Category: General

Article published in the Phelps County Focus on August 1, 2024. Here’s just the start of it; please visit and support my publisher!

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Gatekeeping. If you poke around on the internet, you’ll see plenty of examples, where someone tries to determine when someone else’s accomplishments or tastes or interests or suffering are “sufficient” or “authentic.”

Statements like, “Stop claiming you love sushi when all you do is eat a California roll with a fork!”

There’s something fundamental in human nature that wants to draw boundaries between who is in and who is out. Many of the “gatekeeping fails” memes are updated versions of the old joke, “You think you have it so hard? I had to walk 10 miles to school in the snow, uphill both ways!”

As if one person’s likes, dislikes, challenges, pain or desires are only valid if they are more extreme or more authentic than someone else’s.

Unfortunately, gatekeeping is well-known in the church, too.

We simply cannot resist the urge to make rules, formal and informal, about who is worthy. We have hundreds of denominations in America, thousands worldwide, because of disagreements over those rules.

Keep reading…

This article appeared in the Phelps County Focus print edition on April 18, 2024, and is now available online. Please visit their site to support my publisher!

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Have you read the Bible? There’s some strange stuff in there. In Numbers 21, the LORD sends poisonous serpents among the Israelites, and then commands Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Anyone bitten by a poisonous serpent was healed by simply looking at the bronze serpent. Huh. I missed that first aid lesson in my Boy Scout training.

The Bible is also full of factual contradictions. Who killed Goliath? Well, in 1 Samuel 17, David did. That’s the story we all know. But in 2 Samuel 21, Elhanan son of Jaare-oregim did. Huh.

The more I read the Bible, the more strange stuff and contradictions I find. I grew up in the church, but then as I reached adulthood, my doubts began to grow. How could the sun stand still for Joshua? How could Elijah call down fire from heaven? How could a dead man come back to life? Doubts upon doubts upon doubts. The Gospel seemed like a house of cards. Some of those cards were pretty flimsy—concepts and events that I just couldn’t accept—and so the whole thing collapsed.

A lot of people have a faith like that. Some people claim that there are only two choices: take the Bible literally and accept everything in it as factually true, or take the Bible literally and reject it in its entirety because of its internal contradictions and its contradictions with science and known historical facts. Yet there is a third option.

Doubts are real, and are the natural result of taking the Bible seriously. If you start with a literal reading and use the inherent contradictions to reject it all, then you don’t have to seriously consider its teachings and its insights into the way to live with one another. But if you do take it seriously, you can see that God pervades the text from Genesis right through to Revelation. You can see that God’s messengers taught the Israelites what they needed to know in order to become a priestly nation. You can see that the major and minor prophets gave piercing commentaries on their own societies that still ring true today. And you can see that Jesus revealed the best way to live.

You can accept all of that without believing that Jesus was raised from the dead. I’ve heard people say that Jesus was a great prophet, or their role model. But he was more than that. He was the Son of the living God, the Source of our being, the Word made flesh. He showed us how to live, and how to die. He showed us that there is always hope. He showed us that he has conquered sin and death forever, and he invited us to live into his eternal kingdom now.

It’s OK to doubt what you have been taught. God can handle it. God is strong enough. In doubting, we find the flaws in our house of cards, and in seeking answers to our questions, we end up with a more flexible and resilient relationship with our risen Lord.

The Greek word in the Bible we translate as “faith” means something more like faithfulness or fidelity. Jesus doesn’t ask us to abandon our intellect or to stop seeking answers. Rather, he asks us to stay faithful to our calling despite our doubts. And that calling is to build God’s kingdom, to live into God’s kingdom, to forgive and to be forgiven, to work for the reconciliation of all, to create a community where everyone can thrive.

Doubt your beliefs. Doubt what you’ve been taught. Doubt the Bible, doubt all of the creeds from throughout the centuries, doubt everything. But never doubt that God loves you—you personally, each person, all of us together. Never doubt that God seeks a future where we can all bask in the glory of his love. And go and live as if you and everyone you meet are on a path that leads to that glory in Christ’s eternal kingdom. Amen.

Below is a lightly edited announcement that I made at First Presbyterian Church of Rolla on February 11, 2024, regarding our Ash Wednesday service.

