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The Play That Stops Too Soon

Recently I had a vivid reminder of the value in the breadth of a liberal arts education. My son, who is a computer science major, has become a fan of live theater. When he texted me the title of an upcoming play that we could see together with my other son (a music therapy major),…
Benjamin J. McFarland
January 17, 2024
Blog

The Jesse Window and Kaleidoscopic Wisdom

Our impulse to light the night with glowing colors at Christmastime is a good one. This is the time when “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1 NIV; see also Mt. 4:16) Colors are good parts of a good creation—signposts to what is true, good, and beautiful. Paul describes Christian…
Benjamin J. McFarland
December 14, 2023
Blog

In the Seed, I Perceive the Tree

When I teach our Natural Sciences Capstone seminar class, I must give the graduating seniors a challenging, cumulative assignment, appropriate to a 1-credit seminar course that meets once a week. In my class, these opposing requirements are met by assigning them to write a two-page proposal for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program…
Benjamin J. McFarland
August 11, 2023
Blog

Listening to The Vision of God

In April, the actions of the Washington state legislature were discussed on the SPU faculty e-mail list, which might be a first. We celebrated as SB 5848 “Concerning licensure for music therapists” passed.Congratulations to my colleagues Carlene Brown, Christopher Hanson, Evelyn Stagnaro, Bobbie Childers, and others for their hard work to accomplish this. The bill…
Benjamin J. McFarland
August 9, 2023
Blog

The Conference Table of Opposites

“I will endeavor by a very simple and commonplace method to lead you by experience into the divine darkness,” wrote Nicholas of Cusa in 1453 to the monks at Tegernsee.Nicholas of Cusa, The Vision of God (New York: Cosimo, 2016), 2. In 2023, our faculty/staff reading group discussed Nicholas’s method in a conference room with…
Benjamin J. McFarland
August 7, 2023
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The Book I’d Give My Younger Self

If I could tell my college-aged self to read just one book, it would be The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph B. Soloveitchik.It was published by Doubleday as a book in 2006, but its original form was an essay published in 1965 in Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Thought 7:2 (Summer 1965). To minimize…
Benjamin J. McFarland
March 29, 2023
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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

We are in the middle of a run in the publication of “new histories.” In the five months after The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was published, eight other books with “New History” in the subtitle were published in my library’s database, on topics from the evolution of mammals to Watergate. Hundreds…
Benjamin J. McFarland
January 19, 2023
Blog

Petitions Against Professors, Part 2: Iron and Weeds

In the previous post, I compared the arguments of overwhelmed NYU students to those of their organic chemistry professor. NYU professor Stephanie Lee’s tweet sums it up: “I could write compelling defenses for each party - students, Prof. Jones, my department, NYU admin - bc everyone is operating under different pressures.”Stephanie Lee, Twitter post, October…
Benjamin J. McFarland
January 13, 2023
Reviews

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

We are in the middle of a run in the publication of “new histories.” In the five months after The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was published, eight other books with “New History” in the subtitle were published in my library’s database, on topics from the evolution of mammals to Watergate. Hundreds…
Benjamin J. McFarland
November 8, 2022
Blog

The Beauty of Losing Control of Your Teaching

Seven years ago, I took a teaching sabbatical in Burundi. When I set foot on U.S. soil again, I had the exact opposite of a sense of accomplishment. This ambivalence would continue. In fact, I’m still processing it now. Just this month, a faculty workshop reminded me of this when slides warned of the inevitable…
Benjamin J. McFarland
September 15, 2022
Blog

Did Abraham Pass the Test?

I made many mistakes in my oral qualifying exam, halfway through grad school. The first was probably that I wore a double-breasted blazer at least 5 years out of style, as a committee member noted at the beginning. More substantial was the fact that I stumbled over explaining my collaborator’s techniques to the committee, one…
Benjamin J. McFarland
August 5, 2022
Blog

The Word that Doesn’t Wear Out

In my work as a pre-med advisor, I help students navigate the pictures and words medical schools use to recruit students. Each school has a website and promotional materials making their case that they’re a good fit for YOU, the reader. One paradox of the Internet Age though is that the more information is available,…
Blog

Teaching with Fire, Part 2: The Open Inner Core

In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that the structure of a flame is, at certain levels, similar to the structure of life. The flame suggests that human nature, and even divine nature, is self-gift with a purpose. The stress of burnout may be a sign that the gift is misaligned somehow. But once…
Benjamin J. McFarland
February 25, 2022
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Teaching with Fire, Part 1: Why It’s Easy to Burn Out

My friend left academia for industry last month. He posted online: “I spent years hearing how ‘flexible’ academic is but now disagree. How often did I tell my family things would ‘slow down’ after X? Academia was unstructured but not flexible. Structure (sick/vacation days!) with good management = flexibility.”Carpenter, Tom. Twitter post. January 25, 2022,…
Benjamin J. McFarland
February 24, 2022
Blog

The Meaning of Dreams: Creation Through Selection

Sidarta Ribeiro, in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams, has written a book that artfully blends multiple disciplines of human experience, from sociology to biochemistry, in pursuit of its fundamental question: Why do we dream? Ribeiro argues against the scientific “default” interpretation that dreams are random firings of neurons without meaning.…
Benjamin J. McFarland
December 13, 2021
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COVID-19 and Romans 15, Part 2: Pauline Solutions

Coming back together for education this Fall is a long process that is more a marathon than a sprint—and we’ve already run uphill for a year and a half. This leads to the problems we’re now facing, described in Part 1. How do we continue to navigate these conflicts, divisions, and needs, without enough staff…
Benjamin J. McFarland
October 14, 2021
Blog

COVID-19 and Romans 15, Part 1: Problematic Reunions

A year and a half ago, in the middle of lockdown, it seemed like reunion would never come. Now, it is coming and has already come, in an “already/not yet” sort of dichotomy. Our campus communities are experiencing the joys, and problems, of reunion, as people like me keep an eye on my university’s COVID-19…
Benjamin J. McFarland
October 13, 2021