The Waltonian

Our bodies are God’s good creations and should be honored as such. Furthermore, our bodies allow us to live out our callings, part of which inevitably involves loving the people around us. Think about what it would mean to love someone if we were not material beings, if we were pure spirit–I cannot imagine it. It matters that God became a material being, that Christ loved us by walking among us and sacrificing his body. Our bodies matter, and I think that caring rightly for them is a matter of being spiritually centered. I’d like to explore how this plays out specifically with food and exercise.

When we approach food in the right way, we recognize it as a gift from God–a source of nourishment to be celebrated. However, we are often tempted to eat solely for instant gratification and not for nourishment, leading us to eat more than our bodies can really handle, or to choose sources of food that don’t actually give our bodies what they need. On the other hand, we can also fall into thinking of food as our enemy and end up demonizing everything that doesn’t fall into a very narrow category of “acceptable” food.

A similar pattern exists with exercise. At its best, exercise is something done out of a love and respect for our bodies. But I find it easy to exercise out of a desire to punish my body for not looking a certain way–and this usually turns into an attempt to make my body take on a shape that it doesn’t naturally have. We often hear language like “slimming down” or “burning fat” that makes it sound as if we are trying to chip away at our bodies the way a sculptor chips away at a block of marble. And I wonder, in all of this “trimming and slimming,” if I am really just trying to carve an idol out of my own body.

I was 11 when I first started trying to lose weight. I was an active, healthy child, but I hated the baby fat that still clung to my stomach. I picked up some basic ideas about “nutrition” and started making changes. When my family ate burgers for dinner, I ate mine without a roll. When the moms in our carpool group offered me snacks on the way home from school, I politely declined. I walked on the treadmill every afternoon. By eighth grade, I had slimmed down, and people noticed. Ladies at church commented to my mom about my changing figure, and I soaked this up as praise.

Through high school and much of college, I continued to feel the pressure to keep tabs on my appearance, and I consistently looked at my body either with vanity or loathing (more often the latter). All of my attempts to “care” for my body were rooted in insecurity. My friends praised the healthy lunches I packed for school, not knowing that the real reason I was eating half a turkey sandwich and some carrots was that I hated how I looked. In college, I discovered fitness apps that track your calorie intake, and for weeks at a time I would try to limit myself to as little as 1200 calories a day. Inevitably, stress and hunger would cause me to break down and eat whatever I wanted. But that would just make me all the more determined to make my calorie limit stick the next time.

It pains me to think how distorted my perspectives on food and exercise have been. But even though I still struggle not to be sucked back into this pattern, I’m at least closer to an understanding of what it would mean to care for my body in the right way. I know I need to treat food as a gift created by God to fulfill my needs and avoid demonizing it or treating it as a source of instant gratification. I also need to treat exercise as a matter of self-care and not an attempt to carve my body into something it was never meant to be. The answers are there; the problem is getting away from the enormous pressure to fit a certain standard of beauty. The problem is escaping the visions of models and actresses and Pinterest fitness gurus that dance in my head, tempting me back to my calorie-counting “fitness” apps. I’ve found that I’m most quickly snapped out of this trance when I think about my little sister: it kills me to think that I could be modeling those destructive behaviors for her, and I feel a duty to love my imperfect body in a way that gives her permission to love her body too.

Caring for our bodies well means doing so out of love and appreciation rather than out of loathing. But ultimately, I think that to care for my body well is to be constantly aware that the state of my body is not the center of my life. It means that Christ is at the center of my life, and while caring for my body is important, I am called to many other things that matter much more. I think that when we care for our bodies well, our bodies inevitably fade into the background, overshadowed by the people around us whom we are called to love and the good work that we are called to do in the world.

Some of the best, most beautiful and most bizarre literature has come out of Russia–from Alexander Pushkin’s spirited tales, to Dostoyevsky’s philosophically-rich works, to Gogol’s bafflingly absurd stories.

This semester, Eastern students had the chance to study these and other works of Russian literature with guest professor Dr. Galina Yermolenko. Russian Literature is not a course typically offered at EU, but the Center for Orthodox Thought and Culture has partnered with the English department to institute the class and to bring Yermolenko here to teach it.

