Chapter/Month 3 prompt

Chapter 3 Prompt.  This week is a free write.  Please write on anything that interests you in the chapter.  make it interesting, not superficial!  List at least three questions that arise as you read.

Chapter 2 blog prompts

Chapter 2 Prompt in 2 parts.  

Choose one option from Part 1, and one from Part 2.

Part 1. For the first part of your journal prompts next week, choose one video to view, react and respond to in your journal. I’ll get these videos embedded in the blog when the KHS internet is back up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXyEcMG5bDs

This trailer (above) will give you a sense of the 1959 Movie that shaped a generation's impressions of the Ten Commandments and of Hebrew scripture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOqLpT6HKzY

search from this one for part 2 &3

These three clips (above) explains why the Ethiopian Orthodox claim to have custody of the ark of the covenant, the stone vessel in which the tablets of the ten commandments were stored, and why the ark is so important in Ethiopian churches.

Its not edited very well.  The part we're interested in starts about 3 and a half minutes into the first video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYZ1GVnMT_s

This third trailer is a video collage of the Epiphany celebration in Ethiopia.  It shows how replicas of the ark of the covenant are venerated.  There is a short segment involving animal sacrifice.  If you are likely to find this disturbing, cover or shut your eyes when you see the cow lying on the ground and count to 20 slowly before watching again.

Chapter one blog prompts

Chapter 1 Prompt- Choose one set of questions from the numbered section and one set of questions from the section labeled alphabetically.  You may add additional material based on what interests you in the chapter or what thoughts it stirs in you.

Option A)

1.  What rules shape your life?  Whose rules are they? 

2, What are your most important values? 

Where do they come from? 

What religious tradition are you curious about and why?

3.. Describe something you wanted so much you were willing to suffer for it.

Why did you do it? How did that work out?  Was it worth it?

Option B)

1.     Name two of the problems that Jacobs runs into and how he solves, or

tries to solve, them.  What new problems result?

2.     .  What adjustments does Jacobs make in the early days of his project? 

Why?

Welcome 2010/11 Ethicists!

Welcome to the blog for Biblical Ethics:  The Good Life.
You will find journal prompts here each week, as well as my musings and mental tangents as we journey through A.J. Jacob's Year of Living Biblically.  


Get started by getting to know something about our author with the video posted.
Then get started reading the book's introduction.

Here is your first journal assignment:

Introduction Prompt -due December 4

            Choose one set of questions from the numbered section and one set of questions from the section labeled alphabetically.

1.     Describe something seriously ridiculous that you’ve done. 

Why did you do it?

                  Would you do it again?  Why or Why not?

2.     Describe your experience with the Bible?  Have you read any of it?  If so, what

 parts do you remember?  What do you think about the Bible’s role in Western culture?

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A.      Describe A. J. Jacobs “quest.”  Why did he start this project? What parameters did he set?

B.      How did Jacobs prepare for this project?   What is his background?

C.      Before Jacobs started this project, what did he know about the bible?  How did he know it?  What was his opinion about religion?  

what's this Jesus made of?

Just posted this to my class and thought I'd share:

Here's an extra credit treasure hunt.  To get the extra credit (equal to one assignment) you must answer all four of the following quesitions. What is this statue made of?  Who made it?  What artist designed it?  What was the purpose of the project?

Hard to remember

Its hard for me to remember that students who are in high school now grew up with a different set of expectations. In the midwestern town where I went to Elementary school, it was a big controversy when a teacher ended up fired for putting down and roughing up the only black kid in our school. Its hard because somehow the state of the world we grow up in becomes "normal."

Its hard for me to remember the story one my preaching professor told, only once, about being shot on the way to a civil rights demonstration. He was in the hospital recovering when three little girls died in a church bombing. Its hard to remember because its hard to think of him or them hurt like that.

Its hard for me to remember how much further the world has to go in learning to let, (heck to help!) every human being flourish. Its hard because I have a pretty comfortable life, and my kids have all the options they need. ITs hard to remember because I have to slow down and widen my view.

Its hard, but its worth it.

Remembering Gumby

No more "out of sight, out of mind." When I read that Art Clokey, Gumby's creator, had died, I could see that beloved little green guy (Gumby, not Art), hear his high little voice, and smell the rubbery fragrance of my bendable old friend.  (Wish I was still that limber).  What a great show.   He happily took what ever life threw at him with sweet Polky by his side.


 I didn't get acquainted with Clokey's other creation, Davey and Goliath (was he the first claymationator?) until I married a fan.

  Davey and Goliath were a couple of adventurers sponsored by the Lutheran Church Alot of American kids got their early moral lessons from these two "scamps," (yeah, folks talked like that.)

Here's one in honor of Martin Luther King Day coming up next Monday. Hokie???? Of course, but there are worse things in the world!