Newspapers / Mars Hill University Student … / Nov. 9, 1984, edition 1 / Page 2
Part of Mars Hill University Student Newspaper / About this page
This page has errors
The date, title, or page description is wrong
This page has harmful content
This page contains sensitive or offensive material
Page Two, The HILLTOP, Friday, November 9.1984 The Whole World: In Whose Hands By REV. MARIE BEAN Contributing Editorialist What’S Happenin’ By CHRIS HARRISON and SCOTT BARRON SGA President SGA Vice-President It is hard to believe how fast this semester has gone thus far. There is always something else to do. Get thee behind me procrastination! The Senate has also been work ing alot. With work yet to be done on the next OPEN FORUM, Spring Formal, improving the campus, and much more, there is no time to rest. The next OPEN FORUM will be held in order to discuss the physical condition of the campus: dorms, classrooms, grounds, etc. We do want to em phasize that OPEN FORUM is not a gripe session! The last Forum ended up being a time where students complained about assorted things they disliked, but the grievances made known were for the most part irrelevant to the subject at hand. S.G.A. created OPEN FORUM to be an oppor tunity for students and faculty to constructively work together on making Mars Hill College a better place. Please keep this in mind at the next Forum. OPEN FORUM will convene on Monday, November 12, at 7:00 pm. Be there so that we can all work together in improving our campus. We also want to encourage students to take advantage of the opportunities available here on campus. It is easy for students to be appathetic toward what is hap pening. Many, many times there have been programs planned either by the Residential Living Staff, S.G.A., the Union, or other organizations, and students have not attended for one reason or another. Ironically, many students complain that there is nothing to do on campus. These programs are planned for you as students and are for you to enjoy. Please use these opportunities for your benefit. If there is something that you would like to see done or perhaps changed let us know! Only then can anything be done about it. Take pride in yourselves and in this college in order that we might work together in making Mars Hill the place to be to learn, have fun, and enjoy fellowship together! October has left the year like a gypsy dancer tossing her skirts in wild abandon. Now, November clouds hang low, the tops of dis tant mountains swathed, as it were, in gauze. The few remaining leaves on the trees, wet and heavy from last night’s rain, give the landscape the appearance of old, worn-out tapestry. The morning air is still and quiet. No sound of bird or of insect breaks the stillness. It is a time for turning in ward for reflection. Sophisticated though we think ourselves to be, and scientifically advanced, we fall, nonetheless, under the spell of nature, especial ly at the changing of the seasons. We intuit some mystery beyond our empirical knowledge of equinoxes, lunar phases, and planetary rhythms, something Goethe called “the weird porten tous.” Walt Whitman captured the spirit well in his poem, “When I Heard The Learn’d Astronomer”: U.S. Department of Transportation Famous last words from friends TO FRIENDS. I’m perfectly fine. I can drive with my eyes closed. There’s nothing wrong with me. Are you joking—I feel great. What am I—a wimp? I’m in great shape to drive. You’re not serious are you? What’s a couple of beers? Nobody drives my car but me. I’ve never felt better. I can drink with the best of them. But I only had a few. So I had a couple. I can drive rings around anybody. I can drive my own car, thank you. I’m not drunk. I drive better hen I’m like this. Who says I can’t drink drive? I can hold my booze. I know ”m doing. I always drive like this, wit’ 'xtsTf >st me. What’s a few to me. I’m ”'di my eyes ith me. drink When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lec ture room. How soon unaccountable I be came tired and sick. Till rising and gliding out I wandered off by myself. In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time. Looked up in perfect silence at the stars. Human beings have stood in awe of nature for a long time. So wonderful did the world seem to be that many primitive societies wor shipped the sun or stars or other natural phenomena, attributing them to divinity. The American In dians on our own continent did not worship nature as such, but held it in great respect and honor. Sitting Bull, renowned Sioux warrior, was described by his biographer as hav ing “a love wholly mystical” for his native soil, “he use to say (that) healthy feet can hear the very heart of Holy Earth....Up always before dawn, he liked to bathe his bare feet, walking about in the morning dew.” The ancient Israelites, living among people who worshipped many nature-gods and goddesses, recognized (though not always perfectly or faithfully) the distinc tion between Creator and creation. In one of the earliest documents of the Bible (Judges 5), Deborah sings a song in praise of Yahweh’s in tervention on behalf of his people. When he appears, the earth trembles, the mountains quake. But he is not the mountain or the earth. The Psalmist might praise the Lord as “a sun and shield,” but there was no confusion in his mind regarding the object of his devo tion. The Lord God, Wholly Other, was the maker of heaven and earth, the One who set the sun in the heavens. In fact, declared the author of Genesis 1 and 2, and God, whom the Hebrews worship ped, created everything. And he took pleasure in his crea tion, as a gardener delights in her garden, or a craftsman, in his ar tistry. The name of the garden in which he placed the first man and woman comes from a word which means “delight.” Furthermore, when he instructed the man regard ing its care, the words used suggest tender, loving care. The word translated “to till” is actually literally “to serve”; and “to keep” is literally “to guard,” “to pro tect.” There is nothing in them granting license to exploit, to plunder, or to ravage. Today humankind has the knowledge and the power to destroy God’s creation at the mere push of a button. And not only that, but considers the possibility with cool detachment, as