Chesterton House in the Time of the Coronavirus

Organizational Update
Chesterton House continues to seek and heed the expert voices and research on COVID-19, and comply with Cornell’s policies and behavioral compact.  In keeping with advised social distancing measures, and in an effort to protect the immunocompromised in our community, our residential facilities remain closed to the public for the time being.

This is not without a deep, shared lament, as we understand that our public events and facilities are spaces of community, thought-exchange, and spiritual vitality for many. Chesterton House staff and students continue to exercise our imaginations about how we might practice necessary social distancing while maintaining our pursuit of spiritual formation, Christian thought, rhythmed lives, and belonging.

  • We continue to minister to 35+ students who have stayed in our living-learning community across 3 different houses, helping them to craft new rituals of social distancing, safety, and care for our neighbors,
  • We have resumed some of our in-person spiritual formation and care to students, while still offering many events and gatherings via virtual platforms.
  • We have co-sponsored four virtual Veritas Forums, such as this one on Lament, Beauty, and Creativity with Mako Fujimura, Lecrae, and Alissa Wilkinson.
  • We have offered 2 courses taught virtually by esteemed faculty all over the country.
  • And we are connecting students with Christian faculty at Cornell who can help them to think critically and make sense of what is happening around them, including a virtual lecture and Q&A with Dr. Praveen Sethupathy on how to believe in both God and science as we process what the coronavirus means for us.

In her NYT article, I Miss Singing at Church, Tish Harrison Warren named:

“We must embrace social distancing, for as long is as needed, to protect our health care system and the very real, fleshy bodies of millions of people. But we also need to collectively notice that something profound is lost by having to interact with the world and our neighbors in mostly disembodied, digital ways. This is something to lament and to grieve. And like all grief, it exposes the value and glory of the thing that was lost.”

Glory to God that Chesterton House’s physical presence is such that its absence is felt. As we look forward to this strange and challenging season, we also look back in remembrance, marked by gratitude for all the Lord has done. And we persevere in our calling to empower more faithful living in the Cornell community.

Scroll down to “Stay Connected” to subscribe to our newsletter and be a part of our virtual community in this season.

Live in Community!

General
“That is what our life in community is about. Each of us is like a little stone, but together we reveal the face of God to the world. Nobody can say: ‘I make God visible.’ But others who see us together can say: ‘They make God visible.’  Community is where humility and glory touch.”
– Henri Nouwen

 

We weren’t meant to be alone. In a season marked by so much loneliness and isolation, what would it look like to choose community?

We are an imperfect community of around 40 Cornell students who commit to live together and grow in our knowledge of God through our studies, relationships, stories, retreats, and mundane rhythms of life together.

Aren’t sure where you want to live next year? As you go through the application process you can ask questions and discern if Chesterton House’s living community is a place you’d want to call home.

Have a group of friends you know you want to live with but haven’t found the perfect place yet? Our beautifully furnished main houses overlook the lake. You could live together in the larger community!

We have begun accepting residents for next year and we have limited occupancy so be sure to apply now!

Email [email protected] to request an application!

Orientation Week 2020

General
Welcome, students!
Whether you are taking classes remotely or will be on campus in the flesh, we have a number of events in the coming week for folks to meet for the first time or reconnect with each other. Games, Poetry, Faith & Race, Getting to know churches– Join us! And feel free to share with friends.
*All in-person events will require pre-registration to ensure that we stay within 30 attendees at each location. Masks and appropriate social distancing will be required.
Excited to cultivate a new way of being together this year! Scroll to the bottom of this page to sign up for our newsletter and keep in touch. And follow us on social media! We’ll be sharing what we’re reading, podcasts, the occasional Tik Tok, and info about the rest of our fall events!

What Does COVID-19 Mean for Chesterton House?

Organizational Update

What Does COVID-19 Mean for Chesterton House?

As we seek to heed the expert voices and research on COVID-19, Chesterton House has canceled all in-person events for the remainder of the semester. In keeping with advised social distancing measures, and in an effort to protect the immunocompromised in our community, our residential facilities will be closed to the public for the time being.