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The Stoics have a saying, “Memento mori,” which means, “Remember death.” It’s their way of remembering that death is inevitable, so we need to appreciate the present. This week, Lent begins with Ash Wednesday. We will have a short service in the back of the sanctuary where I will impose ashes with words drawn from Genesis, “Remember you are dust, and to dust you will return.” This is our way of remembering that death is inevitable and to spend the next six weeks in penitence and prayer. We’ve had a few reminders of death lately. Last week, we learned that the Reads lost their daughter, Karen. Then on Friday two days ago, we learned that the Looks lost DC. Yesterday, I found out that my aunt passed away. I won’t pretend to remember or even know all of the loved ones that we have all lost recently, and nobody can ever truly know the grief another person is experiencing.

However, we end this season of Epiphany with a vision of Jesus glorified, shining radiantly on a mountaintop. We will also end the season of Lent with an even more glorious vision, of our risen Lord who conquered sin and death. Unlike the Stoics, we have faith that this world is not the end. We have a hope that in this life we see as through a glass darkly, but one day, we will see God face to face.

So join us this Wednesday to enter the season of Lent with the proper respect for the sinfulness, brokenness, and pain of this world, and our own sinfulness. But at the same time, remember that the things of this world are passing away as God reconciles and restores all things. And remember that we can experience a foretaste of the kingdom of God right here and now, but will one day enjoy God’s reign in all of its fullness.

My latest article in the Phelps County Focus, published January 10, 2024. Here’s a teaser:

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For about a decade, I have gone elk hunting every year with my friend Wayne, who has been hunting elk for probably 30 years. 

In his early days, Wayne used a topographical map and a compass. Topo maps are great, at least if you know where you are on them. In the area where we hunt, near Durango, Colorado, the original maps were made about 100 years ago and revised in 1973. Their details are reasonably good, but, of course, they don’t reflect any changes in the last 50 years, and the resolution isn’t super fine. 

We all still carry a map and a compass, as backup. 

Not long before I started hunting with him, though, Wayne started using a GPS….

Continued at https://www.phelpscountyfocus.com/faith/article_616818ee-aff8-11ee-90dc-afc1e75b9dd3.html

Last week was my rotation on the Faith page of the Phelps County Focus. I didn’t really consider the juxtaposition of the title of my article and my photo! Please read the article here:

The World’s Most Dangerous Person

Here’s a teaser:

A common belief in modern society is that there is no objective Truth, only “your truth” and “my truth.” All truth is relative, and morals are socially constructed. While this sounds like a path to freedom, with nobody to tell you what you should believe, moral relativism has been a tool of authoritarians throughout the past century or so. If truth is flexible, then it might as well be the truth as determined by the strongest. 

As Christians, we assert that there is an objective Truth. There is some divine ordering purpose to the world. There is some absolute moral code that is common to all humanity. So, the goal is to discover this Truth and apply it to your life. 

Where things go awry… (Continue reading)

The Phelps County Focus has a Faith page that features a variety of voices from the community. I have joined the rotation, which is now about every four months. Here is my first article, which was inspired by my study of Matthew 9:35-10:23:

https://www.phelpscountyfocus.com/faith/article_94def9f4-175f-11ee-9f7d-d3131c9a5ea1.html

The other day, I had coffee with my dear friend Ashley. She is the executive director of The Mission, a position she took just a few months before I started volunteering regularly there. She and I are a mutual admiration society—we both see things in each other that we wish we could be.

She recently started using a Monk Manual, after hearing me talk about it. I’ve been using a Monk Manual for about three years now, I think, and just finished “Find Your Inner Monk.” So we were talking about the process and what we get out of it. The Monk Manual is not a lightweight day planner. It’s a heavy process, built on a plan-act-reflect loop with daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual cycles. The reflection piece is critical. The goal is not to get more done or to be more productive. Rather, the goal is to do the right things and to include both doing and being in your goals.

Ashley commented that I’m the most balanced person she knows. Now, perhaps that’s just because she knows all the things I do because they’re pretty public, but I do feel like I’m a well-balanced person. I run, I hunt, I preach, I volunteer. I started a nonprofit, I teach, I do research, and now I’m department chair. How and why do I do so much?

