In Which Chris & Becky Visit Yale

When I was probably 15 years old, a nerdy homeschooled kid living in Texas, I was one day browsing a clothing rack at some cheap retailer - probably K-Mart or whatever the 1990’s equivalent of TJMaxx is today - and finding a royal blue t-shirt with the Yale Bulldogs logo on it. I knew Yale was a prestigious school but not much more than that. My nerdy self sort of liked the shirt, so I bought it and wore it regularly. Occasionally I would get questions on it. “Are you going to Yale?” No, I would reply, I just liked the shirt. In these pre-Internet (at least for us!) days, what I knew about Yale was basically what my folks had said: super-expensive, super-liberal. We were super-conservative and super-poor, so that was basically that. (I eventually attended a less-expensive, but still private, Christian university that was a lot closer to home.)

It was only much later in my life that I realized that the catalog price published for university tuition is like the “room rate” you see posted on the inside of hotel room doors - a huge number that frequently doesn’t reflect the reality of what you’ll have to put out of pocket. In retrospect, my story had all the hallmarks of a good case for a big Ivy League scholarship. A unique educational background. Fantastic test scores and grades. Superb writing skills. Reasonable extracurriculars. In reality’s timeline, I took the highest scholarship that LeTourneau gave for academics (only 20% of my yearly cost!), coupled it with a bunch of grants, and still paid off college loans for a decade afterward. I got a reasonably good education at LeTourneau, met my wife there, got a job, moved to Iowa, hadn’t thought about Yale in a long time.

Earlier this year my work team won a big corporate award, and earlier this week we got to travel to one of our big corporate headquarters sites in Connecticut to be honored at an awards banquet. We all got to bring a +1, so we had several spouses in attendance too. Becky came along and we lightly stretched the travel to make a mini-vacation of it. (As much as a 3-day, 2-night trip can be a vacation, I guess.)

One of those days while we were out sightseeing we drove out to New Haven and spent a couple hours walking around the Yale campus, visiting its museums, sticking our heads into the old buildings, and generally taking in the scene. We’ve walked around a few college campuses the past few years with the kids doing college tours themselves. Campuses have a unique energy, and at an elite school this is amplified. On one hand, I observed, it’s Yale - everybody there is special. That’s sort of table stakes for admission. On the other hand, it’s clear that all these “special” students are still really just 18-to-20-something college kids.

I wondered, as we walked down the shady streets and past the old stone buildings, how would 18-year-old Chris have handled Yale? It would’ve been a move halfway across the country, a country boy plopped down in an East coast city, a sheltered conservative religious kid at a secular institution. Would I have been the stubborn fundamentalist arguing with all my professors? The church kid who went to college and gave up his faith? Or could the sudden emergence from my evangelical bubble have accelerated my movement toward the more tolerant, liberal faith that I have finally come to in my 40s?

What-if’s like this are to a great extent pointless. There are no do-overs. I’m happy and content with where my path has taken me. I was probably better suited for engineering than humanities or law, anyway. But for one fall afternoon, it was fun to walk down the streets of New Haven and idly imagine other pasts.

The blessing of the dedicated civil servant

There’s a wonderful long-form profile on the Washington Post right now about Chris Mark, a man who eschewed an opportunity for a upper-class education to (literally) go work in the coal mines, and ended up revolutionizing coal mine safety. (That’s a gift link, so you can read it whether you’re a WaPo subscriber or not.) It’s a compelling story of a man, driven by some complex family dynamics, who found his niche and ended up in a government job where he could follow that interest in a direction that has resulted in countless miners’ lives saved over his career.

The value of experts in government driving regulation gets stated explicitly late in the piece:

Every now and then, however, Chris’s work slipped into public view. His coal mine roof rating was used all over the world and, in his own narrow circles, he was well known. In 2016 — the first year in recorded history that zero underground coal miners were killed by falling roofs — Chris landed in a public spat. He’d seen an article by an economic historian about the history of roof bolts in the Journal of Technology and Culture. The historian wanted to argue that roof bolts had taken 20 years to reduce fatality rates because it had taken 20 years for the coal mining industry to learn to use them. All by itself, the market had solved this worker safety problem! The government’s role, in his telling, was as a kind of gentle helpmate of industry. “It was kind of amazing,” said Chris. “What actually happened was the regulators were finally empowered to regulate. Regulators needed to be able to enforce. He elevated the role of technology. He minimized the role of regulators.”

