A year ago, North Carolina's governor, Pat McCrory, threatening cuts to UNC's flagship campus at Chapel Hill, said, "If you want to take gender studies that's fine, go to a private school and take it." McCrory's statement suggests that the public university is a place for training rather than for real thinking and questioning, that such questioning is not relevant for public-university students, for first-generation college students — that such students need not worry about imagining their lives because their lives have already been imagined for them.

To say that women's studies, or philosophy, or French is a waste of time for students who need more-practical training is to tell those students we already know who and what they are. It is to kill their other chances.

In the name of keeping those other chances alive, I want to make a plea for a very unsexy kind of public humanities: the kind that involves a classroom, and desks in a circle, and books. And I want to insist that it be a real classroom: the kind you physically walk into, where people complain about the weather and their finals and their lousy jobs before class starts, and to which, at our little campus in western Maine, people trudge from across town or drive for an hour in the snow to be together for a while and talk.

Kristen Case, The Other Public Humanities

   His universal grace,
   small-folded in a warm, dim
   female space - the Word stern-sentenced to be
   nine months' dumb --
   infinity walled in a womb,
   until the next enormity --
   the Mighty One, after submission
   to a woman's pains,
   helpless on a barn's bare floor,
   first tasting bitter earth.

Luci Shaw, "Made Flesh"

From C. S. Lewis's Miracles, Ch. 14:

He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity; down further still, . . . to the very roots and seabed of the Nature He has created. But He goes down to come up again and bring the whole ruined world up with Him.  

Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover.

He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too. 

In this descent and re-ascent everyone will recognise a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life re-ascends. 

It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult. 

So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a re-ascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth--go down to go up--it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.

From Eugene Peterson's introduction to Philippians:

None of the qualities of the Christian life can be learned out of a book. Something more like apprenticeship is required, being around someone who out of years of devoted discipline shows us, by his or her entire behavior, what it is. Moments of verbal instruction will certainly occur, but mostly an apprentice acquires skill by daily and intimate association with a "master," picking up subtle but absolutely essential things, such as timing and rhythm and "touch."

From Jerry H. Gill's "Faith in Learning: Integrative Education and Incarnational Theology":

The Christian notion of incarnation is holistic and integrative. Jesus Christ came into the world as a whole, integrated person -- not as a “pretend” person, a la Clark Kent. Moreover, he was involved in all of life, not just its so-called “sacred” aspects. In his relationships with other persons he took an active interest in the physical, social and emotional well-being of those whom he met. Jesus himself was not divided, nor was his approach to the world. . . .

It is also crucial to bear in mind that embodiment is inherent in the Christian idea of incarnation. The Word became flesh, God indwelt human form, not in appearance only (or merely momentarily), but from birth to death. And even his death gains its primary significance from the manner in which he died, not from the mere fact that he died.
Human existence is embodied existence, and God’s involvement and interaction with us have come in this mode. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the body is basic and good, in contrast to the dualism of classical Greek philosophy (which, unfortunately, has influenced too much of traditional Christian theology). By indwelling (not just “borrowing”) a body, God made a statement about the nature and worth of human existence -- and about divine character as well. Moreover, the Christian hope is for a resurrected body, as well as a new heaven and earth, not for the immortality of a disembodied soul.

Read the whole article here.

From Steve Baarendse's "Why I'm Not on Facebook: An Open Letter to College Students":

Deincarnation

So much of human communication lies in the incarnational bond between word and body. Think about the volumes conveyed by a piercing glance, an eye moistened with tears, a tender hand on the shoulder. Pointed sarcasm or a tough word of confrontation can be tempered in person—the surgeon’s scalpel that cuts in order to heal—but these words are often blunt meat cleavers on Facebook. 

Rembrandt’s Return of the Prodigal Son or Jewish Bride vividly depicts the power of human touch. Bonhoeffer talks about this in the wonderful last pages of Life Together. The ministry of bearing burdens, of holding one’s tongue and listening, of confessing and forgiving—these all involve real presence. If your friend is in extremis, you can text the family a “praying4U!” Or, you can drive to the hospital room and hold your dying friend’s hand. You can embrace the family members, cry with them, read Scripture and sing hymns with them. 

In the 1980s, phone giant AT&T encouraged people to “reach out and touch someone.” And clearly, a personal phone call from a friend can be a touching thing. But whether by phone or Facebook, touch is still a metaphor. You can only really reach out and touch someone by being there. Our society is high-tech but low-touch, and growing more so every day. Jesus mixed his spit with mud and anointed a blind man’s eyes. He laid his hands on little children and blessed them. He touched people. The society that Jesus—and even our grandparents—lived in was lower-tech but higher-touch.

Read more: http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=25-03-044-f#ixzz24QIRIwms