Agora spring 2014

Agora

LUTHER COLLEGE IN CONVERSATION

SPRING 2014

LUTHER COLLEGE, DECORAH, IOWA

LUTHER COLLEGE IN CONVERSATION

Peter A. Scholl, editor

SPRING 2014 VOLUME 26 NUMBER 2

Judy K. Boese, production editor

Agora, an interdisciplinary journal grounded in the humanities, is a project of the Luther College Paideia Program. Paideia consists of many other activities and opportunities, including a three-course interdisciplinary core curriculum; performances and events, including an annual lecture series; library acquisitions; student writing services; networked computer classrooms; and a faculty development program that includes sabbatical grants and summer workshops. All these activities receive final support from the Paideia Endowment, originally established through National Endowment for the Humanities grants matched by friends of Luther College. To see the current issue and archival issues on-line, go to <http://www.luther.edu/paideia/agora>.

The primary Agora contributors are Luther College faculty; writing is also solicited from other college community members and, occasionally, from outside writers. The journal was established in 1988 by then Paideia Director Wilfred F. Bunge, Professor of Religion and Classics. Mark Z. Muggli, Professor of English, was the editor from 1998-2004. Agora is distributed to five hundred on-campus faculty and administrators and to another five hundred off-campus friends of the college. Anyone wishing to be included on the mailing list should contact the production editor. phone: (563) 387-11153 e-mail: boesejud@luther.edu

Contents Cover: My America (2005) by Patrick Luber. Front. Sculpture / mixed media. Wood, brass nails, aluminum beverage cans, found objects, electrical components. Photographed by Peter Ecklund, in situ, Kristin Wigley-Fleming Gallery, Luther College, spring 2014.

Essays and Occasions An Invitation to Learning Nicholas Carr.........................................................................4 Vocation and Sustainability Larry Rasmussen....................................................................8 The First Fifty Years of Biology at Luther College Wendy M. Stevens.................................................................13

2013-14 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Studying the “Other” Research in Animal Cognition as an Example of Studying the “Other”: What It Can Teach Us about Animals and about Ourselves Kristy L. Gould.....................................................................17

Sabbaticals Technology, Time, and Teachers: Different but the Same Barbara M. Bohach...............................................................38 Making Sense of the Balkans Steven J. Holland..................................................................42

Chapel Pause (February 17, 2014) Linda K. Martin..................................................................45 Paying Attention (February 24, 2014) Amy E. Weldon.....................................................................47 Jesus’ Second Touch (March 5, 2014) David Vasquez.....................................................................49 Seeing Things As They Are (March 19, 2014) Patrick Luber........................................................................51

Other from an Other Other: Science and Fiction in Human-Alien Encounters Eric J. Baack and Andrew C. Hageman.................................21 “Both Sides Now”: Considering Forgiveness in Religious and Communal Old Order Amish Traditions Angela Kueny.......................................................................27

PETER ECKLUND

Engaging the Ancient “Other”: Identity and Alterity Sean D. Burke.......................................................................34

My America (2005) by Patrick Luber. Reverse side. Sculpture / mixed media. In situ, Kristin Wigley-Fleming Gallery, Luther College, spring 2014.

Introduction

T

his is the last issue of Agora under my editorship and I know I will miss this work a lot. But ten years have passed since my first issue and I already retired from teaching English last year. So it is time. Besides, my wife Diane Gabrielsen Scholl is retiring from her post as professor of English, and this means we will both, in theory, be free to take off for parts unknown if the wind whispers our names.

As I write, the new editor has not been named, although I am reasonably sure that Agora will continue, and assuming it does, I am even more sure that the editor will be excellent. My confidence echoes what Mark Muggli wrote in his last editor’s piece ten years ago, when it was also the case that his successor had not yet been named. His point was that at Luther, we rest assured that these turnovers will never be “devastating” because “the college community is filled with a host of people who can do … the work. Not in exactly the same way, but often with a similar fervor and a comparable effectiveness.”

And what is this work in the case of Agora? In the first issue in 1988, founding editor Wilfred Bunge described the mission of Agora as being “to manifest and nurture that ongoing conversation which is the genius of a small, residential liberal arts college.” He chose a Greek name for the journal that complemented the name and mission of the Paideia Program, which also provided its funding. Paideia is the word the Greeks used to name the diverse means and ends of a comprehensive education into the traditions and values of their culture, and the agora was the literal and figurative marketplace where much of that education took place. The agora was where they attended to their “common humanity—to community—to shared traditions, values, and responsibilities for the present and future.”

I have enjoyed writing about the cover art in these pieces, and I think Patrick Luber’s My America provides an opportunity for a little more reflection on my departure. After all, this rather allegorical piece is essentially a portal. This is a towering, four-sided structure—the front side is an entryway, as if to a theater since there are ticket windows on either side of the central swinging doors. But the reverse side (see the contents page) is an exit. That the work suggests a theater is reinforced by the little peepholes on the outside opposite sides—if you put your eye to a tiny window you see a lit up picture of the Lone Ranger on one side, and his kemosabe Tonto on the other.

So I am stepping through this theater doorway, off and away through the red swinging doors, passing beneath an inscription that runs around the frieze, saying “Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s.” Below the ticket windows stand a pair of illuminated statuettes of the Madonna, which clearly symbolize the miraculous and enduring assistance of Judy Boese, who literally puts the journal together and has done this and and so much more since the first issue in 1988, and who may just keep on forever. And as for the Lone Ranger and Tonto—might not they represent previous editors Bunge and Muggli? No! More credit is due. On the reverse side of the doorway are matching busts of George Washington and Jesus Christ. Well, maybe that’s too much credit.

Maybe I should reckon their achievements as falling somewhere between those of Jesus and George at one end and Tonto and the Ranger at the other. So special thanks to Wilfred, Mark, and Judy—and to Mike Bartels, the graphic artist who has produced most of the cover designs.

Well, I’m clearly becoming too flip with these comparisons. But in this flippancy I take refuge in the example of Patrick Luber, who says in his artist’s statement that his art addresses “the intersections of prayer, religion, national identity, and popular 2

Agora/Spring 2014

culture within American culture”—weighty themes, to be sure—but that he hopes that “the resulting work is … thoughtful … with a touch of humor….”

The contents of this my last issue fit within the mental template that I have usually followed over my tenure for selecting what has filled these pages. Four pieces were originally created for public delivery in the Paideia Texts and Issues lecture series, and since the beginning of this journal this series has been a mandated and regular feature. Each year the series has a different theme, chosen by the governing board of the Paideia Endowment. This year’s theme was “Studying the ‘Other’”, and next year’s is “Secrecy and Transparency.” The board hopes to select lecturers whose disciplines and views are varied—especially needful when the topic of this year’s series has to do with the “Other”!

There are two sabbatical report essays—it has long been a tradition that Agora solicits and encourages all recipients of sabbatical research leaves to report in this public and permanent forum (all issues can be found online) what they discover and believe: not only to peers in their respective fields and disciplines, but to this Luther community—since the target audience of Agora is the faculty, the staff, the board of regents, the alumni, and the students—and anyone else, of course, who occasions to encounter it.

There are four chapel talks here, since I follow editors Bunge and Muggli in believing that chapel at Luther College provides an important and living tradition that dates to the founding of the college, where we not only gather regularly as a religious community, but offers a forum where we hear news of “our life together”— where births, deaths, and other milestones momentous and more transitory are spoken aloud and registered collectively.

The first three pieces make up our Essays and Occasions section—essentially the “miscellaneous” section. Nicholas Carr’s “An Invitation to Learning” was originally delivered at the opening convocation for the spring 2014 semester. I thought that just as his message was tailored for and of great interest to the entire on-campus community, it should also be made available in Agora with its extended and more permanent potential audience. The same reason for printing the other two pieces pertains to both the addresses by Larry Rasmussen and Wendy Stevens. Rasmussen is a distinguished ethicist whose thoughts on sustainability were powerful and challenging. Stevens’ piece on the first fifty years of the biology department at Luther deserves to be made available in print as it is of interest to so many more than those who heard it as one of the biology department-sponsored Sherman Hoslett Homecoming lectures. It is a fascinating contribution to the history of the College and the life of the mind and the work that has gone on here under the banner of biology.

I think the best thing about being editor has been the opportunity to collaborate with so many faculty and other authors. Over the years I must have worked with some hundreds of different writers; reading each of their works (at least three times) has been a liberal education in itself. I know that we’re in this together, and I have been working in fields where others had already labored and will continue to work. And like Robert Frost’s mower, who finds a tuft a flowers in his field left unscythed by a previous worker, I know and say now, “from the heart,” that people work together, “Whether they work together or apart.”

Peter A. Scholl Editor

Spring 2014/Agora

3

Essays and Occasions

An Invitation to Learning Opening Spring Convocation Address, February 6, 2014

T

Author Nicholas Carr delivered the talk reprinted here at Luther’s opening spring convocation, February 6. The same day he gave the Farwell Distinguished Lecture, and he interacted with students and faculty more informally during his stay on campus. Carr is the author of the bestselling book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains (2011) as well as The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2009) and Does It Matter?: Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage (2004). He served as a columnist for The Guardian, and his writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, and other well-known publications.

Carr graduated from Dartmouth and earned by a masters degree in English and American NICHOLAS literature from Harvard.

CARR

4

Agora/Spring 2014

LUTHER PHOTO BUREAU, LUKE HANSON

hank you very much, Toby Ziemer. Thank you, President Tiede and Dean Kraus, and thanks to everyone here at Luther who has given me such a warm welcome this morning. Warm welcomes are particularly appreciated on mornings as cold as this one. I would like to offer my thanks and my welcome as well to all the students here. It is a great pleasure and a great honor to play a small part in launching you into a new semester with a promise of warmer weather and greener grounds to walk on.

Before I get started, I would like to ask a favor of the students. Don’t worry: it has nothing to do with silencing your phones. As I talk here for the next few minutes, what I would like you to do is to pay attention to your own mind and how it’s working, to be conscious of your own consciousness.

What are you paying attention to? What thoughts and ideas are going through your head at any given moment? I won’t test you on it, but I’ll come back and talk about that a little bit more a little later.

Being asked to come and talk at a college, to talk to students, struck me as a good occasion to think back on my own experience of college and what it meant to go away to school. Back then, when I was in the midst of the experience, if somebody had asked me what college meant to me, I think I would have pointed to a lot of different things: to my professors, my classes, my major, the friends I’d made, my life in the dormitory, the campus itself. I would guess you’d point to similar things if asked the same question. Back when I look back to my college experience today, I would say that

Nicholas Carr delivers the Farwell Distinguished Lecture, February 6, 2014.

as important as all of those individual things were, what was really important was how they all fit together and how they created what I would call an environment of learning, an environment of scholarship. It took civilization a long time to create such an environment, and environment dedicated to the expansion of the mind, to learning, to knowledge. It’s a special environment, a rare environment.

Luther College, as I understand it, was built about 152 years ago, and the people who founded the school were able to draw on many centuries of experience in how to design an institution of higher learning. All that experience is reflected

And for all the advantages the digital environment provides, it also creates a tension with the environment of learning.

What is particularly distinctive about this university environment, or college environment, is that it is both a part of the world and apart from the world. You don’t want college to be an escape from the world; in fact, the whole idea is to think more clearly about the world that surrounds us. But you are also separate from the world for this particular period of time so that you can take a broader perspective and engage in deeper modes of thought and consideration.

Most of my career for the last ten years has involved thinking about how technology—particularly computer technology—influences our lives and our experience of life.

As I thought back to this idea of entering a new learning environment I began to think as well about what has changed with the introduction of the kind of perpetual connectivity that Toby talked about. Having your phone with you all the time. Having laptops, tablets and all sorts of ways to constantly communicate and interact with the online world and all the people and sources of information that lie out there. That is a radically new way to live, certainly radically different from what I experienced and from what most people experienced throughout history when they went off to live at college. I went to college right before the introduction of the personal computer. There was no email, no cell phones, no smart phones.

For me, as for others at that time, going to college provided a clean break. You would leave your high school and you would leave your family. You would come to a new place with new people, a campus, and a big distance would suddenly open up between you and the life that you had been leading. I’ll give you a sense of that. When I was in school, our social media consisted of a single pay phone on the third floor of my dormitory—that was how you communicated with the world; that and your mailbox. Our social networks were the US mail and the telephone system. And because back then making a longdistance call was really expensive, you basically didn’t use the phone. Your parents would call once a week or so. You would connect with them and talk for ten minutes. Every once in a while a friend from high school would send you a letter, which was a big thrill. But that was it. That was your connectivity.

In many ways, I think you are extraordinarily lucky to have a ver y rich means of connecting with information and connecting with other people. You come here and you don’t leave behind your old friends and your family.

You are probably in touch w i t h t h e m Research before Google—Koren Library stacks. moment by moment really, as long as they keep texting you, posting stuff to Facebook and into other social media. And you have the ability to tap into these huge stores of information that were completely off limits not so long ago, or at least required a lot of effort and a lot of time to tap into. If I was in my dorm at ten at night on a weekday night writing a paper or doing some research and reading and I needed to find a piece of information, even the smallest imaginable piece of information, I didn’t get to Google it up in two seconds. I had to walk out and go to the library and hopefully be able to find the information among the stacks or the periodicals or the various research resources there. I went to school in New Hampshire, so I am very familiar with cold, snowy winters. Trudging off to the library is not exactly what you want to do at ten p.m. in that kind of weather.

So you have all sorts of advantages by having constantly access to powerful computers and vast computer networks. I would suggest, though, that there are also some disadvantages.

In a very real way, you are also unfortunate to be immersed in this technology, because you don’t get the kind of clean break that I experienced and that most college students experienced up until recently. We have created, in a sense, a new environment for ourselves—a digital environment that we are constantly interacting with through our phones, through our computers, through other network devices we have. When we come into a college, into this carefully constructed environment of learning, we carry this digital, artificial environment with us. And for all the advantages the digital environment provides, it also creates a tension with the environment of learning. Streams of information and alerts and all sorts of messages come at you all day long. They’re constantly impinging on your mind and grabbing your attention, and they’re effectively yanking you out of this very carefully designed environment of learning, which was created to encourage a very different way of thinking—a calmer, more contemplative, more meditative way of thinking. A way of thinking that only happens when you’re shielded from distractions and interrup-

LUTHER COLLEGE ARCHIVES

in the very layout of the school, how its buildings are arranged.

You come out of the busy world into a quad, a sheltered space, where you are encouraged to engage in a kind of thinking that isn’t always valued and isn’t always encouraged by the world outside of the university. I’m talking about thinking for its own sake; building knowledge for its own sake; being contemplative and reflective. For many of you, this will be the only time that you will be able to enjoy that kind of environment. It is a very different environment from the environment of your family and your high school that you were in before, and it’s a very different environment from the one that will come afterwards, as you move into a career and start families of your own.

Spring 2014/Agora

5

6

Agora/Spring 2014

what is inside of our consciousness because we can only fit three or four things into our consciousness at a time. And if we try to take in too much information too quickly, then we’re never able to think deeply about anything. We suffer, literally, from cognitive overload—an overflowing brain. That’s what happens when you are constantly glancing at your phone, if your phone is constantly buzzing, if you are constantly getting alerts, if you are texting, Facebooking, Snapchatting, Instagramming—doing all of these things all the time as we tend to do today. From the moment you wake up until the moment you go to sleep, you are constantly flushing information out of your conscious mind, out of your working memory, simply to make room for all this new stimulation that comes at you all of the time.

The problem with that is that our highest thoughts and our deepest thoughts and our most interesting thoughts really require attentiveness. This is pretty clear not only from our own experience but from recent discoveries about the workings of the human mind. It is only when we filter out or shield ourselves from distractions and focus our thinking on one thing, whether it is our own train of thought or a complicated argument in a book or a piece of music or an interesting conversation with another person, it is only when we pay attention that we unlock the highest possibilities of our mind. One of the reasons is that it is only when you pay close attention to something that you move that information or that experience into your long-term memory, and it is that process of saving something into longterm memory that allows you to connect the new information or the new experience or the new emotion with everything else you know, with everything else you’ve experienced. And it is those connections, those associations between diverse things, diverse thoughts and facts and experiences, that give richness to our thoughts. Being able to Google a particular piece of information at a particular moment is great, but little bits of information, facts in and of themselves, are not very interesting. It is only when you begin to make associations and connections broadly across many things that you unlock your mind’s ability to think conceptually, to think of the big picture, to think critically, to unlock some very creative thinking. All of these things only happen when you are able to control your mind in such a way that you don’t give in to the distractions and interruptions that surround us all the time, but really focus, really pay attention and concentrate your mind.

Paying attention has always been very difficult, because we have always been distractible and our lives have always been complicated, with lots of things going on. What is new—and you are one of the first generations who have dealt with this problem—is that we not only have all of the distractions that have always been around us and our natural tendency to let our mind wander, but we have this digital enviBY ADRIAN ILIE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

tions, when you’re able to pay deep and close attention to your own thoughts, to difficult subjects, to your professors, to other students that you talk to.

There are a couple of reasons why I think this clash of environments—the digital and the educational—is a problem. One is that when you bring this digital environment with you, it ties you down to your past in a way that wasn’t true before. You are at a stage in your life where you want to explore new aspects of yourself, new aspects of your personality that maybe you didn’t give room to when you were in high school and when you were living at home. That used to be fairly easy because you became a new person when you left and came into college and made new friends and had new experiences. Today with constant communications with your family, with your high school friends, your old friends, your old life laid out for everyone to see on Facebook and other places, it is much, much harder to break away. It takes much more effort, and that can get in the way of some of the exploration that you want to do when you are here for these four years in this unique environment. You get pinned down. The constant access to and the constant interaction with technology—with the digital environment—also has a deep influence, and not always a good one, on the way you think and the way you learn.

Now think about what I asked you to do at the beginning of my talk: which was to pay attention to your thoughts as I was speaking. If you consider what has gone on in your mind, you will start to get a sense of why the digital environment can get in the way of learning and thinking. My guess is that, for most of you, within about ten seconds of my asking you to pay attention to what was going on in your mind, you stopped doing it and began paying attention to me or thinking about other things. Your mind wandered, your attention shifted. What that tells us is that it is hard to An iPhone, 2007. pay attention. It is hard to keep our mind focused, and it is certainly hard to pay attention to our own train of thought. That seems to be an unnatural kind of process that goes against some primitive urge we have to try to know everything that is going on around us all the time. So we have to train ourselves in that kind of attentive thinking.

There is another reason why it is so hard to pay attention and to be contemplative, beyond our instinctive desire to know everything that is going on around us. And that gets into some deep fundamental qualities of our brains. Our consciousness is very narrow. We can’t fit much into what psychologists call our working memory, which is the contents of our consciousness at any given moment. So you are here watching me and from time to time you probably tune out because you see something somewhere else that is interesting. Maybe another student or maybe a thought comes into your mind about something that you did last night or have to do today. We are constantly shifting

ronment that we carry with us which is very carefully designed to keep you interrupted, to keep you distracted, to keep your attention shifting, your focus shifting, to divide your attention. I can assure you that once you leave Luther—assuming that you don’t go on to grad school or become a teacher or professor yourself—it is going to get harder and harder to maintain your focus and to teach yourself the discipline of deep, attentive thinking. These are the years in which you have the liberty and freedom to think big thoughts and to train yourself to be able to do that. That is a skill, if you do achieve it, that you will carry through the rest of your life, through the distractions that are going to pile up when you have a career and a family.

So now is the time to learn how to be attentive, how to think deeply, how to resist distractions. If you succeed in building that skill, you’ll get a lot of practical benefits. You will be more productive and more creative in your work, in whatever profession you choose. You will be working alongside a lot of people who aren’t able to pay attention, who are constantly distracted and constantly interrupted—and as a result you will probably perform better than they do.

So there are very practical reasons to engender this kind of thinking. But there is also a bigger benefit, and that is a benefit to your personal life. The more you can train yourself to focus, to be contemplative, ultimately the richer your life will be. You will be able to enjoy many different types of pursuits, even ones that require following something that is slow and isn’t incredibly stimulating but at the end of the process is very fulfilling. You will get these practical benefits,

and you will set the stage for a richer intellectual life and a richer self as well.

I chose the title “An Invitation to Learning” for this talk because I thought it was important to recognize that when you come to college, when you come to this very carefully designed environment for knowledge-building, what you are receiving is an invitation to learning. It is not a guarantee that you are going to learn. It is not a guarantee that you are going to become more knowledgeable. And certainly not that you will become wiser. It is simply an invitation. It is up to each of you to accept that invitation, and that requires effort on your part. What I challenge you to do is not to say, “I’m going to abandon the technology”; not to say “I’m going to get rid of my phone,” or get rid of my Facebook account, whatever. That is not practical. When you move into the world, those things are not going to be gone and you will need to be familiar with them and manage them well. But I want you simply to appreciate that there are times that you should tune out from that flow of information. You want to set aside time for more attentive thinking, for more contemplative thinking, for turning off the constant barrage of information. Because it is only when you do that, it is only when you exercise that part of your mind, that part of your brain, that you train your brain to behave in that way—and ultimately that unlocks not only the possibilities of a college education but the possibilities for your life for the years after you leave this uniquely designed environment and move out into the world with all its additional distractions and interruptions. Thank you very much for your attention this morning.

Spring 2014/Agora

7

Vocation and Sustainability

K

atherine White wrote on gardening for The New Yorker.

After she died, her husband, author and essayist, E. B. White, collected her essays for a book titled Onward and Upward in the Garden. He wrote an introduction, the end of which is his picture of Katherine in the fall, planning the spring garden she knew she would not see.

Armed with a diagram and a clipboard, Katherine would get into a shabby old Brooks raincoat much too large for her, put on a little round wool hat, pull on a pair of overshoes, and proceed to the director’s chair—a folding canvas thing—that had been placed for her at the edge of the plot. There she would sit, hour after hour, in the wind and the weather, while Henry Allen produced dozens of brown paper packages of new bulbs and a basketful of old ones, ready for the intricate interment. As the years went by and age overtook her, there was something comical yet touching in her bedraggled appearance on this awesome occasion—the small, hunched-over figure, her studied absorption in the implausible notion that there could yet be another spring, oblivious to the ending of her own days, which she knew perfectly well was near at hand, sitting there with her detailed chart under those dark skies in the dying October, calmly plotting the resurrection.1 Katherine White had her calling, plain and clear. To pull on her boots, take her place in the director’s chair at the edge of

Larry Rasmussen, who presented this talk on campus March 7, is the Reinhold Niebuhr Professor

by Emeritus of social ethics at Union TheoLARRY logical Seminary. His most recent book is RASMUSSEN Earth-Honoring Faith: Religious Ethics in a New Key (Oxford 2012). Rasmussen’s Earth Community, Earth Ethics, won the Grawemeyer Award in Religion for 1997.

From 1990-2000 he served as co-moderator of the World Council of Churches unit, Justice, Peace, Creation. He is the recipient of the Joseph Sittler Award for Outstanding Leadership in Theological Education and the Burnice Fjellman Award for Distinguished Christian Ministries in Higher Education.

8

Agora/Spring 2014

the garden, pick up her clipboard, and calmly plot the resurrection.

Vocation—calling—and Sustainability—the viability of “the Garden Planet”—is our theme. But what is our summons—vocation—now? I answered that question the way we all do—by Googling it. A dozen definitions, and even more quotations, turned up.

Some definitions recall the Latin, vocatio—a call, a summons—usually to note that passion and purpose accompany it. So vocation is “a strong desire to spend your life doing a certain kind of work.” Or vocation reflects “a strong suitability” for a particular mission or craft or career that captures your dedication and imagination.

Sometimes vocation escalates to “a divine call.” Or, in the words of a Lutheran bishop speaking to legislators at the New Mexico state capitol, “Your vocation, and every vocation, has sacred capacity.” Like Katherine White’s gardening, I suppose.

