Twenty Years Ago
Science Did That
People throughout the centuries have begged their gods for healing. We see the religious praying for healing. We see the faith healers preying upon their vulnerabilities. We hear of miracles like reversed blindness and re-growing toes.
We hear about this, but we don't see the evidence. The toe woman won't show any images of her toes. While it was supposedly happening, apparently no one videoed it or photographed it. People have written about it, and there's even a website called showmethetoes.com.
Crickets. Not a word.
And then science comes along and simply does what no god has ever done. It gives voice to someone who can't speak.
It makes the paralyzed able to walk.
Why is science superior to prayer? Because it works. Pure and simple.
Heading Out
Monday morning, K and I headed out for a bit of kayaking on the lake before the sun made it impossibly uncomfortable. The kids were (almost) all asleep, our hosts drinking coffee on the front porch, and my girl wanted to go kayaking. What else was there to do?
Splash!
Lake Day
Evening Boat Ride
Sometimes
you just want the day to wash away in a blur and say nothing about it...
First Socratic Seminar
Fire
This year I'm trying a new starter: Write Into the Day. Basically, it's a short writing exercise that is intended to get their minds in a literary space. I've tinkered with it, changed a few things, altered how we share, but so far, I've left the core idea alone: write a few sentences about a given prompt.
Last week, one of the prompts was this: "What lights that fire in you to give it your all?" When I was reading the responses this weekend, I found this one:
Mr Scott because he wants me to be my best in school so everytime he talks to me in the hallway about how much brain cells I have. After we finish talking in the hallway and when I go to my class I'm ready to learn so He always fires me up every time in class so Mr scott fires me and I give it all I have.
These kids kill me: it takes the smallest thing sometimes. This boy was telling me early in the year that he couldn't do any better because he "only has two brain cells."
"What are you talking about? You've got something like 120 billion brain cells, and they all work just fine as far as I can tell."
The next day I saw him, I'd done some calculations, and I told him, "You know if all your brain cells were one second each, you'd have 3,800 years worth of seconds!"
"Really?!" He couldn't believe it.
The smallest things...
Canceled
Some locals weren't too happy about the fact that the Swedish band Ghost was going to perform locally at an amphitheater. A band whose gimmick is lyrics that openly profess love for the devil is not going to be too welcome in the Bible Belt.
So they started praying -- Jeania was praying for a lightning storm and posted about it on the venue's social media feed.
And wouldn't you know it -- a rainstorm came through and washed the concert away. Jeania will forever see this as an answer to her prayers and proof of God's greatness. She will talk about it at church this Sunday. They might even have a hallelujah moment about it.
Meanwhile, there were many Christians posting in response: "We are Christian fans of the band." "We recognize performance/entertainment when we see it and don't feel threatened by it."