From the beginning of the course, Yermolenko’s deep love for language and for stories was evident and contagious. She says that she loves getting into a text and being able to study it closely–down to each sentence and each word. In large part, this appreciation for zooming in on certain passages of a text comes from her background as a linguist. Yermolenko says that from the age of about seven she was tutored in English, French and German. She loved studying language and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Germanic/English Philology from Simferopol State University in Ukraine.

Yermolenko has unique perspective on Russian literature given her Ukrainian background. She was born in a Russian-speaking area of southeast Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union. She moved later to the Crimea where she remained for most of her childhood and young adult years. She says the culture was “very mixed” between Russian and Ukrainian. Although her grandparents still spoke Ukrainian and she learned to speak it as well, all of her education was in Russian, and her immediate family spoke Russian at home.

Yermolenko came to the United States in 1990 to do grad research and has been living and working here since then. In addition to her degree in philology, she holds a Ph.D. in English from Marquette University. Her love of literature dates back to her childhood–she recalls spending her summers reading nonstop. Her mother, whom she refers to as an “angel,” encouraged this by constantly pushing Yermolenko and her sister to read. As a teen, she read classic works by Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev and a whole host of other writers. She considered studying literature as an undergraduate student but decided against it, knowing that doing so would mean being under pressure to carry the Communist Party line in analyzing texts. At Marquette, Yermolenko chose to specialize in British Renaissance literature. When I asked her about her interest in this period, she joked that there are some personality types who are attracted to modern literature and others who are attracted to medieval and renaissance literature. Yermolenko says she definitely falls into the latter category. Some of her work focuses on Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”–a choice that led many of her graduate colleagues to ask if she was crazy. But Yermolenko says she likes this complex, multilayered medieval text, albeit difficult to work with.

As far as teaching goes, Yermolenko says, “I always kind of knew that I would be teaching.” Her interest in having conversations about books was sparked when she got involved with history and philosophy clubs as an undergraduate student: “that’s where I got the love of debating and discussing books.” She goes on to say that in good books there is always something to come back to–always more to explore.

“Still to this day,” Yermolenko says, “I never lose interest even in the books I’ve read many times, if I like them and respond to them. I always find something new, so I don’t get tired of them.”

Yermolenko is currently an associate professor of literature at DeSales University, and this is her first time teaching at Eastern. When I ask her about her experience at EU, she speaks positively and graciously about her interactions with students in her Russian Lit class. It has certainly been a privilege to welcome her to our community, and we hope to see Dr. Yermolenko visiting Eastern again soon.

Last weekend (April 7-9), Eastern University’s dance department presented its spring concert, “In Full Bloom.” The concert featured an array of beautiful pieces choreographed by Eastern faculty and students. To get an inside look at what went into the preparation for this concert, I spoke to senior dance major Hannah Brumbach.

“The premise of the whole show is around community and friendship and binding together,” Brumbach explains. This certainly came through in the concert, with a number of pieces bringing together the themes of unity and individuality. One moving example of these themes was a piece called “Out of the Dust,” choreographed by Madison Eichert, Emily Pisano, Megan Schultz and Chlöe Streitburger. The choreographers note in the program, “Throughout all of the changes that our department has endured, our community has continued to grow. Through these friendships, we are able to support each other to rise out of the dust and overcome whatever comes our way.” Overall, the piece communicated a beautiful vision of what it means to hold one another up within a community, caring for each other and lifting each other up when we fall.

The theme of unity was also present in the three pieces that Brumbach co-choreographed. “Our Own Beat” was choreographed by (and featured) Brumbach along with Jordan Bonney and Maddie Ridgeway. In this tap trio, the dancers worked to bring together different rhythms and movements in one cohesive piece. Explaining the piece, Brumbach notes, “We’re finding a lot of polyrhythms underneath each other, or making the same rhythm with different movements, and working together as a trio to figure that out.”

