Chris Palladino’s Blog

Last week, I shared in a three-way chapel presentation with Drs. Putnam and Toews revolving around the idea of the Image of God. Here are some thoughts from my address.

- The Holy Scriptures tell us that Man is made in the image of God. In the book of Genesis we read of man’s creation in chapter 1:

Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness,” … And shortly thereafter, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them”.

But MAN is also made out of the DUST. In chapter 2:

“the LORD God formed the man [e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being”.

So, the Bible clearly states that we were created by God, in his own image, out of the dust. Funeral services based on the English Book of Common Prayer contain the familiar phrase: - “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust” Even the line “All we are is dust in the wind” became a haunting metaphor sung by the classic rock group Kansas. But what is this DUST?

In Sunday school, I memorized the patented answer to the question What is man? “He is made in the image of God: Man is made with Intellect, Emotions, and a Will.”

But … what does that mean? What do these questions mean as it relates to other questions? I wondered how these questions have led to other questions and what those questions would be. How has man approached these paradoxes in the past, and how did the answers shape periods of time, philosophies, works of literature and art, and relationships in society. How did man address this mystery … What is man?

I was quickly drawn to Shakespeare’s tragic play Hamlet. Talking with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Hamlet asks:

What a piece of work is a man,
how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties,
in form and moving how express and admirable,
in action how like an angel,
in apprehension how like a god!
the beauty of the world,
the paragon of animals—and yet,
to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

Again we are reminded of our creation in the image of God and our relationship to dust.

The more I pondered this, the more I read, the more I realized how many books, how many paintings, how many works of music, operas, and ballets beg the question. How man’s exploration in science, mathematics, and technology, how his architectural endeavors and even his leisure time can be shaped by the answer to these questions … What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be made in the image of God?

The Psalmist writes:

When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?
You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c]
and crowned him with glory and honor.

One of my favorite primary sources of The Renaissance was a speech written by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola called The Oration on the Dignity of Man. In this 15th century piece, the author refers to this same Psalm in addressing the question about man and the result of his origins, that the origins (image or visage as he calls it) begets.

Listen to how Lord Byron echoes the sentiments of Mirandola and Shakespeare in his dramatic poem Manfred,

“How beautiful is all this visible world! How glorious in its action and itself! But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we, Half dust, half deity, alike unfit To sink or soar …”

Despite the many questions raised by this … and there are many, I find encouragement and optimism as I return to the words of the Psalmist

For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well…

Posted by Chris Palladino at 9:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Over the last couple of weeks I have been feeling sick in addition to a bout with the flu. The last time I felt well was when I was teaching at the Wisconsin Wilderness Campus and running the nearby trails. Being under the weather caused me to reminisce about the experience.

I want to thank Mark and Dana, Seth and Suzanne, Paul and Abigail, Alyssa Travis, and the students of WWC for making the week one we will never forget.

Below is a list of highlights for our family from our week:

The community atmosphere and spirit
The Autumn foliage
Digging for worms in the compost pile
Fishing with Seth Fisher and our children learning to bait their hooks and cast their lines
My children kayaking while tethered to the shore of Lake Owen
Gazing at the stars and seeing the Milky Way
Seeing a badger at Mirror Lake State Park near Wisconsin Dells
Jumping into the cube pit
The eerie cry of the loons
Watching the morning mist roll off the lake
Famous Dave’s night at dinner
Thursday tea time
Rollerblading in the side gym
Running each day with students, several of whom set personal distance records
Rock Lake Trail, Ojibwa Trail, Birkebeiner Trail
Game of spoons
Family night and milk shakes
Manly Monday and American Eagle 1,2,3
Dining with the students and the deep conversations
Learning alongside and being inspired by the students and staff at WWC

Posted by Chris Palladino at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last night several students, colleagues, and my wife and I met for dinner and to discuss this 1968 novel by Philip K. Dick. The choice of this book was to begin thinking about technology and its impact. On November 7, the university will be hosting iChristian: How Technology Impacts a Biblical Worldview conference. The novel was appropriate for the questions technology poses. We had to contend with the questions What is a human? Can a person be a human with android qualities? Can the idea of death make us more aware of our humanity? Does technology dehumanize us? Is electronic or virtual beauty any less beautiful than beauty produced by a living person? Can it be more beautiful?

Our next meeting will be on November 21. We will be reading and discussing The Abolition of Man by CS Lewis. You’re invited!

Posted by Chris Palladino at 4:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the spring semester I taught geography, in which one focus was the “power of place” and the questions that stem from where we are raised. I later received an email from a student, explaining how her summer cross- country travels brought a greater understanding of the conversations we had in class. She wrote, I drove across the corn fields of Kansas thinking about how vast the prairies must have seemed to all the families on the Oregon Trail. The storms in the distance were sobering as I tried to think of being in one of them with no protection. As I entered the state of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains began appearing in the distance I thought of Lewis and Clarke and their first discovery of the mountains. Whoa, how overwhelmed they must have been. I was overwhelmed driving up into them and I had already lived in them for years.

