A Personal Reflection for the Season

Christmas memories are personal, deep and important for me. 

 

My family’s New York Christmases with the strong, first generational, influence of Western Europe; Cajun Christmases with their peculiarities of place and culture, half French and half Canadian and only in Louisiana, are unique and forever in my consciousness; west coast Christmases in California, an amalgam of eastern and western tradition, everything always new; Texas Christmases with cowpokes instead of elves, the detail and distinctiveness of each, all lost in the translation of what single Christmas memory is important for me.  

 

Having lived in many places it is difficult to piece together a particular event that holds special importance.  The tradition, and thereby the memory, is not in events or places but beliefs and relationships I hold. 

 

There is one recurring theme in what is powerful for me about Christmas and His name is Jesus Christ. 

 

At Christmas I celebrate the anniversary of the virgin birth of Him as one member of the triune God – God made man – who came to the earth to be a substitute for me in the death and separation brought about by my sin.  This is a belief, my personal belief.  Through His perfection He makes my way straight to the creator of the universe.  Through the power of His shed blood I am forgiven for all my inequity.  All of this, not by my work or effort, wisdom or intelligence, but by His grace.  

 

Grace is so difficult for me to grasp. 

 

All things of value are worked for I am told.  That of which I speak, grace, has ultimate and eternal value, and it is a gift that cannot be bought or earned.   By His virgin birth I have affirmation of His place at the throne of God.  By His crucifixion I am shown the awfulness of my own behavior, by comparison to Him as a man, I see my own lack of righteousness.  

 

Filthy rags.  

 

His resurrection is evidence of my eternal bridge, though Christ, to my heavenly Father.  This is a relationship, a personal relationship.  This is Christmas for me.

 

Don’t be misled. 

 

I remember my Erector sets, and Texaco trucks, bicycles and hockey skates – they brought happiness then and, in memory, they do now.   Likewise Mary and our sons remember and cherish these events too.  I like turkey and ham, cakes and pies and family and those other things that happen around the celebrations in our house. 

 

I enjoy the festivity of the season.  I like gifts… both to give and receive them. I am pleased for the retailers and the way that Christmas sales help balance their books, create jobs and economic growth.  I enjoy the cold weather and the trees and the lights. 

 

But all of this is dull in comparison to the one shining memory that guides me every day of my life and that is simply this:  I serve a risen Savior, born of a virgin to redeem me in my weakness and cleanse me of my sin. It is so very sharp and clear to me, and so crystalline. 

 

If I allow myself to be childlike every day is Christmas.

 

Childlike for The Child.

 

The profit Isaiah predicted it in Chapter 7 verse 14.  Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

 

Some of this comes from an earlier reflection, but none of it loses its luster with time.

 

Our University – Final Exams

It is that season of the year when the smell of turkey and Christmas tress is in the air.  It is that time of year when finals occur.  I really have never liked to think of final exams as final.  I like to see them as turning points, initiation of a new phase of learning.

 

Every teacher who administers a final examination has predetermined what the students should know at the end of the class.  They have a plan.  I knew a faculty member who gave his students the final exam the first day of class.  No one passed.  He then proceeded to teach the unwashed masses.  At the end, on the last day, he artfully gave exactly the same final examination, unbeknownst to them.  Remarkably 95 percent of the class passed and not a single student knew the final was the one used to initiate the class.

 

This is called planning.

 

Thankfully organizations that are trying to move themselves ahead must have a plan.  They must know where they are, and then must assess the progress towards achieving the goals of the plan through some kind of assessment.

 

A final exam.  A turning point.

 

Southern Illinois University Carbondale has an excellent plan, Southern at 150: Building Excellence through Commitment, prepared by over two hundred and fifty people, who painstakingly decided what this university, our university, should be.  It is unique and distinctive for Southern, it was no other institutions plan; it was created by people who shared a developing passion for excellence and academic commitment at Southern. It was imperfect… remember it was made by men and women, flawed by human nature… but no theology today. 