Brumbach also co-choreographed a piece called “Take a Moment” with Samantha Ambrico, Alexandra Roberts and Neeka Skelton.

“It’s kind of a reflection of our time here at Eastern,” Brumbach says, “but for the wider audience it can simply be the premise of community–that no matter how close you are or how far away you are, you’re still connected by your past experiences together. We use a lot of contact with each other and empathizing–so, taking on each other’s movement–and then we use modifications of an original piece of movement to show everyone being uniquely different, but also doing it all together.”

In a piece entitled “Articulation in Two,” Brumbach collaborated with Skelton. This lighthearted and entertaining piece was unique in bringing together two very different styles: modern dance and old Hollywood jazz.

“We had the original nugget of an idea for fusing modern and jazz,” Brumbach says. “We thought it would be really interesting to fuse the two because they’re so different.” Brumbach and Skelton not only wanted to fuse two dance styles, but also wanted to create a piece that married something old and something new. Brumbach explains, “What we’re really looking at is holding on and the importance of looking back at where we’ve come from…..Even though it’s kind of antiquated and silly and doesn’t fit in with our cultural norms, it’s still a gem in our history of dance.”

Throughout the entire concert, it was clear that Eastern’s dance department is bursting with both talent and creative vision. When I ask Brumbach about her experience as a dance major at Eastern, one of the things she emphasizes is the unique bond between the dancers.

“Being in such a community has taught me a lot about loving others,” Brumbach says. “The dancers are together for almost all of their classes. We have rehearsals. We’re spending lots of extra hours in the studio together. We’re being extremely vulnerable with each other in our creative processes….Unfortunately, in our culture art is not valued, and so it becomes competitive in an unhealthy way. And so there are very, very few dance environments that you will ever find like Eastern’s dance department, where you learn how to uplift other people and also uplift yourself.”

This sense of mutual supportiveness was clearly embodied in the art created for the spring concert, and each show served as a reminder that Eastern’s dance department is, indeed, a rare and beautiful thing.

Plans are being developed in Philadelphia for Penn’s Landing Park: a building project in which an 11-acre park will be constructed above I-95.

Since its construction in the 1960s, I-95 has been cutting off the center of the city from the riverfront, but it seems that this is about to change. The park will be located between Walnut Street and Chestnut Street and act as a bridge between Center City and the river. Regarding the project, Tom Corcoran, president of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation, states, “There is now a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reconnect Penn’s Landing back to the Old City and the historic district.” In addition to bridging currently-disconnected parts of the city, the project will also create opportunities for future development, including new residences, hotels and retail area.

Landscape architecture firm Hargreaves Associates is designing the park. According to Hargreaves’ feasibility study, the park is expected to bring roughly $1.6 billion in economic returns to the area over the next 25 years.

The cost of the project is estimated at $225 million, and most of those funds are already secured. The city will pay $90 million, and the William Penn Foundation has pledged $15 million. It was also recently announced that Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) would contribute $100 million to the project.

The idea of building a park over a freeway or highway is not necessarily a new one. This kind of structure, which is often referred to as a “freeway cap park” or “highway cap park,” was implemented as early as the 1950s in Brooklyn and 1976 in Seattle. More recently, in 2008, Boston enacted the “Big Dig” project, which moved several freeways underground and allowed for the development of five new parks. A similar structure was constructed in Dallas in 2012.

In Philadelphia, talk of constructing a cap park has been going on for decades, beginning with the construction of I-95 in the 1960s. Discussion continued up until 2002, when Philadelphia Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron wrote an impactful critique of I-95’s placement. In 2007, PennPraxis, a nonprofit group from UPenn School of Design, presented a plan urging the city to reconnect Center City to the riverfront. In 2011, the Delaware River Waterfront Association included a plan for a cap park into its Master Plan, and in 2012, the city adopted this plan. The past few years have entailed extensive planning and fundraising. Although early work is slated to begin in the next few years, there is still no official timeline for the building project.

