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
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
One of the perks (or occupational hazards) of working for a church is that they might ask you to give the Sunday Morning sermon someday. That’s what happened to me and you can listen to the result:
How Can I Figure Out How Much to Trust Jesus?
(sermon outline)
This sermon contains a fair amount of the story of how I came to be a chaplain here at MIT.
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
Shoot! Clearly I am not cut out for blogging! It’s been months since my last post. Sadly, I think my dreams of having one of those blogs that people actually read are down the drain. And yet, I put the link to this thing on my business cards and I’m too cheap to get new ones before I use these up.
And speaking of my business card, what’s up with the backside of that thing? I gave one to a young woman and she giggled when she looked at the back. When I asked her what was funny, she said “well, you know what this looks like!” But I didn’t. And she didn’t want to clue me in for some reason and then she changed the subject.
I kept trying to figure it out though. I had just ordered a fresh box of these business cards so I wanted to be in on the joke too. The demure tone of her snickering made me wonder if it was something sexual. And then I had my answer. Well, here’s what’s on the back and you’ll probably pick up on it much faster than I did.
Well, if I wasn’t meaning to depict a bunch of sperm cells bombarding the egg, what is the deal with this image? Continue reading
It was my dream to come to MIT since I was in 5th grade. When I visited MIT for the first time as junior in high school, I just fell even deeper in love. And I very much still remember the day when I got my acceptance letter (though it wasn’t nearly as cool as the ones used today). So when I showed up to start classes here, I was a little surprised to find that not everyone loved MIT as much as me.
In fact, it seemed the longer somebody had been here the more they strongly disliked MIT. The place was nicknamed “Hell” and the acronym we used to express how much we hated it got five letters when most only got three. Upperclassmen told me that “MIT teaches you to hate the things you love” and it was taken for granted that the primary emotion of seniors (if not juniors) was bitterness. What on earth was going on? This was supposed to be the greatest place on earth for us nerds! Continue reading
I was a perhaps a bit hasty in introducing myself in my first post. There’s probably more that my multitudes of readers want to know about me.
I should probably say a bit about my chaplaincy. I am the Blue Ocean Faith Chaplain here at MIT. Blue Ocean is a small and very new collection of churches with, what I find to be, a refreshingly simple (yet deeply thoughtful) approach to faith in God.
My big hope for my chaplaincy is that I can help everyone at MIT to thrive spiritually—with no pressure to change their religious affiliation or lack thereof. And I’ve promised to hazard some embryonic ideas about how this might happen in upcoming posts. Continue reading
Hello MIT! My name is Adam Reynolds and I’m one of the MIT chaplains. The fun part of writing stuff that no one will read is that you don’t have to censor yourself all that much. I’m not really the blogging type (I can’t even manage to read blogs), but this seems like a good venue for me to espouse my spiritual musings and my hopes for MIT.
I’m new as a chaplain, but I’ve been very connected to the MIT community since first coming here as an undergrad in 1997. And I’ve been pretty involved in spiritual life here for nearly the past decade.
First a word about the title of this blog. We’re all familiar with MIT’s motto: Mens et Manus, Latin for “Mind and Hand.” Well, in what is surely brash irreverence, I am advocating that we augment the motto with “…et Spiritus!” to emphasize the importance of the spiritual dimension in life in addition to the physical and mental. Continue reading