Part of the answer is that I’m not really that unusual among my peers. As I write this, I’m at the annual conference of the ECE Department Heads Association. Yesterday, there was a panel of deans. Of the five of them, two are also serving as presidents of their technical societies. People like me want to give. Everyone I’ve talked to here seems focused on the success of other people—faculty, staff, students—and wants to make the world a better place. We have all achieved certain things for ourselves, and now we want to see other people achieve great things.

The other main part of the answer is that I enjoy the process. That’s a significant teaching of the Monk Manual. If you are fundamentally driven to achieve some particular goal, your life will not be satisfying. Many junior faculty want to achieve tenure, but once they earn it, they find it to be good but not ultimately satisfying. Every mountain you summit just reveals the next one to climb. Goals are good, but they should be big goals, life goals that you know you won’t achieve but that serve as distant targets.

The reality is that life is lived one day at a time. Earning tenure, or achieving any other specific goal, happens on a specific day, which will be a good day perhaps. But the next day, you still have to get up and go to work. The better approach to life is to use your distant goals to determine which processes to put in your life, and then learn to enjoy the process. Find meaning in the mundane.

Take as an example my passion for running. Well, passion is too strong a word, much too strong. I have goals, but ultimately, I enjoy the process. I enjoy how my body feels after I run. I enjoy running on the roads and trails around my house. I enjoy listening to audiobooks while I run, to nurture my mind and soul while I’m strengthening my body. I find hills to be rewarding once I get up them. I run races (5k, 10k) not to win a prize, but for the joy of running with other people. I just enjoy the process.

The same can be said of my teaching, my research, my preaching, my volunteer work, and now my work as department chair. I find meaning in the day-to-day process, the routine. I have sought a variety of activities to nurture the different parts of my mind, soul, and body.

Where Ashley is different is that she has one big thing that she does. She wants to be more balanced; some days, I want to be more focused. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, as long as you are finding meaning in the process.

One challenge for me is travel. As I said, I am currently at a conference, and will be gone from home for about a week. It’s hard for me to maintain my daily processes while I’m out of my normal environment. So I must go now and do my weekly cycle in my Monk Manual, to keep myself grounded in the present.

Recently, I posted a list of “Edge of the Bed Advice.” One critique from my kids was that yes, they had heard much of it before and knew the stories behind many items, but without that context, they seemed like bromides or proverbs with no real depth. So here’s my first attempt to put some flesh to those bones.

I am currently going through a so-called pilgrimage, Find Your Inner Monk, from the creators of the Monk Manual. Much of the process is about decisions. How to make the right decision, how to make sure you are intentional about decision-making, how to decide out of love instead of fear. I’m also a fan of Jesuit spirituality. In The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, Father James Martin, SJ, describes several methods within the Jesuit tradition for discerning the right decision.

That’s all fine, but mostly, all decision-making literature and methods address the decisive moment. What happens before? What happens after?

In 1996, I was in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, finishing up my MSEE. I had every intention of continuing on with doctoral studies and had even passed the qualifying exam. I pulled out of one job search, too. But then, my relationship with my advisor went through one of those down phases common to every graduate student’s academic career. I applied for a job at Motorola in Phoenix and received an offer ($46,400, above my minimum threshold for consideration of $45k). Now what?

I talked with my dad about it. He counseled me to stay for my Ph.D., but more importantly, he gave me these two pieces of advice:

Beware of making a series of small decisions that add up to a big one.

Make a choice, then do what’s necessary to make it the right one.

Bill Kimball, 1996

The first piece of advice relates to what happens before the decision. It’s easy to drift along, semi-consciously choosing what seems right all the time, and then look back and discover that you’re on a path that you would never have chosen had you fully considered all of the options. In 1996, I had not actually made an inadvertent decision, but was close to it. I think my dad was trying to get me to see the magnitude of the decision I was facing. If I left grad school, would I ever go back? How would it impact my relationship with my girlfriend at the time? What kind of life was I choosing?

Ultimately, I did decide to take the job at Motorola. Now the second piece of advice came into play. Once I left UIUC and moved to Arizona, I couldn’t go back. I had to fully inhabit that life, and do what was necessary to make that the right decision. I discovered life without my girlfriend was not good, so I proposed to her. (We now have two grown kids.) I embraced the challenges of my job and learned as much as I could—not only about MOSFETs, IGBTs, diodes, and semiconductor packaging, but also about professionalism and business practices.