The Google takeaway is that vocation is a summons, with passion and purpose attached to the life work undertaken, whatever it may be.

The quotations ranged from “fridge” door wisdom to monkish meditations and excerpts from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Frodo, although content to remain at rest and at peace at Bilbo’s side, hears his own manner of speaking as a distant small voice that says: “I will take the Ring, though I do not know the way.”

The fridge door wisdom might be W. H. Auden’s “You owe it to all of us to get on with what you’re good at.” Or Annie Dillard’s floral version: “I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you.”

Occasionally the focus is ethical and religious as well as topical. “The two ideas, justice and vocation, are inseparable…,” writes Wendell Berry: “It is by way of the principle and practice of vocation that sanctity and reverence enter into the human economy. It was thus possible for traditional cultures to conceive that ‘to work is to pray.’”2 Berry’s words signal out next turn. The definitions and quotations are too generic to take us very far. While they locate the first term, vocation, they do not locate the second term, sustainability; nor do they line out the relationship of the two.

To begin that, I turn to cultural analysis. Following that, I’ll describe what sustainability means on a changing planet, not least what it means for vocation as our passionate life work. What is good work for a planet in jeopardy at human hands?

PERMISSION OF THE ARTIST

economic growth tops out in its capacity to meet the spirit’s Vocation at home relentless demands. Consumer remorse may even set in as a The New York Times Sunday Review of last December included new house or car and collecting labor-saving devices in every a report by Arthur C. Brooks entitled “A Formula for Haproom have about as much pay-off as new running shoes have piness.” on lung capacity or a golf cart has on the scorecard. With In good American fashion, happiness and its pursuit is telling insight Tibor Scitovsky calls the “mature” consumerist the subject. Brooks assembles the happiness data and puts economy a “joyless economy.”4 down numbers from gold standard studies.

While ordinary sages have long taught that money canStudies of identical twins separated at birth and raised in not buy happiness, the additional surprise is that in recent separate families finds that a surprising portion of American years some affluent societies have experienced a decline in happiness is hardwired in our genes—48 percent to be precise. social well-being. Why? Robert Lane, in The Loss of HappiShort of choosing our parents, we’ve no control over that. ness in Market Democracies, hypothesizes that there “is a kind So what about the other half ? Is it the big one-off events? of famine of warm interpersonal relations, of easy-to-reach That first bicycle, the acceptance letter to Dartmouth, “yes” neighbors, of encircling, inclusive memberships, and of solid to the proposal of marriage, the first born, a winning season family life. There is much evidence that for people lacking in and brass ring, moving to California, leaving California? social support of this kind, unemployment has more serious Yes, these mark much of our happiness. Yet this happiness effects, illnesses are more deadly, disappointment with one’s is surprisingly ephemeral. While it’s real, it doesn’t last long children is harder to bear, bouts of depression last longer, and seems, rather oddly, not to be cumulative. We get over it and frustration and failed expectations of all kinds are more rather quickly. Still, Brooks calculates that it’s 40 percent of traumatic.” Lane comments: “Something has gone wrong. the happiness we successfully pursue.

The economism that made Americans both rich and happy That leaves 12 percent, 12 percent that is under our conat one point in history is misleading them, is offering more trol. Brooks thinks the studies are clear and certain here. Four money, which does not make them happy, instead of more basic values emerge as the surest way to happiness: faith, family, companionship, which probably would….”5 community and work. The first three are fairly uncontroversial.

Companionship, that tell-tale sign of committed relaIn his words: “Empirical evidence that faith, family and friendtionships, is an “externality” to the world of stuff. It cannot ships increase happiness and meaning is hardly shocking. be priced, bought or sold.

Few dying patients regret To continue, then, to overinvesting in rich famlook for happiness and ily lives, community ties fulfillment in getting, and spiritual journeys.”3 spending, and having is I scoured the hapdelusional, once poverty piness and fulfillment has been addressed and literature myself a couple any fear about the next years back and found meal has been met with much the same. The difan ample cupboard. Dieference is that, unlike ner and Seligman sum it Brooks, I factored in the up and make the point correlation of material that only communities well-being and happiof commitment provide ness. That’s where most what people most want: Americans pin their hap“The quality of people’s piness hopes. social relationships is cruUp to a certain point, cial to their well-being. there is a positive cor- Kristen Gilje. Tree of Life (acrylic on panel, 8 feet by 12 feet, 1999).

People need supportive, relation of material wellpositive relationships and social belonging to sustain wellbeing and happiness. If you are abjectly poor, you need to have being…[T]he need to belong, to have close and long-term more to be more. Needs of food, shelter, clothing, meaningsocial relationships, is a fundamental human need.”6 ful labor, security, and festivity must be met if people are to Wisdom about belonging and what truly counts is never experience well-being. An increase in material well-being wholly lost on us, however misdirected it may be. The essentials correlates positively when the struggle is to exit debilitating come home to us with some regularity, frequently in those poverty and “make a life.” circumstances when our lives or the lives of loved ones are Yet among affluent nations and affluent strata within threatened (a fire or flood, a disease, the death of a friend). It poorer nations, a fat bank account and high levels of material comes clearest as we grow old, however. Ask any grey hair to possessions prove weak surrogates for genuine well-being. write her or his own obituary, how she or he would like to be Out of hope and habit, goods as the good are turned to in remembered; the answer is never “I became far richer than all one shopping spree after another; but a sense of fulfillment, my friends and enemies” or “I fooled a lot of people at their while expected, is not realized. Levels of happiness do not own game” or “I left many good people behind as I crawled to improve with improved standards of living and at some point Spring 2014/Agora

9

the top” or “I had the highest IQ in the class and outsmarted everyone.” The retrospectives of old age, like most eulogies, appeal instead to moral character. Those eulogies in fact often highlight only the positive. In its own way that is yet more evidence that people want to be remembered as a good friend, father or mother, a generous spirit, someone who did well by the community and blessed it with their presence. They want to be remembered among those who gave of themselves for a good that will outlast them. They want their lives to continue in the lives of those who come after.7 All this substantiates Brooks’s contention that family, faith, and community are the keys to happiness. Yet none of these substitutes for his fourth key value and the role it plays—namely work, his synonym for vocation.

The great work of sustainability is moving through a set of long, hard transitions from industrial-technological civilization to ecological-technological civilization.

The other three might not surprise us. Work may, however, not least because there’s a lot of drudge out there and fewer than one-third of U. S. Americans feel fruitfully engaged by their work. Despite the Lutheran bishop’s contention that every vocation has “sacred capacity,” legion are the numbers who would never name their work experience as one of “transcendent” fulfillment. Yet, as Brooks notes, that criterion— transcendent meaning—may be too high for most anything, including marriage. Step back, and ask instead whether, on balance, you’re satisfied with your job, and the percentage climbs as high as 80 percent.

Still, satisfaction—or not—isn’t the point. The point, rather, is that in this culture vocation is invested with great meaning and expectation, whether it’s experienced on the job or not. “Vocation is central to the American ideal,” writes Brooks, “the root of the aphorism that we ‘live to work’ while others ‘work to live.’”8 Vocation as good work is not less than “the bedrock of our culture and character,” he concludes. It is of disproportional importance to the happiness we pursue, whether we catch happiness or not. Good work brings happiness “by marrying our passions to our skills, empowering us to create value in our lives and the lives of others … [It’s] the thrill of creative effort.”9 Given the high place of vocation as good work I suppose we’re back to our initial definitions and quotations. Not quite, however. Added cultural analysis show what factors make for happiness and the high stakes that surround vocation, at least in U. S. society.

Vocation and sustainability We still haven’t paired vocation to sustainability, however.

Indeed, everything to this point is trivial by comparison.

Compared with vocation and the fate of the Earth, it pales.

There are sages who understand the work of sustainability precisely as vocational. This is Wendell Berry’s manner of 10

Agora/Spring 2014

speaking in every sheet his old typewriter bangs out. But I have in mind especially the late Thomas Berry and his volume, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future.

Every civilization and people has its historical project, the collective vocation that Berry calls the people’s “great work.” In his account “the Great Work of the classical Greek world [was] its understanding of the human mind and the creation of the Western humanist tradition; the Great Work of Israel [was] articulating a new experience of the divine in human affairs; the Great Work of Rome [was] in gathering the peoples of the Mediterranean world and of Western Europe into an ordered relation with one another … The Great Work [of India was] to lead human thought into spiritual experiences of time and eternity and their mutual presence to each other with a unique subtlety of expression … In America the Great Work of the First Peoples was to occupy this continent and establish an intimate rapport with the powers that brought this continent into existence in all its magnificence.”

And our Great Work? To effect “the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans [are] present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner.”10 That defines sustainability. Sustainability is the dynamic relationship by which Homo sapiens sapiens and the rest of life come to live together in a mutually enhancing way.

“The Great Work” is the work of moving from, in Berry’s terms, a “technozoic” to an “ecozoic” era.

I would amend that slightly: the environmental crisis is in fact a civilizational crisis and the great work of sustainability is moving through a set of long, hard transitions from industrial-technological civilization to ecologicaltechnological civilization. Both are technological, albeit in quite different ways.

What sustainability entails Here’s one way to describe the transitions to a sustainable ecological-technological civilization. Sustainability entails: A perspectival transition in which we understand ourselves as a species among species no longer inhabiting the same planet Homo sapiens have known for a very long while. Altered perception includes a certain reenchantment that counters the “disenchantment” of the world (Max Weber) by which nature was rendered little more than resources exclusively for human use. Disenchantment renders nature, or Earth, no more than décor for the human. Reenchantment restores to human consciousness and feeling nature as a community of subjects, the bearer of mystery and spirit, the ethos of the cosmos, and the womb of all the life we will ever know.

An economic transition in which economics and ecology merge to become “eco-nomics.” Eco-nomics embeds all economic activity within the ecological limits of nature’s economy and pursues the three-part agenda of production, relatively equitable distribution, and ecological regenerativity. Growth as a good is not precluded, provided it is ecologically sustainable and regenerative for the long term, reduces rather than increases the instability that large wealth and income gaps generate, and bolsters rather than undermines the capacity of local and regional communities and cultures to nurture and

draw wisely upon their cultural and biological diversity. In all events, “the first law of economics must be the preservation of the Earth economy.”11 A demographic transition in which human population levels off or slowly declines and the negative per person impact on the rest of nature gives way to mutual enhancement with other life.

A polity transition in which the basic conception of democratic capitalism shifts, if indeed democratic capitalism is retained at all. It shifts from (a) a society that fosters virtually unrestricted liberty to acquire and enjoy wealth, in which the right to property and its uses is more basic than the right to use government as an equalizing force, to (b) a society that fosters the common good through the process of democratizing social, political, and economic power in such a way that the primary goods of the commons—earth, air, fire, water, light—are caredfor requisites of a shared good, a good for both present and future generations of humankind and otherkind.

A policy transition in which policies are as integrated as nature itself. Climate change, poverty, energy, food, water are interlaced in the planetary economy. They, and the “wicked problems” they represent, cannot be silo-ed and targeted separately for either analysis or solutions. Integrated policies need to mirror the systemic character of nature’s own integral functioning, just as human technologies must cohere with the technologies of the natural world.12 And a religious and moral transition in which, because planetary health is primary and human well-being is always derivative, the center of ethics and culture shifts from the ego to the ecosphere as the relational matrix of our lives and responsibility. Human creatures, embedded as nature in nature, are inseparable from the rest of nature from which we have evolved, upon which we depend, and whose fate we share.

The center of ethics and culture is no longer the self, much less the autonomous self. Nor is it a collective human presence cast over against nature, as though these were separate and distinct entities. Nature and its economy are the bottom line, with us and our welfare and power responsible to it. This makes Earth-honoring planet-keeping the common calling of all religions in the same moment that the moral framework stretches beyond a fixation on the human species so as to include responsibility for the eco-social, the biophysical, and the geo-planetary, together.

A collective summons to embrace responsibility for the eco-social, the biophysical, and the geo-planetary, together—this is our vocation together, for as long as our time lasts. Something like Katherine White “calmly plotting the resurrection,” I suppose.

As sweeping as this is, I am still uneasy. Some important truth is not yet being told, or not told with sufficient force. So I close with an attempt to describe the elephant in the room.

Vocation in the Anthropocene The elephant in the room is the unawareness, or maybe denial, that Earth has literally shifted under our feet. In all likelihood, we face a new geological age of our own making; and that is the change that changes everything, for vocation, sustainability, and all else. Let me explain.

Most talk of vocation and of sustainability assumes we live in the late Holocene, for very good reason. The Holocene has hosted every single human civilization to date, bar none.

We face a new geological age of our own making; and that is the change that changes everything, for vocation, sustainability, and all else.

Here’s the point for vocation and sustainability: Every geological age is distinguished by its core planetary surface processes, those intertwined operations of the three great commons, the atmosphere, oceans, and landmasses. If the composition of the atmospheric gases is changing—say, more water vapor or more greenhouse gases and accelerated and extreme climate events, and jet streams and circulation patterns altering course; and warmer, stagnant air hovering over melting Arctic ice, for example; or, if the composition of the oceans is changing so that acidification and more sequestered C02 and warmer temperatures and changing currents are killing off present ocean eco-systems, including coral reefs, those all-important nurseries; or, if changes in landmasses—say, agriculture, urbanization, mining and other forms of an extractive economy—affect the availability, flow and health of fresh water; or the regenerative health of the soil; or the structure and chemistry of coastlands and wetlands; or the biodiversity of flora and fauna, insects and microorganisms; if these events are happening on our watch, then we are witnessing the kinds of changes in planetary processes that end and inaugurate geological epochs.

That may be exactly where we are now. The International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) is the official keeper of geological time. To map Earth’s ages the Commission plants what it calls “golden spikes” where geological epochs begin and end. The ICS will get back to you in 2016 about whether to plant a new golden spike. If it does, that will officially end of “Holocene” (that’s Greek for “Wholly Recent”).

In any event, the mark of the Holocene has been climate stability sufficient for the triumph of life amid nature’s predilections to try anything once. It has provided been climate stability steady enough to host all human civilizations to date. The mark of the Anthropocene, by contrast, is climate volatility due to the high impact of human activities on the composition and the systemic workings of the atmosphere, oceans, and landmasses.

These impacts are not benign. See Elizabeth Kolbert’s new book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History (Henry Holt, 2014) or hear Eileen Crist. The consequences, Crist writes, are called climate change, ocean acidification, and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They are called large-scale deforestation and desertification. The consequences are called 400 dead zones worldwide. They are called 90% of the big fish in the oceans are gone, and ‘empty forest syndrome.’

The consequences are called the stifling of animal Spring 2014/Agora

11

migrations and the constriction of wildlife’s home ranges. They are also called the closing of the human heart to the suffering of farm animals. The consequences are called ecological amnesia, on the one hand, and a widening wave of grieving for lost beings and places, on the other….[They are called] a nonhuman holocaust that is not even permitted to be called one.13 Crist’s conclusion is that every human civilization has argued that economic and political power to appropriate “whatever humans can use from the natural world—from oceans, forests, rivers, grasslands, coast, wildlife, domestic animals, genomes, or the crust of the Earth” is not only our right but our calling, no less than our vocation.14 But in our time, that appropriation of the natural world has issued in a new Earth age, the Anthropocene.

For vocation, the Anthropocene brings us to a parting of the ways in the long journey of our species’ history. Will the human vocation in the Anthropocene be essentially, in Crist’s words, “[t]he strategy of creating and sustaining a human-run biosphere [that] reaffirms the legitimacy of anthropocentrism, [that] avoids interrogating our relationship with the biosphere and its whole ensemble of life as an ethical matter, and [that] resolutely eschews confronting global civilization as a totalitarian system on Earth?”15 Or will our vocation in the Anthropocene be Berry’s—namely, to reinvent the human at the species level, away from Earth as empire and toward mutuality across the community of life? In different words, is sustainability as mutually enhancing relationships of the human with the rest of the community of life and its indispensable abiotic envelope not our good and great work in the Anthropocene? Or is our vocation the fully geoengineered Earth?

Which is it? Continue an occupied planet and get it right this time? Many say “yes” in the manner of Stewart Brand: we are the gods now, and—in the interests of keeping our planet a workable stage for our unfolding destiny—we have to get good at it. Or do we undertake a radical transformation of ourselves, heart, soul, and mind, together with modernity’s institutions and way of life?

When vocation is married to sustainability on the cusp of the Anthropocene, those are the choices and the stakes.

Notes 1. Katherine White, Onward and Upward in the Garden, Introduction by E. B. White (Beacon Press, 1979), xviii-xviiii.

12

Agora/Spring 2014

2. All definition and quotation citations are from http://www. goodreads.com/quotes/tag/vocation.

3. Brooks, Arthur C., “A Formula for Happiness,” The New York Times Sunday Review, December 15, 2013: 6.

4. Tibor Scitovsky, The Joyless Economy: the Psychology of Human Satisfaction, Revised Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992).

5. Robert E. Lane, The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), selected from pp. 319-24 and cited by Speth, The Bridge at the Edge of the World, 135-36. Readers can find detailed analyses of the “happiness literature” published since the 1970s, with references to the wisdom of the ages as well, in two recent volumes. Sissela Bok, Exploring Happiness: From Aristotle to Brain Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011); and Derek Bok, The Politics of Happiness: What Government Can Learn from the New Research on Well-Being (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Both are reviewed by Timothy Renick, “Pursuing Happiness,” The Christian Century, Vol. 128, No. 1 ( January 11, 2011): 22-26.

6. Ed Diener and Martin E. P. Seligman, “Beyond Money: Toward an Economy of Well-Being,” in Psychological Science in the Public Interest 5, no. 1 (2004): 18-19. Michael Walzer, in Spheres of Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 31, argues that “The primary good that we distribute to one another is membership in some human community.” Martin Buber uses still grander terms: “The primary aspiration of all history is a genuine community of human beings.”

Martin Buber, Paths in Utopia (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 133.

7. These paragraphs on material abundance and happiness are slight adaptations of those on pp. 162-64 of my Earth-Honoring Faith (Oxford University Press, 2013).

8. Brooks, New York Times, December 15, 2013: p. 6 of The Sunday Review.

9. Ibid, p. 7.

1-4.

10 .Thomas Berry, The Great Work (New York: Bell Tower, 1999),

11. Thomas Berry, “Conditions for Entering the Ecozoic Era,” The Ecozoic Reader, Vol. 2, No. 2, Winter, 2002: 10.

12. Thomas Friedman, “Connecting Nature’s Dots,” The New York Times Week in Review, 23 August, 2009:8.

13. Eileen Crist, “Ptolemaic Environmentalism,” pp. 5-6 of the manuscript version. This will be a chapter in a forthcoming book, Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. George Wuerthner and Eileen Crist, eds. (Foundation for Deep Ecology and Island Press, 2014).

14. Eileen Crist, “Ptolemaic Environmentalism,” p. 9. This will be a chapter in a forthcoming book, Keeping the Wild: Against the Domestication of Earth. George Wuerthner and Eileen Crist, eds.

(Foundation for Deep Ecology and Island Press, 2014).

15. Ibid.

The First Fifty Years of Biology at Luther College Note: This essay is a truncated version of the Sherman Hoslett Lecture delivered October 6, 2012 during homecoming, the forty-first annual lecture in this series sponsored by the Luther College Biology Department. To see Wendy Stevens on YouTube presenting this lecture, which includes material on the second fifty years of biology at Luther, Google “100 Years of Biology at Luther College.”

I

have always been intrigued by the concept of “sense of place,” both from an historical perspective and also from a human evolution basis. When I was asked to give the Hoslett Memorial Lecture for Homecoming, 2012, investigating the history of Luther’s biology department had great appeal to me. I had participated in this history for forty-six years, first as an undergraduate and then as a member of the biology department faculty until my retirement in 2013. In addition, the year 2012 marked the centennial of biology in the curriculum at Luther College. The resulting “treasure hunt for material” was immensely enjoyable and satisfying to me.

Determining the actual beginning of biology at Luther College is not as easy as one might be led to believe.

Andrew A. Veblen was the first to teach a biological science at Luther College. He was not hired to teach biology, however. Veblen was hired in 1877 to teach English, Latin and Penmanship, but two years later, in 1879, he added physiology to the curriculum. He proposed to the entire faculty at the time, all eight of them, that the first piece of lab equipment, a microscope, be purchased in April 1880. [Incidentally, Veblen was a brother of Thorstein Veblen, author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899).] When Veblen left the next year, physiology was replaced by zoology until the 1890s when it, too, disappeared from the curriculum.

A 1911 Chips article argued that a well-planned and thorough introduction to biology would be of interest and advantage to all students giving a clearer insight into the significance of the developments in this science. Chips also Wendy Stevens graduated from Luther in 1969 with a degree in biology and certification to teach high school biology, but after earning an MS in zoology, she was by invited back to Luther to oversee labs and WENDY M. teach general biology. Later she was made STEVENS an assistant professor of biology, and retired in 2013 after serving for forty-two years. In addition to teaching parasitology, physiology labs, nutrition, histology, human anatomy, and human dissection, Wendy is known for spearheading the establishment of the Russell R. Rulon Endowed Chair in Biology and also for establishing a fund to support the human dissection experience—now named the Wendy Stevens Human Anatomy Lab Endowment.

mentioned that a biology course would “aid in driving out quackery and humbug” attributed to misinformation presented by newspapers.

So the next fall, 1912, Hans Hilleboe was hired to teach eight credits of biology and education courses. This biology course was part of the preparatory department, three years of high school curriculum for students coming to campus without sufficient academic background. However, this was the first time a faculty member was hired to teach biology, and biology entered the curriculum as a permanent course.

It is this date, fall 1912, upon which I’m fixing the beginning of biology at Luther.

The first year the biology laboratory budget was $2.00, but this was increased to $505 the second year to purchase needed equipment and supplies. For perspective, tuition, furnished room, electricity and use of the library plus gymnasium was $62.50 for the year for a preparatory student, $42.50 for a college student. Meals were not included in these fees, but the Boarding Club, managed by students, provided “good, wholesome food” for a cost of $2.53 per week.

By 1916, biology was offered as a college course on a par with the other two sciences, chemistry and physics. Students now paid a lab fee of $5.00 per semester to take biology.

What type of lab work was done back in 1916? Several laboratory hours were spent studying, identifying, and drawing various stuffed animals from the museum collection. Students also did angleworm dissections and drew plates of the various organs. They also studied living angleworms as to their habits and adaptation to environments. And the fern was dissected and drawn.

Yes, Luther did have a museum. In 1877 President Larsen received a collection of 600 birds’ eggs to form the nucleus of a museum. More specimens arrived and in 1890, $50 was allocated to provide display cases. By 1912 the museum was housed in the old “Chicken Coop,” a two-story building northwest of Old Main. It was originally a barn, then remodeled as student housing, and finally thoroughly renovated in the summer of 1922. It contained the museum proper: the pioneer collection, Indian artifacts and the natural history collections.

Also by 1922 the biology offerings had increased from one course to four: elementary zoology (intensive study of the frog), embryology (chick and pig embryos), invertebrate zoology (angleworms), and vertebrate zoology.

In 1927, a new biology faculty member, William L. Strunk, was hired. That first fall Strunk enlarged and renovated Spring 2014/Agora

13

LUTHER COLLEGE ARCHIVES

LUTHER PIONEER, 1935

the biology lab that was located in the basement of Old Main. are depicted with the male Additional lighting was added and one side of the room had reproductive system (both recitation chairs, charts and blackboard space for lectures. external and internal) reThe center of the room contained glass cases for specimens, maining a mystery. from the Natural History Museum. The other side was the Student research was “true laboratory itself ” equipped with microscopes, slides and prominent on campus durmodels, valuing over $4,200. ing the 1930s just as it is Strunk also brought new courses into the curriculum today. One student planned including Organic Evolution in 1929. This totally surprised to “scour the territory of me. Offered annually, it was a “critical study of the theory of Winneshiek and Allamaorganic evolution.” The purpose of this class was to give the kee counties in search of student a thorough understanding of the course and cause all the different species of evolution, taking up without bias the arguments for and of native plants including against the theory of evolution. Texts included Organic Evolichens, mosses, ferns and lution by Lull; The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man by mushrooms to be dried, Darwin. mounted and classified for The Evolution course was taught for five years, until in an herbarium.” When this William L. Strunk, ca. 1935.