Sources: archpaper.com, billypenn.com, gizmodo.com, NBC

Before we can discuss the nature of Lent, we must first discuss why it is important that Lent is a season. To say that something is a season is to say that it is part of an ever-changing cycle—e.g., winter, spring, summer, fall and so forth. The season of Lent is part of the larger cycle of the church year, which commemorates the events of the Gospel on an annual basis. During Advent, we anticipate Christ’s coming in the flesh; at Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of the incarnation, of God made flesh; during Lent, we anticipate Christ’s death and sufferings; at Easter, we celebrate his joyous resurrection. This cycle is only possible because the Gospel is not a series of point-blank theological statements; rather, it is a story into which Christ invites all of humanity. The practices of the church year, then, allow us to live this story every year. And Lenten practices allow us to better envision our role within this story.

Lent is primarily a time of penitence and of reflection on the death and sufferings of Christ. These two things are intrinsically linked: in order to consider the fullness of what Christ’s death meant, we need a time during which we understand the depth of our own sin. And so, during Lent, we approach Christ with humble submission, being especially cognizant of our own brokenness. Through such penitence, we are better able to understand where we fit into the narrative of Christ’s death—as the fallen people for whom he died. Furthermore, we understand not only on an individual basis, but also en masse through shared penitence with the entire Church. And we reflect on our shared human brokenness not simply for the sake of fixating on sin, but that we might understand the magnitude of Christ’s death.

In other words, the context for penitence is always and only under the shadow of the cross. We already know the end of the story—the promise of the resurrection—and therefore cannot fall into a despair which rejects all hope. And yet, during Lent, we assume the posture of Mary, weeping at the foot of the cross for the death of her son. We too must mourn Christ’s death in this manner, with the full knowledge that Christ suffers on our behalf.

So how do Lenten practices of giving things up fit into this picture? Through practicing self-denial, we consider the crucial role of self-sacrifice in the Christian story, with the primary image of self-sacrifice being the cross. Furthermore, the things we let go of give us an opportunity to be more acutely aware of how we are to long for Christ. By denying ourselves of certain desires, we become all the more aware of those desires and are better prepared to prayerfully redirect them toward Christ, who is the true fulfillment of all desire.

Thursday, March 23 was the opening night for Eastern’s production of “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.” All in all, the show proved to be a delightfully sweet and zany comedy. The basic premise of the musical is a county spelling bee, full of highly idiosyncratic 12-year-olds who each bring their own unique backstory to the surprisingly intense competition.

The highlight of the show by far was the wonderfully odd array of characters brought to life convincingly and humorously by the cast. Matthew Ernst played borderline-insane Vice Principal Douglas Panch—the word reader for the bee, whose responses to competitors’ requests to define words and use them in a sentence only grew more outrageous as the play went on. When one competitor asked him to define the word “cow” he responded exasperatedly, “It means cow!” And when another competitor asked him to use the word “Mexican” in a sentence, he responded with, “Guacamole is the Mexican pudding.” Imagine all of this combined with an aggressively nasal, Miranda-Sings-esque voice, and you can imagine why Ernst’s portrayal of Vice Principal Panch had me laughing out loud for the entirety of the show.

And then there was Rona Lisa Peretti (yes, her name rhymes with “Mona Lisa”), played by Caroline Campbell—the overinvested former spelling bee champ in charge of the whole thing. Campbell played her as the perfect combination of overzealous spelling fanatic and prim school marm.

And then there were the spellers—a fabulously quirky and diverse bunch, each brought to life in a unique and endearing way by various cast members. There was Logainne Schwartzangrubenniere (yes, her last name really is that long), played by Carly Nuneviller—an over-pressured, perfection-seeking girl who also happened to have a severe lisp and somehow always got stuck spelling words with multiple “s” sounds. There was Marcy Park, played by Amy Tuck—an overachieving wonderchild who excelled at everything and spoke six languages. There was Olive Ostrovsky, played by Sydney Becker—a sweet, dictionary-loving girl who just wanted her parents’ affirmation. Jared Maier played Leaf Coneybear, a quirky, superhero-cape-wearing boy just trying to impress his family. Bryan Eltman played former spelling bee champ Chip Tolentino, a spiffy used-to-winning type.