That wasn’t such a good time to be working for Motorola. They completely owned the analog cellphone market, but bet heavily on satellite telephony (Iridium) instead of digital cellphone technology. Bad move. They ultimately spun off two companies out of the Semiconductor Products Sector, Freescale (now part of NXP) and ON Semi. So, here was a time when the first piece of advice came back into play.

My product group was eliminated, and ultimately sold off to a company in Tucson. I could have moved with it; if I were an Arizonan, that might have been a compelling opportunity. I had an offer to move over to the part of Motorola that made communication satellites, but the work sounded incredibly boring. A colleague and I had an offer to move together to a Motorola semiconductor group in Austin, which was really tempting. But then I received an offer from Baldor in Arkansas (now part of ABB), with work that seemed more aligned with my future.

The easiest choice would have been the communication satellite business. My wife could have kept her job; we could have kept our house, which was beautiful (if a little excessive for a family of two). But that would have been a case of making a small decision that would set us on a path we didn’t necessarily want. I ultimately took the job at Baldor, which set me on a path that, a few years later, took me back to UIUC.

The reason I had that opportunity at Baldor, and the reason I ended up back at UIUC and eventually Missouri S&T as a professor and chair, is because at each step of the way, I made the most of the opportunity. While I was at Motorola, I was inexperienced, but learning every day, working hard, and doing my very best. When I was at Baldor, I quickly became one of the best engineers, at least in the middle power range. When I returned to UIUC as a research engineer, I made sure that I met and exceeded all of the expectations of the job, so I had the flexibility to join a startup company and get my Ph.D.

Two weeks ago, I officially became the chair of my department. I don’t know if it was the right decision, but I went through some discernment and ultimately decided to apply and then to accept the offer. Now, there’s no going back. I am the chair, for better or worse. So, I plan to do whatever it takes to be the best chair I can be. I’ll take advantage of opportunities to learn and grow, and to lead our department to be the best it can be. And in the end, it will have been the right decision because of my commitment to making the most of it.

Recently, I read This Is Day One, by Drew Dudley. One of his exercises for identifying your personal leadership values, drawn from lived experience, is to write a list of advice.

If you were sitting on the edge of the bed of your son or daughter the night before they left home for good, what advice would you give them?  What are the most important lessons life has taught you so far?  Ultimately, what perspectives, actions, or ideas have played the biggest role in your happiness?

I decided that was a worthy exercise, and that I should share my list with my kids (who indeed have left home, maybe not for good but close to it). And, I might as well share the list with others, too. I won’t claim credit for every entry. They have been informed by my family (especially my parents) and friends (especially Sharon), plus books I have read and events I have attended. I do stand behind all of them, though, and all of them have been meaningful to me.

• Choose your friends wisely. They will make you better or worse.
• Some people are different from you. They value different things and have had different life experiences. That doesn’t make them right or wrong, just different.
• Have someone you can tell anything—anything at all—confident that they will still love you and want the best for you. Be that person for someone else, too.
• Taking care of your body pays long-term dividends.
• Everyone is dealing with something. Sometimes it’s obvious and public, like a wheelchair. Often it’s hidden and private. Be kind, since you don’t know what load the other person is carrying.
• It’s better to be lucky than good, but you make your own luck through hard work, a willingness to learn, and openness to others.
• Love. Always love. Love is putting other people first.
• When someone points out a mistake, the best thing to do is to correct it as best you can. If you try to defend yourself, you’ll just make it worse.
• You don’t have to understand someone to appreciate that they have the divine spark within them. That’s particularly true of LGBTQ individuals.
• As a student, you will hit a wall when the system you have doesn’t work anymore. Be willing to tear it down and build a better system. Change your study habits, your schedule, whatever.
• Have a system for tracking short-term and long-term tasks and goals. If you don’t, odds are you’ll forget something important. The system has to work for you. Get suggestions from others, but make it your own.
• If you don’t write it down, it might as well not have happened. (Speaking of research and other work.)
• Everyone’s life is a product of both their actions and their environment. Be proud of or take responsibility for your actions, but also acknowledge the people and opportunities you’ve had that formed you.
• Family is important. Chosen family—spouse, children, close friends—is essential.
• The fact that it could be worse, doesn’t make it any better.
• It is always better to make more money.
• Beware of making a series of small decisions that add up to a big one.
• Make a choice, then do what’s necessary to make it the right one.
• Public speaking is easiest when you are the person in the room who knows the most about the subject. Just define the subject to make sure that you are the most knowledgeable.
• Always be beyond reproach.
• There is no fixed timeline or process to grief or emotional healing. It is up to each person who is hurting to determine how best to heal and how long it will take. Stay on your own timeline, not someone else’s.
• The kingdom of God is at hand! We can experience it in relationships with other people.
• Abundant life is not the same as a life of abundance. Abundant life is about love, peace, hope.
• No matter how thin the pancake, there are always two sides. Life is more complex than you realize from your own perspective.
• If you have privilege—race, gender, orientation, educational, financial—use it to elevate those who don’t.
• If you want something done, give it to someone who is busy. Be that busy person who gets stuff done.
• You will often find that the people who work long hours are in the office because they don’t want to be at home. It’s OK to work hard, but don’t work as a form of escapism.
• No one person can ever be enough for you. Yes, you should choose a life partner and choose them wisely, but do not rely on them to be your only support.
• Life doesn’t follow a straight line. It’s OK to make some changes along the way that may seem like steps backwards if they make your life better in some way (e.g., short-term career pain for long-term and/or personal gain).
• Do the best you can with what you have, where you are today.
• Find good mentors, more than one. People who represent the kind of person you want to be. Since nobody is perfect, have different mentors for different parts of your life or different aspects in which you want to grow.