1933-34 when two courses, Genetics and Eugenics and HuChips article was written, man Heredity replaced it in the catalog. he had already collected 1,000 different species and hoped to During the spring and fall semesters of 1930, Strunk took approach 2,500 species by the end of the summer. a one-year leave of absence to complete his PhD. Taking his Another student did physiological experiments on white place was an alumnus who had just graduated from Luther, rats, counting their corpuscles and hanging weights on them Sherman Hoslett. Sherm was well-liked by the students as to see how strong their muscles were. He also prepared slides noted by the student-drawn caricature of Hoslett in a 1930’s of crow embryos, first collecting the eggs and incubating them Chips. He maintained a flourishing guinea pig colony in the to the proper stage of development and then sectioning the biology lab where the students enjoyed watching the males as embryos with a microtome and mounting them on slides. they defended their territories.

In September of 1932, forty male In February of 1931, Strunk restudents gathered in the biology turned with doctorate in hand. The laboratory in Old Main to organize a students welcomed Doctor Strunk back biology club called the Linne society. with a “festive board set up in the biolThe group was organized to meet once ogy laboratory, prettily decorated with a month to hear lectures by outstanding skeletons of a cat, a chicken and so on. men in the field of biology.

Brigham Young, our favorite guinea The first meeting of the Linne pig, was at one end of the table and ProSociety was a rather colorful start. A fessor Sherman Hoslett, as toastmaster, local surgeon, Dr. Svebakken, spoke sat at the other. It made a delightful on life and customs of the Mexican scene. Included in the evening’s fespeople illustrated by the physician tivities was awarding Brigham Young Early biology laboratory in the basement of the himself dressed in native costume. He a diploma and the D.A.H.—Doctor of second Main building, ca. 1927. brought a pair of fleas also dressed in Animal Husbandry.” native costume preserved in a walnut When Hoslett left to pursue his master’s degree, Strunk shell, a sample of a highly intoxicating beverage made from was still the only biology professor, but more courses were the cactus plant, and 3,000 feet of film that he had taken while added: a total of fourteen biology courses offered annually or in Mexico. Other well-known speakers included Dr. Charles in alternate years plus seminar and special problems. The biolMayo from Rochester, MN, and Dr. Gundersen from La ogy lab in Main was expanded to include a storage room with Crosse, WI, speaking on their medical specialties. a “good collection of alcoholic and other illustrative material, The decade of the 1930s was, of course, during the Great and a considerable collection of charts and lantern slides.”

Depression. Starting in the fall of 1932, biology majors who By 1921 Luther had acquired a human skeleton that can “lacked sufficient funds to complete four years of training be seen in a photo in the 1921 yearbook. Luther also purat Luther College” could attend for only two years during chased a complete life-size human manikin in 1932. Made which time they could take practical course work that would of plaster of Paris mache, it had plaster of Paris organs that prepare them to enter a variety of areas such as medical school, could be removed, including a brain that was “dissectible” conservation fields, or research in different zoological fields. into six parts.

Also in 1932, women were allowed for the first time to Another teaching aid was the Body Scope (copyright take classes on Luther’s campus. Women were not yet allowed 1935). By turning the cardboard discs the viewer gets an into attend Luther College—Luther was still a school exclusively troduction to all body systems including most of the external for men, but they were members of the first class of the Decorah features. However, only the female internal “generative organs” Junior College for Girls. These female students had their own 14

Agora/Spring 2014

LUTHER COLLEGE ARCHIVES

professors and classes, but they were allowed to register for biology at Luther and also use Koren Library.

In the fall of 1933 Sherm Hoslett returned with his master’s degree. Hoslett taught the introductory and general coursework while Strunk was a powerhouse, teaching all of the other biology courses in addition to becoming the Health Director for Physical Education and teaching six courses in that department, setting up a health service on campus, and directing the activities of the college radio department.

Then after spring semester 1939, Strunk disappeared. He was such a popular professor, but even Chips did not mention his leaving. I finally found an article in Luther Alumnus, August 1939, to discover that Strunk had gone to St. Olaf.

What a loss for the biology department! His legacy was huge including sixteen biology majors graduating in 1939 out of eighty-seven graduates.

It was a time of starting over as Sherm Hoslett returned after getting his PhD to become head of the department in 1940.

On May 31, 1942, a bolt of lightning struck the attic of Old Main, and in a matter of hours, the building had burned.

Volunteers assisted faculty and students in removing valuable biological equipment from the basement of Old Main.

The basement of Larsen Hall was designated as a temporary classroom. The large center room where health service is now located was divided in half from east to west with the south room for the biology department and the north half forming two classrooms for the college in general.

It was also wartime and Luther went into an accelerated program, lengthening summer school to twelve weeks and conferring degrees on students who completed three years and two summer sessions. The number of biology majors decreased with only one to three biology majors graduating each year until 1948. It was a difficult time.

By the late 1940s the north-south divider was removed in Larsen Hall and two more laboratories were added. This picture [above right] is of Sherm Hoslett teaching in the north lab of Larsen, 1947-48. There were practically no storage facilities—only a few cabinets and a curtained area containing shelves for several rat cages. Frogs and turtles were kept in wire cages, outdoors in a cold-water area near the river. There was very little office space. More faculty had been added during the 1940s, with two faculty and a teaching assistant often sharing one nine-by-six foot office in the basement of Larsen Hall.

Botany was re-introduced into the curriculum in 1946 when Gene Goellner was hired. There were regular Saturday classes until noon, and in courses such as field biology the catalog advised students that “laboratory work will consist almost wholly of field observations and surveys. It is advisable to leave Saturday afternoons open for this purpose.”

By 1957, there were four members of the biology department: Hoslett; Frederic Giere (physiologist); Louise Ambuel (botanist), the first woman professor in the biology department; and Vernon (Bud) Bahr (teaching assistant). A photo [page 16] of Hoslett and Bahr conferring in the laboratory where upper level biology courses were offered shows skulls that are still in the field museum and skeletons that are still used in the anatomy lab. All biology faculty were Luther

Sherman Hoslett teaching in the north lab of Larsen Hall, ca.

1947-48.

alumni, and they were all still crammed into the so-called “temporary” quarters of Larsen Hall that had been used for fifteen years so far.

However, plans were being made to build a new science hall. By May of 1959, plans neared completion with the east wing of Valders to house chemistry and physics and the west wing to house biology on the first floor and mathematics on the second floor. The concourse would have ramps leading to the second floor. There would be a greenhouse with a sunken pool for aquatic and amphibian life forms, a seventy-seat planetarium with twenty-four foot projection dome, and a lecture hall-auditorium seating 300. The total cost of the new science hall was estimated at $1,322,000 with additional contracts for science equipment.

Although biology faculty had a lot of say in planning the biology wing of Valders and the space was provided, still the money had run short and equipment was scant. For example the faculty research lab had a hood and one lab table. That was it. There was an elevator shaft but no elevator and distilled water from Chemistry was dispensed into a carboy and carted down the ramp to the biology labs.

While Valders was being planned and built, an internal controversy arose in the late 1950s . Sometimes this is referred to as the disagreement over whether or not to teach evolution on campus, but evolution actually played a very small part in this debate that totally changed the existing religion and biology departments.

J. Wilhelm Ylvisaker was president of the college at the time; he was well intentioned but mostly interested in the college’s relationship with the church. Some faculty felt he was vacillating and not acting decisively in leading the college in growth and that he was not supporting his faculty and—especially in issues of very low faculty salaries—that he depended too much on the dean and did not solicit the opinions of others. Ylvisaker also had Parkinson’s disease, which was another factor influencing his presidency.

Orlando W. “Pip” Qualley, the academic dean, was competent and efficient, but he often acted without consulting anybody. Qualley kept appraised of Luther grads and alumni of other church colleges. When a faculty position opened up, Pip would be on the phone inviting his choice to join the faculty without regard to the current professors’ opinions.

Gerhard L. Belgum, head of the religion department, had a strong personality and was an outspoken critic of the Spring 2014/Agora

15

LUTHER PIONEER, 1952

confidence in the administration. However, on February 21, administration. He had extraordinary influence on students 1961, the Board of Regents accepted Belgum’s resignation, in his classes and also felt strongly that the religion (or Bible) and in the spring of 1961 the majority of the religion faculty department needed to nurture the faith of the student, a faith also resigned. based in tradition. He advocated biblical study that would not This put Hoslett and Giere in a very difficult situation. undermine beliefs or create doubts.

Valders Hall of Science was scheduled to open for classes that Robert W. Jenson had been a student of Belgum’s who in that fall of 1961. Valders, the first million-dollar building then pursued his PhD in Germany, where he studied under on campus, was spacious and modern, with labs and offices Karl Barth, a renowned theologian of the twentieth century. with windows—a facility they had been wanting for years Jenson was the polar opposite of Belgum, believing that any and years. How could they walk away attempt to protect students by censorfrom that? So Hoslett and Giere ing ideas or literary works defeated the both signed contracts. Bud Bahr had purpose of Christian education. Jenson just been rehired and found himself was equally charismatic in front of the moving equipment including six classroom. kymographs, eighteen microscopes, When Jenson returned to camone dissecting scope, and the natural pus as tenure-track a member of the history collections to the new buildBible department, heated discussions ing that summer. Louise Ambuel erupted. Some of these centered on was on leave in St. Louis studying evolution. Jenson definitely believed at Washington University. in evolution and Belgum probably Classes started but Hoslett and did, too. But evolution was one of Vernon “Bud” Bahr and Sherman Hoslett, in the Giere had continuing dissatisfaction those topics that might shake a stu- south lab of Larsen Hall, ca. 1952. with the administration and most dent’s faith and therefore Belgum felt likely felt increasingly isolated from the rest of the faculty. evolution should best be left alone and not discussed. Things Then on a windy night, November 2, 1961, the C. K. got worse; Belgum would hold department meetings while Preus Gymnasium caught on fire. According to Chips the fire excluding Jenson and two other religion professors who were started backstage. The back windows were open and a west perceived not to hold the majority’s opinion. wind gusting up to forty miles an hour blew flames through How does biology fit into all of this? Sherm Hoslett, had the building. A student turned in an alarm and the firemen been teaching in the biology department since 1933. Where arrived within moments, but they could not get water due to did he stand on the issue of evolution? In the late 1950s Holack of pressure and the fact that some of the valves were not slett held a weekly seminar in the living room of his house open. The brand new carillon in a tower of the gymnasium was with treats and coffee. Students called the seminar Evolution affected by the heat and its chimes were going crazy. Embers Seminar. They read The Origin of Species and discussed it chapfell to the ground around Valders and were blown far beyond. ter by chapter. When students would ask if evolution concepts Overnight Valders was no longer just a science building. were really correct, Sherm would answer, “What do you think?”

Valders became the campus canteen, the book shop, and the It was pretty clear that he was an evolution biologist. post office. Valders 117 (the current V206) became the site But Hoslett was also a very close friend of Belgum. Both for chapel, Nordic Choir, and Messiah rehearsals. Physical Hoslett and Giere had a common and growing dissatisfaction education classes and theater productions were held in the with the administration concerning many of the same issues basement, and there were recitals in the concourse. espoused by Belgum. One of the leading points of contention Three weeks later, on November 22, 1961, both Sherman in 1960 was whether or not Jenson should receive tenure.

Hoslett and Frederick Giere resigned. They were asked to Belgum had made it clear to the administration that he reconsider but the rift was too large. Louise Ambuel elected wanted Jenson dismissed and unless Jenson was dismissed, he, not to return to campus from her sabbatical leave.

Belgum, would resign. Therefore on January 23, 1961, Belgum And so it was time to start over again. submitted his letter of resignation, and President Ylvisaker accepted it. It should be noted that Jenson was sensitive to what was happening and he also submitted a letter of resignation, but the administration rejected his letter, keeping him Notes on the faculty.

Much of the information in this article has come from the three volumes of published Luther College histories; college catalogs; the school newsThere was one final detail. When Belgum joined the paper, Chips; the college yearbook, Pioneer; the Luther Alumni Magazine; faculty, he requested a letter of pastoral call because he viewed Agora; and interviews with former Luther biology faculty, including his work in the Bible department as a pastoral ministry. Since Fred Giere and Vernon “Bud” Bahr. My thanks to both Rachel Vagts he was “called by the college,” the Board of Regents would (Archives) and Robert Fitton (Director of Projects and Laboratories in also have to accept his resignation. If the Board refused his Biology) for their assistance in obtaining information and photographs resignation, it would vindicate his position and show lack of for this article.

16

Agora/Spring 2014

The 2013-14 Paideia Texts and Issues Lecture Series: Studying the “Other”

Research in Animal Cognition as an Example of Studying the “Other”: What It Can Teach Us about Animals and about Ourselves November 12, 2013

Kristy Gould is a professor in the psychology department where since 2001 she has taught courses including Animal Cognition, Brain and Behavior, and Learning and Behavior.

She regularly collaborates with students in her research and has published extensively on animal cognition and intelligence, focusing particularly on birds in the Corvid family.

She earned her PhD at the University of by Nebraska after graduating from Dakota Wesleyan University.

KRISTY L.

GOULD

K. GOULD, SUBMITTED PHOTO

A

s a biopsychologist studying animal behavior and cognition, when I saw that the Paideia lecture series this academic year focused on the “other,” I knew I had to apply. Indeed, I do study the “other” in the form of non-human animals. In fact, I am the only person in the psychology department that does not study humans. My main area of research involves investigating cognition (thought processes) and intelligence in birds in the Corvid family, which includes crows, jays, nutcrackers and magpies. I also teach a course on animal cognition here at Luther where the students explore perceptions of animal intelligence and what research in animal cognition can tell us not only about animals, but about humans as well.

Many people are interested in what animals are thinking and why they behave the way they do. People also love stories of seemingly clever animals doing things that remind us of human behavior. However, we have to be careful about describing animal behavior in human terms. When we do this, we engage in anthropomorphism, which means we are attributing human characteristics and feelings to non-humans. We do not know if the animal in question is really thinking like us or being driven by the same emotional processes as we would be given the same situation. Anthropomorphic stories of clever animals, however, can often be studied experimentally. And when animal cognition researchers do just that, sometimes the results validate that there is a sophisticated cognitive mind at work in that animal. Other times, however, they discover that while the animal looks like it is thinking in the same way you

Kristy Gould at Dolphin Quest Hawaii, Jan. 2014. or I do, it is in fact behaving in a similar way due to simpler cognitive mechanisms.

On the flip side, many people believe there is a very firm line that can easily be drawn between humans and animals.

They believe that humans are the pinnacle of intelligence and that the gap in cognitive abilities between us and “them” is quite large has been a part of human culture from the beginning. We like to think of ourselves as special and distinct from all other living creatures on the planet. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have tried to understand what makes us so unique, and in doing so they have continued to raise the bar in terms of what cognitive abilities help us draw that firm line, demarcating abilities that we have and animals do not.

However, research continues to show us that while humans are unique in what our cognitive abilities allow us to do, we share many fundamental similarities in cognition with many animals. Five of these similarities—unknown or even denied by many—are as follows: 1) Humans use tools; chimpanzees and capuchin monkeys use a stone and anvil to crack open nuts. Chimpanzees use long grasses and sticks to probe for termites and ants. Woodpecker finches and New Caledonian crows use cactus needles or sticks to pry grubs out of tree bark. Dolphins break off sponges and attach them to their rostrum to protect themselves while foraging for fish that normally sting.

Spring 2014/Agora

17

18

Agora/Spring 2014

Tools and a basic self-awareness In my laboratory here at Luther College we have been investigating two of the examples of shared cognition that I discussed above in birds of the Corvid family. What we have found adds to our understanding of the cognitive abilities of these birds and helps us better understand their general level of intelligence. It also demonstrates a basic shared level of cognition between birds and humans.

Tools New Caledonian crows are the only Corvids to show sophisticated tool use and modification of tools in their natural habitats. However, other birds in this family show an understanding of how to use objects as tools and even make tools in laboratory settings. One such bird is the blue jay, a species of bird found here in Decorah. Jones and Kamil (1973) found a hand-raised blue jay in their laboratory that was tearing off strips of newspaper from the bottom of its cage and using the strips as tools to rake in food pellets Figure 3. Mealworms and felt cloth as on a ledge outside its presented to blue jays, second task. cage. It had figured out how to do this on its own and other birds in the laboratory also started engaging in the behavior as well, most likely through observational learning. Since then, no one has investigated this ability further in blue jays.

We tested five blue jays in a simple two-choice task, where they were given two potential objects that could be

KRISTY GOULD, 2011

KRISTY GOULD, 2011

2) Humans not only use tools, but make and modify tools; chimpanzees modify the grasses and sticks they use to probe for termites and ants to make them more efficient. New Caledonian crows modify sticks in their natural habitat to make them efficient probing tools and in the laboratory, they can bend wire into hooks to gain access to food.

3) Humans have self-awareness, as defined by the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror; chimpanzees, elephants, dolphins, and three species of Corvid birds have “passed” the mirror test. When a mark is placed in an out-of-sight area, these animals touch or inspect the mark when placed in front of a mirror compared to control conditions.

4) Humans can count and perform mathematics; an African gray parrot could add quantities of items together and give correct answers both verbally and by choosing the correct Arabic numeral. Chimpanzees have been taught to use Arabic numerals to give answers about quantity and basic addition.

5) Humans have a complex language used to communicate; while no animal has a language system as complex as ours, there are examples of animals that can be taught to understand human verbal language, such as dogs and dolphins, as well as animal that Figure 2. Mealworms and felt cloth as can “speak” back to presented to blue jays, first task. us verbally (African gray parrots), in gestures (chimpanzees), or by using symbols (bonobos, which are also great apes).

These cognitive abilities are traits that can be acted upon by natural selection. Cognition and behavior are traits that can evolve due to changes in the brain and nervous system of organisms, and these traits confer some kind of fitness benefit upon the individuals within a population who have them. This can include being better than the average member of your population in finding food, mates and/or avoiding predators.

If this cognitive ability allowed you to have more offspring

LUTHER PHOTO BUREAU, 2010

Figure 1. Abigail Seyfer, LC ’10, tests a blue jay.

and they, too, inherited your cognitive abilities, then the trait would be propagated through many generations.

Two species can share a trait, whether it is physical one or a cognitive one, for two reasons. First, they can be closely related, evolutionarily speaking. Therefore, they both inherited the trait from their common ancestor. Primates are our closest ancestors and, therefore, it is often not surprising to people when a chimpanzee or monkey does something clever.

Second, the shared trait is an adaptation to similar ecological pressures that the two species have in common. This is called “convergent evolution” and is the best explanation for understanding why we share general cognitive abilities with many animals including dolphins, elephants, and birds.

Dogs are a different story. Humans have artificially bred them for certain traits, characteristics, and temperaments.

Through this domestication process, we have created an animal that is very in-tune to humans and has certain qualities that allow dogs to not only carry out tasks for humans (such as guarding, herding, and hunting), but to be a faithful companions and friends. Because of this, we have created an animal that is able to understand our language, pick up on our gestures, and read our emotions. Shared cognition with dogs is a by-product of what we have created through the domestication process.

KARL GILBERTSON, 2010

Mirrors Self-awareness is the ability to recognize oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

It is an important first cognitive step in the development of our social identity. Human children develop this ability at around eighteen months to two years of age, as has been shown in experiments using mirrors. Before this age, children Figure 6. A Clark’s nutcracker during a presumably do not mirror-mark test.

KARL GILBERTSON, 2010

recognize a mirrored reflection as their own selves.

However, once they reach this cognitive milestone, if you place a mark on their forehead (that they cannot see) and put them in front of Figure 5. The mirror test; note the mirror a mirror, they will at one end of a cage. make directed actions toward the mark. This includes reaching up to touch it and inspect it. The number of mark-directed behaviors during the experimental mirror condition is compared to the number of similar actions toward that part of the forehead during control conditions, which include marking with no mirror present and no mark with a mirror present.

Other animals have been given this mirror-mark test and have “passed,” meaning they made significantly more markdirected behaviors toward the target area of the body during experimental conditions compared to control conditions.

These include all of the great apes (bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans), elephants (using a very large mirror and their trunk directed toward the mark), dolphins (since they can’t make directed actions toward their body without arms or hands, the measure used was time spent investigating the target part of their body by exposing that part toward the mirror in their tank), and the Eurasian magpie, a member of the Corvid family of birds. Other animals have not “passed”, including the lesser apes and monkeys, parrots, dogs, and two species of crows.

We wanted to see if two species in our laboratory would “pass” the mirror-mark test, so we replicated the research done with the Eurasian magpies (Prior et al. 2008) using two Corvid species, the Clark’s nutcracker and the Western scrub jay. Both are species found in the western parts of North America. We gave six nutcrackers and twelve scrub jays five, twenty-minute sessions in front of a large mirror at one end of a cage to expose them to a reflective surface (Figure 5). Then we tested them in a number of experimental and control conditions. In all cases, a small circular sticker or “dot” was placed on the central neck region of the birds, so that they could not see the dot (Figure 6, Clark’s nutcracker and Figure 7, Western scrub jay). The experimental condition was a red, blue, or yellow dot placed on the neck in the presence of the mirror. The control conditions included either 1) a colored sticker in the presence of a nonreflective piece of gray plastic the same size as the mirror, or 2) a clear sticker (presumably blending in with the feathers, so not perceived) in the presence of the mirror. What we found after a number of trials of each condition Figure 7.Western scrub jay during a mirror-mark test.

Spring 2014/Agora

19

KARL GILBERTSON, 2010

KRISTY GOULD, 2011

used as tools to gain access to out of reach food (Figure 1). The experimenter (Abigail Seyfer, LC ’10) would show the two choices to the bird and then allow them to make a choice.

Figure 4. Mealworms and hooks as The tools included a presented to blue jays, third task. piece of felt cloth or a pipe cleaner hook. In the first task, a mealworm was placed either on or next to a piece of felt cloth on the far end out of reach and the bird could pull the cloth toward it to gain access to the food (Figure 2). In the second task, the mealworm was placed on the end of both, but one cloth was cut in half (Figure 3). Therefore, the cloth cut in half could not be used as a means of getting the worm. In the third task, the mealworm was placed in the crux of the hook or just outside of it. The bird could pull on the end of the hook and use it to rake in the worm (Figure 4). We had two birds that solved the first task, making the correct choice on all trials from day one and day fourteen, respectively. One of the same birds also solved the second and third tasks. The second task was the most difficult, with the bird choosing better than chance after twenty-one days. However, the bird made the correct choice in task three on all trials from day two of the task. These results show that blue jays do have the capacity to understand how tools function and use them to make correct choices about gaining access to food.

The remaining birds were very nervous around the human experimenter and this affected their ability to solve the task.

In fall 2014 as part of my sabbatical, I will be investigating the ability of a new set of new blue jays to use tools that I provide for them while no human is present in the room. I am hoping that by removing the source of their nervousness and allowing them to choose when to use the tool based on their own motivation to eat, I will be able to show that these birds can use tools to gain access to food. I will be looking to see if they modify the tools in any way, and as a follow up, use any birds that show this behavior as models for other birds to see if the other birds can learn through observational learning.

was that half of each of the species (three nutcrackers and six scrub jays) had significantly more mark-directed behaviors (whether beak to dot or claw to dot) during the experimental trials compared to the control trials. This behavior suggests that these birds have a basic self-awareness. Why some species of birds in the Corvid family show these results and others do not is still not understood. However, it shows us that some birds have a level of awareness that is similar to that of other animals that most people would consider to be fairly intelligent, including apes, dolphins and elephants.

