Tue 24 Jul 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Alicia Luschei
A 2007 graduate reflects on one area of her growth over the past year. “From the boardroom to the classroom to the manufacturing plant to the bedroom, as God’s image bearers, both male and female have something profound to offer one another in each situation.”
As I begin to reflect on my time at the Academy, and areas where I have grown the most over these past nine months, I realize the biggest areas of growth have occurred within the context of living in community, in relating to the guys and other girls living in the Windrush House.
Tue 24 Jul 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Amin Aminfar
Amin Aminfar (’03) is finished with grad school but is still learning. “There is no phrase more semantically empty than ‘the real world.’ Once one enters the real world, apparently, the airy considerations of Christian community—or the kind of idealism that corresponds to a “protected” learning experience—must give way to harsher truths of driving to work and paying the bills.”
There is no phrase more semantically empty than “the real world.” And this is something of a surprise, given the way that the phrase looms in the consciousness of young people, or at least has been invoked over that consciousness as a kind of boogeyman, sent to scare students onto the path of hard-nosed pragmatism about their lives. For it is to students that the phrase is spoken, used to draw a contrast between their lives as students and their lives after being students which, because these lives at least notionally involve mortgages, taxes, and the like, have this quality of concreteness that qualifies them for membership in “the real world.”
Tue 24 Jul 2007 • Responses: 1 • by J. P. Moreland
J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of philosophy at Biola University, was a scholar in residence at Osprey Point in 2007. In this essay, he reflects on reasons the media and others seem to miss the blatant issues behind the news.
Have you ever watched the so-called experts in the news almost universally give the wrong analysis of an issue? Have you known in your heart what the real issue is and been flabbergasted at how so many prominent media leaders can’t seem to get it? I don’t know about you, but when this happens to me, I have trouble staying in my easy chair while the talking heads on the televised news can’t see the nose on their faces.
Tue 20 Mar 2007 • Responses: 4 • by Wendell Kimbrough
2007 Academy Fellow Wendell Kimbrough reports on his changing attitude toward beauty in a fallen world.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the concept of beauty. My mother is an artist, so over Christmas break I spent a lot of time at home gazing at her artwork. After three months at the Trinity Forum Academy, I found I had a new capacity to be enamored by her work. My mom is always creating new paintings and rearranging the house to reflect her art; my childhood unfolded within an evolving display of color and light. Naturally, this shaped me as a person. By the time I was 19 and leaving for college, I had a healthy, if sometimes naïve, appreciation for beauty and its effect on human beings.
But over the last few years, despite my childhood, I unconsciously developed a deep skepticism toward beauty. Whether it was beautiful people or beautiful places, I discovered that beauty can often be used as a veneer to hide ugly things.
Tue 20 Mar 2007 • Responses: 2 • by Judd L. Robertson
A 2004 Academy alumnus discusses his recent spiritual and intellectual journey from “Bible study” to “small group” and its implications for a church in a lonely world.
I’ve been involved in Bible studies since my freshman year in college, and have led them on and off since my junior year. Their success is hard to judge, if that is even the right language. Do people keep coming? Are they learning? When the former was true, I’d often walk away wondering how much people really got out of the time, questioning the effectiveness of my teaching, and criticizing myself for not knowing enough. At times I wished for a Matrix-like infusion of raw Biblical data—not only for me but for the whole group.
In my mind, the purpose of the Bible study was, obviously, studying the Bible. Like the sermon on Sunday, the measure of Tuesday’s gathering was how much we learned about the Bible—and, by extension, about God. Fellowship before and prayer after, though important, were the crescendo and decrescendo. In this way of thinking I found knowing God got easily confused with knowing about God, and learning was mistaken for growth.
Mon 19 Mar 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Amanda Jones
Our annual January conference has become integral to the Trinity Forum Academy. This exciting event brings together a group of Christians to critically engage a timely topic. This year’s conference focused on the life of William Wilberforce, the man who dedicated his life’s work to the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain.
The conference began on Friday evening with a talk given by Micheal Flaherty, the president of Walden Media. Micheal showed clips from Amazing Grace and spoke about the concept of integrity in the film industry. He shared about the personal journey that led him to found Walden Media and reminded us that true dedication to a cause, like the abolition of slavery or the reformation of the film industry, may require a lifetime.
Mon 19 Mar 2007 • Responses: 0 • by Nigel Cameron
Why the Stem Cell Stakes Are so High
A resident scholar at Osprey Point looks at the stakes in the stem cell debate.
Wed 13 Dec 2006 • Responses: 6 • by Jamin Warren
TFA Alum Jamin Warren takes on the relationship between books and death.
“Witness Mr. Henry Bemis, a charter member in the fraternity of dreamers.”
One of The Twilight Zone’s earliest episodes entitled “Time Enough at Last” portrays a man named Henry Bemis who can never find time to read. His philistine wife torments him and his boss thinks reading is trash. After taking a lunch break in the vault of the bank where he works, a nuclear blast decimates the human population, finally removing the tongue-cluckers who stood between Henry and his beloved pages (truly one of this century’s greatest segues).
Wed 13 Dec 2006 • Responses: 1 • by Anne Hartman
An alumna turned staffer shares from her journals.
I’m looking back at a journal entry from the end of my year as a Fellow here at the Academy. I remember writing it: sitting under the trellis at the back of the house after midnight, watching the moon on the water and listening to the trees shrug off the June breeze. I remember the feeling of urgency that for me often accompanies the end of something—the need to look intently, to take in the scene around me, knowing that I will not quite see it in the same way again, from the same vantage point of belonging. Perhaps some of that urgency grew out of the understanding that, while the view from the back porch would remain essentially the same, my perspective would shift with my leaving, and shift even again in coming back. I knew that I would be able to revisit, but never recreate.
Tue 12 Dec 2006 • Responses: 1 • by Mary Catherine Caldwell
A journal entry from a 2007 Academy Fellow.
As I sit here contemplating so many thoughts, I am overwhelmed at where my mind and my heart are going. After just reading how the Lord God is the creator and we are the molded clay before him, I find myself prostrate on the floor because that’s the only way that I can come before his throne. Paul says that some vessels are molded for glory and some for destruction. Some for mercy and others to be hardened. I am so in awe; the fear and reverence of the most holy most powerful maker has been burned upon me. I am before him—the whole, powerful, solid, true, beautiful great I AM—and I am fearful of his power yet I am thrown on my face in thanksgiving that he had mercy on me! That he adopted me, my name, as in Isaiah, was called, and I am his. I feel in awe of him and so inadequate to look upon his glory; I feel as Job did crying out for a mediator.
