Thought for the Week From University Minister Ira DeSpain

These weekly thoughts are intended to stimulate your thinking and provide a context and backdrop for your life, work and study for the week ahead.

Spring Semester

March 8-14

There are only two ways to look at your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
--Albert Einstein

Miracles are common things seen with uncommon vision. The promise of Spring has come. Seeing it as an annual routine or annual surprise is up to you.

March 1-7

I was raised to believe that God has a plan for everyone and that seemingly random twists of fate are all a part of His plan.
--Former President Ronald Reagan

Feb. 22-28

Of all the needs (there are none imaginary) a lonely child has, the one that must be satisfied, if there is going to be hope and a hope of wholeness, is the unshaking need for an unshakable God.
--Maya Angelou

Feb. 15-21

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
--Abraham Lincoln

Associate with men of good quality if you esteem your own reputation; for it is better to be alone than in bad company.
--George Washington

Today is Presidents’ Day. I’ve selected a couple of quotes from the presidents whose birthdays are closest to today.

Feb. 8-14

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of the mine, that a child of farm workers can become the president...
--Nelson Mandela

In the mid-1850s, pioneers traveled through this area and knew that the future hope that would sustain the frontier was an educated population. That’s how and why Baker University was founded. That ideal is behind the quote from Mandela too. Have a meaningful Founders’ Week.

Feb. 1-7

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
--George Washington Carver

Jan. 25-31

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-- Martin Luther King Jr.

Interterm

Jan. 18-24

Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Service is also a way for people of different faiths, or even no faith, to come together to work for a common purpose. That is such an important part of Dr. King’s legacy.

Jan. 4-10

This is a day of new beginnings,
Time to remember and move on,
Time to believe what love is bringing,
Laying to rest the pain that’s gone.

These lyrics are from a hymn written by Brian Wren. The words and sentiments seem appropriate as we begin a new year.

Fall Semester

Nov. 30-Dec. 6

The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.
Here the impossible union
Of spheres of existence is actual,
Here the past and the future
Are conquered and reconciled
--T.S. Eliot

I continue to believe that the events of December, of God reuniting with the world, are always mysterious. Welcome to the most mysterious time of the year!

Nov. 16-22

I don’t know Who, or what, put the question. I don’t know whether it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some time I did answer Yes to Someone, or Something, and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal.
--Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the United Nations

The goal for Hammarskjold was world peace, for which he worked tirelessly. Happy International Education Week!

Nov. 9-15

You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.
--Anonymous (Winston Churchill)

This is a wonderful thought. There is some controversy over whether or not Winston Churchill actually said it. I suspect he did not. It’s a good thing to remember regardless of who said it.

Nov. 2-8

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read or write, but Those who cannot Learn, Unlearn and Relearn.
--Isaac Owolabi, Adult Education Advocate

Oct. 26-Nov. 1

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
-- Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Churchill was a war-time leader. His sentiment is similar to a more familiar quote: “The first casualty of war is the truth.” These are helpful reminders as we deal with the loss of civility in public discussion, as well as the realities of our own Baker grapevine.

Oct. 19-25

The truth does not hurt. Truth alleviates pain, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.
--Miguel De Cervantes

This sentiment caught my eye as we continue to sort through a wide variety of opinions that each claim a corner on the truth.

Oct. 12-18

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.
--Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Oct. 5-11

The superior reasoning power . . . revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.
--Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

Some of you will have a few days off from class this week – whether on task or relaxing, enjoy the incomprehensible universe!

Sept. 28-Oct. 4

We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.
--Hegel

Sept. 21-27

There is a difference between being convinced and being stubborn. I’m not certain what the difference is, but I do know that if you butt your head against a stone wall long enough, at some point you realize the wall is stone and that your head is flesh and blood.
--Maya Angelou

Sept. 14-20

Education stuck together with a good head and a good heart brings greatness.
--Noah Reynolds

Yes, human beings are a combination of body, mind and spirit, woven together in a great and mysterious way. Use what you learn to make your head level and your heart warm this week.

Sept. 7-13

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
-- Galileo (1564-1642)

I hope this serves as a helpful reminder that science and religion, intellect and faith, are not opposites or enemies, but partners and friends.

Aug. 31-Sept. 6

Kids who score high on achievement tests are, obviously, good test-takers, a convenient skill but not necessarily evidence of deep or creative thinking.
--Priscilla Vail (1931-2003), nationally known educator and speaker

I believe deep thinking involves input from your heart and soul. The evidence may not be what you know, but how you live.

Aug. 24-30

Descartes was mistaken; he said, "I think, therefore I am." Nonsense! I love therefore I am.
--William Sloane Coffin

This is a companion to last week's thought. Both come from page 1 of Coffin's book, Credo.

Aug. 17-22

Socrates had it wrong; it is not the unexamined life but finally the uncommitted life that is not worth living.
--William Sloane Coffin

This first one of the year is from a pastor in the center of social justice issues of the 20th century. He was University Minister at Yale, was arrested for demonstrating for Civil Rights, and ended his ministerial career as the pastor of a large, multidenominational church in New York City.