References Jones, T. B. and Kamil, A.C. (1973). Tool-making and tool-using in the Northern Blue Jay. Science, 180, 1076-1078.

Prior, H., Schwarz, A. and Gunturkun, O. (2008). Mirror-Induced Behavior in the Magpie (Pica pica): Evidence of self-recognition.

PLoS Biology, 6, 1642-1650.

DESGN BY MICHAEL BARTELS

Conclusions The field of animal cognition is an exciting and dynamic field encompassing both psychological and biological approaches.

The more we investigate the cognitive capacity of animals, the more we become aware that many are smarter than we credit them for being. This helps us to not only understand them, allowing us to be better informed in our relationships and interactions with them, but it also helps us understand

ourselves. It is true that no other animal can build skyscrapers, write poetry, or design computers. We are unique in these abilities among the living things on this planet. However, there are animals out there that share a smaller slice of that cognitive â&#x20AC;&#x153;stuff â&#x20AC;? that allows us to be so special in our cognitive abilities. While their abilities are limited compared to ours, understanding why we share these basic similarities, either due to evolutionary relationship or convergent evolution, helps us understand the evolution of cognitive traits and provides evidence that our furry and feathered friends may be thinking and behaving in ways that are similar to our own thoughts and behaviors.

20

Agora/Spring 2014

Other from an Other Other: Science and Fiction in Human-Alien Encounters February 18, 2014 I. Constellations ne of the most eagerly anticipated science fiction films of 2013, and one of the top ten box office successes of the year, was Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. While Gravity didn’t feature aliens, it did attract an interesting range of attention from people deeply invested in the convergence of science and fiction. First up is Dr. Kevin Grazier. He’s a rocket scientist with a PhD from UCLA and fifteen years’ experience working in NASA’s Jet-Propulsion Lab on the Cassini/Huygens Mission to Saturn and Titan. When the National Academy of Sciences launched “The Science and Entertainment Exchange” program, Grazier joined. The Exchange was initiated to “connect entertainment industry professionals with top scientists and engineers to create a synergy between accurate science and engaging storylines in both film and TV programming.”1 Grazier has brought his love of science fiction and his science expertise together

O

by

ERIC J. BAACK

by

ANDREW C. HAGEMAN

Eric Baack is an associate professor of biology who came to Luther in 2007. He began to study biology after earning a BA at Carleton in philosophy and an MA at Lewis and Clark in education. His PhD in population biology is from the University of California, Davis. He investigates the evolution of crop plants and the origin of new plant species. His research projects include examining the crop genes in a wild environment, attempting to redomesticate the sunflower from the wild, and examining diseases carried by deer ticks.

Andy Hageman came to Luther as an ACM-Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011, and is now an assistant professor in the English department. After six post-college years working in Shanghai, Andy entered graduate study and earned his PhD at the University of California, Davis. His research frequently focuses on techno-culture and machines and ecological narratives and images in writing and film. He has published essays on a range of topics from David Lynch and Chinese cinema to American science fiction and the philosophy of Slavoj Zizek. His courses include EcoMedia, Literature and Ecology, and The American Novel.

to advise writers, directors, and producers developing television series such as Battlestar Galactica, Defiance, and the 2013 film, Gravity.

While Grazier helps shape science fiction, two other scientists provide critical readings and analyses of it. In particular, these two scientists focus on the representations of science and of scientists in science fiction. At the vanguard of the field is Dr. Sidney Perkowitz, Emeritus Professor of Physics at Emory University, who has published numerous books and essays on the subject.2 The third scientist involved is Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium, research assistant in the astrophysics department of the American Museum of Natural History, and increasingly a public intellectual of the sciences. Both Perkowitz and DeGrasse Tyson tweeted about Gravity. Perkowitz offered even-mannered commentary in search of patterns and connections that could link the film to other science fiction narratives, but Degrasse Tyson used Twitter to berate the filmmakers for scientific inaccuracies as well as the filmgoing public for desiring this kind of science fiction. Amongst Degrasse Tyson’s science burns were the quips, “The film #Gravity should be renamed ‘Angular Momentum,’” and “Mysteries of #Gravity: Why we enjoy a SciFi film set in make-believe space more than we enjoy actual people set in real space.”3 When an astrophysicist’s tweets about science fiction film grab trendlines, that’s something to notice and inquire about.

What we extrapolate from this constellation of scientists is that popular science fiction is a site where people believe there are significant stakes. Over the past several months we’ve explored the convergence of science and fiction—of a scholar of film and literature, and a biologist—in our conversations.

Our talk tonight is the result of that exploration.

To transition into our film analyses, we start with a brief visit to Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic, Alien. [A film clip showed science officer, Ash, an android played by Ian Holm, talking with Warrant Officer Ripley, played by Sigourney Weaver. In the scene, Ripley is asking what Ash has found out through his preliminary study of the alien parasite they unwittingly brought on board their ship. Ash provides a curt, technical answer, which he “translates” for Ripley with even less patience and only after her insistent prompting.] It is clear from this clip that scientists should be worried about their portrayal in popular culture. The scientist is a classic figure in human-alien encounters, occupying a third position, neither fully human nor fully alien. The film Alien underlines this point by making Ash an android. But in addition to his intelligent-machine status, we see the scientist as an other other who is capable of exploring and analyzing the alien other and then translating that to the fully human others in the story. What does Spring 2014/Agora

21

it mean? It is this depiction of the scientist as other other, in the third position in human-alien encounters that we’re focusing on tonight.

The scientist is a classic figure in human-alien encounters, occupying a third position, neither fully human nor fully alien.

In the rest of our talk, we will each present analysis of a film that features scientists as part of the human-alien encounters that drive the narratives. Andy will talk about The Day the Earth Stood Still. Eric will talk about Dark City. And then we will conclude the talk together by reflecting on what we have produced and might yet produce by making this a collaborative project.

The Days the Earth Stood Still [Andy] From the many films we considered, we chose The Day the Earth Stood Still for four key reasons. First and foremost, it is one of the most well-known and oft-cited science fiction films of alien-human encounters. Second, the film’s explicit message is a call for human beings to see themselves differently, through the eyes of an alien other. Third, the film contains an intriguing portrait of a scientist, Dr. Barnhardt, and of a global science community. Fourth, in 2008 a remake of the 1951 original was released. As critical film viewers, we can analyze a remake in terms of how it modifies the thematic concerns of the original. These changes tell us something about the anxieties, ambiguities, and desires of a past era. And, in revealing something about the past, an original and a remake also make more visible the anxieties, ambiguities, and desires that constitute our present.

I begin with a brief synopsis of the 1951 film. Flying saucers land in national capitals worldwide. A human-looking alien, Klaatu, emerges from the UFO in Washington D.C. accompanied by his robot muscle, Gort, and is immediately shot by an American soldier. After a miraculous (or is it scientifically-advanced?) recovery, Klaatu informs the President’s secretary that he speaks for a federation of alien species. He was sent to Earth to tell human beings that the aliens noticed that we now have primitive atomic weapons and space travel technologies and that we must disarm. This is in the name of peaceful coexistence of all species in the universe. The President’s secretary acknowledges the request, but he claims that Cold War politics prevent the U.S. from communicating with the Soviet Union and nations loyal to it.

In the face of an impotent political structure, Klaatu escapes from the military hospital and moves into a lodging house, where he gets to know a nice war-widow and her son, Bobby.

Bobby helps Klaatu contact the famous American physicist, Dr. Barnhardt, who organizes a meeting of the global science community to hear and act upon Klaatu’s message. At Barnhardt’s suggestion, Klaatu gives a demonstration of his alien people’s power by making every non-human thing on earth stand still. The film finishes with Klaatu explaining to 22

Agora/Spring 2014

the scientists and other scholars that his own species created robots such as Gort to police themselves against future atomic aggression, and now it is time for the people of Earth to decide whether to live in peace with themselves and alien others or to die at the hands of the aliens’ robots.

Now that we’ve got the basic story in mind, let’s turn to some elements of Klaatu’s ultimatum. It makes sense that in 1951 Americans had high anxieties about the development and proliferation of atomic weaponry, especially within a global social structure divided between capitalist and socialist political economies. The film addresses this techno-cultural concern by introducing the alien as a third position, outside the Cold War binary. While the US and USSR squabble about who holds the correct view within a choice of two options, in zips Klaatu with a perspective that doesn’t care about human beings or political economy. Through his external eyes, people are led to see atomic warfare as a catastrophe waiting to happen. Interestingly, Klaatu claims that it is the combination of atomic energy and space travel that forced him to give us the aliens’ ultimatum. Recall that this film is six years before Sputnik, so space flight in the film operated as a force outside of the binary Cold War ideology—a force of alternatives. With Sputnik, human space travel would be re-contained within the Cold War binary.

In the 2008 remake, the united aliens are concerned not with atomic war; now they are stewards of life in the universe.

They have planted secret agents on Earth to assess whether humans are capable of becoming ecological beings. In a brilliant cinematic stroke, the head sleeper agent informs Klaatu in Mandarin Chinese over burgers at a McDonalds, “The tragedy is, they know what’s going to become of them. They sense it, but they can’t seem to do anything about it.” This sentiment that we know, principally via science, that there are climate, water, and species extinction concerns, and yet we seem unable to change is a familiar and a pressing one—a sentiment that occurs where science and fiction converge. At the close of this meeting, Klaatu agrees to unleash Gort to wipe all human life from the planet so that the aliens can restart the ecosystem.

Just as the original Day disrupted a Cold War binary with a third, alien position, so, too, does the 2008 Day try to wiggle out of current binary impasses such as the Global Climate Change debate. That said, the ultimatum to disarm and deactivate atomic weaponry is far easier to imagine as a possible action than the demand to become ecologically sustainable.

What would that mean? How would you make it happen?

To explore this difference further, let’s turn to the scientists.

In the original film, the human boy, Bobby, tells Klaatu about Dr. Barnhardt, one of the smartest scientists on Earth who lives nearby in D.C. They try to visit Barnhardt, but when he’s not at home, Klaatu sneaks into his office to rework equations that will make Barnhardt want to meet with him (Figure 1).

[Here we played a clip of the alien, Klaatu, visiting Dr. Barnhardt in his home office, after his reworking of the equations has indeed piqued Barnhardt’s curiosity. Together they discuss humanity, science, and politics as they intersect in the crucial ultimatum Klaatu has come to deliver. Barnhardt agrees to disseminate the ultimatum via the global science

COPYRIGHT TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP..

Figure 1: Dr. Barnhardt (Sam Jaffe) and Klaatu (Michael Rennie) in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

community, adding that success will also require bringing in the best thinkers of all fields.]

Now we see again a scientist occupying a sort of third position between Klaatu and humanity at large. Barnhardt recognizes Klaatu’s intellectual superiority and his alien status through his mad math skills—a channel of empiricism and reason. Yet, when they discuss Klaatu’s ultimatum, Barnhardt says that scientists are too often ignored or misunderstood.

To convince people to accept the scientists’ call to change, Klaatu needs to provide a tangible rather than intellectual demonstration of power. Barnhardt mediates between aliens and humans as well as between capitalist and socialist humans.

In the meantime, Barnhardt moves swiftly into action on behalf of all human beings, coordinating a meeting of global scientists, and as a kind of second-thought, thinkers from a range of fields, to be held at Klaatu’s ship after the standstill demonstration. The intellectual community, especially as brought together through its scientist members, stands in the film for the last stronghold of universal human collectivity. World War II and the Cold War had divided humanity into two collectives each defined by war against an enemy other. But in the film, the arrival of an alien other, the other other, disrupts the Cold War antagonism. Klaatu insists his message is for all human beings—not for individuals. The scientists prove to be the people most capable of creating a way forward for the good of a universal collective humanity.

Interestingly, Barnhardt casts the positive role of scientists not as reason against emotion, but as curiosity—that’s what makes good science. What is more, Barnhardt is a facilitator rather than a leader—one scientist amongst the society of scientists and other intellectuals who operate cooperatively toward a universal objective.

In the remake, by contrast Barnhardt lives in rural seclusion—an image of the scientist as lone genius. Unlike in the original, this time Klaatu does not deliver an ultimatum. The end of humanity was already enunciated, with a tang of special sauce, at Macdonald’s.

[Here we played the clip that “remakes” the earlier scene.

In the 2008 version, Klaatu and Dr. Barnhardt are joined by Helen, Barnhardt’s daughter who is also a scientist. The conversation between Klaatu and Dr. Barnhardt focuses on the

human capacity to change course, though only when we’re absolutely at the precipice of total catastrophe. The conversation is disrupted when they go outside and see three U.S.A. military helicopters approaching, strangely coded to look like UFOs flying in formation—as if Big Government is the real alien intruder. Helen and Klaatu need to leave but just before they go, Dr. Barnhardt whispers to her, “Change his mind.

Not with reason, but with yourself.”]

Here we see Barnhardt pleading with the alien that humanity will change once we really, really reach the absolute precipice. Barnhardt sees that Klaatu remains un-persuaded so he tells Helen, his daughter and also a scientist, to persuade him, but not with reason. Helen’s demonstration comes when she sacrifices herself for her stepson. What appears to Klaatu an act of irrational emotion on the part of a scientist, of course a female one, convinces him that human beings can become ecological. He calls off Gort, and the film ends with a lot of human and non-human life destroyed but with implications of a bright green future to come.

As such, the remake turns from the alien convincing the scientist through reason to the scientist convincing no one through reason. We see a turn from a global science cooperative to the nuclear family as the site for imagining social change, from a newly imagined human collective to the monadic individual. All of these turns feel comfortable, recognizable, but essentially problematic. The alien appeared and the Earth stood still. Everything was disrupted. But this time he changed and we didn’t have to, not really. Dr. Barnhardt’s two contributions to the 2008 remake are, first, to give an absurdly monocausotaxophilic cast to science as he proclaims we are close to a solution—a single fix to becoming ecological, and, second, to bracket away science in favor of un-reason. This shift in content from atomic war to ecology reflects our changing social concerns, but it also reflects a resistance to imagining new collectivities even when aliens or ecological threats appear that touch us all.

As a last note, the remake was released in 2008, the same year that credit froze, the year Earth’s economy stood still, and George W. Bush went on television to say, “The market is not functioning properly.”4 Did the economic crisis not resemble an alien disturbance of our everyday social structures? It is worth considering what the human response in the remake reflects back to us about how and why we responded as we did to the day the economy stood still. In place of the 1951 ultimatum that demanded sharp, distinct change, the 2008 version vehemently promises “we can change”—a mantra that Helen and her father repeat over and over again, yet nothing in the film suggests that people can actually bring about change and that it might require re-imagining social relationships to do so.

Dark City [Eric] Andy has painted two views of the role of science for us—and scientists—in society. I want to shift the focus inwards and explore what science fiction could say about the nature of scientists, particularly about my identity as a biologist. I will explore this in Dark City, a film directed by Alex Proyas and released in 1998.

Spring 2014/Agora

23

24

Agora/Spring 2014

Figure 2: Dr. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) in Dark City.

[Here we viewed another clip that showed Dr. Schreber explaining that the aliens had the technology to manipulate human memories, but they required an artist to make use of the technology. We see him mixing drops of liquid containing memories as if he were mixing paint, and injecting himself in the forehead with a syringe as a crowd of the Strangers looks on.]

We are left uncertain about Dr. Schreber’s participation with the Strangers’ research. Was he coerced? He does not say so—and as he describes his role, his face registers pride rather than regret. The aliens need him—especially his understanding of humans—to do the research, and he alone can do it. His slight smile as he works at the microscope suggests that he takes pleasure in the experiments he is doing. His pleasure makes sense. Think of the crudeness of his experiments that he can do on his own, working with rats in a maze, compared to what he can do when working with the Strangers. Their technology makes so much possible. Imagine if psychologists were able to manipulate memories. Individuals could have their history repeatedly altered, or their situations altered.

This would be a dream for a scientist who wishes to tease out the effect of experience on identity. With the Strangers’ technology, we could control for all of the factors of differing experiences. We would no longer need to compare identical twins raised apart in an effort to tease out the roles of nature and nurture. Dr. Schreber can take the same genotype, the same brain—and rewrite the memories to see how they affect behavior. Or he could put the same memories into two different individuals. Rather than waiting a lifetime to see the outcome, he can begin a new experiment every night.

Imagine the satisfaction of being able to ask fundamental questions about human identity, to have experiments that can be repeated, and to have data that are reliable.

There is the small question of who will hear his conclusions, for Dr. Schreber has no human colleagues. However, the Strangers are an intent audience whose very survival as a species depends on his work. The Strangers helpfully supply the laboratory and the skilled assistants—no need for Dr. Schreber to spend time writing grant proposals to fund the work. They also supply a captive population to work upon, the population of an entire city. Dr. Schreber has been offered the perfect opportunity for his work as a scientist—why shouldn’t he smile?

So, perhaps he was not coerced. Perhaps he even volunteered. We sense that this might have been possible—his erasure of his non-scientific memories occurs at his own hands.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FIL M CORP.

In Dark City, we begin with John Murdock (Rufus Sewel) waking up in a bathtub. Above his head, a light is swinging as if someone had just bumped into it—but no one is present. A woman’s dead body lies on a bloody floor. John has no memory of how any of this came to be. Soon he is fleeing from “the Strangers”—pale alien beings—who pursue him across a dark urban environment. In this city, the sun never rises, no plants grow, no birds sing. John’s memories are addled—things he remembers are wrong. He is seized by the idea of returning to his childhood home by the ocean.

The mysterious doctor Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) is trying to contact John. In this strange city, nearly everyone falls asleep at midnight. When they do, Dr. Schreber scurries about the city in the company of the Strangers, injecting sleeping victims in the forehead (Figure 2). He has been working for these aliens, conducting the most extraordinary experiment that a psychologist could ever imagine. He replaces people’s memories, and then observes how they behave. One day a man might think that he is married. After a visit from Dr. Schreber and an injection of new memories, he might mourn a wife who died. After yet another visit from the doctor, he might reflect on his life as a bachelor. Our doctor’s name, Schreber, comes from a famous asylum patient who believed that his mind had been invaded, but here it is Schreber who is doing the invading. He is working for the Strangers, using technologies that they developed, conducting experiments on their behalf. Despite this, he seems to be trying to help John Murdock escape from the Strangers. What is he up to?

In this film, Schreber occupies a strange place, similar to that of Ash (Ian Holm) in Ridley Scott’s 1979 film Alien. He is not an alien, but he works with them. He is a human, but with knowledge and power that no other human possesses.

And he is a strange individual. I want to show a couple of clips that convey these things. In the first clip, Dr. Schreber meets John Murdock’s estranged wife, Anna Murdoch (she is called Emma Murdoch up until a final sequence when she turns out to be Anna Murdoch). Dr. Schreber has asked her to speak with him in the hopes that she can help him find her husband.

[Her we played a clip in which Emma / Anna Murdoch, played by Jennifer Connelly, enters Dr. Schreber’s office, where she sees him collecting data as rats navigate a maze. Dr. Schreber, pays more attention to the rats than to the beautiful and distressed woman.]

We pity Dr. Schreber. He’s been saddled with the name of a lunatic and given a limp. His speech breaks the rhythms of English as if he’s struggling to translate his thoughts into a language that mere humans can understand. Confronted by a beautiful woman, he looks away to record data from his experiments on rats. Do we trust him? While he is not as alien as the Strangers, he is clearly “other.”

Later in the movie, he finally meets up with John Murdock.

After a friendly greeting, Schreber aims a gun with one hand and with the other attempts to inject John with a syringe full of new memories. A police detective prevents this, and forces Schreber to join the search for John’s childhood home by the ocean. As they seek this place—it cannot be found, for it is a memory that Schreber fabricated for Murdock—Dr. Schreber explains what he has been doing.

Is it possible to carry out basic science and obey Kant’s categorical imperative, to always treat others as ends, never as means?

We ask our students to cross the barriers that keep us from disgust, and we ask them to do this from the very beginning.

We—we biologists, that is—don’t apologize for crossing these barriers; instead, we embrace the otherness that barrier crossing brings. Our comfort with discussing Lyme disease and the toxicity of seminal fluids over dinner is a mark of pride.

Our willingness to confront disease, death, and the messy innards of living things is the source of our knowledge. When students flinch, we ask them to reason about their discomfort: the preserved crayfish is dead, how can it hurt you? Why be uneasy about it? The owl vomit has been sterilized, so go ahead and touch it. The message is that a biologist—even a first year biology student—crosses these barriers.

I’m not suggesting that the barriers that we ask Luther students to cross are comparable to the many ethical lines that Dr. Schreber crosses. Dr. Schreber is a caricature—but his features have merely been exaggerated, not wholly invented.

Scientists do cross boundaries that make others uneasy, and they do make use of others in search of data: it is a rare study in psychology, biology, or even education that will directly help those participating. Is it possible to carry out basic science and obey Kant’s categorical imperative, to always treat others as ends, never as means?

I was thinking about the first lab in Bio 151, and the moment when we ask the students to preserve their samples in alcohol. I don’t mark the moment when students kill their

Figure 3: Klaatu in Dr. Barnhardt’s office, The Day the Earth Stood Still. caddisflies as their entry into the scientific worldview, when they begin to become other. There’s no discussion of Kant as we hurry to complete the lab before the next one begins.

At the end of Dark City, Dr. Schreber is revealed to be a hero of sorts. He does not defeat the Strangers—but he provides the insight that allows John Murdock to do so. The same ability to manipulate memory that he has used on behalf of the Strangers, Schreber now uses to break their control. In the end, he injects John Murdock with a new set of memories that reveal how he can free humans from the Strangers. His powers and knowledge, however darkly obtained, prove to be essential.

Like Dr. Schreber, I’m an experimentalist: I want to test hypotheses by manipulating life. To do this requires crossing some boundaries—some of my otherness is essential to what I do. But I’m not sure that the way I’ve asked students to cross boundaries is essential. My encounter with Andy, and our encounter with aliens, has led me to ask my students about their emerging identities as scientists, and has led me to wonder whether I ought to pause at some of the boundaries.

Conclusion Syntheses Andy: I am calling my synthesis “Freud slips in and out.”

In our discussions, Eric and I talked about the fact that Dr. Schreber refers to a real-life German judge who suffered severe psychological illness. Sigmund Freud read Daniel Schreber’s Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (1903) and described a new diagnostic notion based on the case—“paranoid dementia.”

As a result, Schreber played a significant role in the early development of psychoanalysis—a field in which science and fiction converge as a study of the seemingly alien forces of the Unconscious within us. Part of doctoral training in twentieth-century literature and film studies is gaining an extensive knowledge of Freud’s work and using it as a text analysis tool. Naturally, I started thinking about our films through Freud early in this project. Eric reminded me that it is a pretty select population of filmgoers who would catch the Schreber reference, much less be able to work with it. It was only after Eric’s contribution to our dialogue that something I had previously overlooked in the mise-en-scène—the details of the scene—in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still caught my attention (Figure 3).

Spring 2014/Agora

25

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX FILM CORP.ORATION

He clearly regrets losing this aspect of himself—but does he regret his work with the Strangers?

What do we feel about this? Revulsion—at least in part. Schreber is alien. What does his alien nature mean for my identity as a scientist? I was staring at the blank screen, thinking about how to begin this talk last week when one of my advisees walked in to chat about her courses. Every time I mentioned a biology course, a look of horror crossed her face.

What was this about?

