Word: curious
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Last Friday, I was riding through central New Jersey, seated in a minivan next to my 8-year-old cousin, Andrew. He had just recently begun to enjoy reading, and was curious about the newspaper in my hands. Andrew was drawn to the image of an alien accompanying the lead story of the day: the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. He then began to read aloud what they had left on their web page: "As was promised--the keys to Heaven's Gate are here again in Ti and Do as they were in Jesus...
...could even imagine the effects being felt here in Harvard's classrooms. Suppose the teaching fellows of Social Analysis 10: "Principles of Economics" are using a mainframe computer in Littauer to model the United States' gross domestic product from 1950 to 2050. Someone might be a bit curious after noticing a 50 percent drop in output after...
...curious way, heaven is AWOL. This is not to say that Americans think death ends everything or even that they doubt heaven's existence. People still believe in it: it's just that their concept of exactly what it is has grown foggier, and they hear about it much less frequently from their pastors. To reverse the words of the old spiritual: Everybody's goin' to heaven, just ain't talkin' 'bout it. The silence is such that it sometimes seems heaven might as well not be there. Kreeft complains that even if our basic belief has not wavered...
Second, as we support and enlighten each other, I think we also must remember that we have a responsibility to curious outsiders. The question that any student religious group faces is how to reach the community at large without imposing on the individual religious experience. I think the most effective learning happens by example, through modeling behavior. I hope that interacting with students who are academically and socially active yet also find the strength and time for religion would inspire others to explore their own religious heritage. Awareness comes with exposure. That's the most valuable thing any Harvard religious...
...neighbors, bosses or maybe even servants who further crafted our character. From them, we learned honesty, loyalty, compassion, responsibility, shame, duty and other "values." And, of course, our parents never stopped giving us every opportunity that so many other youths never had. Then we arrived at Harvard, and something curious occurred. We realized that we owed everything we have to...ourselves...