Room 55: Radicalization, Apocalypse, and Mothers [see previous post on Conspiracies]
—I’m sorry to visit you like this, but as Thomas’s Mom you have some things to teach us about his background, why he did what he did.
—You’re here to lecture me on how his actions are my fault?
—No. But they do play a part. It’s not so much about you as what you saw in him. How he turned out.
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Ever read through those passages of Genesis, and get tired of all those people who are introduced, only to die in the next line?
“So all the days of Noah were nine hundred and fifty years, and he died.”
“Jared lived a total of 962 years, and he died.”
“Lamech lived a total of 777 years, and he died.”
“Kenan lived a total of 910 years, and he died.”
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Source: To Pray, or to Politicize?
The only way I knew how to share my piclit poem. Through wordpress.
Piclit is a creative tool for using visuals and and a word bank to create a literary poem accompanied by literal imagery.
It’s a neat thing to do in your spare time, but it’s also a great tool for easing students into composing poetry. The visual inspiration is there. A word bank is there. Students don’t have to stress over creating a poem from scratch. They can rely on a set of words and combine them in any number of ways.
I think the tool speaks for itself. I tried it in my classroom once, but I will say that it may work best with middle schoolers. It’s a good digital tool to introduce students to poetry.
I think to myself, when will we American Christians see the irony?
When we label Islam a violent religion with no teachings of peace, when we use violent rhetoric to attack doctors who perform abortions, when we treat refugees like potential threats to a country defined by mass immigration—what are we missing?
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Conclusion and Reflection
Many current critics will argue that the Gospels are obstacles to understanding the historical Jesus, but I believe they are the means. I think what plagues many modern scholars is a distrust of the past itself, an almost disdain for people of the past. We live in an “enlightened” age in which we seem to almost study all the horrible things in the past—colonialism, slavery, sexism, war, ignorance, oppression—as if looking for little happy things that stand out because they are like the values we have today. In this way I think most current historians and textual scholars dismiss the Scriptures. As Bauckham quotes Coady,
“The independent thinker is not someone who works everything out for herself, even in principle, but one who exercises a controlling intelligence over the input she receives from the normal sources of information whether their basis be individual or communal.”
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Testimony invites trust.
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If we can’t trust memory, we can’t trust anything. As Bauckham says, “trust in the word of others is fundamental to the very idea of serious cognitive activity.”
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As mentioned in the last post, in 7th grade I wrote a spy novel and called it “8 Ball.” But not only did I write the novel, I planned out another 24 novels that would feature the same characters in further adventures. Because the world must obviously be made aware of the full story, I have provided a summary of the adventures below. If you read this, your day will be well spent.
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[Continued from part 1]
It’s one of the most innocent and compelling mottoes for young children. Sharing Is Caring. Nobody would dispute this. Until you start talking about communism.
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CALEB COY 