Biologists have a fascination with what usually provokes disgust. Dinner conversations become animated with discussions of parasites and disease. Usual taboos—snakes, insects, feces, dead things, even dead humans—become the object of study in biology. And we immerse our students in this from the very beginning. In the first week of introductory biology at Luther College, we go to a beautiful stream to pick over the invertebrates living amidst the rocks and sediments and preserve them in alcohol. The following week, we dump them out of their jars and carefully sort them. If you walk down the hallway outside my office, you’ll see the nursing students dissecting cats, or encounter students carrying cups of their warm urine from the bathroom to the lab for analysis. As early as elementary school, we ask students to assemble skeletons from owl pellets—desiccated vomit.

CHRISTIAN MEHLFUHRER, VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

When Klaatu initially breaks into Dr. Barnhardt’s ofscientists such as John von Neumann. Whether this system fice, we see him approach and then pass in front of a framed will continue to work as more nations join the nuclear club portrait hung on the office wall, his head momentarily filling remains to be seen. in the same space as the head in the portrait. And, later in The remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still ends with the the film, when he meets Barnhardt in the scientist’s office, threat of alien destruction removed—at least for now—but Klaatu is filmed in close juxtaposition with the same portrait. no action on the part of the global community to end the The subject of the portrait? Yes, Sigmund Freud. We might ecological crisis. Andy pointed out the film’s failure to envision think of Klaatu as taking a place in the lineage of scientists collective action. It’s an interesting point, and one I think that delivering ego-blows to humanity that Freud himself posited is simultaneously accurate and inaccurate in its pessimism. in his 1916 lecture “Fixation to Traumas—The Unconscious.”

Had I been directing the remake, I would have brought Freud listed the blows as Copernicus: displacing us from Klaatu to the Grand Canyon to meet the biologists at work the center of the universe; Darwin: displacing us from our there to save the California condors. During my January privileged place in creation via our descent from the animal term courses in Arizona, students are able to observe conkingdom; and Freud: whose dors sunning themselves on discovery of the Unconscious sandstone cliffs: in 2014, revealed that we are not we saw seven of them. They even in control of ourselves.5 were some of 200 of these Like Freud, Klaatu delivers a birds left in the wild, up science-driven ego-blow to from just twenty-two in humanity, and the film delves 1987. Each bird is captured into how we respond to such repeatedly every year and traumatic disruptions to our checked for lead poisoning, daily life and sense of self. and treated if necessary: an Without working colextraordinary level of care laboratively on this project A Californian Condor in flight, photographed from the Navajo that might well come out of and having a colleague not Bridge at Marble Canyon, AZ science fiction. This care is simply take it as a matter required because of the lead of course that I would analyze the films via Freud, I might fragments that the condors ingest while foraging on animal not have noticed that portrait and thus the overt if subtle carcasses. An alien observing our activities there might conpresence of Freud in the original Day the Earth Stood Still clude that we humans are crazy and unable to prioritize. We and Dark City. As far as I can tell, Freud has dropped out expend tremendous energy to monitor and treat the condors of the 2008 version—not a real surprise there. Nevertheless, when we could simply eliminate the lead ammunition that there remains exciting potential work to be done reading was poisoning them; but at the moment, we find it easier to these human-alien encounters via Freud. Gort, for example, treat the condors than to deal with the root cause of their ill one-eyed and erect, an obvious phallus, embodies Law as an health. Despite these efforts, several condors die each year other through which we constitute our social relationships. from lead poisoning.

Plus, the original is structured on the dynamic of Klaatu, a In the movies, a scientist’s decisive action can save huhandsome man or manlike alien, entering the lives of a warmanity from annihilation. I suspect that if we manage to save widow who is ready to re-marry and little Bobby who deeply the earth, our efforts will look much like the work to save the desires a replacement for his lost father. condors: tenuous, with at least one step backward for every I decided not to emphasize Freudian analysis for our step forward; scattered; and conflicted. talk, but it’s something I plan to pursue, and maybe a survey of scientists in human-alien science fiction films is just the thing for an English-science double major’s summer research Notes project.

Eric: The original Day the Earth Stood Still came out a few short years before Secretary of Defense McNamara began to invoke the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, that had become a familiar idea during the Cold War, as US strategy.

The threat of nuclear war became understood as unwinnable by either side, and so unfightable. Professor Barnard’s calculation in the first Day the Earth Stood Still proved correct: faced with annihilation, humans would figure out a way to draw back from the brink. In this case, the US and USSR provided the threat of global holocaust without the need for Gort, the robotic alien peacekeeper, but with the aid of game-theorizing 26

Agora/Spring 2014

1. On The Science and Entertainment Exchange and Dr. Grazier’s specific contributions to it, see the program’s official website: <http://www.scienceandentertainmentexchange.org/>.

2. See, for example, Perkowitz’s 2010 book, Hollywood Science: Movies, Science, and the End of the World.

3. To read the panoply of tweets, search #Gravity in Degrasse Tyson’s Twitter account: @neiltyson.

4. See President George W. Bush’s speech transcript of 24 September 2008: <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/business/ economy/24text-bush.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&>.

5. This lecture is published in English in Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, part of the Standard Edition, translated by James Strachey.

“Both Sides Now”: Considering Forgiveness in Religious and Communal Old Order Amish Traditions March 11, 2014

F

orgiveness has always seemed to me an intentional, focused activity that I work through after I’ve been hurt. It helped me to move beyond some of the pain caused when others hurt me and to verbalize my feelings to the person who hurt me. Although working through these difficult emotions takes energy, I usually feel relief through the process. Forgiveness, for anyone, can provide an opportunity to move beyond pain, or to possibly re-build a relationship.

Additionally, there are mental and physical health benefits that come with forgiveness. I found this exploration of Amish practices a fascinating opportunity to think about ways to promote health in people, through forgiveness.

The phrase “both sides now” from the song by Joni Mitchell describes seeing two sides of clouds, or love, or life. Forgiveness can also be seen from two sides. Just as individuals can practice and receive benefits from forgiveness, whole communities can practice and receive benefits from forgiveness. Forgiveness could even be considered a necessary component to bind a community together, because individuals within that community depend on one another to live.

I asked the question, “How does a community develop this spiritual/religious principle at a communal level to such an extent that it becomes embodied and readily practiced by its members in everyday life?” As a nurse, I worked for years with Old Order Amish communities (referred to as Amish from hereon), recognizing and hearing stories of their forgiveness.

I looked to the Amish community during my research to help answer this question.

The Amish live on the outskirts of mainstream US society and view forgiveness as a necessity to their lives (Kraybill, Nolt, & Weaver-Zercher, 2007). With the rest of the nation, I watched the Amish community’s reaction to a local milk deliveryman who entered a one-room Amish schoolhouse in by

ANGELA KUENY

Angela Kueny, Luther ’02, has been a assistant professor in the Nursing department since 2010. She did graduate work at the University of Northern Colorado and earned her PhD in nursing from the University of Iowa in 2011. Her focused teaching areas include Management and Leadership in Nursing, Research for Evidence Based Practice, and Community Centered Care.

Her teaching experiences include both theory-based classroom education and clinical rotations in the community setting.

Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. He killed five children, injured five more, killed himself, and hurt hundreds of family and community members. Within days, Amish community members went to the home of the shooter’s family to console them, offer them forgiveness, and attend his funeral.

The radical embrace of this value by the Amish offers mainstream society an opportunity to witness and learn from their communal traditions of forgiveness.

This paper responds to the Paideia lecture series “Studying the ‘Other’” theme by describing the formal and informal avenues that Amish men and women follow as they teach and practice forgiveness. The information from this presentation was derived from Nena Amundson Distinguished Professorship funded research that I conducted with two research assistants, Ashley Urspringer and Sandra Cardenas. The unique collective approach used by the Amish is striking, and can potentially be used to think about forgiveness in ways we have never thought about it before.

What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness is the act, or process of, forgiving. The act of forgiving starts with a transgression, or someone hurting someone else; there may, or may not be, an apology. After a transgression, an individual moves through a process to make a decision to release the transgressor from their action (Luskin, 2002; Worthington, 2006). When someone desires to release the transgressor, something inside happens that moves the person to a more positive emotional state (Barry, 2011; Worthington, 2005). The movement to release the transgressor relieves the anger towards that individual, the desire for revenge, and can reduce resentment (Lawler-Row et al, 2007). Besides this emotional change on the inside, there is something interpersonal about forgiveness. When the hurt individual releases the transgression, he or she may move to feeling positively again towards the person who hurt him or her (the transgressor).

Reconciliation is the restoration of friendly relations, and this doesn’t necessarily happen (Lawler-Row et al, 2007). Even if reconciliation does not occur, however, the hurt individual is less likely to seek revenge after the process of forgiving (Barry, 2011). The chances of retaliation go down after someone has decided to forgive, and the chance of the hurt person lashing out, hurting someone else (continuing that cycle) goes down (Gassin, Enright, and Knutson, 2013; Paul, 2012; Waldron & Kelley, 2008).

When someone decides to forgive, there will likely be a memory of the transgression, violence, or offense. Forgiveness does not mean that the transgressor’s actions are condoned or approved. Forgiveness is not intended to replace the justice, or Spring 2014/Agora

27

Forgiveness in the Amish Community The Old Order Amish live self-reliant lifestyles separate from the mainstream. Seeking religious freedom during the religious reformation of the 1500s, they formed a tight-knit religious Personal and Community Benefits of Forgiveness community that exists today. They constrain themselves from using technology, driving automobiles, and they live simply Forgiveness fosters individual and community well-being. and as naturally as possible, resisting modernization as much Those individuals who work towards forgiving a transgresas possible. Their faith is of utmost importance to them, and sion may experience a decreased stress response, resulting their spiritual practices are blended throughout their daily in wellness and health benefits. Plentiful research supports lives. Their cultural beliefs revolve around their religious beboth self-reported and measured health benefits from forliefs, and their relationships with each other are necessary for giveness, such as lower blood pressure, lower depression, their survival together (Hostetler, 1993; Nolt, 2003). lower heart rate, lower stress, and even greater longevity Amish Grace by (Baskin & Enright, Donald Kraybill, Ste2004; Doblmeier, ven Nolt, and David 2008; Koenig, 2008; L. Weaver-Zercher Lawler-Row et al., (2007), highlights 2008; Lawler-Row forgiveness in the et al., 2010; TousAmish community, saint et al., 2001; explaining its neTo u s s a i n t e t a l , cessity within this 2008.; Toussaint et community. Amish al, 2010) Psychosospiritual practices are cial factors that are referred to as Gelasinfluenced by unsenheit; Gelassenheit forgiveness include calls Amish members anger, hopelessness, to submit to God’s self-efficacy, fear, will, yielding to one and hostility (Barry, another and avoiding 2010; Koenig, 2008; acts of vengeance and Lawler-Row et al., revenge (Kraybill et 2008; Worthington, An Amish picnic near Hazelton, Iowa, 2005. al., 2007). Forgive2006). ness is an essential Scholars have pillar to Amish spirituality. It is deeply ingrained in Amish also demonstrated the positive effects that forgiveness has life because they believe that it is necessary to forgive each on communities. Kiefer et al. (2010) demonstrated that other in order for God to then forgive them. Kraybill et al. forgiveness training with parents resulted in decreased in(2007) describes how Amish persons learn about forgiveness terpersonal stress and decreased negative parenting styles. through the Lord’s Prayer, community teachings in songs or Robert Enright and a team from the University of Wisconsin books, parents’ demonstration of forgiveness, and their accepdemonstrated in Belfast, Ireland, that after a forgiveness tance of God’s will. Within the Amish church, only men hold intervention within the schools, children experienced less formal positions, preaching about religious values (Hostetler, depression and demonstrated prosocial touching behaviors 1993). In order to gain a deeper understanding about how such as hugging (Gassin et al., 2005). Additionally, commuthe community infuses forgiveness into their everyday lives nities lacking forgiveness may experience violence as a result and some more about women’s and men’s roles in this, Ashley from revenge, and community members may feel unsafe or Urspringer and I decided to focus our ethnographic research vulnerable (Cantacuzino, 2012; Couper, 1998). on this topic.

Something of particular interest to me is the context that surrounds individuals and communities as they decide and move through the process of forgiveness. A study by Kathleen Our Research Process with the Old Order Amish Lawler-Row et al. (2007) involving 270 college students, We collected data over twelve months on a part-time basis. In explained that context did matter in motivating people to order to gain entrée we met with a few different individuals forgive. Students mentioned religion, the philosophical/moral who knew the community within this settlement well; one of teachings of doing good to others, and whether or not someone these individuals contacted the first bishops to see if we would apologizes as some of the motivations for considering forgivebe able to meet. (Amish settlements are regional communiness. Forgiveness is a socially learned behavior (Paul, 2012). ties that typically consist of several districts. “Community” is Seeing forgiveness through an Amish cultural lens can help to a more relational term than “settlement,” although I use the identify some of the cultural contexts that shape forgiveness term “settlement” in its place when defining the bounds of within a community. this particular regional community.) Once we met with those bishops, they referred us to others who would be able to talk P. SCHOLL

legal ramifications, that offenders may be receiving for unlawful violent acts (Luskin, 2002). The “forgetting” is really more about letting go of that hatred after the offense.

28

Agora/Spring 2014

• • • •

How do you learn about forgiveness?

How do your children learn about forgiveness?

Where in the community do people learn about forgiveness?

What is your role in the community related to forgiveness?

Interviews were informal, and tailored to our participants, depending on their community roles. Eleven different observations took place in schools; around the community in shops and other public places; in family homes; and in community gatherings, such as Emotions Anonymous. Seventeen formal and informal interviews were always in the homes of our participants. With the two research assistants mentioned earlier, I coded all of the transcripts from these experiences and texts, and then developed relationships across all of these codes (Lofland et al., 2006).

Participating Community We were able to meet with seventeen community members, shown in Table 1, including bishops, families, and school teachers. Sometimes we spoke with them in pairs, and sometimes we spoke with them one-on-one. This Midwestern settlement identified themselves as Swartzentruber Amish, a more conservative sect within the Old Order Amish (Hostetler & Nolt, 2013). Amish settlements organize themselves into districts, and one district is the number of families who can fit into one home for a church service. Each church district may vary slightly in their respective cultural rules (referred to as the Ordnung) (Hostetler, 1993). There are three full-time bishops that each lead two of the districts and another visiting bishop who comes every few weeks. The average Amish family has between five and seven children though many have upwards of ten or more (from what we saw). Within this settlement there are ten one-room schoolhouses taught

by Amish teachers. One of the schools Ashley Urspringer attended had twenty-one scholars; this is an average size of Amish one-room schoolhouse in this settlement.

Table 1

CAROL M. HIGHSMITH ARCHIVE, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

to us about this topic. Once we were more familiar with the community, we developed relationships with both Amish and non-Amish key informants to help us interpret the stories we were hearing and have rich discussions about forgiveness in this community (Agar, 2008; Patton, 2002).

We mainly used interviews, observations, and community texts (such as newsletters) to understand forgiveness in this community. After getting to know the individuals within the community, we used focused interview questions such as:

Participants Bishops/Ministers Parents (not including bishops) School Teachers Community Members Non-Amish Neighbors

Number 2 5 (Male = 1; Female = 4 1 Full-time, 2 Part-time 3 4

Amish children on the road in Lancaster County, PA, between 1980-2006.

A Deeper Look into Forgiveness in This Amish Community: “A Necessity to Life” We were struck immediately that this community approached forgiveness in a proactive manner. During our first visit with a bishop and his wife, our eyes were opened to their consideration that forgiveness was a necessity to life to this community.

The bishop said, “We need it!” and later his wife said, “The Amish need forgiveness to live the way that we live.” Another woman said, “You have to forgive every day.” And another bishop said, “Well, forgiveness is a must. You have to forgive.

It’s not an option. Otherwise, you can’t let go of stress….”

The community focuses on teaching children about forgiveness as the foundation of having a community that is ready to forgive. Throughout the study, participants consistently responded that forgiveness was a necessity to life. In order to practice forgiveness as an adult, it is of great importance to train children from an early age to forgive.

Values Connected to Forgiveness in this Settlement Many values were described as foundations to forgiveness, such as humility, discipline, cooperation, and the use of the Biblical teaching that participants called the “Golden Rule.”

One interview with a Bishop and his wife exemplifies some of these connections. The mother said, “Well, it [forgiveness] comes with discipline. I think, when you can discipline a child, then they know that they have to give up a little bit of their will in order to obey what you have today. Then, the child doesn’t think that they can do what they want; they have to listen….

This would teach them to let go of some of their willpower to forgive.” Her husband echoed, “Like when a child is just learning to eat, and he is at the table. He is saying, ‘I want this, or I want that,’ and he thinks that he can start eating whenever he wants. If you can start teaching the child at that age that they have to wait to eat with others, and they can eat what everyone is eating, then they will learn that it’s not just up to them. They will learn those important manners….

Forgiveness is part of that. If a child doesn’t know discipline, then they don’t know about forgiving others.

Spring 2014/Agora

29

He continued, “…from an early age, it is important to have the children working on the farm doing chores together.

They really have to learn to work with the other children when they do this…. When a child has those chores every day, it teaches that sense of responsibility that’s important for forgiving.”

When children learn and experience these values, adults within the Amish community hope they will be more likely to forgive as adults. This proactive approach instills values that underlie forgiveness even before hurts, transgressions, or anger occurs.

Forgiveness in Schools The schools are separate from the usual public school system, and Amish school teachers teach the values of their community within their schools (Wittmer, 2006). Schools provide a focused environment for children to learn these values associated with forgiveness. The “Golden Rule” was brought up by almost every single participant. The “Golden Rule” originates from Luke 6:31 and reads, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets” (NRSV). It is foundational in developing forgiveness in these Amish children. When Ashley Urspringer attended a day of Amish schooling, she saw a poster on the wall about The Golden Rule, clearly identifying the school’s focus on it.

Discipline also became a topic of conversation when discussing learning and practicing forgiveness, even in the school setting. Stories shared by siblings in one family described the discipline they received in school included, “…putting their head down on the desk, staying inside while the rest went out for recess, or being made to stand up and apologize in front of the entire class.” Teachers impressed upon us that formal public apologizing was part of the forgiveness process as well.

They stand in front of the whole class to apologize and forgive.

Children’s books used in the classroom setting include specific stories about forgiveness. A popular saying, found in one of the children’s books at school called Lessons From the Clock, read: “Jesus first, Others next, Yourself last.” Parents would talk about their hopes that children would learn to be humble and think of others first. This emphasis from these books, in addition to other places in their lives, shows that the greater Amish community is intentional about teaching this humility. Two of the common school books used in this community include Seeking True Values and Lessons from the Clock. One story from Lessons From the Clock demonstrates the connection between the Golden Rule and forgiveness. The story is about a girl who moved to a new town and started a new school: As I came closer to the school, two girls were playing there a game of hop-scotch… but they began to stare. They whispered and they turned away; I thought I heard my name…. The two girls said, “were sorry, Kay. We know that we were rude.”

“Oh I’ll forgive you” then I said, and asked each girl her name…. I’m glad I was reminded well to keep the Golden Rule. I made a lot of friends that year, and I enjoyed the school.

30

Agora/Spring 2014

Coloring books also include pictures and sayings about forgiveness and respect for others. One coloring book found in a store in this settlement had a page that read, “Misfortune happens to everybody. If we accept it in the right way, we will become a better person.” These books provide value-based lessons for the Amish community, specifically including forgiveness.

Local Amish Communities Learn from Larger Amish Community About Forgiveness Forgiveness is encouraged as a necessity across the national Amish community. For the English, or non-Amish, we might call these forgiveness promotions “secular” or “popular.” For the Amish, everything is related to their faith in God, so this is part of the spirituality played out in community settings.

Plain Interests and Family Life are Amish newsletters that include editorials, stories, recommendations, and general communications across the national Amish community. Stories from these newsletters include personal essays about working through anger; grandparents’ advice to younger families to work on forgiveness; children’s poems or stories about apologizing, forgiving, and moving on; essays about parents being good spouses (including forgiving each other); or other funny sayings or quotes about forgiveness. Since they don’t have Facebook or Wikipedia or blogs, these periodicals are their ways of communicating what matters the most and relating their daily experiences as Amish people.

The perspective that forgiveness is practiced daily struck us. The routine practice of forgiveness is exhibited in these newsletters. Example statements found throughout these publications include: • Lord give me this day my daily opinion, and forgive me the one I had yesterday.

• You can forgive your husband a thousand times.

• It takes a village to raise a child, but that doesn’t mean the parents are exempt.

• When feeling anger, take several deep breaths and try staying calm.

• An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

• Children should be taught what NO means before they go to their grandparents.

• “This is a test,” I realized. “Can I forgive?”

• Unresolved hurts from the past complicate matters.

• Keep your forgiving up-to-date.

• Freely forgiving allows us to love freely.

Although it wasn’t clear if other Amish communities practice Emotions Anonymous, this community held regular meetings to maintain their mental health. They created a consistent group, and obtained the needed materials, such as pamphlets and meeting procedural guides. Every Monday evening, members of this settlement attend and share their personal stories that they are working through or feelings that they need to release. The meetings are attended by both women and men, and review twelve steps, and then reflections.

They read pamphlets about different emotional topics at each meeting. Forgiveness was the topic of one of the pamphlets, but they didn’t go through that specific pamphlet when we were there. One couple said, “If the person is well altogether they are more likely to be mentally healthy and ready to forgive. When they are full of junk food, they might not be thinking straight and less likely to forgive or more likely to make mistakes.” Being mentally healthy allows people to be open to forgive, and that takes effort.

Male and Female Roles in Teaching Forgiveness in this Amish Settlement Male Roles: Men were involved in teaching forgiveness as bishops, ministers, and fathers. Only men in the Amish community can become church leaders. In our discussions with the bishops, they emphasized the fact that they used sermons to teach the community about forgiveness. One bishop noted, “I will talk about it a lot in my sermons because it’s part of what everyone has to do everyday.” Another bishop said he speaks about forgiveness in every sermon. He pulled out his heavily worn Bible to show us the book of Matthew. He first pointed to Chapter 18:21-22: Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?”

Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (NRSV) Additionally, he pointed out the Lord’s Prayer within his Bible while speaking to us, specifically the verse that read, “And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matthew 6:12, NRSV). A different bishop focused on the interpersonal aspect of forgiveness when describing how he preaches about it: I try to teach about fairness…. When someone is in a dispute, it’s important for them to think about the other person’s point of view. They have to think that the other person might not have meant to do them harm, or to try to think about where they were coming from. If you can’t forgive and forget, then you will have revenge in your heart. That’s when people hurt people.

Communion services are held twice a year, and community members typically come to see the bishops to work through any forgiving that they are struggling with prior to Communion, in order to cleanse themselves. Bishops also might refer members to professional services outside of the community if members are really struggling.

We were surprised at how much church didn’t come up with participants who weren’t the bishops when we would ask about how people learned about forgiveness. Besides one woman describing a situation of a sister who needed to ask forgiveness from the church for her relationship, others did not bring this up; we may not have spoken to those most troubled and working with the church. There are no Bible lessons dur-

ing school, according to the teachers we spoke with. They use other books to build the values needed for forgiveness, and the formal Bible teachings come from Church and bishops during off-church times.

Men tended to bring up the mental anguish, stress, and the bigger picture of hurting others, and even alcoholism without forgiveness. One of the research assistants, Sandra Cardenas, presented this information as part of her NCUR (National Conference on Undergraduate Research) presentation, so more detail on that analysis was saved for her.

We ran a small analysis of co-occurring codes inside of Atlas.ti (our qualitative software program), and we analyzed how often participants brought up gender specifics (male or female) with discipline. Males were brought up slightly more than females, with about 17% of the codes about discipline being related specifically to men (while 10% of the codes were specifically related to women). Both genders were certainly both involved in discipline, but men were brought up slightly more often with discipline.

Female Roles: Women strongly agreed that forgiveness is a daily necessity, and gave us an idea of how this was managed on the home front and in school. While one bishop was describing how to talk about forgiveness with some of the church members who needed it, his wife said, “Yes, you have to learn it from when you are growing up as a young child.