I replied to her that when we travelled to and from Wisconsin I would also be looking out the window with new lenses due to the same conversations in class. Since fall break extended our weekend for travelling home, we decided to go around the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and through Ontario, Canada.

Here are some of our traveling highlights. Each of these enhanced our understanding of the diverse topography and culture of the US and Canada. If you ever have a chance to take the same course, we highly recommend it!

Northeast Wisconsin – isolated and beautifully wild, incredible foliage, cheese curds, driving through snow squalls in early October, and seeing a snow plow for railways

Rural Michigan – getting gas alongside a motorcade of four-wheelers, colorful foliage

Upper Peninsula, Michigan – fall foliage on the left and expansive Lake Michigan on the right … absolutely stunning, picturesque lighthouses dotting the shoreline

Norway, Michigan – Leif Erikson Appreciation Day (instead of Columbus Day) and the Viking ship to welcome visitors

Mackinaw City, Michigan – the bridge connecting the two parts of Michigan … an engineering marvel.

Frankenmuth, Michigan – Bavarian culture and architecture, Oktoberfest, Bronner’s Christmas Wonderland

Thanksgiving Day in Canada- Enjoy the holiday, eh?

Niagara Falls, Ontario – being soaked by the mist, the thunderous noise, tremendous power

Upstate New York and Pennsylvania – foliage, foliage, foliage!

Home, sweet Home- Journey’s End, at last

Posted by Chris Palladino at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year I titled my fall break blog “Reflections on To Autumn by John Keats”. Last year I spent fall break admiring the changing colors in around the tri-state area of Philadelphia.

This year the poem was intensified as we spent the last several days in upstate Wisconsin. On Wednesday, I spent the afternoon circling the trails around Lake Hildebrand and Rock Lake, trail systems several miles from campus, with Mark Jalovick and six of the WWC students. As we ran the trails, we couldn’t help but celebrate God’s creation and artistry. I am amazed by the multi-faceted explosion of the colors that seem to have peaked in just a few days. The sun, glistening off leaves, enhanced the experience. I was reminded of Keat’s poem and thought it needed an encore reference.

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Posted by Chris Palladino at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I arrived with my family at our Wisconsin Wilderness Campus in Cable, Wisconsin on Sunday. On my previous visit, I missed the chance to run a historic course, sticking instead to the Telemark and Rock Lake Trails. The Birkebeiner is a world-renowned 50K ski race celebrating the rescue of a Norwegian prince in the early 13th century. Last year the director of the campus, Mark Jalovick, a multi-year finisher, insisted that I run the famous cross country ski trail. Within minutes of arriving this year, Mark invited me to run part of the trail as he rode his mountain bike. I consented without anticipating how challenging and exhausting the constant undulation of the trail would be, especially the grade. I was pleased to have run on a piece of Nordic history and tried to imagine the many students who skied the famous course. Mark, thank you!

Ja, Vi Elsker Dette Landet

Posted by Chris Palladino at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I have sought to visit Chicago for years. I have studied the architecture of Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. I have viewed scenes of people running along Lake Shore Drive and had pictured the Magnificent Mile (Michigan Ave). I envisioned the height of the Sears Tower. My dream finally came true on Saturday.

Last year when we journeyed to the North Woods of Wisconsin to PBU’s Wilderness campus, we went around the Windy City. This year we drove through the heart of Chicago. I dropped my wife and children off at Navy Pier and the Chicago Children’s Museum. Due to a festival of some sort, there was no parking on or near the pier. Ready for a run, I drove north along Lake Michigan for several miles until I found parking. I began a jaunt south along the famous running route. On my return, I detoured through the city, enjoying the iconic architecture before joining my family in the museum.

As I returned to the car I marveled at the city, contemplating Carl Sandburg’s poem, Chicago. How fitting!

Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling,
City of the Big Shoulders
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
and under his ribs the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

Posted by Chris Palladino at 12:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In our Student’s Life and Calling classes we have been discussing the big questions humanity has asked and why humans ask them. Part of the background to this has been the books A Mind for God by James Emery White and Engaging God’s World by Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. For our discussions we have looked at a variety of mediums that humans have used to ponder these inquiries, including music, art, literature, and film. The categories below are followed by some of the lenses we have looked through:

Literature
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt
Imperial Woman by Pearl Buck

Music
A New Law by Derek Webb
Dust in the Wind by Kansas
Society by Eddie Vedder
I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For by U2
It’s My Life by Bon Jovi
Imagine by John Lennon

Film
Dark Knight
Dead Poets Society
Return of the Jedi
Mona Lisa Smile
Lion King
Gattaca
Armageddon

Art
The Scream by Edvard Munch
Creation of Adam by Michelangelo Buonorotti
Untitled by Mark Rothko
Ben Franklin Drawing Lightning from the Sky by Benjamin West
Seven Deadly Sins by Jerome Bosch
The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein
Bicycle Wheel by Marcel Duchamp

Posted by Chris Palladino at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Last year several social studies majors and my wife and I began a book club that started as an over-the-Christmas-break read of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. After Moreau we read The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck, followed by Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and then Slaughterhouse Five also by Vonnegut. We finished the semester with a reading of Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll.