Government functionaries can be an easy target for criticism, but this profile highlights the key and dedicated role that so many play in today’s society. In my own work I have encountered many Federal Aviation Administration employees who fit a similar profile. They found some particular niche interest related to flying, and they made it their life’s work to make it better and safer. It’s often a thankless job, and on a government pay scale that pales next to what they could likely make in industry.

(As a side note, this is part of what makes Trump’s Project 2025 intentions to politicize the civil service so terrifying: it would eliminate protections on just these dedicated experts to replace them with people who don’t know the topic but who donated to the right political cause. You wanna see the country (literally) crumble? Ditch all the regulatory experts like Chris Mark and replace them with Heritage Foundation interns.)

David Bentley Hart’s “The Experience of God”

With some of my recent reading getting my mental wheels turning about the nature of who God is, I figured it was a reasonable time to pull The Experience of God off my shelf. Right off the bat in the introduction, Hart promises what I was hoping for: “My intention is simply to offer a definition of the word ‘God’…” Unfortunately, 332 pages later, what David Bentley Hart has written isn’t at all simple, and approaches a definition of “God” only from an oblique angle.

Hart structures the book in three major parts. In the first, he clarifies that the “God” he is describing is the ultimate deity, the prime mover, from which all other creation and being have their source. It is here even in the beginning section that he starts taking aim at what appears to be his actual target with this book: the arguments of the popular atheists of the late 20th and early 21st century. (Richard Dawkins is a regular whipping boy.)

The second section (comprising the bulk of the book) is structured around three characteristics which Hart points to as the core aspects of God: being, consciousness, and bliss. Each of these (long) chapters seems less interested in enlightening the reader on who God is than in disputing with the atheists and materialists. God is the root of being, declares Hart, and anyone who says differently is just stupid. There is no materialist explanation for consciousness, says Hart, and the materialists who argue for an evolutionary reason and dismiss God are illogical and foolish. There is no evolutionary reason for a search for beauty, truth, and goodness, says Hart, and those who would try to argue thus are intellectually dishonest. So it goes.

Hart’s arguments are at his strongest when he’s arguing for something instead of railing against something. The first part of his chapter on bliss was particularly good in that regard. Sadly, most of the book goes the other direction.

It’s very hard to review Hart without taking his blustery style into consideration. He’s never met a big word he didn’t like. He makes huge sweeping assertions without any hint of supporting justification. He seems to think that just by declaring something “obviously” wrong that it’s obvious to everyone and doesn’t need explained. In doing so he dismissively waves away not just the weak sauce of people like Dawkins but also more substantive scientists and thinkers who deserve better. Hart falls almost into self-parody at the beginning of chapter six: “[W]e should not mistake every pronouncement made in an authoritative tone of voice for an established truth.” While aiming this at popular atheists, it’s an argument that is equally valid against Hart himself.

There’s an old joke about a preacher, who at one point in his sermon notes has written: “weak point, pound pulpit”. As a lay theologian and not much of a philosopher at all, my trouble with Hart’s book is that he does so much pulpit pounding it makes me suspect the strength of his points. Even in places where I find myself in agreement with his conclusions I have a hard time feeling like the book was beneficial.

Bullet Points for a very hot Monday Afternoon

  • First day of school today for our two oldest kids… both at college so we won’t get chalkboard pics this year.
  • Back to a full work week; the summer grind seems to set in here in late August. I think our European friends have the right idea, just taking most of August for vacation.
  • A friend pinged yesterday to note it had been a year since a retreat we attended. That got me reflecting. It’s been quite a year.
  • Turns out some combination of time, therapy, improved habits, loving family, and patience can produce good results, even in the midst of sadness and chaos.
  • How am I old enough to have two kids in college?!?
  • I’ve been umpiring rec league softball again this year and tonight is the end of our tournament. Forecast heat index: 115F. Oof.
  • Once we get past Labor Day, life speeds up… a lot of business travel this fall.
  • Related to a couple of these bullets: time to shop for a new suit. Think this time I’m gonna invest a little bit and not just buy whatever I can find cheapest off the rack at Kohl’s.
  • I keep thinking that if my life gets too slow once the kids are out of the house, I could get certified and start umpiring high school softball. Feels like one of those things that you would have to jump into with both feet and make a fairly exclusive hobby during the summer.
  • Picked a book up off the shelf for book club yesterday and had forgotten just how good that book is. Time for a re-read, maybe. I don’t re-read too often.
  • If I stop and think a moment, I kinda wonder what things will look like a year from now when I look back on the (currently upcoming) year. Life is wild.