though it were our prerogative to return the earth to chaos. Where did we get the idea that the earth belonged to us to do with as we choose, and if the business of living and, especially, of waging war, involved destruction, well, that was just the nature of things. According to God’s own word, that is not the case. Even in waging war, he declared, an ethic of con servation should prevail. Listen: “When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them; for you may eat of them, but you shall not cut them down. Are the trees in the field men that they should be besieged by you? Only the trees which you know are not trees for food you may destroy and cut down that you may build siegeworks against the city that makes war with you, until it falls” (Deut. 20:19-20). Paul, in his monumental theological work, the letter to the Christians at Rome, sets forth what we might call an “ecology of redemption.” He writes: For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:19-21). In his award-winning book. The Lives of A Cell, Lewis Thomas declares that it is an illusion for human beings to think they have invented an existence above the rest of life. “Man,” he writes, “is embedded in nature,” Created from the dust of the earth, the Bi ble says, and to dust we shall return. We are bound in some un fathomable way to this material universe we call home. Would that we could love it as tl us both loves it! As o|‘ it, “The vision we nee. May the conviction that t| the subhuman world i| usefulness to us, but nowh( in itself.” That vision bre is b might ,hes of counterbalance we ne^ sound from the threat of a ^ (.j^gjj. j. poisoned and ravishjjjm^jgj ment too deadly for hjj follow tion. That vision migl^>ortuga illumination we nee(^f,gj.jj p, discover our place in tj, small redemption. That vision, but pel us to claim our Rrrential co-creators with Gotijovely, life the prophet’s dre^ ^f,g jje earth: shall The wolf lamb, and the leopard with the kid, and the calf and th(, here i falling together, ^ and a little child them. alone Is in hor BE CA hat ther 1suppo bmbinat keeps The cow and the b(,hom 11 their young shall together; and the lion shal like the ox. The sucking child skfoat-sla the hole of the a: and the weaned c his hand on the a They shall not hurt all my holy moui for the earth shall knowledge of the as the waters cov (Isaiah 11:6-9). ;s, perv VV Now the wind ris^jsH through the hills. Tbditor and tingles with thl ,. winter s magic. Soor .. will fall. The pj^ down. And again, asf .. ’ it all for the very ^ earth-creatures, too, wonderment. DRINKING AND DRIVING CAN KILL A FRIENDSHIR VS&StVOV Serving Mars Hill College Since 1926 Executive Editor David Wachter Managing Editor Denise Groh can be s well The Counselor’s Corner By merry burgess Contributing Editorialist I’M SORRY. Two simple words, and yet so very hard for most of us to say. Two words which could heal and soothe, and yet so many things (pride, stub bornness, fear) prevent us from ut tering them. Elton John knew what he was talking about when he wrote his song “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word.” Back in the mid-70’s there was a blockbuster movie called “Love Story.” Maybe some of you remember the classic line from that movie “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” At the time it seemed like a very clever line. The more one thinks about it and ex periences it, however, the more un true the line becomes. Thus, many of us laughed a few years later when Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand did a movie together (I think “What’s Up, Doc?” was it’s title); he sententiously spoke the line “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” and she replied “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard!” You should be extra careful to admit wrong and say I’m sorry to those you love; those words should never be taken for granted. It takes a big heart (and small ego) to be able to say I’m sorry. You have to admit to not being perfect, to having made a mistake in what you did or said. You become vulnerable, human, falli ble. But making a mistake does not mean you are worthless. It is okay to be human! When you say “I’m sorry” (and mean it) you begin the process which heals wounds, restores trust and friendship, and which makes you a better person. People really do not look down on you for saying I’m sorry. Quite the contrary, they will admire your strength of character. “Pride goeth before a fall.” Ad mitting we are wrong is difficult to do, but necessary if we are to grow. The difficulty is our pride, the big ego. Our emotional growth is equal to how readily we accept our humanness, how able we are to be wrong. With humility comes a softness that smooths our every ex perience, our every relationship. Pride makes us hard, keeps others away, and sets us up for a fall. Struggling with others and with ourselves takes it’s toll. As we try to prove how smart and clever, and how much better than others we are (usually at the expense of others), we create irreparable rifts. When pride gets in the way, we become defensive (there’s no way I’m going to admit I’m wrong!), and a friendship goes down the drain. We let pride push us into behavior we are not proud of, and then pride will not let us back down—even when deep in our souls we know we are wrong. Billie op m top K to a ra campi dience i of 1000 plificat oadcast an ef 18 watt; tion hi rogress 8 when Holiday, a black once said: “Sometkl. At tl to win a fight than lent stat wonderful words mly be “winning”, meathat ha ourselves and other: possibl won? rogram Learning to swalny oth to ask forgiveness^n, in ; sorry,” is a hard valuable. Develop tommer of being humble. others, having a waiiH-FN becam statio the are characteristics o be proud. Such trint stj allow pride to stani a Ma and your fellow hultates tl “Hey! I’m sorry Iginnini to you yesterday, er is t mouth before I pitisc joc gear, and said someaverag mean. Can we get the pi straighten things ofer, ho’ cherish your friend(ck on
Mars Hill University Student Newspaper
Standardized title groups preceding, succeeding, and alternate titles together.
Nov. 9, 1984, edition 1
2
Click "Submit" to request a review of this page. NCDHC staff will check .
0 / 75