Just today, thinking about all of this,  I found an article by Tim Keller, “Preaching in a Post Modern City.” He gives an interesting perspective on how we live and fail to live gospel centered lives. He talks about how we become the  changed people that we desire to be and are supposed to be. Speaking about virtue he says,” it particularly grows by a faith-sight of the glory of Christ and his salvation.” I believe that to be true, that seeing Jesus is powerful and causes us to move. He also says, “Is [the gospel] basically about what I must do, or basically about what he has done?”

I had a childhood teeming with people. Not just a family of three younger brothers and two parents, but also my dad’s twelve siblings and their families, and my mom’s three sisters and brothers and theirs. I have grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and too many to count. The neighborhood I grew up in has multiple families with children my age, some older, most younger.  There were always new babies next door to hold and kiss on the cheek. I had more siblings than I could keep track of to play with, sometimes fight with, but mostly just get dirty with. Whitman writes,

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough, 

To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough, 

To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough

And also, 

There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well.

I think of the summertime when we ran from yard to yard while our mothers held the babies and laughed together.  And the winter when we dragged our sleds to the nearest hill and then home to any house in the neighborhood to sit by the fireplace and dry our socks. 

My house in the neighborhood was a curious place. I asked my parents and they told me it was a house church. All I knew was that that meant on Sunday mornings my brothers and I would put aside sibling rivalries and put away our toys. We would convert the dining room into a sanctuary with hymn books on the chairs. The podium my father built went under the window. My father would lead a worship service from there. On Friday night’s my parents and others gathered in that same room for bible studies.

My home was open to all kinds of people. We would sing together, eat together, pray together, and sometimes live together. We once lived communally with another family, shared kitchen and a living room. When they moved next door there was always someone else moving in. Whether a student from Paraguay, a preschool teacher with her crazy dog, a young pharmacist from Chicago or Korean couple. I was always among people I loved, or sometimes people I would rather have nothing to do with had my parents not invited them into our home. Instead of Whitman’s housekeepers, fireman, wrestlers and farmer’s daughters In my house I remember Korean grandmothers, a Nigerian couple, an Iranian convert, a student with a beautiful singing voice, a monk, and especially a flavor chemist who gave me a collection of beads on my birthday. There was always a dynamic circle of noncompatible people who could somehow get along passing through my house, and often staying.

I hear that people are beautiful even when they are broken. They can annoy me and also have an intensity, a depth that I can never know. All I do know is that people are to be felt and experienced, known well and embraced.  Maybe the peculiarities of their personalities are not such a defining factor as the simple fact that they are human souls.

I SING the Body electric;

The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth them;

They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,

And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the Soul.

Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves;

And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?

And if the body does not do as much as the Soul?

And if the body were not the Soul, what is the Soul?

[Whitman, Walt (1949) Leaves of Grass, and Selected Prose. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.]

Our goal is to provide a place where students can engage in open discussion about spiritual issues that matter to them.  We welcome non-students and want them to join in the discussion.  The world is a diverse place, and people of different ages and backgrounds need to learn how to listen to one another.  We need each other, more than ever before.   Because we are an undergraduate student organization, we  need to focus on issues relevant to students and campus life.  Yet we recognize that there is a huge world out there beyond the boundaries of the campus, and that world — some would call it “the real world” — matters to us as well. 

We don’t want this website to become an intellectual or cultural ghetto where Christians of a single tradition or denomination dominate the discussion.  Next semester, we hope to broaden our audience and publish articles by people with truly different points of view.  For example, we would be happy to publish pieces by atheists and agnostics.  If you have an idea for a piece — or if you have already written something — please send it to us at psuseed@gmail.com.  For guidelines, refer to our Submissions page.  One of the most important guidelines is this:

Opinion pieces should be thoughtful and well reasoned, demonstrating an ability to see multiple sides to an issue.  If the issue truly has only one side, then it is self-evident and not worth writing about.

We really do mean that.  You may have strong convictions about an issue.  But please don’t assume that all people who think differently from you are misinformed, immature, inferior or morally challenged. If you are absolutely convinced that you are 100% correct, and your only purpose is to convert others to your point of view, this website is not for you.  This forum is for people who are ready to speak and ready to listen.

Beginning in January, Seedlings are going to delve into issues of male-female relationships, romance, love, marriage and sexuality. We are going to be reading books and posting articles on these subjects, and on plenty of other subjects too. 

Now that the fall semester has come to an end, our rate of publication will slow down.  Over winter break (Dec. 18-Jan. 11th), this website will not be updated frequently.  But new pieces will still appear from time to time.  Stop by and visit us during the holidays. Merry Christmas! And Happy New Year.

The Seed Editorial Staff

The sypnosis from http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=396:

This year, The Princeton Review named Penn State the #1 Party School in America. It’s a rotating crown—last year it was University of Florida, before that it was West Virginia University. So we wondered: What is it like to be at the country’s top party school? This American Life producers spent a recent football weekend at Penn State to figure this out. There, we learned the definition of “fracket” (think frat plus jacket); the best way to clean up beer cans after a big party (snow shovel); and how hard it is to get college kids to drink less (really hard).

I’ll be listening.