Henri Nouwen: An alert and aware spiritual life

Currently reading Henri Nouwen’s Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. What a wonderful little book! This bit in particular hit home today:

Not too long ago a priest told me that he cancelled his subscription to the New York Times because he felt that the endless stories about war, crime, power games, and political manipulation only disturbed his mind and heart and prevented him from meditation and prayer.

That is a sad story because it suggests that only by denying the world can you live in it, that only by surrounding yourself by an artificial, self-induced quietude can you live a spiritual life. A real spiritual life is exactly the opposite: it makes us so alert and aware of the world around us, that all that is and happens becomes part of our contemplation and meditation and invites us to a free and fearless response.

As timely in 2024 as it was when Nouwen wrote it in 1975. And I both understand the plight of the priest in his story and desire to have, as Nouwen says, a free and fearless response to all that happens around me.

Rethinking who are "The Normal Ones"? A.R. Moxon nails it.

I really appreciated A.R. Moxon’s weekend post framing up the “Weird” discourse from the past week. (This long-ish excerpt is still really just an excerpt. Worth reading the whole thing.)

Not so very long ago, it wasn’t normal to be trans or gay or even nonconforming to very strict gender roles in any way. It wasn’t normal to be a woman with a powerful job. It wasn’t even normal to be a woman with a paid job of any kind. It wasn’t normal or even legal to be a woman with a bank account. It wasn’t normal to be a woman who could just chart their own way in life, and make their own decisions about their bodies and their lives for themselves. And it wasn’t normal to be Jewish, it wasn’t normal to be Muslim, it wasn’t normal to be Hindu, it wasn’t normal to be an atheist; nor was it normal to be Black, or Asian, or any identity in a category called “nonwhite” that people used without really thinking about it. It wasn’t normal to be chronically sick or disabled, and it certainly wasn’t normal to expect to be treated as a full member of society if your way of being was not normal. And there were many many other ways of being that weren’t normal either. They were different, other—weird.

Some of these ways of being abnormal were permitted to a degree, others were not. They were permitted by The Normal Ones, who had the license to decide what identity was, and to establish the strictures which that identity must remain, outside of which that identity could not stray. And not so very long ago, one of the main requirements for anyone with a “weird” identity who was receiving from license for that identity was that they would agree that The Normal Ones had the right to bestow such a license, because they and only they were truly normal.

It was normal to be white. It was normal to be a Christian. It was normal to be a man with a job, and it was normal to be a woman who was a man’s property. It was normal for children to be viewed as property of the parents, which (see previous point) meant the property of the man. It was normal to be straight and cis. It was normal to be able-bodied and employed. More importantly, though, these were the only normal things to be. To not be those things was to be abnormal, and to be abnormal was to be at the mercy of The Normal Ones.

Abuse—by those who were normal, of those who were not normal—used to be normal, and not ever acknowledging how all the most normal forms of abuse actually were abuse was most normal of all. It was perfectly normal to be racist, misogynist, a religious bigot, as a way of defending and maintaining normalcy, which was a way of defending who did and who did not have the right to make decisions about what identities would be permitted, and to what extent the permission would be allowed. So rape was normal, and bigotry was normal, and exclusion and threats and punishment and murder of those who committed the offense of trespassing the established boundaries of what ways of being human would be permitted by normal people was normal.

I fooled you. All of that is still normal. But increasingly, more and more of us are moving on from all that. We’re done with it.

Imperfectly, to be sure, haltingly, no doubt. Sometimes it feels as if we’ve been scaling a mountain face and only recently passed through some clouds, allowing us a view, previously obscured, of what lay above—and so the distance we’ve come often only affords us a better view of how much further we have to climb. I know some would like to use the daunting climb looming above us to claim that we haven’t climbed at all. But, if we are attentive and look downward long enough, we can see, peeking through the clouds, the vast prospect of rigid and supremacist normalcy we’ve left behind. We can see all the ways of being a human that used to depend upon normalized bigotry for permission to exist but which now give themselves their own permission to exist, without seeking any other. We can see more and more identities that are now considered normal, and more and more of the abuse that once was granted as normal is now recognized, from loftier vantage, for the abnormal perversion it is.

Preach, brother Moxon, preach.

New Boeing CEO: Kelly Ortburg

It’s not too often that the national news runs an update that talks about someone I know, so when the alert came up on the NY Times app this morning, it was pretty cool: Kelly Ortberg is becoming the new CEO of Boeing.