People learn it when they are young and then they can keep using it when they get older.” Upon entering into the home of one family, a woman and her adult daughter were baking. They knew we were there to talk about forgiveness, and they said, “Well, here! Look at our cookbooks!” Within the cookbooks, we found sayings on the bottom of pages about forgiveness, and entire pages with stories about forgiveness. Although girls sometimes help outside if the family is short of boys, they will learn from their mothers about how to raise a family of their own. The practicality of having forgiveness woven into daily chores seemed a natural fit to teach children its importance.

Women are certainly involved in discipline, and they also thought about discipline as a contribution to forming children who will be open to forgiving. One afternoon, I was speaking to a pair of women. One was the widow of a former bishop in the community and the other his adult daughter (also a substitute teacher) caring for her mother. Although the mother had suffered a stroke, and had a difficult time speaking, she knew we were discussing forgiveness. In the middle of our time together, she said, “I spanked my children,” as clear as day. She was communicating that discipline was an important connection to forgiveness!

All of the women we spoke with were either teachers at one point in their lives, or they were substitute teachers. Some of the women commented on how well some of the school teachers around the community could discipline, almost scaling them a bit as “good” or “not so good” depending on how well they disciplined. An additional way that teachers impress values on children is through an activity called “Teacher Says.”

This involves the teacher writing something on the board that the students copy down. It allows children to practice spirituality while practicing their handwriting! When we were visiting one family, their children had just come home from Spring 2014/Agora

31

school. We asked to see their tablet from that morning, and they had copied “Do unto others as you would like them to do unto you.” Humility, respect, and the Golden Rule come up as values connected with forgiveness, and teachers recognize this and teach it intentionally.

A teacher told us, “If they get it now and learn the values [of forgiveness] now it will help when they are older. When they are older they will bring back memories of what they learn here.” Women, as well as men, are focused on teaching children important underlying values that will build an open sense of forgiveness later in their lives.

Conclusions Popular models by Fred Luskin, Everett Worthington, Michael Barry, or Robert Enright and colleagues focus on psychotherapeutic, psychoeducational, or spiritually insightful interventions related to forgiveness (Barry, 2010; Luskin, 2002; Gassin et al., 2005; Kiefer et al., 2010). The Amish model shows us that men and women are intentionally involved, in complementary ways, with instilling the values that underlie forgiveness on a daily basis. They demonstrate a communitybased, proactive, and holistic approach to prepare Amish members with a forgiving response when a transgression occurs.

The Amish see this as necessary for living in their tight-knit community together and for receiving God’s forgiveness. One bishop had focused on fairness, while school teachers teach children to apologize and forgive on a daily basis.

These community members recognized that values such as humility, or subordinating one’s will to others; discipline; and empathy (seeing the other perspective) are all integral to forgiveness. These values and practices help them to be open to forgiveness when trials arise. Examples from school classrooms, church sermons, Emotions Anonymous, cookbooks, and children’s books thread these values into the Amish lifestyle, and parents knew that this intentionally training helped individuals to be guided by these values in their daily lives. With such instruction, they believed, forgiveness might likely come easier.

It is challenging to maintain these values when we are selfish, when we place ourselves first and foremost, above our communities, or our relationships, or our parents. Michael Barry (2010) says, “One of the biggest…barriers people must overcome is their feeling of moral superiority or selfrighteousness toward the people who caused them harm….

Developing empathy…toward the people who have hurt us is a critical bridge to cross” (130). This proactive approach can instruct us all to revise some of the ways in which parents and communities raise their children and how community members treat each other. Forgiving can be seen not only as part of a religious doctrine that must be followed; it can be everywhere. What we can learn from this Amish model is that forgiveness is linked to other values and can be taught at an early age. This holistic approach of fostering forgiveness can allow individuals to be open to thinking from other perspectives, respecting others, and wanting to live in a community where people need each other.

Nelson Mandela passed away in 2013 at the age of ninetyfive, an icon of justice, peace, and perseverance. He has been 32

Agora/Spring 2014

quoted for saying, “Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace” (Nelson Mandela Foundation, 2014).

Can we move forward towards a place of peace, rather than to a place of violence and war in response to personal, community, or even international struggles? It’s difficult to know where to start, but the Amish model gives an idea that it can be started proactively through humility, discipline, and thinking of others with empathy and respect.

References

Agar, M.H. (2008). The professional stranger: An informal introduction to ethnography (2nd ed.). Bingley, UK: Emeral Group Publishing Limited.

Baskin, T., & Enright, R. (2004). Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling & Development, 82, 79-90.

Barry, M. (2011). The forgiveness project: The startling discovery of how to overcome cancer, find health, and achieve peace. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregal Publications.

Cantacuzino, M. (2012) The forgiveness project. Retrieved from: <http://theforgivenessproject.com>.

Couper, D. (1998). Forgiveness in the community: Views from an Episcopal priest and former chief of police. In R. D. Enright and J. North, Exploring forgiveness (121-130). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.

Doblmeier, M. (2008). The Power of forgiveness [Documentary Film].

Raleigh, NC: Horizon Video Production.

Gassin, E., Enright, R., & Knutson, J. (2005). Bringing peace to the Central City: Forgiveness in Milwaukee. Theory into practice, 44 (4), 319-328.

Hostetler, (1993). Amish society (4th ed.). Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Hostetler, J, & Nolt, S. (2013). The amish. Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press.

Kiefer, R.P., Worthington, E.L., Myers, B.J., Kliewer, W.L., Berry, J.W., Davis, D.E….& Hunter, J.L. (2010). Training parents in forgiving and reconciling. The American Journal of Family Therapy, 38, 32-49.

Koenig, H.G. (2008). Medicine, religion, and health: where science and spirituality meet. West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Foundation Press.

Kraybill, D.B., Nolt, S.M., Weaver-Zercher, D.L. (2007). Amish grace: how forgiveness transcended tragedy. San Francisco, CA: JosseyBass.

Lawler-Row, K., Hyatt-Edwards, L., Wuensch, K, & Karremans, J. (2010). Forgiveness and health: The role of attachment. Personal Relationships, 18, 170-183.

Lawler-Row, K.A., Karremans, J.C., Scott, C., Matityahou, M., & Edwards, L. (2008a). Forgiveness, physiological reactivity and health: The role of anger. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 68(1), 51-58.

Lawler-Row, K., Scott, C., Raines, R., Edlis-Matityahou, M., & Moore, E. (2007). The varieties of forgiveness experience: Working towards a comprehensive definition of forgiveness. Journal of Religion and Health, 46(2), 233-248.

Lofland, J., Snow, D., Anderson, L., & Lofland, L.H. (2006). Analyzing social settings: a guide to qualitative observation and analysis (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Luskin, F. (2002). Forgive for good: A scientifically proven prescription for leading health and happiness. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Nolt, S.M. (2003). A history of the amish: revised and updated. Intercourse, PA: Good Books.

Patton, M.Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Paul, G. (2012). â&#x20AC;&#x153;We must not think evil of this manâ&#x20AC;?: A case study of Amish and English forgiveness. Communication Quarterly, 60(3), 424-444.

Toussaint, L., Overvold-Ronningen, M., Vincent, A., Luedtke, C., Whipple, M., & Schriever, T. (2010). Implications of forgiveness enhancement in patients with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome. Journal of Health Care Chaplaincy, 16:123-139.

Touussaint, L., Williams, D., Musick, M., & Everson, S. (2001). Forgiveness and health: Age differences in a U.S. probability sample.

Journal of Adult Development, 8(4), 249-257.

Toussaint, L., Williams, D., Musick, M., & Everson-Rose, S. (2008).

The association of forgiveness and 12-month prevalence of major depressive episode: Gender differences in a probability sample of U.S. adults. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture, 11(5), 485-500.

Waldron, V., & Kelley, D. (2008). Communicating forgiveness. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Wittmer, J. (2006). The gentle people: an insider view of amish life (3rd ed.). Washington, IN: Black Buggy, Inc.

Worthington, E.L. Jr. (2006). Forgiveness and reconciliation: Theory and application. New York, NY: Routlegde.

Worthington, E.L., Jr. (2005). The power of forgiving. Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press.

Spring 2014/Agora

33

Engaging the Ancient “Other”: Identity and Alterity

by

SEAN D. BURKE

34

Burke joined the Luther faculty in 2007. He is an associate professor of religion and his courses include such titles as Jesus and the Gospels; Lost Scriptures; Vocation, Self, and Service; Sex in the Bible. He is a graduate of Concordia College (New York) and earned a master of divinity degree from Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia and a doctorate in biblical studies from Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA. His book Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts was published by Fortress Press in 2013.

Agora/Spring 2014

few lines later, Cleaver wrote that eunuchs, along with gentiles, “… are outcasts. They are disgusting, ritually unclean, defiled, just as we gay men are…. Of such is the new people of God made” (111).

Reading Cleaver persuaded me that it was worthwhile to learn Sean Burke in Winston-Salem, more about the story of North Carolina, 1997. the Ethiopian eunuch, so I was on the lookout out for what others had written. I came across Nancy Wilson’s book, Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible: she went further than Cleaver in suggesting that eunuchs were the gay men of antiquity. I also found Victoria Kolakowski’s book chapter, “The Concubine and the Eunuch: Queering Up the Breeder’s Bible”: she claimed that eunuchs were the transgendered people of antiquity. I could understand the impulse behind these identifications. It made sense to me that in arguing for full inclusion in contemporary religious communities, lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgendered, and other queer people would seek to find themselves in the religious tradition’s foundational stories. For if we were there in the stories of origins, how could anybody exclude us from full participation in the present?

As I returned to seminary to complete my studies, I continued to think about this story. At that stage, I noted that most of those had written about the eunuch in relation to gender and sexuality were clergy and activists. The topic had not yet become a focus of scholarship. So I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in biblical studies, with a focus on the story of the Ethiopian eunuch. Early on in my program I familiarized myself with the contemporary academic study of gender and sexuality. Intellectual trends in this field of study began to throw a wrench into the kind of identification with this character I had found in the works of Cleaver, Wilson, and Kolakowski. I found persuasive contemporary arguments that gender and sexuality are social constructions—interpretations of natural phenomena to be sure, but not themselves fixed, natural essences. These constructions differ across cultures and through time. They change and have histories, even within a single culture. While sexual orientation and the division of human beings into two exclusive groups—heterosexual and homosexual—might provide the framework for understanding discourses of sexuality in the United States in the twentieth century, it did not provide an adequate framework for under-

SUBMITTED BY SEAN BURKE

T

here are certain moments in your life that seem fairly ordinary at the time, but that you later realize were actually key turning points. One of those moments happened for me in the spring of 1997. I was twenty-four years old and a student at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. Because it was my third year, I was not actually at the school; instead, I was off on my year-long seminary internship. Of all places, Yankee that I was, I had been assigned to a church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The church rented an apartment for me, and I was sitting in my living room on the couch with which the church had furnished the apartment. The apartment had been in the youth room since the 1970s or 1980s.

I spent a lot of time that year thinking about a major problem: reconciling sexuality and a calling to ordained ministry.

Already having an inclination toward academics in general, and the humanities in particular, it is perhaps not surprising that one of the means by which I wrestled with this problem was reading books. On that particular day, I was sitting on the couch reading a book called Know My Name: A Gay Liberation Theology (1995) by Richard Cleaver, published by the Presbyterian-affiliated Westminster John Knox Press. In chapter 4, “What God Has Made Clean,” Cleaver suggested that Christian churches today have something to learn from the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8:26-40 about the full inclusion of lesbians and gay men—those were the two groups he focused on. Cleaver described his own identification with this character, writing “Yes, we feel sorry for the eunuch: as many straight people seem to feel sorry for me, often revealing their sympathy when they ask if I am sorry that I will never have children—as they might ask a eunuch. (Unlike the eunuch, there is nothing to stop me from doing so; but if I ever do, it will not mean that I am no longer gay)” (Cleaver 110). A

April 8, 2014

princes who had grown up in the harems became rulers in their own right, some looked to the eunuchs who had watched over them as children to serve in positions of trust in their royal courts as a counterbalance to the power of the nobility. Court eunuchs could be found in culture after culture in antiquity—Assyrian, Babylonian, Israelite, Judahite, Persian, Roman, and Byzantine, as well as in China. In fact, we know from ancient documents the names of powerful eunuchs who served as royal counselors, treasurers, viceroys, and generals.

Just as the first two groups of eunuchs in the saying attributed to Jesus could be found in the world outside the New Testament, so could the third group. Many in antiquity would also have been familiar with the galli, devotees of the goddess Statue of a gallus (plural: Cybele who as an act of devotion galli); priest of Cybele (aka, castrated themselves. The cult of Magna Mater). Rome, CapCybele had its roots in Anatolia, itoline Museums (late second but by the time of Jesus, it had century AD).. spread throughout the GrecoRoman world. And like court eunuchs, the galli were not hidden away on the margins of society. In the major cities, including Rome itself, they played a central role in the public rituals by which Cybele was honored. It seems that some also traveled in the countryside, playing music and begging for money as acts of devotion to Cybele.

At this point in my research, I could safely conclude that there were some very significant ways in which the Ethiopian eunuch was not just like me. In fact, there is really no socially recognized place in contemporary American culture for eunuchs. They are simply not part of most Americans’ understanding of the world and how it works. Moreover, many, if not most, Americans are unaware that there are still cultures in the world today in which there are socially recognized places for eunuchs.

Now I needed to dig deeper to define the alterity, the Otherness, of the ancient eunuch. This is where things got complicated … and even more interesting. It turns out that the ancients themselves were not quite sure exactly how the identity of eunuchs fits into their categories of identity. In terms of gender, were eunuchs girls? This is how Apuleius identified them … at least sometimes. Were they effeminate males? Thus wrote Dio Chrysostom, Lucian, Martial, Ovid, Statius and …

Apuleius sometimes. Were they half-men? That’s how they were defined by Seneca and Virgil … and sometimes Ovid.

But that still does not exhaust the list. Apuleius—in his third appearance on the list—sometimes described eunuchs as humans in the process of transforming from male to female.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

standing discourses of sexuality among ancient peoples in the Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

For me, ideas and insights drawn from feminist theory, gender studies, masculinity studies, and the history of sexuality coalesced in the interdisciplinary academic field of queer theory. Queer theorists argue that in a given culture, certain discourses produce a hegemonic construction of gender and sexuality that is then naturalized and normalized to the point that people forget that it is actually a contingent construction—and hence neither fixed nor stable. But like the scene in The Wizard of Oz film when the little dog Toto reveals that the wizard is actually an old humbug behind a curtain, there are sites in every naturalized, normalized hegemonic regime of gender and sexuality where the work of construction itself can be seen through the curtain. By highlighting and analyzing these sites, it becomes possible to call a cultural group’s attention to the possibility of constructing gender and sexuality in new ways.

My journey had begun with an initial, naïve identification with the Ethiopian eunuch: he is just like me. Now, however, I wondered what would happen if I used queer theory as a lens through which to analyze anew the eunuch and his story. This became the focus of my dissertation and the book based on it [Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch: Strategies of Ambiguity in Acts, Fortress Press, 2013]. I had to learn everything I could about ancient eunuchs. I had to understand them on their own culture’s terms, allowing my initial, naïve identification to be confronted by the possibility of alterity, difference. I began thinking that perhaps the Ethiopian eunuch is not just like me; perhaps he is quite different.

It turns out words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament provided a good starting point. In Matthew 19:12, Jesus refers to three groups of eunuchs: those who were born eunuchs; those who were made eunuchs by others; and those who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

The ancients knew that some humans who were born with certain male-identified genitalia lacked the ability to procreate, including hermaphrodites and those who lacked functioning testicles. This first category of eunuchs, however, did not form a discrete social group in any ancient culture.

The ancients also knew that the techniques they had developed for castrating male animals, in order to make them more tractable, could also be used on human males. To put it delicately, these techniques all involved rendering the testicles inoperative. At first it seems that these castration techniques were used primarily to punish lawbreakers or to humiliate defeated enemies. Over time, however, certain societies developed other uses for eunuchs. In fact, it turns out that a significant group of ancient eunuchs lived not on the margins of society, but in the very center. The origins of this discrete social group—court eunuchs—are to be found in the practice among certain rulers of employing eunuchs to guard the harems where their wives lived. They needed guards who were strong enough—read manly enough—to fight off intruders, but who could not—read were not manly enough—to impregnate the rulers’ wives (note that the concern was pregnancy, not sexual activity itself ). As the young

Spring 2014/Agora

35

THE LOUVRE VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Aristotle, Lucian (sometimes), Quintus Curtius Rufus, and communities regarding same-sex marriage, the ordination Suetonius identified eunuchs as hybrids of male and female, of gays and lesbians, and the religious blessing of same-sex while Lucian (in his third appearance on the list), Ovid (also relationships. Perhaps these debates should be understood in his third appearance), and Valerius Maximus identified within the larger context of more than a century of challenges them as neither male nor female. Martial, Quintilian, Terence, to the naturalization and normalization of discourses that conand Josephus went even further and defined eunuchs as monstructed one group as superior to another, including men and sters—that is, not human. The same ambiguity could be found women, and that undergirded multiple systems of domination. in relation to other identity categories. In terms of sexuality, It is at this point that I could move to a new, more critical some early Christian kind of identificawriters identified eution with the eunuch. nuchs as paragons of There is similarity in virginity and chasthe position queer tity, while most nonpeople in the United Christian writers States have occupied defined them either in this culture and as derided objects the position the anof sexual penetracient eunuch occution or as terrifying pied in his culture, creatures who could especially in relation sexually penetrate a to gender identities male citizen’s wife and the social orwithout any evidence ders that depended in the form of pregon them. But the nancy. In terms of The Baptism of the Ethiopian Eunuch by the Deacon Philip, Lambert Sustris eunuch’s difference class, were eunuchs (between 1545 and 1550). could also provide a powerful elites? They lens for self-criticism. certainly occupied important positions in royal courts and in The ancient eunuch demonstrates that a more just social orthe cult of Cybele. And yet, in both those settings eunuchs der depends not only on critically analyzing and ultimately were defined as slaves. Just to complicate things even more, reconfiguring identities of gender (and sexuality), but also on some eunuchs began life as children of freeborn parents. In doing the same for identities of class and race. This called for terms of what some scholars see as an ancient discourse of greater attention to the need to improve on the spotty history race, even eunuchs who were native to the land where they of contemporary American queer movements when it comes served were usually defined as foreigners. to class and race.

Eunuchs troubled—destabilized—the very distinctions of gender, sexuality, class, and race upon which ancient identities and social orders depended. The ancient eunuch was an Other It is precisely by attending rigorously to the who embodied ambiguity. This ambiguity, however, turned Other’s alterity that we create space for a more out to be the key to understanding the significance of ancient eunuchs. In his own culture, the eunuch provided one of those critical, more productive kind of identification “Wizard of Oz” sites where the curtain is pulled back on the with the Other. constructedness and contingency of identities and the socials orders that are built upon them. The ancient eunuch was what I call a “queering figure.” Even as a character in a text, a eunuch In the end, this research taught me something about had the potential to destabilize ancient discourses in such a cross-cultural encounter—whether with an ancient Other way as to open up space for the construction of new identities in a text or a contemporary, flesh-and-blood Other. Naïve and social orders that allow even more people to be recognized identification is a useful starting point. We cannot really have as fully human. This provided a new avenue for analyzing the a cross-cultural encounter if we do not first recognize that the story of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts. It turns out that at a key Other is a human being “just like me.” But we must discipline point in a very important story of origins for the churches—a ourselves to take the next step in cross-cultural encounters story about how inclusion in the community came no longer by actively seeking to learn everything we can about how the to be based on Judahite identity—one writer had chosen to Other is different.

What language does the Other speak? How narrate the baptism of a queering figure. Suddenly it could be does the Other’s culture understand the universe and how it argued that the project of queering identity categories and the works?

How is the Other’s society organized, and why?

What social orders that depend on them is not foreign to biblical does the Other believe and value, and why?

It is precisely by literature, but rather it is inscribed in the text itself. attending rigorously to the Other’s alterity that we create space All the things I learned by studying the eunuch and his for a more critical, more productive kind of identification with story enabled me to reconsider my own culture with fresh the Other. That identification, however, will not be based on eyes. I thought anew about debates in society and in religious identity but on position. How is my position in the world 36

Agora/Spring 2014

similar to and different from the Other’s position in the world?

Queer scholarship often places at the center of scholarly study people and subjects that have traditionally been on the margins, in the hope that by doing so, we may be able to develop new ways of looking at the people and subjects that have traditionally been at the center of study. My study of the Ethiopian eunuch and his story has implications for the study of other ancient texts, including other biblical texts about characters that have been more central to the religious tradition, including Jesus and his disciples. I am teaching a course this semester on Jesus and the gospels, and we are currently in the middle of a unit on scholarly study of the Jesus of history. More than a century has now passed since Albert Schweitzer produced his incisive critique of a prior generation’s attempts to study the “historical Jesus.” He argued quite persuasively that the nineteenth-century, German, liberal Protestant scholars who went questing after the historical Jesus tended to find a Jesus who walked and talked just like a nineteenth-century, German, liberal Protestant. Even now, in what many have labeled the “third quest,” scholars continue to face the danger of “finding” a Jesus who either looks like themselves or like the selves they idealize.

Academic study of Jesus, and the Bible as a whole, demands a broad, deep, and critical knowledge of the ancient world.

If even scholars are in danger of failing to move beyond the level of naïve identification, it is all the more important that we discipline ourselves to do rigorous research on difference. This is why academic study of Jesus, and the Bible as a whole, demands a broad, deep, and critical knowledge of the ancient world. Jesus and his disciples did not speak English as their first language, nor any other Indo-European language; their first language was a Semitic one that worked quite differently than English. They were not members of the middle and upper classes of a postindustrial society, but peasants, and perhaps artisans, living in an agrarian society that basically consisted of two classes, a very small elite and everyone else. They were not citizens of the homeland of a military and economic superpower, but subjects of the foreign military and economic superpower whose officials and troops occupied their homeland. They did not learn about their world through the study of books in formal, state-funded schools; rather, they listened to and learned to tell the stories handed down by their ancestors. And they performed religious acts that we today would associate with a religion called not Christianity, but Judaism.

In a place like Luther College that values the dialogue between faith and learning, I want to suggest that the process of cross-cultural encounter I am describing is important not only for the academic study of religion, but for the encounter

of religious practitioners with their own foundational stories as well. It is quite understandable that contemporary Christians, for example, would seek to identify with characters in the Bible. This even extends to Jesus himself in the long and rich tradition of the imitation of Christ. Thomas à Kempis, in a writing of that very title, attributed these words to Jesus: My child, I came down from heaven for your salvation and took upon Myself your miseries, not out of necessity but out of love, that you might learn to be patient and bear the sufferings of this life without repining. From the moment of My birth to My death on the cross, suffering did not leave Me. I suffered great want of temporal goods. Often I heard many complaints against Me. Disgrace and reviling I bore with patience. For My blessings I received ingratitude, for My miracles blasphemies, and for My teaching scorn.

James Montgomery, in a text that provides the words for a hymn that some of us may sing during the Christian Holy Week, wrote: Go to dark Gethsemane, ye that feel the tempter’s power; your redeemer’s conflict see, watch with him one bitter hour; turn not from his griefs away, learn of Jesus Christ to pray….

There are also public and political discourses that make a direct—and naïve—identification between us and Jesus. I did a Google search using the words “Jesus was a(n) …”, and here is just a sample of the contemporary identities I found attributed to Jesus: feminist, liberal, conservative, white man, black man, socialist, capitalist, anarchist, Zionist, small businessman, radical nonviolent revolutionary, vegan, and—my personal favorite—Episcopalian.