This is not without a deep, shared lament, as we understand that our public events and facilities are spaces of community, thought-exchange, and spiritual vitality for many. Chesterton House staff and students continue to exercise our imaginations about how we might practice necessary social distancing while maintaining our pursuit of spiritual formation, Christian thought, rhythmed lives, and belonging.

  • We continue to minister to 20 students who have stayed in our living-learning community across 3 different houses, helping them to craft new rituals of social distancing, safety, and care for our neighbors,
  • We have transitioned our weekly gatherings to virtual platforms, offering spiritual formation and pastoral care to students connected to the ministry,
  • We have co-sponsored 3 virtual Veritas Forums, such as this one on Lament, Beauty, and Creativity with Mako Fujimura, Lecrae, and Alissa Wilkinson,
  • And we are connecting students with Christian faculty who can help them to think critically and make sense of what is happening around them, including a virtual lecture and Q&A with Dr. Praveen Sethupathy on how to believe in both God and science as we process what the coronavirus means for us.

In her NYT article, I Miss Singing at Church, Tish Harrison Warren named:

“We must embrace social distancing, for as long is as needed, to protect our health care system and the very real, fleshy bodies of millions of people. But we also need to collectively notice that something profound is lost by having to interact with the world and our neighbors in mostly disembodied, digital ways. This is something to lament and to grieve. And like all grief, it exposes the value and glory of the thing that was lost.”

Glory to God that Chesterton House’s physical presence is such that its absence is felt. As we look forward to this strange and challenging season, we also look back in remembrance, marked by gratitude for all the Lord has done. And we persevere in our calling to empower more faithful living in the Cornell community.

Scroll down to “Stay Connected” to subscribe to our newsletter and be a part of our virtual community in this season.

Self or Person?

Uncategorized

By Justin McGeary

Who am I?

A question never asked in a vacuum, this one will have new force for the thousands of students packing up and leaving family, friends, and home this month to live and study at a university.

The question will appear or be felt everywhere—in the mind, in the classroom, in the heart, in the cafeteria, in the choices, in the parties. The answers once assumed or understood as coming from parents, friends or the pulpit will be questioned. College life is an identity crisis in the truest sense of the word—a critical time.

Who am I?

In his introductory chapter “From Self to Person—Some Preliminary Thoughts” of the book Figures in the Carpet, Wilfred McClay sets forth two ways to answer the question: one is either a self or a person.

“Our age, of course, speaks of selves,” he observes matter-of-factly. What is a “self”?

“The self is… changeable and contingent and interior…[and] tied to a romantic and subjective view of the isolated and autonomous individual… The self is a moveable and malleable target, one that adapts to changing circumstances, revising its constitution repeatedly over the course of an individual life, taking on strikingly different colorations at different times.”

This self is defined in isolation from others, independent and introspective, but above all, ever-changing. For as exotic as it sounds, and though not the word on the street, the conception of an individual as a mere “self” is arguably the assumption found on the TV and the movies we watch, sold in the stores where we shop, and assumed in the academies where we study.

There is nothing deeper than the constantly changing surface, nothing providing continuity or depth, and for McClay a chameleon “self” is ultimately “unreachable”–and this means, essentially, a hollow answer to the question, or a perpetual identity crisis as the answer shifts as the self changes. And while perhaps entertaining on TV, it does not describe what we hope for in a best friend.

Who am I?

McClay prefers the answer: a person.

“It is the person, not the self, that is not only the home address of our consciousness, but the nexus of our social relations, the chief object of our society’s legal protections, the bearer of its political rights, and the communicant in its religious life. To put it another way, it is the person, not the self, whose nature is inextricably bound up in the web of obligations and duties that characterize our actual lives in history, in human society—child, parent, sibling, spouse, associate, friend, and citizen—the positions in which we find ourselves functioning both as agents and acted-upon.”