Kelly was the CEO at Collins Aerospace (where I work) for several years prior to our merger with United Technologies back in 2018. I presented to him in meetings at least a few times when he was in a VP/GM role probably 11-12 years ago. Always thought he was a good guy. I’m have hope that he will be the right guy to turn things around at Boeing.

2024 Reads: Making All Things New by Ilia Delio

Making All Things New is the most complete and succinct compilation of Delio’s theology and philosophy that I’ve encountered so far. She’s strongest in her call to bring our theology into alignment with modern cosmology, and in exploring how the human brain works and interacts with others. (Let’s not forget she’s got a PhD in pharmacology, after all, and was doing research on ALS or Parkinson’s or something.)

I still think she’s way too bought into Kurzweil’s singularity and transhumanism, but I’ll forgive her that because I think the rest of it is bang on. Very manageable at 200 pages.

Matt Tebbe on how supremacy systems work

Father Matt Tebbe, on Facebook today, with a wonderfully clear explanation of how supremacy systems work:

In supremacy systems - and white conservative patriarchal religious organizations run on supremacy logic more often than not - any opposition or questioning or exposing of how abuse works is considered ’extreme'

Within supremacy logic:
Opposing abusive logic and people is equal to and commensurate with the harm and indiscretion of abusive logic and people. Both are considered ’extreme’ and this is because: supremacy systems are anxious systems, and anxious supremacy systems rely on the majority of people a- fawning, b- freezing, c- fleeing or d- fighting along with the supremacy ideology.

But facing that ideology and calling it ‘wrong’ is a deep violation- a transgression- of how supremacy systems work. Because supremacy systems run on domination, control, conformity, submission, obedience, unquestioned authority.

I mention this all to say: I know that many who follow along and read my Facebook have also been labeled or called ’extreme’ for attempting to oppose injustice or advocate for yourself or call attention to abuse or speak out about wrongdoing. This is one artifact of supremacy systems: it’s considered ’extreme’ and ‘uncouth’ to explicitly, plainly, directly name and identify specifically abusive behavior.

But I want to say: opposing injustice isn’t extreme, beloved. That’s how love works. And i guess we could say that love seems extreme in systems that have chosen to run on logics other than love.

Take heart, good people. Love is the right kind of extreme to be when opposing injustice.

Matt has a gift for identifying and naming the systems that drive so much of our American lives. He’s worth a follow.

Belatedly catching up on Star Trek Discovery Season 5. What am I watching again?

We’re way behind on TV watching, but last night Becky and I started in on Star Trek: Discovery, Season 5. We’ve enjoyed Discovery thus far, so of course we’re gonna watch it through the final season. And while I still love the characters and want to see another season of story with them, I’m not sure I love this format for a Star Trek series.

Maybe it’s because I’ve recently been watching Star Trek: Deep Space 9 for the first time and enjoying the long seasons full of individual episode stories, but the first two episodes of Discovery make clear that it’s about a single story arc over the season. And the story and directing moves feel clunky and obvious. There’s the need to re-introduce each of the characters while they narrate a little bit that you need to remember about their backstory. There’s the whole “get the band back together again” trope that brings Tilly back to the Discovery crew. There’s the “one last job” trope for Saru. (Also, I love Doug Jones, but feels like his makeup crew slipped here - I don’t remember his teeth and lower lip being visible underneath the facial prosthetics in earlier seasons.) Episode 1 sets up the quest and gives us the lovable rogues who are ever so briefly positioned as villains before one of them is immediately revealed as Book’s family… it’s just too much.

Historically, Star Trek has kept most of its drama on ship or in very limited location shots because big cinematic production is expensive. With computer animation getting cheap, Discovery has moved a huge amount of the action onto planetary surfaces. Episode 2 has Burnham and two other characters riding high-speed speeders (a mash-up of a snowmobile, a jet ski, and a Return of the Jedi-style speeder bike) across a desert planet to escape an avalanche. It’s really more Star Wars than Star Trek at that point. The desert village and market could just as easily be Mos Eisley as anywhere in a Star Trek universe.

And then there are the musical cues. I don’t remember any previous Star Trek shows leaning so hard into orchestral scores. This is much more movie scoring than traditional TV scoring. And while composer Jeff Russo weaves hints of the Star Trek: The Next Generation theme motif in wherever possible to make clear that this is Star Trek, all the things he has the strings and horns doing make it clear he’s been listening to John Williams’ Star Wars sound tracks quite a lot.

In the end I’m gonna watch it because dang it, it’s Star Trek, but I’m ready to go back and finish up DS9, where I can be sure that I’m watching Trek and not some Star Wars universe show on Disney+.