Why do you get up in the morning?


In The Fabric of Faithfulness Steven Garber leads into this question with an excerpt out of a letter he received from a former student. The weight of her letter, writes Garber, comes in this paragraph:

I do not hate my job. Our caseloads are low here, I enjoy the staff, and the pay and benefits are generous. I just don't find the work rewarding. I have seen and heard so much in the families I work with and "help," and the problems seem so mammoth. I do appreciate the relationships I've built with some of my clients, but I am so overwhelmed. I realize that one reason I'm so unhappy is that I miss the mental stimulation and intellectual discussion of college and my hospice internship. Steve, if I remained mentally alert and absorbed in all that I deal with, I couldn't get up in the morning!

Why do you get up in the morning?



The question is weightier than it at first appears to be. It is not just about the choice faced by a university student between staying in bed another hour or going to the library to work. It is a question all of us face every morning, especially when our habitual routines run threadbare. A little later in the book Garber writes that

Many students, perhaps most, emerge from their university experience ready to take on the world; the idealism of youth, we call it. But then somewhere along the way the reality of life in the fast lane of adult responsibility hits -- sometimes like a ton of bricks, sometimes like acid rain. In a thousand ways they see how hard it is to be faithful to family, at work, in politics. Day in and day out the experience disappointments in every part of life -- every part of life -- and see how hard it is to be hopeful (and therefore responsible) actors in human history as they try to be neighbors to those next door and to those around the world.

Why do you get up in the morning?



At heart that more playful question, says Garber, is rooted in more substantive ones: Which commitments will give shape to my life? Is my life about something that matters? What do I really care about?



So ... why do I get up in the morning?



Superficially, I get up to read. Books are my drugs and I need another shot.



Scratching through the skin of this question: I wake up to see the smiles of my children; I wake up to talk with my wife; I wake up because justice cries out to be done; I wake up because -- maybe, just maybe -- today will be a thief of a day ...

Last night the formal seminar group started out by watching The Big Kahuna.



When we think about a movie it is helpful to read a few reviews. Here is a selection of reviews of The Big Kahuna: Chiaroscuro; Christianity Today/The Film Forum; Roger Ebert; Hollywood Jesus; Stanley Kauffmann; Looking Closer.



Notes: (1) The Big Kahuna is rated R for "strong language." (2) For more resources on film see the Chiaroscuro resource page.

Discussion questions for September 19


In preparation for this discussion we will read Steven Garber's Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving together belief & behavior during the university years, the introduction and chapters 1 and 5.



During the course of the week before the seminar discussion, formal participants will post their responses to the following questions.


1. Garber writes (p. 15):

Why do you get up in the morning? For nearly twenty years I have been teaching university students in many different kinds of settings -- both those laboring away at secular-spirited institutions and those within Christ-centered colleges and universities, both undergraduate and graduate students, both within the classroom as a professor and outside as a campus minister -- and in a variety of ways I have asked this question. It gets at the relationship between what one believes about the world and how one lives in the world, particularly as that dynamic interaction is being formed as young people begin to move out of their parents' worlds and worldviews and take up their own convictions as frameworks within which to live and move and have their being. But it also focuses a student's attention, asking for a good reason to get up -- beyond the call of the cafeteria or the classroom.


At heart that more playful question is rooted in more substantive ones: Which commitments will give shape to my life? Is my life about something that matters? What do I really care about?

So ... why do you get up in the morning?


2. Garber interviewed numerous people for this book. He found that “in the tapestrylike stories of the experiences of those interviewed . . . three factors were the major influences, as seen retrospectively, on the construction of their respective visions of what is real and true and right.” What are these three factors? What is their influence in your own life?


3. Garber found in his research that “As those interviewed answered questions about how they make sense of life and the world, two factors stood out. . . . No other issues seemed as central to their articulation of their worldviews as these two; together they are woven into the fabric of faith of those who still believe and who act on what they believe.” What are these two factors? What is their influence in your own articulation of a worldview?


NOTE: Informal participants are invited to use the discuss function (at the bottom of this entry) to add their observations. The formal seminar group will have seen The Big Kahuna on September 12, and informal participants are invited to add their comments on that film in the same way.