 

Just the hard core reality of final examinations.

 

In a few years there will be a final examination.  We will look at the plan and look at where we are, where we were, and decide whether or not we have been successful.  There will be intermediate steps too.  Accrediting agencies will come in and determine whether or not we are meeting the goals that were consistent with the goals of the accreditation processes. 

 

This is a bit like a midterm examination. 

 

Our university is not unique, although the kind of planning process that we used was as intense and thorough as any.  It was excellent.

 

These kind of final examinations and planning processes are not only important for universities, but they also are also important turning point for communities.  Many of our communities in Southern Illinois could benefit greatly from an inclusive, thorough assessment of where they are and where they want to be.  Sometimes these turn into efforts to create jobs, and little is more important than a job in creating family life that works. 

 

In addition, the community needs a destination, a dream.

 

Now don’t let me even try to fool you.  I look around the campus and see the looks of challenge and anxiety on the faces of students, and they could hardly be convinced that the final examinations they are immersed in are part of a turning point for their future, a dream.

 

Maybe a nightmare, but not a dream.

 

I have a word for the student, the university, and the community. Absent that final exam, that turning point, all driven by a plan, hopefully an artful one like Southern at 150:  Building Excellence through Commitment, any destination will do.

 

Any destination being acceptable is a real nightmare.

Our University – New Insights

 

In this season of thanksgiving and refreshment, of looking ahead and looking back, little is more central to our university than new ideas and new knowledge that build on the past and shape the future. 

 

Looking back and looking ahead. 

 

This is the basis of science, the foundation for research, and a primary cause for action at our university.  I know most of us are focused on practical and immediately applicable knowledge, techniques and approaches to problems that have immediate utility so that our offspring and graduates may get the benefit of employment upon graduation. 

 

This is as it should be.

 

However, if the purpose of our University stops there, it stops short.  Any useful technique or knowledge that can be applied to a problem of the day started as a form of research and discovery somewhere in the past. 

 

The history of invention suggests many good ideas that we take for granted did not get life in university laboratories but in garages and workshops of big thinkers, idea people, who had a passion to discover something of value.  The vulcanization process that allowed rubber to be durable for tires for cars and trucks was developed by Charles Goodyear on a kitchen stove according to some accounts.  Thomas Edison extended theoretical physics in a dark wooden shack to illuminate the world; Henry Ford needs no elaboration here as he developed process that forever impacted ever thing that people make.  Even in recent history Steven Jobs and his partner worked technological miracles in a two car garage, I sit at the child of their active minds and deliberate passion, connected to the world not imaginable only two decades ago.

 

The workshops, garages, and kitchen stoves of the 19^th and 20^th centuries are the best universities of the 21^st. 

 

While the nature of discovery has not changed…driven people finding better ways to do things… the processes have become more complex, and in many cases require the infrastructure a university provides.  And no matter how good the athletics program and other extra curricula activities, or how important student clubs and organizations are, of how valuable civic outreach and community service is, the seed corn of the research university is research.

 

It makes learning come alive. 

 

Research and discovery are the backbone of reputation and any other recognition in any other avenue is valuable, but pale in comparison.

 

 

In this reflective time, I was looking back at our recent history of contributions to various bodies of knowledge.  They are considerable.

 

Mechanical engineer Om Agrawal is reinventing calculus, Pinckney Benedict received the 2008 Pushcart Prize, Max Yen, continues to develop intelligent transportation systems, Larry Hickman was honored as the national 2007 Phi Kappa Phi Scholar, an award given only once every three years.  These are a few examples among many.

 

The distinction, recognition and reputation faculty members bring to our university has value beyond measure in defining who we are.   Our own Buckminster Fuller recognized the ultimate impact of discovery and summed it up for us: Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.

 

We will have achieved great success in the future if our university can add but a few lines of instruction for the operation of the planet.

 

And so we do.