individuals would set out ...
continue reading ->
Aliens, Anchors, and How Words Still Matter
I was twelve years old and it was a school night. I was at the dining room table, carefully gluing together pieces of paper and cardboard as I tried to create a diorama on Beethoven ...
continue reading ->
Learned Living
Regarding Hamlet, Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that “knowledge kills action; action requires the veils of illusion.”1 He was quick to outline that Hamlet’s knowledge did not consist of an overabundance of choices or possibilities, which then ...
continue reading ->
Media Gallery