And last, but certainly not least, Ethan Pierson brought charm, humor and vitality to the role of William Barfee—a socially awkward yet dignified kid who showed up clad in a green velvety coat and bright orange scarf. He repeatedly said “I know” after being told he spelled a word correctly, stretched dramatically and excessively before every word, employed his own unique “magic foot” method of spelling each word on the ground with his foot and (spoiler alert!) won the bee in the end.

The musical involved a number of unexpected and heartwarming turns. There was the moment when the all-around-perfect Marcy Park decided to throw the bee and free herself from having to be perfect at everything. There was the moment when Logainne decided that ethics were more important than trophies, despite pressure from her parents to think the opposite. And my personal favorite was the moment when Olive Ostrovsky and William Barfee found themselves competing against each other as the only two remaining spellers and ultimately realized that through their shared love of words they had forged a friendship much more valuable than any trophy.

One of the strongest elements of the musical was its ability to bring humor to an unexpected realm and to help us take joy in a wide array of human idiosyncrasies. One of the songs centered on the phrase “life is pandemonium,” and ultimately, I think the entirety of the play reflected the truth of this line, yet suggested that we find ways to laugh at the pandemonium of life. The production was not only a lighthearted laugh-inducing tale of competitive spelling, but also a reminder to take joy in the quirks of others and to find the humor embedded in daily life.

All schools shape students in particular ways because every school is built on value judgments about what is good. Public school systems are generally centered on ideas about what people ought to know and be capable of in order to be productive citizens. Prep schools and other high-end private schools tend to focus on academic excellence for the sake of successful college careers and ultimately for the sake of broader social, economic and vocational success. Religious schools are guided by the value system of the faith upon which they are built. The same pattern is present in less traditional models of schooling. Home schooling environments are built upon the principles of a given family or school group. Even free schools, which generally have virtually no set curriculum of any kind, are still bound by a commitment to certain democratic and communal values. It is impossible to have a school that is not animated by judgments about what is good, and students seem to be inevitably shaped by these judgments. Students may reject, accept or continue to contemplate the moral foundations of their educational environments, but what they can rarely do is to ignore such foundations or be unaffected by them.

Some schools are more intentional and explicit than others when it comes to shaping students in this way. In schools that focus more heavily on preparing students for vocational and economic success, moral formation often tends to be more implicit. On the other hand, schools that focus more on allowing their students to develop into certain kinds of people are more explicit about moral formation and more likely to develop formal structures by which such formation is supposed to be accomplished. Christian schools often make claims in their mission statements about how they aim to shape students. Eastern University, for example, “is dedicated…to the development of people of faith who will enhance the quality of society and the church.” This comes from Eastern’s vision statement. Eastern’s statement of educational values notes, “In a culture that tends to value the credential or degree rather than the person who receives the degree, we seek to educate and develop men and women of intellectual ability, strong character and deep Christian commitment. We seek students who are serious, teachable and invested in their educational experience so that we can have maximum impact on their intellectual and spiritual formation.”

The idea at the heart of this attempt to shape people goes all the way back to Aristotle, who discussed whether virtue (that is, goodness of the soul) can ever really be taught. The tricky thing about this question is that virtue, goodness, moral formation, etc. are less about what we know and more about what we love. In other words, you cannot simply make someone virtuous by telling them what virtue is; you cannot make someone good by simply explaining to them what is good; you cannot make someone loving by telling them what it means to love. Telling is not enough, because knowing is not enough. We become virtuous not when we know what is good, but when we love what is good. The language that schools use to describe this phenomenon varies: we may speak of it as “formation” or “personal growth” or “developing habits of the heart” or “shaping people.” But the common thread (and perhaps the bottom line) is a transformation of what a person loves.