A human being is socially, politically, and religiously rooted. We exist in a “web of obligations” and relationships, and we might add, callings (though McClay would not reduce a person to only this “web of obligations”). This description lacks the limitless freedom of the self, but is more substantive. A person lives in relation to others and is known in relation; a self stands alone.

The challenge of the university years, especially the first, is that one feels more like an isolated self than a relationally rooted person. Once dropped off in the dorm room, all the previous relations, callings and obligations seem to fade and there exists an opportunity to remake one’s self. It is unlike anything before in life.

Who am I?

McClay’s description of the person fits well with what theologian John Calvin wrote about “the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” Of these two facets of knowledge he writes, “[W]hich one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern… it is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.”

How we answer the question of identity depends on how we answer the more basic question, “Who is God?” Anthropology and theology are inextricably linked. We are human persons, and human persons are known and understood in relation to divine persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But this question of identity is often asked from only one side of Calvin’s equation, the human side, or with assumptions of the “self”’ in view rather than a “person.”  How we answer the question, “Who am I?,” depends simultaneously on how we answer the question, “Who is God?” [1]

In view of the challenges and opportunities facing the incoming students at the university, Chesterton House aims to ask both questions—“Who am I?” and “Who is God?” As a Christian study center and residential community, Chesterton House believes that learning, growing, and knowing occur in life together.  So, we aim to connect students with the Christian intellectual riches of the past in order to robustly address the perennial questions. Thereby, the identity crisis will not be wasted.

 



[1] For some wonderful essays on this topic see Personal Identity in Theological Perspective edited by Lints, Horton and Talbot (Eerdmans 2006).

Show and Tell

General

This piece is contributed by Gary Villa, Spiritual Director of the Chesterton House.

On a shelf in my bedroom sits a broken pastel blue-and-yellow-colored egg shell , the remnants of the first gift I ever gave my wife, Kira. Shortly after she came to faith, we colored Easter eggs together at her kitchen table. I made a small gift to her of my “art”, an egg with crudely drawn sun, moon and stars. It was kept whole for years, through 3 apartment changes and into our current home. Finally broken by the curious hands of our first son, we keep what remains as a tangible reminder of that early date and the beginning of our love.

As I sometimes lead post-dinner conversations in the Chesterton House residential communities, I often look for ways to provoke the students to tell each other more of their own stories, who they are and what brought them here to this place. One of my favorite ways of doing this is inviting them to bring an object of their own to the table as a kind of show-and-tell. Somehow it is easier to talk about yourself when you’re holding a purple plush eggplant or a camera or a favorite pen. The items are as varied and different as our residents.

In the lovely first chapter of John’s gospel, the apostle describes Jesus as the creator of all things. But he uses an unusual term: the “Word” or put another way, the self-expression of God. John says that all things (!) were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made (John 1:3, ESV). How beautiful! There is nothing you can find that is not in some way tinged with the marks of God’s self-expression to us. His nature, his character, his power are somehow woven into the stuff of our lives, even in this sin-broken world.

Because of this we can have not just permission, but freedom and joy as we work in whatever field we find ourselves in. If “all that is” is somehow the product of God’s self-expression, we can be confident that something of Him can be known in any field of study or work. All our work – mathematics, art, science, engineering – becomes a theological endeavor. We learn of God as we learn of his world. And, what’s more, all of our work also then becomes doxological for us as well – an act of worship. We can with joy respond to God in worship as our knowledge of him grows and deepens through our vocation. The cosmos is God’s show-and-tell to us.

Of course, like the egg shell I gave my wife, the cosmos is broken. The earth that was given to us to rule and care for was just as broken by Adam’s sin as we are. It, too, is tainted everywhere by sin’s rule and effects. But Paul tells us that the gospel is good news not just for humanity, but for all of creation. The same Jesus who created all things for himself (Colossians 1:16) reconciled all things to himself by the blood of his cross (1:20). The redemptive sweep of the gospel is cosmic, not just personal.