I think it is important for those who identify as Christians in the United States today to engage academic study of the Bible in order to pay adequate attention to the alterity of Jesus and his disciples. What if we allowed questions such as the following to occupy a central place in some of our personal and communal Bible study: Do American Christians occupy the same position in our world that Jesus and his disciples occupied in theirs? If not, what can American Christians learn by attending to the differences? Might this provide a lens for healthy self-criticism? Might these differences suggest different priorities for American Christians’ individual and communal lives of discipleship? Finally, might thinking of our engagement with our own foundational stories as truly cross-cultural encounters impact the way we engage Others in our world today?

Thanks for your attention, and I welcome your questions.

Please feel free to communicate with me via e-mail at burke. sean@luther.edu.

Spring 2014/Agora

37

Sabbaticals

T

here is little doubt that technology has changed the way we live our lives today. Information is at our fingertips and communication enables us to make face-to-face contact with people in ways my grandparents could not even imagine. Many of these changes we take in stride and quickly forget how we “used to” do things. Children, on the other hand, know little of how things “used to be.”

As far as they know, computers have always been portable and phones have never been tethered to a wall. With these changes in mind, I spent much of my spring sabbatical away from teaching education courses in K-5 classrooms observing how children and teachers negotiated these new technologies.

I focused especially on the so-called “1:1” environments and general classrooms. One-to-one technologies are those which provide mobile digital devices for each student in the form of laptops, iPads, Chromebooks, and so forth. First, I will report on the interactions that I had with children and teachers while I was allowed to “walk the halls” and learn from tech-savvy elementary students and their teachers. Second, I will briefly describe the development of a Teagle II project concerned with interdisciplinary teaching using Norman Borlaug’s humble beginnings as the focus of an elementary learning experience through partnering with local schools. Finally, I will conclude by sharing my thoughts on how effective teachers inspire and influence children’s lives, in ways that are not so different from country-school teachers a century ago.

by

BARBARA M. BOHACH

38

Barbara Bohach is an assistant professor in the education department. Beginning in 1992, she supervised student teachers and taught courses on the teaching of reading.

Her expertise in teaching reading and experience as a certified elementary classroom teacher had prepared her to be a clinical instructor in education for Luther. She is a graduate of Viterbo College with a masters in elementary reading and language arts and an EdD in curriculum and instruction from the University of Northern Iowa.

Agora/Spring 2014

W. DES MOINES COM. SCHOOLS TECHNOLOGY

Technology, Time, and Teachers: Different but the Same

Figure 1: This map of Iowa shows how nearly 50% of the school districts in 2013 used 1:1 technology.

Expanding My Educational View Sitting down next to the small six-year old boy who escorted me to his elementary school’s computer lab, I must have paused longer than I thought when logging onto the school’s computer. He immediately read my hesitation as an apparent “cry for help” because he gently patted my hand and sympathetically commented, “ It’s OK. I’ll help you. I’m really good with computers.”

During the spring of 2013, I spent my sabbatical traveling to school districts and researching how one-to-one programs are being used in elementary classrooms. With the number hovering around 50% of schools in Iowa implementing 1:1 mobile technology for student learning, I thought it would be wise to see how teachers were handling this new pedagogical challenge. I sought to examine how the growing use of 1:1 with iPads and laptops was impacting instruction by elementary teachers. If these new devices were truly changing pedagogy in classrooms, then I needed to examine ways to prepare my future teachers for this changing environment. (See Figure 1, Iowa 1:1 schools in Spring 2013.1) Fortunately January 2013 did not offer as much rain, sleet, or snow as this past January, so I was able to journey to a number of school districts in northeast Iowa and southeastern Minnesota that are implementing 1:1 digital devices and other technologies. My first stop was to visit a middle school, since I had agreed to “supervise” one of my advisees as he developed an independent study of this school’s use of

technology in a 1:1 iPad environment. We had communicated electronically and his educational musings were posted to a blog so that all could follow his thoughts about the twentyfirst century classroom.2 I observed students collaborating in a 1:1 iPad classroom that day. Working in teams, students were charged with the task of creating a video emulating Alton Brown’s show Good Eats. This food network show uses science to explain chemical reactions in the food we cook.

Sixth graders eagerly set to work investigating their ideas for this project, and as they did so they were meeting Iowa Core Standards for middle school science by understanding that “Substances react chemically in characteristic ways with other substances to form new substances (compounds) with different characteristic properties”; moreover, they were also using Twenty-first Century Skills (ICC.gov). After watching a clip of Chef-scientist Alton, the teams were to collaborate, research, script, and then create their own cooking episode.

Using iPad technology, a group member’s kitchen (with parent permission), and a rubric guiding the expectations, the classroom filled will chatter as planning ensued. As I left them trading ideas for their culinary chemistry creations, I overheard them whispering: “How do you think we should explain the chemical reaction for this recipe?” No one even noticed that the bell had rung for lunch.

The type of engagement I witnessed during this project was due, only in part, to technology. Students were able to locate information quickly on their iPads and then bounce ideas off around in their group. Expectations and parameters set by their teacher were clear because technology alone does not make learning happen; it also requires planning and guidance from the teacher. This school has support for teachers so that pedagogy can be nurtured, and as one teacher reported, “We don’t have a technology initiative—we have a learning initiative”—and I certainly witnessed it that day.

Listening to Little Ones Moving on to another school district, I decided to focus more on the elementary grade levels since most of the students I teach will have the opportunity to student teach at this level.

As I wandered through the halls with my iPad in hand, I noticed large classroom posters created by Glogster.com featuring habitats and children’s non-fiction literature. Using this information genre, large colored pictures were printed of a text’s cover while a QR Code (barcode) hugged the corner of each poster. My curiosity got the best of me and I opened the QR Code reader application on my iPad and positioned it over the corner of the poster. This app instantly read the barcode and opened to a short book review video presented by a group of children.

“Did you see me?” asked a little girl who had just popped out of the room behind me.

“Did you make one of these posters?” I answered.

“My group did one on frogs. We read the book, then we wrote about interesting things we learned, and then we made a movie on the iPad and my teacher made a QR Code so we could see the movie,” she explained.

“Wow! That’s interesting,” I replied. “What grade are you in?”

“First grade,” she responded, as she turned and skipped back to her classroom.

As I watched her enthusiastically bounce down the hall, her teacher came out of the classroom and said, “I see you were visiting with my little girl with special needs.”

“Yes,” I replied. “She really learned a lot about frogs from that project.”

“She sure did, and they all were very proud of that information video,” shared her teacher. “We have been finding new ways of doing projects with classes using technology, but they still have to write information they learned so they can read and record their little movie. They are excited to share their reading.”

“It didn’t take me long to find that out,” I laughed.

As I wandered in and out of classrooms, I saw children “bumping” iPads together. When I asked what they were doing in the concerned tone of a former third grade teacher, they told me they were trading images.

“You are trading images by hitting your iPads together?”

I skeptically queried.

“Sure. It’s an app called ‘Bump’ and you just hit the iPads together and my image bumps into my friend’s iPad. We’re doing a book together and I thought my image file looked like a better picture for our Iowa book,” explained a fourth grader.

“Interesting,” I said slowly while watching them share files. When I reflect back on scouring colleagues’ classrooms to locate specific letters of the World Book Encyclopedia, I am struck by how locating resources has changed. Children are still writing reports, but the tools are different. This requires teachers to really teach young children to critically think about the value of information they are finding for reports.

Children have to learn that all information is not equal in its usefulness for supporting their writing objectives; research requires that one evaluates information before accepting it at face value. If young children are asked these questions as they begin writing, they will learn to continue this practice as they grow in their literacy skills. Good teachers have always asked these questions.

In the upper elementary wing of this school (grades four, five, and six), I was invited to join a Luther alumna, Kelly Sorenson, as fifth graders explained how they use ooVoo, a free video chat and instant messaging app, to communicate with a classroom in Connecticut. Mrs. Sorenson’s class does weekly sharing with students as she team-teaches with Mrs. Petroski in Connecticut. The teachers met on-line and were sharing writing projects on a weekly basis between their classrooms.

The strengths of learning in this global arena were certainly evident as children shared with one another and developed friendships through their interaction. The integration of technology throughout the curriculum is evident in this classroom each day. Mrs. Sorenson’s blog continually updates students and parents with expectations, projects, humor, and photographs.3 Children expect to be given on-line assignments since Mrs. Sorenson “flips her classroom,” and consequently, video assignments or readings provide background to help students prepare for classes the next day.

Spending time with this class gave me a real sense of how future teachers might have to think beyond their “traditional” Spring 2014/Agora

39

classroom schemas in order to teach effectively in technologyrich schools of tomorrow. Students in this classroom know that learning is found beyond the pages of a traditional textbook.

Although these texts (now available in digital and traditional form) are important for developing a foundation, classrooms walls are expanding in ways that few could have imagined possible even a few short years ago.

My Take-Away These observations and interactions have invigorated my thinking about how I can prepare my future teachers to think about teaching and learning in ways that are different from what they experienced as students. Research indicates that teachers are likely to teach as they were taught, since over a decade of modeling has molded their view of “school.”4 Current pre-service teachers, however, have few models for imagining the possibilities of using these technological tools in teaching.

Children, on the other hand, master the art of using apps on a Smartphone or digital tablet before they come to pre-school.

They expect to be able to share a story by illustrating it on an iPad and then recording themselves retelling of the story. They aren’t afraid to swipe, drag, tap, or pinch the screen to get the device to react to their commands. Children are masters of exploration; it’s how they learn.

Because of these observations, I revised my own syllabi looking for ways where my future teachers could contemplate alternatives to “traditional” projects and explore assignments that required them to engage with digital devices as students and teachers. The connections I made in school hallways allowed me to develop collaborative writing projects between fifth graders and my pre-service teachers in a language arts methods class. The children submitted writing on Google Drive, so Luther education majors could give feedback on the students’ drafts. This joint project served as a way for fifth graders to write for an authentic purpose and it provided future teachers with realistic examples of student writing.

Through the “comment” feature on Google Drive, these writing teams conferenced and children used the writing process to improve their narratives. During the spring semester, Luther partners helped children revise and edit articles for an on-line newspaper. The writing was purposeful and technology allowed the partners to work together. This also served as a way to help teachers by giving timely feedback to young writers.

Supporting classroom teachers is certainly the aim of any collaborative projects we develop in teacher education.

Another example that my students created was to produce “book trailers” as a strategy for developing interest in reading children’s literature. Using teasers, clips, and previews—similar to strategies the film industry uses to entice potential audiences when creating “movie trailers”—pre-service teachers combined video, text, music, and narration to entice young readers to read their book suggestions. These “trailers” became models for elementary students who started developing their own book promotions. In effect, technology allowed children to update reviewing books and sharing their opinions with a wider audience.

40

Agora/Spring 2014

Partnerships With Teachers Through all the observations and interactions in schools that I experienced during my sabbatical, one of the most rewarding was that of making connections with classroom teachers. In fact, one of these young teachers has become a member of Luther’s Education Advisory Committee. This young teacher uses technology frequently with his first graders and is willing to demonstrate its use with my pre-service teachers. During this academic year, my teaching methods students have written lesson plans and sent them to this teacher in Pine Island, MN. He uses their lesson plan to teach a group of first graders; he then video records that lesson and shares it with us using a link to a broadcasting channel. My students watch the lesson and then we “meet” using video conferencing technology to discuss the lesson and changes he might have made from my pre-service teacher’s original plan. This conversation allows my students to ask questions and to observe how first graders were able to achieve the objectives of their lesson plan. Seeing first graders wave and shout, “We love Luther College” is a bonus!

Final Reflections As I reflect on the value of these seemingly casual conversations with teachers, I have come to realize that the time spent reaching out and connecting with schools is invaluable.

Teacher educators have to know how pedagogy is changing due to influences from a variety of sources, and one of the best ways to stay current is to be in the schools. It is the combination of reading scholarship and engagement with teachers that I believe best serves our pre-service teachers. They are entering a world in which education may look very different than what they remember as children, and it will require them to critically think, reflect, and select what is best for their students.

This being said, the best teachers have always done this and they have done this well. For the past three years, Luther College education majors have conducted an educational “INSPIRE DAY” for fifth graders at Norman Borlaug’s family farm west of Cresco, Iowa (see Figure 2). This Nobel Prize winner’s scientific and humanitarian achievements stemmed from humble beginnings in a rural country school and from sound work ethic he assumed while growing up on a small farm in the second and third decades of the twentieth century.5 Our future teachers develop social studies and science lessons for fifth graders from surrounding school districts and teach in rotating sessions. A sample of these lessons include comparing and contrasting simple machines used by farmers when Norman Borlaug was a child to machines used today; discussions and activities involving worldwide equity in food resources, water quality testing and conservation practices; and lessons taught by pre-service teachers modeling instruction from the actual one-room schoolhouse Borlaug attended when he was a child.

These lessons are framed to help children and future teachers see and appreciate the challenges of change that come with every generation. Whether it is the one-room rural school of yesterday or the technology-rich classrooms of today, it is the quality of the teacher who makes the difference for children. When reflecting on some of the “big challenges

Really, it’s about one of my biggest passions in the classroom and that is relationships with students. Do I love technology and the exciting and innovative future of our schools? Absolutely. Yet, there is so much more to teaching than simply being on the cutting edge and finishing content and standards … There is a call to send out better people from your classroom. A great start in this direction is a view of caution when eliminating the interpersonal element and replacing it with technology. 7

BARBARA BOHACH

“in classrooms of today, such as English Language Learners and differentiation, I am struck that these were issues for teachers in schools in rural areas as well.

Children, for example, came from homes where Norwegian, German, and Czech languages were spoken at home and then were taught in English at school.

Differentiation was a fact of life when you had children ranging from first to eighth grade in the same classroom. Teachers had to vary instruction and pair pupils if they were going help all their children. The best teachers knew their children and they were advocates for their students as well. In fact, Norman Borlaug might not have even gone to high school, if it were not for the suggestion of his teacher who went to visit his parents and suggested they send Figure 2: Teaching in Norman Borlaug’s one-room schoolhouse. him to Cresco High School.6 This was not an opportunity afforded by many farm boys a century Notes ago. However, this action by one elementary teacher may have 1. West Des Moines Community Schools Technology.<http:// been the action that changed countless lives. wdmtech.wordpress.com/2013/03/15/11map/> I conclude that it is not the technology that will make the 2. Withers, A. (2013). <http://wdmtech.wordpress. difference; it is the teacher time and time again. My student’s com/2012/02/07/wsr1to1> blog probably says it best,

3. Sorenson, K. (2014). <http://www.5bblogger.blogspot.com/>

4. Kennedy, M. M. (1999). The Role of Pre-service Teacher Education. In Darling-Hammond, L. and Sykes, G. Teaching As The Learning Profession: Handbook of Teaching and Policy (pages 54-86).

San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

5. Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation. <http://www. normanborlaug.org/>

6. Vietmeyer, N. (2011). Our Daily Bread. Lorton, VA: Bracing Books.

7. Withers, A. (2013). <http://wdmtech.wordpress. com/2012/02/07/wsr1to1>

Spring 2014/Agora

41

Making Sense of the Balkans

Steve Holland was selected as a Fulbright scholar to teach in Montenegro in 2012-13, and his experience there is the subject of his essay. Since 2011 Holland has by occupied the Dahl Chair in Economics and STEVEN J. Business at Luther, where he joined that HOLLAND department in 2005. After St. Olaf College, he went to Georgetown for a JD and worked as an attorney before earning his PhD in economics at the University of Minnesota. Holland specializes in the interaction between legal and economic systems and designs and teaches courses that examine public policy issues in an interdisciplinary way. His interest in the environment motivates him to also teach courses related to environmental economics and policy.

42

Agora/Spring 2014

The fortress walls of Kotor, Montenego.

STEVE HOLLAND

I

spent my recent sabbatical in Montenegro, a small, beautiful country in the Western Balkans, where I lived from August 2012 until June 2013.1 Near the end of the year, an old friend visited and while we were scrambling up the fortress walls of the city of Kotor he asked, “Have you learned anything you can bring back to your students?” I had begun to consider this question, but the Balkans is a rich and complicated region, filled with contradictions and resisting precise description, so the question deserved more thought. I surprised myself, though, by blurting out, “History matters.”

I had always been told that history matters and if I had been pressed I probably would have agreed that it does, although I would not have been able to put up a very spirited defense of that proposition. But this changed for me last year.

When you begin to care about a place and its people, as I did in Montenegro, you try to make sense of it. And when you try to make sense of the Balkans you are unavoidably catapulted back into history.

It is easy to fall in love with Montenegro. Most obviously, it is gorgeous. Lord Byron said, “When the pearls of nature were sown, on this soil an overflowing handful was gathered.

The most beautiful contact between the earth and sea took place at the Montenegrin littoral.” Less obvious but no less compelling, are the people. While they are not warm to strangers, once you have made an introduction they are generous and kind. Their hospitality made it easy to empathize with their struggles.

Montenegro, like many Balkan countries, is struggling.

Montenegro is not poor by world standards but it is by European standards. Incomes have been stagnant for many years

and unemployment is high, reaching close to fifty percent for people under thirty.2 Many of the political institutions are dysfunctional and seem to serve only the country’s elite.

Montenegro’s relative poverty is especially frustrating because only a day’s drive to the north is Slovenia, another country of the former Yugoslavia that has a per capita GDP of more than three times that of Montenegro.

I asked my colleagues at the University of Montenegro and the University of Donja Gorica why this is the case. By far, the most common response was to blame Montenegro’s condition on five centuries of Ottoman occupation of the Balkan Peninsula. Of course it couldn’t be that easy, but this kind of answer forced me to really confront the question of how much a place’s history influences the lives of people today.

A Very Brief History of Montenegro In 1389, Prince Lazar of Serbia prepared to defend his kingdom against the advancing Ottoman army. In an epic poem describing the Battle of Kosovo, Saint Elijah appeared to Lazar as a grey falcon and gave him a choice. Lazar could have an earthly kingdom, in which case he must saddle his horse, grab his sword and stop the Turkish attack. Or he could gain a heavenly kingdom by building a church on the Kosovo plain and accept that he and his soldiers would be destroyed in battle. The poem describes how Lazar chose the heavenly kingdom, built the church and was killed, with over 70,000 of his soldiers. Nonetheless, the poem concludes, “All was holy, all was honorable / And the goodness of God was fulfilled.”3 Thus began five centuries of the Ottoman occupation of Serbia.

The Battle of Kosovo was also a defining event for Montenegro. At its peak, the Ottoman Empire controlled most of

History Matters This history has had a significant effect on the development of Montenegro’s current institutions. The constant threat from outside powers and the difficulty of uniting tribes within Montenegro prevented a strong central government from ever developing. The leaders extracted what they could to fund the Church and finance the occasional wars against the Turks, but most people looked to their village and tribal leaders, rather than the central government, for support.

Economically, Montenegro’s harsh terrain and isolation made it very difficult to transport and trade goods outside of Montenegro. The threat from outside empires made property rights uncertain and this further limited opportunities for investment and expansion. As a result, most exchange was

Making Sense of the Balkans?

Viewing Montenegro’s current state through the lens of its history helps explain some of the big questions one can’t help but ask after spending some time there: Why aren’t people as well off in Montenegro as they are in Slovenia? Why doesn’t the government better serve its people? And why don’t the people do something to improve their institutions? The simple answer seems to be that Montenegrin government never worked particularly well, and so Montenegrins became

STEVE HOLLAND

the Balkan Peninsula, although it never fully controlled “Old Montenegro”—a small, landlocked patch of rock protected by a ring of some of the most inhospitable mountains you will ever find. While these Montenegrins avoided Ottoman rule they were constantly under threat, often at war, and cut off from the rest of the world.

Throughout this time, Montenegro was primarily controlled by tribes, each of which occupied a distinct geographic region. Blood feuds were a normal part of the life of these tribes well into the twentieth century.4 Although the region was technically governed by the Orthodox Bishop in Cetinje, the Church constantly struggled to unite the tribes, eliminate the feuding, and maintain control over Montenegro.5 Governance did not become easier over time. In the nineteenth century Montenegro began to slowly expand. With expansion came greater heterogeneity, as the new territories included additional tribes and, for the first time, Muslims and Catholics. And while the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire reduced some of the threat to Montenegro’s independence, that threat was quickly replaced by the growth of Hapsburg and Russian influence in the region. Montenegrin leaders (by the 1850s Montenegro had its first secular, royal family) tried to create unity by appealing to the people’s Montenegrin-ness and tried to consolidate power with force, but the true power remained at the tribal and village level.

STEVE HOLLAND

The Montenegrin littoral at Petrovac.

local, further reinforcing the legacy of collectivist economic, political and social institutions that continues today.

[Fig. 3] The Prokletije range—mountains that protected Montenegro from invasion but made trade more difficult.

This history is very tangible in Montenegro, and it helped me begin to appreciate how past events can have an important and persistent effect on economic and political conditions today. Montenegro has been saddled with a weak government and an economy that has long relied on personal relationships to function well. These economic and political institutions may have evolved in a logical manner, given the historical context, but they no longer serve the people well.

Montenegrins, like all people, want the capacity to flourish.6 They want fair opportunities to use their gifts and talents but often find jobs are only available to those with family or political connections. Montenegrins want a voice in their government but find nepotism, censorship and intimidation of political opposition. A few want to be entrepreneurs but discover corruption, labyrinthine regulations, and poorly functioning credit markets get in the way.

When formal political and economic institutions fail to provide people the capability to live their lives fully, they tend to develop informal institutions that do. In Montenegro, people came to rely on family and tribe for support and often ignored or actively avoided government and formal markets.

Society centered itself around smaller, homogeneous groups where exchange was less costly and behavior was easier to control with social norms. The result is that Montenegro is more segregated and has a much higher degree of conformity than in more individualistic societies such as the United States.

The Prokletije range—mountains protected Montenegro from invasion but made trade more difficult.

Spring 2014/Agora

43

used to getting along without it. Neglect allowed the current government to become corrupt and extractive and the people currently in power have strong incentives not to change it, so the cycle continues. This simple story feels right to me and there is plenty of evidence to support it, but here is where I would probably ask my students, “Could it really be that easy?”

How do you explain the wars of the 1990s, for example?

Montenegro borders Hercegovina, the site of many of the worst incidents of genocide in the Bosnian war, and Montenegrin troops participated in the siege of Dubrovnik. How can those atrocities be explained—especially when Orthodox Serbs, Muslim Bosniaks, and Catholic Croats lived side by side for hundreds of years? It is possible, I suppose, to find roots of the war in the historical evolution of the region’s institutions. People are very scared of being in the political minority because there is an expectation that leaders will only help and protect “their own.” Politicians exploit these fears and play on people’s strong ethnic identities to manipulate and divide people and accumulate additional power. But we heard horrible stories of brothers fighting against brothers, and this defies easy explanation.

There are signs that change is underway. Does history help us anticipate the future? Montenegro is moving steadily through the process of joining the European Union and most Montenegrin students and faculty seem to believe that greater integration with Western Europe is in Montenegro’s best interest. When I asked why, most people admitted some fear of being trampled by the large European economic powers but seemed to think that the EU would force the Montenegrin government to clean itself up. There is a consensus among Montenegrins that their institutions are broken and insufficient to propel the country forward, but I also sensed a deep hopelessness that necessary changes could be accomplished internally. Despite the recent struggles of Greece, many Balkan countries see the EU as the most likely impetus for much needed change.

There may also be deeper shifts taking place. When I entered the University of Donja Gorica for my first day of teaching I was struck by a poster that read, “Even God is an Entrepreneur.” While I am still not sure what that means, the poster has stuck with me as a symbol of the concerted effort by

44

Agora/Spring 2014

the universities to help students think more entrepreneurially.

I think the slogan is also an awkward attempt to connect the God at the center of Prince Lazar’s Serbia and the traditions of Old Montenegro with the rational individualism now being promoted in the universities of modern Montenegro.