What does it mean, then, to make someone love something? This is, after all, what the idea of formation boils down to. Eastern’s commitment to develop people of “strong character” indicates the development of a person who loves what is right, good and just. Similarly, developing a person of “deep Christian commitment” is simply another way of saying a person who loves Christ, loves the Christian tradition and loves what Christ loves. But how is this to be done, if it can be done at all? It seems to me that it is entirely impossible to make another human love something, and thus teachers and schools should not expect to be able to shape people at will. We ought not delude ourselves into thinking that making students do certain activities, read certain books or learn certain material can ever really make them love what we believe ought to be loved. It seems a bit manipulative and perhaps presumptuous for schools or teachers to believe they can change students this way–as if students are pieces of clay to be molded. As an aspiring educator, I find myself convicted to remember that I am not the Potter–that role has already been claimed by the only One who is really capable of molding human persons.

And yet, perhaps schools and teachers do play some kind of role in shaping what students love. This role is not the all-definitive one of the potter; rather it is one of invitation and example. Love is revelatory, and when teachers actively and evidently love something, it reveals the worthiness of that thing to be loved. When, in the course of teaching science, or history, or literature, or math, a teacher demonstrates a deep and overflowing love for beauty, or wisdom, or creation, those things are shown to be worth loving. This example of love (which ultimately functions as an invitation to love) seems to me to be the strongest way that schools shape students morally.

Sources: Phil Cary, Jeff Dill, Nicole McKeown

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Most college students can think of at least one professor who has significantly impacted their college experience, perhaps by asking challenging questions, introducing engaging new concepts or offering personal or academic support. The professors I’ve encountered at Eastern are one of the defining points of my college experience–perhaps the most defining, with the only exception being my fellow students. I’ve encountered many faculty who have proven to be genuinely concerned with my intellectual, spiritual and personal well-being and growth. In talking with friends of mine from other colleges, many are shocked to hear that several of my professors have even invited my class or some other group of students into their homes.

We need to remember that the kind of care we are receiving is, indeed, astounding. I think this is especially noteworthy when considered in the light of the financial sacrifice attached to teaching at a small, Christian school such as Eastern. The accompanying graph shows the average salary for full-time professors for a variety of schools from 2007 to 2014. Also included in the graph is the national average salary for full-time professors at four-year private schools. (Data was not available for 2015 to 2016. Additionally, the graph does not include the salaries of associate professors and adjuncts who make significantly less than full-time professors.) As the graph shows, Christian schools like Messiah, Wheaton, Gordon and Cairn simply are not able to pay professors on the same level as other private schools. Even Wheaton, which has one of the highest full-time faculty salary rates of Christian universities, still lags behind the national average for four-year private schools by over $20,000. It is also important to note that this graph is not adjusted for inflation. If it were, we would see the national average for four-year private schools remaining relatively flat and Eastern’s faculty salary rate declining more noticeably.

I would venture to guess that this situation might be discouraging to some faculty. I would think that it could be hard to feel valued by one’s institution when the numbers seem to suggest otherwise. The situation is complicated by the fact that the salaries for the top administrative positions run so much higher than faculty salaries. Eastern’s eight highest-paid administrators all received six-figure compensation packages in 2012, 2013 and 2014–as is the case at most private four-year universities. (This information can be found on tax forms which are publicly available online.) Let me be clear: I most certainly do not pretend to understand the complexities of university finances, and I recognize that there are valid reasons why administrative salaries are what they are. However, that does not necessarily make the salary gap any more palatable when faculty are such a vital part of any university, and especially this one. The faculty are the heartbeat of a university, and when we are unable to recognize this financially, we must find other ways to do so. So let me say it here and now: faculty, you are a vital and valued part of this university. This place would be nothing without you, and I wish that your paycheck better reflected that. On a daily basis, you engage with us in meaningful conversation resulting in real personal growth, help us make sense of the world and ourselves and support us as we explore our callings. Regardless of what the numbers indicate, I hope you know that none of this is taken for granted.

Sources: data.chronicle.com, foundationcenter.org

The term “consumerism” can refer to many things, but in this article I mean to specifically address the increasingly high levels of consumption of goods and services within our society. It often seems to me that we are so immersed in consumerist society that we are unable to understand it—having never known anything different, we have no basis for comparison. I think about this every semester as I lug bag after bag from my car to my dorm room during move-in. “Why do I have so much stuff?!” I’ve wondered in exasperation during every move-in and move-out for the last four years. But somehow I can’t ever seem to bring less stuff.