By May we decided to be more proactive with our book list in order to give a greater number of people an opportunity to read the books and join us. Over the summer I spoke with the pastor of our church about using the basement to host these discussions and making these discussions available to the congregation. He was delighted. We decided that Saturday evenings would be the best time to meet.

On September 26 we will commence with our 2009-2010 book clubs. All are welcomed, and a pasta dinner will be provided by the Palladinos. We will be meeting in our church (Newtown Community Church on route 413, across from St. Mary’s Medical Center) at 5:30 p.m. We will be discussing The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. The Social Studies Committee produced book marks listing the choices for the next nine months. Each discussion will be on a Saturday night at our church, dates to be determined.

Here is the list:

September – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
October – Do Androids Dream of Electronic Sheep? by Philip K. Dick
November – The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
December – Into the Wild by John Krakauer
January – The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
February - The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
March – The Call of the Wild by Jack London
April – The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane
May - Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

We are looking forward to this time of fellowship and dialogue around these books which raise many worldview questions.

Posted by Chris Palladino at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of the Highlights of World Civilizations II

Summer Session 2 was again a rewarding experience as I got to spend time with thoughtful students. Daily we spent time after class furthering our discussions and voluntarily gathered in the evenings for three film and discussion nights. The films included Contact (Scientific Revolution – Copernicus, Galileo, Newton), Swing Kids (Germany on the Eve of WWII – Mann, Bonhoeffer), and Conspiracy (Holocaust, Eugenics – Nietzsche, Dejaurnette, Nazism, ).

Here is a sampling of the students’ favorite questions and discussions in their own words. In the parentheses following each quote, I placed the question, the time period, and/or the primary source that inspired the discussion

I liked the discussion on running/hiking on the trail. It made me realize that I depend too much on technology. It made me want to spend at least a day in nature away from some of the technology that controls my life. That discussion along with the question, “does man control machines, or do machines control man?” made me reevaluate my dependence on technology. I want to take the challenge posed in class of spending a week or a month without television, music, computer, or a cell phone. These discussions made me realize that I am missing out on the wonders of nature because I am always in front of the television or talking to people on my computer. These discussions made me want to go outside and talk to people in real life or just appreciate the beauty God created. (The Documentary called The Runner, Romantic Poetry by Wordsworth, Shelly, Byron, Keats; Industrial Revolution)

The discussion regarding DNA and genetic engineering made me think about the ethical boundaries I have in place and why. (Frankenstein by Shelley)

The processing question that interested me that most was the introduction of cultures. First of all it challenges one to analyze ones’ own culture at a much deeper level than one is accustomed to doing. One must analyze the intricacies of why someone does things and his motivation behind what they do. An individual must analyze how his culture has formed some of his biases. (Christopher Columbus: Viewpoints - Hero or Villain; Collision at Cajamarca by Jared Diamond from Guns, Germs, and Steel)

I was intrigued by the question on Bill Gates and limiting the amount of money that we are allowed to make. It was hard for me because I know that my logic and reason conflict with my heart and emotions. (Atlas Shrugged by Rand; Wealth of Nations by Smith; Das Kapital by Marx; Utopian Socialism by Owen)

Single-handedly, I enjoyed the connectivity history presents. No event in history happens without a cause and effect. These historic figures should not be forgotten. Though they may have died hundreds of years ago, they somehow have an impact upon us even in the 21st century. (The philosophy of the interdisciplinary approach to studying the past and present)

The car changed the way roads were made. Asphalt or milled stone was utilized and perfected to meet the demands of the automobile. This led to the demand for and development of the interstates. People can now avoid an experience of small-town culture and customs. Towns and cities are now shaped by the layouts of roads. Cars have revolutionized courting and have spread families out across states and nations. It has impacted the arcitectural designs of homes. It has caused a demand in steel, rubber, and oil … Thus the car, which is widely used in our daily functions, has transformed the American culture and our perception ... The history of the car should not be overlooked as it has strongly influenced our way of life in these numerous ways. (Industrial Revolution; Factory System; 19th Century Economics; Geography to Nowhere by Kunstler)

Posted by Chris Palladino at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)