Is that You, God?
“The fact that we can’t see God makes it easy to slip into a pattern of doing all the talking ourselves. Is it too much to expect that God might speak back to us, not only with expressions of love but with guidance that is trustworthy and wise? . . .

“The capacity to recognize the voice of God through the ministry of the Holy Spirit arises out of friendship with God that is sustained through prayer, silent listening and attentiveness to all that is going on outside us, inside us, and between us and God. Through practice and experience we become familiar with the tone of God’s voice just as we recognize the voice of a loved one on the other end of the phone. There is a place deep inside each of us where God’s Spirit witnesses with our spirit about things that are true (Romans 8:16). It takes experience and practice to learn to recognize the communication that goes on in that place.”

—Ruth Haley Barton in Invitation to Solitude and Silence (IVP®).

Truth? Who cares?
In an essay about the role of truth in politics, associate professor of philosophy at U. of Connecticut, has this to say: “At the end of the day, is it always better to believe and speak the truth? Does the truth itself really matter? . . . Sure, we may say that we want to believe the truth, but what we really desire is to believe what is useful. Good beliefs get us what we want, whether nicer suits, bigger tax cuts, or a steady source of oil for our SUVs. At the end of the day, the truth of what we believe and say is beside the point. What matters are the consequences. . . . Such rough and ready pragmatism . . . appeals to America’s collective self-image as a square-jawed action hero.”

—Michael Lynch, from his recent book, True to Life: Why Truth Matters (MIT Press), excerpted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Sept. 10, 2004.

Gotta be a reason
“The very fact that the universe is creative, and that the laws [of physics] have permitted complex structures to emerge and develop to the point of consciousness—in other words, that the universe has organized it own self-awareness—is for me powerful evidence that there is ‘something going on’ behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming. Science may explain all the processes whereby the universe evolves its own destiny, but that still leaves room for there to be a meaning behind existence.”

—Physicist Paul Davies in The Cosmic Blueprint, (Templeton Foundation Press).

Tell it like it is
“[The Christian faith] tells us that truth is holy, and truth-telling a noble and useful profession; that the reality around us is created and worth celebrating; that men and women are radically imperfect and radically valuable. . . . We are freed from certain secular illusions and monochromatic tyrannies of hopeful thought. The bad news can be told full out, for it is not the only news.”

—Novelist John Updike, from More Matter: Essays and Criticism, quoted by Martin E. Marty in Context, August 2004.

Squirrel fishing
Students at the University of Oregon have been among the most recent to organize a group dedicated to squirrel fishing, the practice of enticing squirrels to chase a nut attached to a string.. Students at Harvard University appear to have started the trend in 1997 with a Web site devoted to the activity. Squirrel fishing groups have popped up at the University of California–Berkeley, the University of Southern California, the University of Oklahoma, and others.

—Adapted from National On-Campus Report, August 1, 2004.

The real source of joy
“People today sometimes talk about Easter as if the great message is that there is really life after death after all. That is a very modern perception, which would occur only to somebody who had been brought up with the secularist denials of life after death. If that’s where you’re starting from, Easter is still good news.

“But for the early Christians, that was not their issue. They knew if they were God’s people they would be raised from the dead. For them the issue was, is Jesus the Messiah or is he not? Had God’s kingdom been decisively launched or hadn’t it? The answer was, yes, he was, and yes, it had; and here we go.

“The dominant note in the early Christian world view was joy, because something has happened as a result of which the world really is a different place. They’re living out of that; they don’t really care if they get put in prison or beaten up or whatever because something has happened that now determines who they are.”

—British theologian N. T. Wright, quoted in a U.S. Catholic interview, July 2004.