However, in a few small ways I’ve glimpsed a world less driven by the accumulation of stuff. My grandfather sometimes shares memories of growing up in the wake of the Great Depression, during which time, he says, children were happy to receive an orange and a few pieces of candy for Christmas. And I can remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House on the Prairie” book series as a kid and being fascinated and entranced by the combination of elegant simplicity and grit that I saw in her tales of pioneer life.

In general, most of us have a lot more stuff than people did in the past. For example, in 1930, the average American woman had nine outfits; today, she has 30. And because we have more stuff, we also need bigger houses than we used to: the average square footage of our houses continues to go up even as the average family size shrinks. Of course, consumerism is not limited to the physical things we own. We also consume a great deal of food, entertainment and other services. Just think of the ways that portion sizes have increased in America. According to the National Institutes of Health, portion sizes in American restaurants have double or tripled in the last two decades. Or, consider the recent-phenomenon-turned-new-norm of Netflix bingeing. Netflix recently analyzed viewers’ watching habits and found that people tend to finish the first season of a show in only one week’s time.

Some argue that all of this increased spending is good because it contributes to a healthy economy and prevents another recession. But I believe that before we even ask, “Is this good for the economy?” we should be asking simply, “Is this good?” And while healthy economic patterns do matter a great deal, that question cannot be answered through a purely economic lens, as humans are not purely economic beings.

So, is consumerism good? One way to answer this question is to consider the production process for the goods we consume. In many cases, it seems that our ability to own three times as many outfits as the average person in 1930 is largely dependent on the availability of cheap clothing. But this clothing is often cheap because it is produced by underpaid (and perhaps endangered) factory workers in less-developed countries. Our increasing access to cheap clothes seems to be dependent on global inequality. By purchasing clothing or other goods from vendors that depend on cheap labor, we participate–at least indirectly–in unjust economic structures. There is also a question of sustainability. It takes a great deal of resources to produce the goods we are buying. Given the limited resources of our planet, we need to ask how important the things we are buying really are. Do we need them? If we don’t truly need them but just want them, how significantly will they actually improve the quality of our lives? These are questions we need to ask ourselves again and again if we are to avoid being unthinkingly lulled into unhealthy and potentially unjust consumerist habits.

While consumerism seems to me to be a disconcerting and seriously problematic reality, I often tend to think optimistically about our generation’s concern about social issues, including consumerism. However, after reading a sociological study of young adults done by Christian Smith, I now wonder if my optimism is unmerited. Smith notes, “Fewer than one in 10 emerging adults we interviewed voiced any kind of focused discontent or more intense criticism of mass consumerism. And only a minority of those spoke of actually changing their own thinking and behaviors accordingly.” This is yet another reason to be concerned about consumerism: most people aren’t all that worried about it.

Addressing post-World War II Britain, Dorothy Sayers writes, “A society in which consumption has to be artificially stimulated in order to keep production going is a society founded on trash and waste, and such a society is a house built upon sand.” This is all too relevant to our present circumstances. Advertisers work endlessly to convince us that the things we buy will grant us more pleasure, ease, entertainment and satisfaction, ultimately making us happier people. I can’t help but wonder if our unceasing consumption of goods is driven largely by spiritual poverty. The culturally endorsed remedy is to buy, buy, buy. But this seems like a futile solution when what we need to do is learn how to be—how to seek a good life built on love of God and love of people.

Sources: Forbes; National Institutes of Health; The New York Times; Dorothy Sayers, “Creed or Chaos?”; Christian Smith, “Lost in Transition”

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Although Palmer Seminary has now been located at the St. David’s campus for several months now, many undergraduates still do not know a great deal about it. For those who don’t know very much about Palmer, the seminary’s mission aptly sums up the ethos of its identity: “The Whole Gospel, for the Whole World, Through Whole Persons.” This means that the seminary places particular emphasis on the good news for a diverse world, justice for “the least of these” and forming its students for transformative service. Students come to Palmer from all over the globe and from all walks of life. This variety of backgrounds allows students to learn from one another’s unique approaches to ministry and life. As Palmer student Christen Blore explains, “We’re sitting in class with the whole church.” The education they receive allows for not only intellectual development, but also for personal, social and spiritual development. To get a fuller sense of the Palmer community, I spoke to several students about what brought them to Palmer and what their experiences in seminary have been like.

