Six Degrees of Separation

The weekend of the 13th-15th, I was at a graduate philosophy conference in Carbondale, IL (Southern Illinois University) presenting a paper at a conference devoted to "building bridges" between Islam and America. My paper was on Al-Farabi's Religious Pluralism as Prolegomena (isn't that a great word?!) for dialogue between Islam and the West. It wasn't my best paper (actually, it was a paper I wrote for a previous class and just happened to be a great fit for the conference), but every chance to present (and have the promise of the proceedings get published) is good for the resume. The skinny of the paper: Al-Farabi, Medieval Islamic philosopher, had a notion of Religious pluralism/inclusivism that viewed religion as a subcategory of philosophical truth (basically "philosophy for the common people") that viewed any religion as true that could trace its concepts back to the Greek philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. We could debate the problems of such a view (both from a Christian or pluralistic perspective), but my whole point in using his work was to point out the limited number of ways it is relevant to current religio-political discussions between Islam and the West--especially for those Westerners who think Islam is one-dimensional, inherently violent, and exclusionary (ahem, Pat Robertson, among millions of others).

Anyways, like I said, it wasn't my best paper, but the chance to get away and hang out with other graduate students was a blast. Actually, in all honesty, in the past I've felt quite like an outsider at these kinds of things. Perhaps, its because I don't have the cool philosophical look and can't speak all the nice philosophical jargon that everyone else speaks. Who knows, but this one is different. You might toss it up to the fact that SIU is in the middle of nowhere (no exaggeration), but their philosophy department had the best cameraderie of any department I've ever been around. They do everything together, even with some of their professors. On Sundays, for instance, they play flag football together, and two of their 50+ year old professors play with them (and I'm told they hit the hardest!). They even arranged for all the presenters to be picked up at the St. Louis airport (two hours away) and stay with fellow grad students.

What made this trip even more exciting were the people I met that, turns out, I had some commonality with. The second person I met upon arriving on campus, for instance, happened to be a graduate from Cedarville (my undergrad). Now, Cedarville is a small school (3000 students) with tiny philosophy program (there are like 4-5 students a year getting their degree in philosophy). So, for us to meet up well, I guess I'd have to call it providential. We never met at Cedarville (we only overlapped for a semester), but we had so many similar stories and experiences, and a similar theological-philosophical viewpoint to reflect back on them, that we wound up chatting for quite a long time.

Then, as it turned out, one of the other presenters was from Purdue University and knew quite well Justin, an old friend of mine who was in my wedding and now doing philosophy at Loyola-Chicago. He told me some stories about the early years at Purdue and the crazy things he and Justin did, and we got to talking about our faith, the difficulties of being a God-follower while being a philosopher, and various theological topics.

Finally, to top it all off, as I was chatting with my host the last evening I was there, I mentioned a previous paper I had presented at West Chester University. His girlfriend looked at me and said, "Wait, you mean just last January? (yeah) We were there too!" Wow. I live in such a very small world. In my previous life, I lived in a very small conservative baptist world largely in the Midwest. The world I now live in is spread across a much larger part of the country, and there are thousands of people doing philosophy in the U.S., but the contingent of the philosophers I am connected to as a Continental philosopher in the Eastern part of the states may only be slightly larger than the world I've come from. So maybe I'm not a tiny fish in a great big sea. I'm just a tiny fish in a very crowded lake full of much larger fish all vying for the same living space (and jobs!).

Weekends of getting away and having new experiences and meeting new people are so enriching and encouraging. And then I got to come back to see my son so ecstatic to see me after being gone for three days, that he refused to take a nap the rest of the day! There is no hierarchy of "good, better, best" to compare these experiences and opportunities. We cannot place a value on these nuggets of eternity we are given--the laughter of a child, a conversation on faith with a new friend, the experience of camaraderie and hospitality from total strangers. These are the experiences that help mold us and shape us, realize what really matters, and remind us that life is a gift to be taken up and embraced every day. These are the opportunities that show us that each day, each encounter with a new person, can literally change the way we see the world. "This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." What brings you joy? What fills you with life, hope, and appreciation for what you've been given? What helps you remember to make the most of each day?