We could have a problem here...

Hi Jeffrey
Here is some feedback to help with the final application.

No special order.

1. It is not clear in the materials what you wish to do with your
life and this should be related to why you wish to continue your
studies in UK

A Rock and a Hard Place

i survived a harrowing interview last night. as you may know, i've been applying for fellowships to study philosophy in england next year, and this interview was with stanford's panel to determine whether to endorse my application. twenty minutes of lively, intellectually stimulating terror.

the panel (five former rhodes and marshall scholars in a variety of disciplines) had the good-cop-bad-cop thing going: the dramaturge on my right warmly admired my guts for raising a subject as taboo as religion in my personal statement; then the physician on my left demanded how belief in god could possibly be consistent with an event like Katrina. they also asked for my position on the intelligent design movement, my proposal to eradicate palo alto's homelessness, my evaluation of the ethics of "pay day loans" from an economic perspective, and when the devastation seemed complete they congratulated me on my grades and ushered me out of the room gasping for breath and clutching my chest. thank god that's done--unless of course i actually get endorsed and run the full gauntlet of three more of those.

but, as a sort of ironic reminder that i really do want to go to grad school, i started work today. at bosch i have truly gone corporate: not much use anymore for the gazillion t-shirts i acquired in the last year. on the plus side, there's a bike path that runs almost directly from my apartment to work, and we get free drinks. a frappuccino or two may heal the wounds left by the dress code.

Getting Back and Getting Rid

i've been looking forward to this week for some time, what with the stanford kids getting back and all. (1) my friends are back, which makes me happy. (2) they have removed their mountains of stuff from our apartment hallway, which makes me very happy.

Jesus Doesn't Need Your Sympathy

I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code yesterday, by and large a pretty frustrating experience. I'm no historian, so there are better people for you to talk to as far as those details go, but I know enough to recognize the stew of baloney Brown has cooked up (ever so lightly seasoned with fact). Still, the thing that really aggravates me (and I'm sorry if after my previous posts I'm starting to sound like a band that only knows one tune) is that after Brown's Robert Langdon has proposed that there exist, in secrecy, "thousands of ancient documents as scientific evidence that the New Testament is false testimony", he then goes on to rally to my poor deluded religion's defense:

"The Bible represents a fundamental guidepost for millions of people on the planet...Those who truly understand their faiths understand the stories are metaphorical."

Sophie looked skeptical. "My friends who are devout Christians definitely believe that Christ literally walked on water, literally turned water into wine, and was born of a literal virgin birth."

"My point exactly," Langdon said. "Religious allegory has become part of the fabric of reality. And living in that reality helps millions of people cope and be better people."

"But it appears their reality is false."

Langdon chuckled. "No more false than that of a mathematical cryptographer who believes in the imaginary number i because it helps her break codes."

(By the way, that last analogy is interesting, but figuring out how good of an analogy it really is requires us to answer the same questions about reality and justified beliefs that we started with, not only for religion, but also for mathematics (and you certainly shouldn't put much weight on whether a mathematician calls something "imaginary", "irrational", or "transcendental"). So, while interesting, the analogy isn't especially helpful.)

Here's a parallel to Langdon's vindication of Christian belief, from one of my favorite authors:

"What do you mean, Lu?" asked Peter.

"What I said," answered Lucy. "It was just after breakfast when I went into the wardrobe, and I've been away for hours and hours, and had tea, and all sorts of things have happened."

"Don't be silly, Lucy," said Susan. "We've only just come out of that room a moment ago, and you were there then."

"She's not being silly at all," said Peter, "she's just making up a story for fun, aren't you, Lu? And why shouldn't she?"

The trouble with Peter's well-meaning defense, of course, is that Lucy is not trying to communicate a made-up story for fun, but rather something that really happened to her in Narnia. So if Peter were to successfully carry off his "defense", then he would actually defeat Lucy's whole purpose in telling them about the wardrobe.

And I'd say the same to Langdon or Brown or whoever offers this kind of "defense" of Christianity: thank you for your sympathy, but some of my religion's stories are not metaphorical, and if that is the only way you can see to make sense of them, then please, kindly throw them away along with the phlogiston theory. "If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain."

Saying Yes

I finished Life of Pi a few days ago, and I'm fairly dying to discuss it. Unfortunately, after much deliberation, I've decided there's pretty much no way to do that without spoiling the story for those of you who haven't read it. So go read it, and then we can discuss.

And speaking of stories, I am currently in possession of Simpstory, the Stanford Improvisors' archival tome. Each graduating member takes their turn with the book and fills a page or so with recollections and advice to future SImps. I'm not sure what to write.

What is improv? First off, it's wonderful and beautiful. We play games. We tell stories. There are few rushes to be got rivalling that of finding just the right piece at just the right moment: suddenly realizing that of course the doctor was in love with her receptionist all along, and the prescriptions she's been writing contain coded love poems to him, which we will now both read aloud, one word at a time.

Improv is creative in the best way, the way that feels more like discovery than invention. You don't make stories, you find them, waiting for you, in silly suggestions and unconscious offers. The best improvised characters have the least contrived about them; they walk onto the stage ready-made with lost loves, secret ambitions, apartments in the South Bronx, and rose tattoos on their upper arms. The best improvised stories are obvious--even when they are surprising--because the sapphire of Montecristo never really could have been anywhere else but in the mechanic's toolbox, disguised as a ratchethead, all along.

Improv is collective in the best way. Everyone is as different from each other as possible, and it's precisely because one of us is a quiet, self-effacing rubber tycoon and the other a prattling, stage-filling nephew that the magic happens. On stage and off, we take care of each other. We help each other. We share control; there is no room for divas in improv. The SImps are a Team like few teams can be.

Improv is forgiving. One of the main reasons I improvise is because it teaches me to fail, over and over again. The Coach's motto is, "If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't doing improv". The freedom to be absolutely awful, shocking, dull--is what makes it possible (from time to time) to be none of the above. In other circles we call that Grace.

"Improv is the closest thing I've found to a religion", says one SImp, and she speaks for many. And really, there are far worse religions one could find; here is a great deal of genuine wisdom and authentic joy, and that's a large part of why I so exuberantly immerse myself in it. But the immersion has to be slightly ginger, because wholeheartedly entering the world of theater really is very like practicing a foreign religion, and it can be difficult to hang onto the knowledge--that not everything beautiful is true.

And there's the rub. Stories are wonderful and beautiful, but if none of our stories are true, we are impoverished, or worse. Really, despite the enormous beauty I've tried here to describe, at the end of the day my dear playful trusting loving improvisors show all the symptoms of truth-starved people. (Which is to be expected, I suppose--it seems just about everything I've read or watched lately is out to remind me that "truth" isn't a real hot item these days. "Just believe" is more the spirit. Alas.)

So my prayer for the Stanford Improvisors, and for the rest of you, too, I guess, is that we would learn not only to tell stories that are beautiful, but also to hear the stories that are true.

Yes.