Joey Yim

[media-credit name=”Jordan Kolb/ The Waltonian ” align=”alignleft” width=”260″][/media-credit]

“I studied at the University of Delaware and got my degree in English. My initial plan was to go to law school and be a lawyer….I was heavily involved at my church. I was a Bible study teacher for a lot of college students, and it was during this time period that I really strongly felt that God was beginning to place a call within my life to go into full-time ministry….All in all, I think my time here has been great. The seminary has taught me about more than just scholarly academic knowledge, but moreso about what it means to be a minister of the gospel and what it means to be a whole person who brings the whole gospel into a broken world. I’ve learned the value of being able to be open-minded and be open enough to at least understand, empathize and listen to other people’s stories, opinions and beliefs and not necessarily condemn them for that but to be able to—in seminary we say—‘stay at the table’ and just engage.”

Angeline Washington-Clark

[media-credit name=”Matt Wolek/ Waltonian” align=”alignleft” width=”260″][/media-credit]

“I went to a seminary open house, and that’s when I knew. I was sure that was where I was supposed to be….My major is Master of Divinity and International Development, so I’ll get a dual degree. When I started this program, I was working in Washington, D.C., and I was commuting to Palmer. It’s been an awesome ride. I really have discovered so much about myself as an individual and about how God is going to use me in the world and why I had to focus on international development and divinity and how those degrees will mesh with my long career in government. I worked in government for 25 years, and I’ve gotten to have some really great experiences. While attending seminary, I actually supported the Presidential Inaugural Committee and planned President Obama’s last inauguration….I have a heart for religious freedom, and I believe that my government experience and the M.Div. and the international development will come together as far as that’s concerned….I think Palmer is such a unique entity….It’s an awesome experience—the staff, the professors, everyone’s so unique….I’m learning so much from people who may have learned differently or may have had different experiences from mine.”

Cynthia Lyman

[media-credit name=”Jordan Kolb/ The Waltonian” align=”alignleft” width=”260″][/media-credit]

“I came to college here in 1960. The main hall was Walton, and my dorm was Doane Hall. I graduated in ‘64 and got a degree in teaching and taught French and Spanish for years. Then I retired, and then I came to my 50th class reunion….After my husband passed away, I felt that God called me to seminary to prepare for the next chapter of my life….I started taking classes here in August 2015, and I really feel like this is where I belong. I love the fact that I’m the oldest person in any of my classes!…I love being here with younger people. It’s great to get their energy, to get their take on things….I love the diversity. It’s just amazing. It’s the way the world should be. Things would not be so out of synch if we were more open and more accepting and willing to change.”

Josh Braman

[media-credit name=”Jordan Kolb/ The Waltonian” align=”alignleft” width=”260″][/media-credit]

“I went to seminary because I felt like I was prepared for youth ministry, but I wasn’t prepared for other ministry positions….What I plan to do now is hospital chaplaincy. So that’s why I went to Palmer. But why I stayed at Palmer was really because of the diversity of the students and the faculty….I started to really value diversity, realizing that I didn’t have all the answers. My experience was very different, yet still valid, but maybe incomplete of what the greater world of faith and theology and church experience really was about….I’ve been in many different part-time ministries, and it’s tough to be in ministry part-time and a student full-time and then work part-time. It’s a lot of things to juggle. So I’m really looking forward to the hospital chaplaincy because it offers a structure. And there are people in the hospital that are different than congregation members. People in the hospital are in a really desperate and vulnerable and broken spot. What I’m learning is that it’s a real privilege and an honor to be able to hear their story and to be able to just be with them—not even to have to say anything, but to just be with people and just love people.”

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