Would adopting more Western attitudes be good or bad for Montenegro? Many people in the universities hope that, over time, a fresh approach will improve the country’s government, strengthen markets, and reduce ethnic tensions.

I am curious to see whether the entrenched formal political and economic institutions can change in the next few generations or whether centuries of institutional evolution are too powerful to overcome.

Looking to the past is, of course, not a new approach to thinking about economic issues, but I am finally beginning to “get it.” History does matter, and I am grateful for an experience that began to help me understand why.

Notes 1. The Fulbright Program, the U.S. Department of State (especially the U.S. Embassy in Montenegro), the Bert and Mildred Dahl Endowment, and Luther College have my deep gratitude for the funding and other assistance that made this sabbatical possible.

2. MONSTAT— Zavod Za Statistiku Crna Gora (Statistical Office of Montenegro), http://www.monstat.org/cg/.

3. Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Cannongate: Edinburgh 2006 (p. 909).

4. Milovan Djilas, Land Without Justice. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: New York 1958.

5. There are several good histories of Montenegro that I have relied up while reflecting on this experience. They include Elizabeth Roberts, Realm of the Black Mountain: A History of Montenegro. Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York 2007. Kenneth Morrison, Montenegro: A Modern History. I.B. Tauris: London 2009. L.S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453. New York University Press: New York 2000.

6. For more on this approach to well-being, see Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom. Anchor Books: New York 1999, and Martha Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach.

Belknap Press: Cambridge, MA 2011.

Chapel

Pause

February 17, 2014

Text: Romans 8: 26-27

n the Old Testament there are some prescribed patterns of pauses, or Sabbaticals. In Leviticus, when Moses speaks to the people from Mt. Sinai, God’s people are told to hallow the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants—a year of Jubilee. At the same time they are also told to farm the fields for six years only, “but on the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest for the land” (Leviticus 25: 4). The idea of a Sabbatical every seventh year is a common concept on college campuses but not in many other places in our culture.

Then there is the weekly pause prescribed in the Old Testament, the seventh day of the week, or Sundays, as we know them. This is the pause with which we are most familiar.

It hails back to the creation story in Genesis when God rested from work on the seventh day and made it holy. We at least know we’re supposed to follow that one! As to how well we follow it, we can each be our own judge on that one.

Dan Erlander, a pastor and friend, describes a Sabbath in this way: “Here’s how it works: You take time off from work to do nothing but enjoy friendship with God, others, and nature.

During this time you can even run in meadows, hide in forests, and act silly. You can lie in the grass and watch clouds roll by. by

LINDA K. MARTIN

Linda Martin began teaching voice for the Luther music department in 2003 and has served as an instructor since 2008 in music theory, ear training, and music education courses. She has conducted Cantorei, a women’s choral ensemble, since 2005. Before coming to Luther she taught all levels of vocal/choral/general music in public schools, churches, and privately. Linda and her husband Mic have two daughters, both Luther graduates with music education degrees, and five grandchildren.

IAN CARSTENS

I

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the Saints according to the will of God.

Cantorei, spring semester 2014.

The time-gift includes a day each week and a year every seven years—a whole year to do nothing but enjoy God. Wow!” In the New Testament Jesus shows us by example. Jesus keeps attempting to pause, breathe, and pray, perhaps on a daily basis—we don’t know specifically. But the crowds who followed him and even his own disciples often made it difficult for him.

In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke we hear these lines [the lines were spoken by Martin’s choir, Cantorei, in unison and by individual voices]: He withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.

And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose and went out to a lonely place, and there he prayed.

And when it was day he departed and went into a lonely place.

After he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a lonely place apart.

And Jesus said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray.

When evening came, he was there, alone.”

Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.

Spring 2014/Agora

45

46

Agora/Spring 2014

MIC MARTIN

Rest. In my work as a musician and teacher of music, a rest or a pause in the music is a chance to take a breath. It may also be a chance to anticipate an exciting moment in the music—just before a dramatic climax perhaps. For many students here at Luther, their involvement in music is a pause in their day, a chance to breathe differently, to stop reading or computing, to gather with friends to make music. For me—music is not a pause—it is my life’s work. That’s a good thing, but it’s definitely not a pause.

I pause when I walk across campus on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays to attend chapel. I put my work down and back away from the computer on my desk, I stretch, I walk, I sing, and I meditate on the Good News as it is shared here in this space.

I pause when I walk outside with our young dog, Winnie.

Her enthusiasm, curiosity, love for people and other dogs is sincere and refreshing. She gets me outside and helps me to pause outside, in nature.

I pause when I spend time with our grandchildren.

Children help us to live in the moment, because they do.

Our youngest grandchild, Luke, is three. And he loves music!

(Actually, all of our grandchildren love music.) Luke and I have a this in our shared love of music. When Luke wants me to sit at the piano, hold him on my lap, and play and sing Raffi Cavoukian songs, I do it! I put everything else on hold and just do it: a wonderful, refreshing pause.

Luke is a child of God, created in God’s image, claimed

by God and marked with the cross of Christ forever, just like our other grandchildren. God made Luke perfect in the way he is—with an extra copy of the twenty-first chromosome.

No matter how hard we work or pray, no matter how much money we donate to good causes, nothing will change the fact that Luke has Down syndrome. And it’s okay. Luke is a beloved child of God. Luke helps those of us around him to pause, to breathe, to take life a little slower, to live in the

Linda Martin with her grandson Luke Thompson. moment, and to attend to those around us. He has definitely helped me to become more sensitive to the needs of others in our community who are “differently-abled” like he is. The children remind me about what isn’t important in God’s sight.

It isn’t important to be busy, productive, successful, or to earn all A’s. It is when we pause that we realize this. Life in the Spirit is about much more than high scores or lots of points.

Jesus often went away—alone—to pause and pray. And we can learn from him. What pulled Jesus away from these wilderness times and back to his community? It was the needs of the people and the compassion he felt for them. He was drawn back into the community to feed the hungry, heal the sick, to minister to the needy.

Pausing allows us to be aware of those needs—and to respond to them in God’s way.

[The Cantorei choir said: “Be still and know that I am God,” and then Linda Martin conducted them in singing the traditional American song “Down in the River to Pray.”]

Paying Attention

February 24, 2014

by

AMY E. WELDON

Amy is an associate professor who joined the Luther English department in 2005 after earning degrees from Auburn and the University of North Carolina (MA, PhD).

She writes fiction and creative non-fiction and teaches a range of creative writing and literature courses, as well as Paideia and courses for the honors program. Her literary scholarship focuses on British Romanticism and Southern American literature.

WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

I

want to talk to y’all today about the word “attend.” We use it for a lot of things, like attending class—but what does it really mean? Planting your body in a chair and really taking part are totally different things, just like passing your eyes over a page is not the same thing as reading. To attend means to use your body, and all your senses, and your mind and your spirit, to really see. A few weeks ago Nicholas Carr reminded us about the need to be sure we’re really paying attention.

[Carr’s talk is the first in this issue of Agora.] The insidious distraction of technology means that if we’re going to keep using it, we also have to guard our own abilities to attend to the world and other people. And being members of a college community and interacting with so many responsibilities and identities every day reminds us that attention is a crucial and forgotten skill: pause, clear away the mist of habit or distraction or prejudice, and look carefully at what’s actually in front of you. Let it be itself and not only what you want to think it is. This is attending to one another. To yourself. To the world.

And to the divine, which is waiting so patiently to speak.

In my creative writing classes we talk a lot about how writers need to be able to pay attention to the physical world, the body and the senses, in order to be able to render them onto the page. Inevitably, because I come from a medical (and farming) background and have lots of science students in my classes, we talk about the body and the natural world as a source of image and metaphor. Once my dad found a nest of baby rattlesnakes inside a wooden pallet under his diesel-fuel tank. “I reached for the nozzle and then I heard them,” he said.

“Rattlesnakes have a very particular noise. It’s not just ‘shhhh.’

It’s SHHHHH, almost like a spit. It’s a hard noise. I could see all their little heads and tails raise up between the slats, and wave back and forth.” As a surgeon, my father’s been shaped by thirty-five years of his art: putting his hands on someone

John Hunter. Painted by John Jackson in 1813, after an original

by Sir Joshua Reynolds. else’s body, and looking closely. It’s no accident that attending physician is a phrase that’s described him—any physician should attend, should pay attention with body and mind.

Doctors in the eighteenth century prided themselves on diagnosing patients by smelling their skin, and sometimes even tasting their urine (a diabetic’s tastes sweet). Strange, then, that these physicians considered the laying-on of hands—let alone the actual incision into flesh—to be an ungentlemanly degradation. Surgery was left to a lower trade: barbers, whose red-and-white-striped poles are relics of the blood-streaked, white-bandaged sticks they gave their un-anesthetized patients to grip. John Hunter (1728-1793), one of the first great surgeons, opened a staggering amount of anatomical knowledge through his dissections and anatomy classes—which were run, as almost all medical lectures then were, around corpses stolen by “resurrection men.” But, more, he dissolved the barrier between medicine as theory and medicine as practice, with observation from life as the thread suturing them both. I love to imagine Hunter surrounded by his students, directing their Spring 2014/Agora

47

eyes to the wet swollen sac of an exposed heart, barking at the one who yawns, “Attend, sir! Attend!” You read about Hunter and you see a man who’s relentlessly curious, running down facts and putting his hands all over life, paying attention with every fiber of his body and mind.

How often do we really pay attention that way? How often do the electronic lives always flowing along on our devices, alongside our real lives, stop us from seeing that what’s in front of us is real, too? Another thing we talk about in my classes is habitualization, the dulled feeling of over-familiarity that stops you from remembering, say, what you had for lunch yesterday, or exactly what route you took to get from Brandt to the CFL this morning. Philosopher Victor Shklovsky famously wrote that “Habitualization devours work, clothes, furniture, one’s wife, and the fear of war.” He quotes this passage from Leo Tolstoy’s diary, where Tolstoy writes, “I was cleaning and, meandering about, approached the divan and couldn’t remember whether or not I had dusted it. Since these movements are habitual and unconscious I could not remember and felt that it was impossible to remember—so that if I had dusted it and

48

Agora/Spring 2014

forgot—that is, had acted unconsciously, then it was the same as if I had not. If some conscious person had been watching, then the fact could be established. If, however, no one was looking, or looking on unconsciously, if the whole complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.”

If we really think about what we’re giving up when we give up attention to our lives, we see how important it is to wake ourselves up, and stay awake. It’s hard. I’m writing a book about how to do this very thing, and it’s still hard, even for me. Yet Romans advises, “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,” and that is what happens with the small, quiet renovations of our selves, every day, when we pay attention.

Buddhist nun Pema Chodron asks us, “Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what’s the most important thing?” I’ll repeat that. Since death is certain and the time of death is uncertain, what’s the most important thing? The answer I come back to, in poet Mary Oliver’s words, is always this: attend, as fully and completely as I can, to my “one wild and precious life.”

Jesus’ Second Touch

March 5, 2014

They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.

He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, ‘Can you see anything?’ And the man looked up and said, ‘I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.’ Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

“T

hey came to Bethsaida”—since our January term 2014 study abroad course and trip that took us to Israel, Palestine, and Jordan, every reading of this text fills my mind with images of the places that we visited. I picture a map in my head, and see Jesus crisscrossing the land as he moves about in his ministry. In today’s reading, Jesus is on the move, as he often is.

Particularly in the Gospel of Mark, but in all of the Gospels, Jesus is always on the move. In the Gospel of Mark we are kind of rushed right along. Mark is a kind of Gospel that fits our lifestyle today! It’s very short—fifteen chapters to get the whole thing down. Almost every single chapter begins with the word “immediately.” Jesus is on a rush. Jesus has something he needs to accomplish that is very, very important. We run the risk of seeing Jesus as the rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: “I’m late, I’m late, for a very important date!”

In Mark, we hear from the very beginning that “In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee,” which is in the north, “and was baptized by John in the Jordan,” which is to the south. Jesus crossed a number of boundaries along the way. Just three verses later we hear that “the Spirit immediately drove Campus Pastor David came to Luther in 2001. David has ministered to Lutheran churches in Indiana and Ohio and is active in advocacy and study related to immigration issues and youth development. He has spoken at various regional and national youth events and is the author of Out of the Waters …, a Bible study on the book of Exodus, and 1 and 2 Samuel (Augsburg Fortress). He graduated from Texas Lutheran University, earned his master’s at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and his by DMin through the Association of Chicago DAVID Theological Schools.

VASQUEZ

AARPM ZAIMER. LUTHER PHOTO BUREAU

Text: Mark 8:22-25

Pastor David Vasquez imposes ashes in the CFL. him out into the wilderness,” a little farther south. Repeatedly, Jesus is taken somewhere, or makes his way somewhere else “immediately.” Shortly before the section of the Gospel we are focusing on today, we are told: “Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, to Bethsaida” (Mark 6:35).

“To the other side” Jesus is intent throughout the Gospel, not only to be on the move, but to push his disciples to go “al otro lado,” to the other side. “El otro lado” is what people in Mexico call the United States. Spanish people—folks who live in the Southwest United States—when they talk about el otro lado, they mean Mexico.

Have you been al otro lado—to the other side? Have you been to the other side of the US Mexico border, or across to the other side of some other physical border on a J-term trip, or a service trip, or just on vacation? Perhaps you have crossed some other boundary, leaving your suburban neighborhood to go on a service trip to the inner city; or for some of you, leaving the inner city to come to this winter wonderland of northeast Iowa!

When we travel to “the other side,” we often see the world both literally and figuratively through a camera lens. In the overwhelming light of first encounters, everything stands out, even the most mundane things—we see a stray cat: picture; vendors in the street: picture! Everything seems exotic, because our senses are so overwhelmed by the experience.

I imagine that the blind man in our gospel story felt that way. He must have felt that he had been wrenched to the other side, to a new world, when Jesus touched him for the first time. The blind man was brought to Jesus by a group of friends. I imagine he was pretty petrified. I imagine that he had been through this routine a few times before, when well-intended friends brought him from a doctor or a healer Spring 2014/Agora

49

DANIEL FLUCKE

in the hope that he could see. After all, without vision he Lent is a season when we recognize that we’re not there wasn’t quite normal. In the understanding of the time, he yet. We recognize that we are able to see some things—that was marked by his sin. So they brought him from place to light has begun to come into our eyes through what we learn, place in hopes of healing. through study, travel, and experience; that there is much good He must have been scared that it wouldn’t work again, or in the world to see, but we also name the fact that we are not worse yet, that it would turn out to be a prank. Jesus takes him quite there yet. By putting ashes on our foreheads, inviting our by the hand, perhaps a bit more aware of what this was like for community to a time of fasting and prayer, to give something the blind man. Jesus seems to have learned something in his up or take up a new discipline, we have the courage to both be travels around. In the previous chapter, when he encounters vulnerable and to speak truth to the world and to ourselves, someone else in need—a Syrophoenician woman—Jesus didn’t that we are not there yet. And then we invite what author handle that so well. In that encounter he insulted the woman Keith Miller calls Jesus’ second touch. publicly, saying to her, “It is not proper to take the children’s “Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked food from the table and give it to the dogs.” It seems like Jesus intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything has learned something from that woman, because this time clearly.” avoiding the public humiliation of that earlier encounter. In When we cross a boundary into a new country or a new a powerfully tender gesture, Jesus takes the blind man aside, experience, when we try to walk in someone else’s shoes, we may away from the gawking eyes of the crowd. not be able to see everything clearly. But Lent’s invitation is to Now the guy probably mirror Jesus’ vulnerability and freaked out, because the first the blind man’s courage, in the thing that happens once he’s confidence that we will receive alone with Jesus is that he gets Jesus’ second touch, which will spit on his face! Just when he help us to see more clearly. thinks this is nothing but a I pray that as we go into prank, something happens. this journey of Lent, that you Suddenly light comes streammay find in the ashes, in the ing in! In the blindness of new prayer and fasting, in the givlight, in the overwhelming ing of alms, and in other ways, sense of new impressions, he the opportunity to see more has no idea what he’s looking clearly. As we begin Lent, we at. Jesus asks, “Can you see are going to be focusing in anything?” It is as if he’s askchapel on a series about seeing, “Did I get it right? Did ing with new eyes. Students, it work?” The guys rubs his Luther student Sarah Webb (’11) with children during a Mission faculty, staff and visitors who eyes—maybe trying to get the Guatemala J-term course, March 2011. will speak in chapel through spit off of them!—and he says, Lent, will be asked to think “I can see people, but they look like trees walking.” about how the disciplines of Lent might help us to see our There is something powerful in this exchange. On the everyday life through new eyes. one hand we have Jesus who is showing some vulnerability Along with the traditional Lenten disciplines, we are inby asking the opinion of the other, to see if his well intended viting the community to try something perhaps a bit more out actions have had the desired effect. There is power in vulof the ordinary. Since the beginning of the semester we have nerability, when we go to the other side and are willing to talked a lot about the limitations of our ever-present technolask—and listen—whether we got it right. And there is also ogy, particularly in the form of cell phones. This is your chance amazing courage in the blind man, who knowing that he is to redeem your cell phone! Since most of us carry these around, speaking to a teacher who is followed around by crowds of it also means that we carry a camera with us everywhere we people. He could just as easily have said, after the fashion of a go. So, our invitation is to take one picture a day for the forty good Midwestern Norwegian, “It’s great … could be worse … days of Lent. Just one picture, of something that reminds you we’re good.” Instead, he has the courage to say, “We’re getting of God’s presence in your life and the world around you, or there, but we’re not there yet.” something that allows you to see the world a little differently, that helps you see the world a little clearer. Amen.

50

Agora/Spring 2014

Seeing Things As They Are

March 19, 2014

Note: Patrick Luber’s chapel talk was delivered in the atrium of the Center for the Arts, and this “chapel on the move” immediately preceded the formal opening and reception for an exhibition of his mixed media sculptures in the Kristin Wigley-Fleming Gallery at the other end of the corridor. One of the works exhibited is on the cover of this issue.

by

PATRICK LUBER

Luber is a professor of sculpture at the University of North Dakota whose mixed media sculptures were on display at Luther in spring 2014. Many of his sculptural reliefs in this exhibit reference the milagro, “a type of personalized prayer offering.” He has presented more than thirty solo exhibits and participated in more than a hundred group exhibits. Luber holds a bachelor’s degree in sculpture from Greenville College and a master’s and Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the University of New MexicoAlbuquerque.

Prayer Offerings for Ailments Both Real and Imagined by Patrick Luber. Wood, brass nails, aluminum beverage cans. happens when we encounter new ideas or situations that do not conform to our worldview.

We potentially blind ourselves to the presence of God’s grace, and God’s grace at work in the world. Several years ago during a conversation with my student and friend Ryan Stander, he said, “if we believe that God’s presence and grace is truly at work all around us—wherever we are, or whatever situation we are in, then we have to be open to the reality that His grace can be experienced even in the most unlikely places.” I found Ryan’s words both exciting and inspiring, but also challenging. What is my particular blindness? Where am I failing to see God’s grace at work in my daily life?

Seeing God’s grace in the most unlikely of places often requires us to “see with new eyes,” and those new eyes are not ours, but God’s. Diane Millis makes this observation about Jim Brandenburg’s photo project. She states, “Brandenburg’s self imposed ninety day project was an exercise in learning to notice. Artists like Brandenburg remind us that seeing involves more than just looking at someone or something.”

Which I might add, is what most artists encourage us to do.

“They show us that in order to really see, to notice, we must get ourselves out of the way. We must learn to open our eyes and be willing to sacrifice what we would like to happen, our agenda, and be receptive to what is actually happening.” And, as Millis has observed, “with the saints and sages, artists learn to surrender their I-hood” and try to see things as they are, not how they want, or wish them to be.

Spring 2014/Agora

51

PETER ECKLUND

I

n Matthew 20:32-34 we find the crowds calling out to Jesus, and then He responds and asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” And they answered, “let our eyes be opened.” Jesus “moved with compassion on them and touched their eyes…and…immediately they received their sight and followed Him.” It seems throughout the Gospels blindness was the affliction most people begged to be cured of, and I’m sure that the metaphorical potential of this physical affliction did not escape the storytelling pedagogy of Jesus. Many of the miracles involved the restoration of physical sight and many more make metaphorical references to “restoring sight” as revelation. Both the restoration of physical sight and spiritual sight seem to be implied in John 9:25 when the man, now cured of blindness proclaims, “though I was blind, now I see!” a passage that found its way into John Newton’s hymn “Amazing Grace.”

Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber often suggests that Christianity and the life of a Christian is a constant cycle of death and rebirth—from the death and resurrection of Christ, to the cycle of the liturgical calendar. Even sin can be seen as a form of death, and forgiveness as rebirth. But I think the idea of death and rebirth could be applied to the idea of blindness, and the restoration of sight. In our everyday lives we often lose our sight—our spiritual sight. Sometimes our loss of spiritual sight is sudden, but with many of us it often happens slowly—we are not even aware it’s happening—until one day we find ourselves blinded, usually as a result of our own making. Madeleine L’Engle states this very succinctly, “Because you’re not what I have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.” Although L’Engle is speaking of our interactions with other people, this type of blindness often

I think the makers of art as well as the viewers of art need this ability. When my students are struggling with their own art-making, I often encourage them to ask the artwork what it needs to succeed, which is not always the same as what they want to do. And when we view works of art, we must also get ourselves out of the way. As Diane Millis states, “In order to see things as they really are…[we]…must be still, wait patiently, and watch [or look] closely.” The works of many artists challenge us—or invite us to see in new ways—and the scriptures constantly do this too. The scriptures always seem to be trying, or maybe it’s more like they are always prying—prying our eyes further and further open so we may fully see the implications of the Gospel message.

We are now in the Lenten season, a time that reminds us of death and rebirth, blindness, and the restoration of sight. But we must “be still, wait patiently, and watch closely.”

John 20:11-16 tells us that, at first, Mary Magdalene did not recognize the risen Jesus, mistaking Him for the gardener.

Perhaps in the throes of grief and despair Mary’s sight was clouded or maybe her vision was impaired because she did not fully comprehend God’s plan for the Resurrection—her sight was still rooted in this world—but Jesus was patient

52

Agora/Spring 2014

and called her name, “Mary,” and she recognized Him. This Lenten season, let us pray that when we meet Jesus on the path outside the tomb on Easter, let us not be blind, but let us see things as they are and not as we wish them to be, and recognize Jesus as our Savior. But equally important, let us see with new eyes every day and recognize His grace at work all around us—even in the most unexpected places and faces.

Let us not live in blindness and darkness but through His grace; let our lives be instruments of His sight and His light within the world.

References

Bolz-Weber, Nadia. Outrageous Faith: A Night of Great Music and Honest Talk. Chester Fritz Auditorium, Grand Forks, ND. October 3, 2013.

L’Engle, Madeleine. Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. Colorado Springs: Waterbrook Press, 1980.

Millis, Diane M. Conversation: The Sacred Art: Practicing Presence in an Age of Distraction. Woodstock: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2013.

New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Find the current issue and back issues of Agora online

Y

ou can read the current issue of Agora online and you can also find and search all back issues by first going to our webpage: search “Agora” on the Luther College homepage. The current issue can be viewed right on that page. For back issues, click on the link that takes you to the webpage titled “Luther College Publications Archive.” Enter and then “select publication,” to search either Agora or The College Chips—the complete files of both Agora and the campus newspaper are available. You can search using names, words or phrases, and dates. You can read online or download as a PDF.

Changing your address? Want to stop receiving Agora?

If you do, please email or write us. Contact Agora, c/o boesejud@luther. edu, or write Agora, Main 126, Luther College, 700 College Dr., Decorah, IA 52101.

The image above illustrated early issues of Agora. The journal was established by the Paideia Program, and paideia translates as education. The image shows a teacher with his tablet on his lap and stylus in his hand.