Interfaith Dialogue – The Gift of the Other

Interfaith_TreeI’ve recently accepted the opportunity to coordinate MIT’s awesome interfaith dialogue program: The Addir Fellows. Addir is an ancient Sumerian word that means ‘bridge’.

Here’s my latest Tuesday’s in the Chapel talk where I discuss some of the reasons I’m so excited to promote interfaith dialogue (mp3).

Continue reading

Why I Care About Sleep at MIT

from sleepingmitstudents.tumblr.com

Sleep deprivation is often part of the MIT student experience. One of my dreams (pun intended) is that MIT can come to have a healthier sleep culture.

In this week’s Tuesday’s in the Chapel, I talk about why I see this as such an important issue—both based on my personal experience as an MIT student and from a spiritual perspective.

There’s no transcript this time because this was talk was completely unscripted—which is very unlike me. In addition to the audio, the text selections1usually in these selections I like to include some connection to non-religious stuff for the sake of inclusivity, but since I did this one with virtually no prep, I defaulted to Bible verses that were top of the mind. I used are below.

Continue reading

Notes:   [ + ]

1. usually in these selections I like to include some connection to non-religious stuff for the sake of inclusivity, but since I did this one with virtually no prep, I defaulted to Bible verses that were top of the mind.

How to Smell Really Good (Emotionally)!

emotional-hygieneBringing together this summer’s Pixar blockbuster Inside Out, classic episodes of the original Star Trek and the gargantuan, impenetrable novel Infinite Jest, here’s my Tuesday’s in the Chapel talk for this semester (as audio and transcript):

First Reading:
From Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, p. 695:

Hal, who’s empty but not dumb, theorizes privately that what passes for hip cynical transcendence of sentiment is really some kind of fear of being really human, since to be really human (at least as he conceptualizes it) is probably to be unavoidably sentimental and naïve and goo-prone and generally pathetic, is to be in some basic interior way forever infantile… One of the really American things about Hal, probably, is the way he despises what it is he’s really lonely for: this hideous internal self, incontinent of sentiment and need, that pules and writhes just under the hip empty mask, anhedonia.

Continue reading

The Paper is White

41Yfhd45TwLHere’s another short talk I gave at “Tuesdays in the Chapel,” a weekly interfaith, non-denominational chapel service hosted by MIT’s Chaplain to the Institute. The topic for this year’s talks is “One thing that is most important.” For whatever reason, this talk ended up being a little bit on the intense side. It opened with a couple of excerpts from The Road by Cormac McCarthy, one of the most intense and haunting–and best–books I have ever read. And that kind of sets the tone for things.

Here’s the audio of the talk or you can read it below.

 

Continue reading

One kinda folks

The following was a short talk I gave at one of the weekly “Tuesdays in the Chapel” services hosted by Bob Randolph, MIT’s Chaplain to the Institute. The prompt for this year’s talks is “A book or event that changed my life.” The topic of my talk is what I call “centered sets” and I develop the ideas a little bit more in depth in this post. Continue reading

Who says you are better than others?

The following was a short talk I gave at one of the weekly “Tuesdays in the Chapel” services hosted by Bob Randolph, MIT’s Chaplain to the Institute. The prompt for this years talks is “A book or event that changed my life.”

-The first lines of The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me…

Our topic is a book that changed your life. The Great Gatsby is not the book that changed my life, though I like it very much. I included the first few lines of Gatsby though because I think they warmed me up for the the thing that would change my life. Continue reading

In my family we…

The following was a short talk I gave  at one of the weekly “Tuesdays in the Chapel” services hosted by Bob Randolph, MIT’s Chaplain to the Institute. The prompt for this years talks is “In my family we…”

A reading from G.K. Chesterton’s Heretics:

Some sages of our own decadence have made a serious attack on the family. They have impugned it, as I think wrongly; and its defenders have defended it, and defended it wrongly. The common defence of the family is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life, it is peaceful, pleasant, and at one. But there is another defence of the family which is possible, and to me evident; this defence is that the family is not peaceful and not pleasant and not at one.

It is precisely because our uncle Henry does not approve of the theatrical ambitions of our sister Sarah that the family is like humanity. The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family, are, for good reasons and bad, simply revolting against mankind. Aunt Elizabeth is unreasonable, like mankind. Papa is excitable, like mankind Our youngest brother is mischievous, like mankind. Grandpapa is stupid, like the world; he is old, like the world. Continue reading