Last year, LGBTQ+ Rolla held its first big public event. We had held some Zoom events with just a smattering of participation, but were emboldened to hold our first Pride gathering. I had hoped for 20 or 30 people to attend and we planned accordingly. We had music and snacks, but not much else. Over 90 people showed up! I was amazed. Not only did they show up, but they had a great time, as evidenced by the fact that they stuck around for the whole evening.

We continued to hold events throughout the year, with a focus towards building community and ramping up to another Pride gathering. Knowing that people would show up, we planned a little more carefully. I remembered one of my previous greatest achievements: when I was general chair of APEC in 2017. APEC is a major conference for engineers in my field. Engineers are not known to be highly social, but we still have a social event on Wednesday night of the conference. We’ve done various things over the years, but that year, we struck gold. We rented a city park and had different activities around it: food (there has to be a meal), a live band with a dance floor, games like cornhole, hand-rolled cigars. It was a huge success because there was something for everyone.

Last night, we held Phelps Pride 22 in the lower Schuman pavilion. Instead of just a bunch of random snacks, we had food trucks—Food For Your Soul and Sweet Stop. We had music from Spotify and from a keyboardist (Chris Feaster). We had crafts—jewelry-making and tie-dying. We sold T-shirts, plain white but with our logo, perfect for tie-dying. We had games—cornhole, ladder ball, volleyball. Something for everyone. Even a speech celebrating Pride as a protest, with a reminder that our work of building a better world is never done.

IT WAS INCREDIBLE! I would say easily 200 people. The pavilion itself was full, with people filling the lawn around it for a long way in every direction. I spent most of the night at the welcome table, selling T-shirts and raffle tickets and getting people to wear name tags.

One beautiful moment came around halfway through. A guy came over to the welcome table and said, “How can I be a better ally to you?” I said, well, first of all, I’m an ally myself, so start where I started: show up. He had already done that much, so I told him to keep showing up. Secondly, I pointed him to our website, which has some good resources. But the beautiful part is that he asked. He wants to be better and do more for other people.

That’s the sort of thing I have been hoping for. By national standards, Rolla is fairly conservative; by rural Missouri standards, it’s moderate-to-progressive. Just the fact that more than 1% of the city’s population showed up to Phelps Pride is a good indication that there are supportive people in the community. But we can and must do better and be better. The burden is not on LGBTQ+ individuals—it is on straight allies. We need to make a community that is more inclusive, more open, more loving of each other.

The greatest is the enemy of the great.

From This Is Day One by Drew Dudley

Was Phelps Pride 22 better than Rolla Pride 21? Wrong question. The 2021 event will always be the first one, which makes it special. The question is, was Phelps Pride 22 a great event? Absolutely! People gathered in true community, openly living their true selves. We should strive to make every day great by helping everyone live as the best versions of themselves.