The vision is compelling: the earth, the universe – all that God has made exists not merely as a backdrop for humanity but as a good thing in itself. God declared it to be good at creation and reconciled it to Himself at the cross. For this reason, we are free to declare vocations of every kind not only good, but Christian. Science, education, agriculture, engineering, health – these are all Christian vocations. These are things that God cares about. It is our privilege to work – wherever God has called us – to His glory and as a demonstration of His intentions for the world.

 

Gary Villa, a staff member of New Life Presbyterian Church, serves part time as the Spiritual Director of Chesterton House. Gary earned his BA in International Ministries from the Moody Bible Institute in 1996, and later obtained his MA in Interdisciplinary Studies (church history/spiritual formation) from Wheaton College in 2006. His interests include baseball, poetry, jazz, and gluten-free baked goods. Gary and his wife Kira, a doctoral student in Applied Economics at Cornell, have one son, Aidan.

The Cornell “NO”

Uncategorized

The following reflection is from the late Fr. Bob Smith, a good friend to all of us at Chesterton House. 

Two weeks ago, after the 9:30 PM Mass in Sage Chapel, I had an experience that has made me reflect on one of the major challenges to healthy human and spiritual development in student life at Cornell. The incident was trivial, but its implications are not. I was at the door of the Chapel, saying goodbye to students leaving the Mass, when I realized that some cards announcing an important event happening during the week were not being distributed. I asked four students in a row to stay a few minutes to help me pass out the cards. All four immediately said “No” and kept walking away. We had just prayed the Mass together, the request would take about two minutes or less, and their immediate, unreflective reaction was to refuse because they had no time.

I’ve been thinking since that night about the Cornell default position of “NO” to almost any request for time beyond that which a student has not already allocated to some specific use. There is a culture of hard work and commitment to excellence in study and creative work that is one of Cornell’s most admirable aspects. There is also a kind of idolizing of that commitment that produces spiritually dangerous imbalances in students’ decisions about the use of their time, and about the parts of themselves that they neglect because of an obsessive concentration on the demands of work.

The word ‘idol’, though strong, does capture some of the implications of Cornell students’ thinking about the demands on their time made by their work: it plays the role of a kind of God to which they owe absolute obeisance and fromwhich they expect a sort of salvation. Few students would readily think of their image of the demands of their work as a temptation, but an excessive pursuit of excellence in some field can be as spiritually dangerous as any obviously degrading indulgence.

I would like to make a modest proposal. I suggest that every student decide each Sunday on one hour each day (Monday to Friday) during which Cornell does not own you, one hour set aside for the sake of some part of yourself that does not have to do with your studies, exams or class projects. One could do almost anything during that time so long as what you do expresses some real and important part of yourself. And the hour should be deliberately set aside and marked out–a kind of symbolic acknowledgment that, as a human person, each of us transcends even the most important particular task or role. None of us, of course, works all the time. We all idle away an hour or more every day, but this ‘sabbath’ hour would not be only a kind of relaxation, but rather an exercise of freedom.

What would Cornell be like if this ‘sabbath’ hour were to become as much a tradition here in the life of students as the obsession with the demands of work? Would the default and self-protective “No”, gradually become a community and personally life enhancing “Yes”? What do you think?

Culture Making

Uncategorized

Just out from InterVarsity Press, and making a big splash, is Andy Crouch’s (Cornell ’90) Culture Making. We’ll have our own review of the book posted here shortly, but in the meantime here are a few items of interest:

Christianity Today published Creating Culture, adapted from the book, an extended interview with Andy Crouch, and second, shorter interview.

To see even more, InterVarsity Press has made several chapters of the book available online.

Alernatively, you can watch Andy explain the thesis of the book in a video clip on YouTube.

Gideon Strauss of the Work Research Foundation gives the book a rave review in Books & Culture.

John Seel provides a more critical review at Ransom Fellowship.

There’s lots more on the website Culture-Making.com.

Of course, you can become a fan of Culture Making on Facebook.

Last but not least, you buy a copy at our favorite bookstore–Hearts and Minds Books.

Chesterton House Painting
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