Our Annual Lecture Series

The Cade Community Lectures

“On Being Human”

Annual Lecture Series

Lethbridge Public Library

Wednesdays

7:00 pm

January 19th - “What collecting has taught me about being human”

Erin Phillips, Chaplain, Ecumenical Campus Ministry

January 26th - “What policing has taught me about being human”

Hugh Richards, Criminal Justice, Lethbridge College

February 2nd - “What facebook has taught me about being human”

Jennifer Davis, General Studies, Lethbridge College

February 9th - “What volunteering has taught me about being human”

Mike Mahon, President, University of Lethbridge

Sponsored by Ecumenical Campus Ministry, the President’s Office, University of Lethbridge, the President’s Office, Lethbridge College, and Lethbridge Public Library

Just one more reason why I love this time of year

Bags collected by Ascension
This is what approximately $10,000 in groceries look like!
Two of our student volunteers!
The line-up
Checking out the goodies
Maureen Mahon, whose husband is the new president of the U of L, helps out!

Yesterday was the day we handed out campus care parcels at the university. For a month my admin assistant has been distributing grocery bags to south Alberta churches. The university has had a bunch made for us but this year the budget didn't allow that so Safeway generously donated a lot of their bags. Last week Beth started gathering up a lot of bags and some of the churches started dropping theirs off to Immanuel Lutheran who graciously offer their hall for our depot. I brought in the bags Ascension donated and some that were dropped off at my house from one of our rural congregations. Then Saturday a bunch of us sorted the bags. Yesterday was the day we distributed them! IVCF staff and students came and helped Maintenance load them all up and drive them down to the University where they unloaded them and then the fun began.

Students began lining up a half hour before we began the hand out and we managed to hand out 442!!! bags in 20 mins. An hour later when I checked my email there were two lovely messages from students thanking us for the food and the encouragement. I love my job!

Canada's Sweetheart

I had the opportunity last night to hear Canada's Sweetheart, Jill Barber in concert. What a delightful evening! I don't know how to describe her music - sort of singer-songwriter, sort of folk, sort of jazz, sort of '50s something. Sort of awesome though! She had us singing, she had us swaying, she had us in the palm of her hand. She's delightful and her band was amazing. What a great time! and it was a fundraiser for Womenspace, an organization that does all sorts of education and advocacy for low income women and that lost its federal funding last year. The church was really full - it was great to see. If you want to check out her music you can find her site here.

Scenes from Sunday/Monday

Communal values not valued

A study has confirmed what many of my friends have claimed: when it comes to academic jobs candidates with good social skills are at a disadvantage. Further the study finds that since women are more likely to display communal values women are disadvantaged in academic hiring. Read a report on the study here.

On Writing

I wasn't much of a writer in high school and didn't get a lot of encouragement either. Fortunately I fell into the hands of a great prof at university who believed students needed to learn how to write if they were going to learn how to think. Tom Graham taught us how to read and how to write and in the process to think. I will always be grateful to him for his fourth year methods seminar, one of the hardest courses I ever took and one of the most helpful.

Now Ben Myers has written this wonderful post on the writing life and I recommend you check it out.

I still struggle with this aspect of writing:

4. Writing and discipline. The self has a tendency to leak and dribble. Left to itself, it loses all definition, becomes a shapeless puddle. Writing, like ritual, is a cast into which the self is poured. Writing is care of the self. ‘He who would not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable things, ought himself to be a true poem’ (Milton). A book is a few seconds of inspiration plus a few years – or a lifetime – of discipline. You cannot have a campfire without the first spark, but the spark is useless without the slow labour of gathering wood, building the fire, and maintaining it when it begins to die.

Reading Lists

In the latest issue of Christian Century there are lists of theology books the contributors think are essential reading if you want to know what has happened in theology for the past 25 years. The lists are interesting - you can read them here. Although the preamble is that these are essential for understanding what has been happening in theology I think they are more revealing of what has been happening intellectually for these contributors. But that's okay. I liked reading the list and have added a number of the books to my list of what I want to read. I also spent some time thinking what five books have influenced the way I think about things in a significant way so here is my list:

Daniel Boyarin, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity

Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

Sarah Coakley, Powers and Submissions

James Alison, Faith Beyond Resentment

Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Resident Aliens

and what would your list be?