WHAT A RUN FOR SOPHIE BULL!!! 🤩🤩
At the NCAA Division III Outdoor Championships, Sophie Bull of Calvin stormed to victory in the women’s 3k steeplechase with a personal best of 10:11.73!
Audrey Maclean of Middlebury claimed second in 10:23.59, while Keira Rogan of Hamilton finished third in 10:24.46.
You know, it’s funny when people hear that Pope Leo XIV has a math degree, taught physics, and wrote a thesis on monastic leadership, they act like it's some wild plot twist. The Catholic Church has always been low-key obsessed with education. I mean, did you know nearly every pope since the Renaissance has had a PhD? Benedict XVI had five. Cardinals today basically need doctorate-level expertise to even get a seat at the table. Leo XIV isn't an outlier; he's following a 2,000-year-old playbook where faith and reason are BFFs. This is the same institution that gave us the Big Bang theory (thanks to a Jesuit priest, Georges Lemaître) and the guy who invented genetics (shoutout to Gregor Mendel, the pea-plant-obsessed Augustinian friar). Yet somehow, we still think of the Church as just incense and hymns.
The Church's duality; defending doctrinal tradition while pioneering intellectual frontiers, is its defining paradox. Consider the Vatican's astronomical observatory, which has operated since 1582, or the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, which has included members like Hawking and Einstein.
Let's break it down. Those monks and nuns you picture copying manuscripts in candlelit monasteries? They weren't just praying, they were preserving ancient Greek philosophy, advancing math, and basically saving Western civilisation during the Dark Ages. Fast-forward to today, and the Vatican still runs its own space telescope (yes, really, Jesuit brothers track asteroids). The Chúrch condemned Galileo, sure, but now it funds ethical stem-cell research and partners with IBM on AI ethics. It's like the ultimate comeback story: "Oops, we messed up on heliocentrism; here's a think tank on quantum physics."
And let's talk about those religious orders. Jesuits? They basically invented the modern university system. The Jesuits founded in 1540, by a chap called Ignatius Loyala, (half monk, half soldier) ran over 800 universities globally. Franciscans gave us Occam's Razor; you know, that "simplest explanation is best" rule you learned in science class? That came from a 14th-century friar who loved logic more than the Pope loved his fancy hat. The Dominicans had Thomas Aquinas, who merged Aristotle's philosophy with theology. Augustinians, Leo XIV's crew, were all about community and critical thinking, traits he took to Peru, where he spent 20 years teaching in slums while quietly holding dual citizenship. The guy's got more layers than a medieval manuscript.
But here's the upper-cut: the Church thrives on this weird paradox. It's conservative enough to make your grandma nod approvingly ("No women priests? Classic.") but progressive enough to have a Pope who trash-talks eco deniers and slams border politics. Leo XIV fits right in; he's a Republican primary voter who also called Trump's family separations "illicit," a social media critic who warns bishops not to be divisive online. It's like the Church says, "We'll debate evolution with Darwinians by day and chant Latin psalms by night and we'll look good doing both."
So next time someone acts shocked that a pope knows quantum physics or tweets about refugees, just smile. The Catholic Church has been playing 4D chess with knowledge for centuries. It's not a relic; it's a living library, where friars argue about black holes over breakfast and nuns run coding bootcamps. Leo XIV? He's just the latest chapter in a story where faith doesn't fear science…It fuels it.
How has narcissism evolved in the last five years since I wrote When Narcissism Comes to Church?
In at least fives ways:
From Authority to Algorithm-Based
From Hidden to Performative
From Apathy-in-Action to Empathy-Under-Attack
From Anxious to Emboldened
From High Bars to Heroic Comebacks
Read more: https://t.co/KhLyEykJcy
Congratulations to the inaugural Denver Christian Athletics Hall of Fame class.
Coach Dick Katte
Al Tebrink
Jackie (Bucher) Washington
Jen (Tubergen) Warden
Bret Schoolmeester
Kirk Nieuwenhuis
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭’𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐢𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞?
I would suggest that motivation is a human system whereas discipline is a human strategy….
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Motivation is related to rewards and punishments that emerge in our environment and that drive our approach and avoidance behaviour.
Discipline is more a human strategy that we might use to retain a goal-orientation
Motivation is a part of us no matter what. It is a constant. Discipline is a strategy that we use or don’t use (on a continuum)
Religion
THE WORD religion points to that area of human experience where one way or another we come upon Mystery as a summons to pilgrimage; where we sense beyond and beneath the realities of every day a...
-Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words
SOPHIE BULL IS AN ALL-AMERICAN!! A perfectly executed race lands the sophomore her first all-american honor, finishing 5th overall and running a PR of 10:31 in the process! Knights Nation is so proud of you Sophie! #GoCalvin
@UnitedCoaches convention with coaches from around the world. Met 2009 @rollDCthunder alum Brendan Roslund. Presenter on modern GK analytics for https://t.co/M2HnkmnENp
With the sad news of the passing of Sir BOBBY CHARLTON at the age of 86, here is our essay on the Manchester United and England legend. From Men in Blazers' "Gods of Soccer". ❤️❤️❤️
❝BOBBY CHARLTON'S story begins in tragedy. In 1958, just two years into his senior career at Manchester United, Charlton and the team were on their way back from a European Cup game in Belgrade. Halfway home, they stopped in Munich to refuel. It was early February in Germany and the ground was covered in melting gray slush. During takeoff, the plane began to skid down the runway, and it became clear that the plane wasn’t going to be able to accelerate enough to lift into the air. Tragically, it was also too late to slow down. The team said their prayers as the plane veered off the runway and crashed into a nearby house, splitting in half and depositing passengers every which way. When Charlton’s teammate, Harry Gregg, dragged him out of the fiery wreckage by the seat of his pants, he assumed that Charlton was dead. Astonishingly, two minutes later, there was Charlton—the shy 20-year-old kid from the mining town of Ashington, Northumberland—standing on the edge of the blaze, surveying the wreckage.
That Charlton lived to play 22 more years is a miracle. That he managed to accomplish what he did in that time is a miracle on top of that. The numbers speak for themselves: 17 years and 758 games played for Manchester United, 249 goals, one European Cup, three League titles, one FA Cup, 106 caps for England, one World Cup championship in 1966 (the first and only in English history), one Ballon d’Or, one side of the stadium named in his honor at Old Trafford, one knighthood. When you add all this up, you get one of the most impactful careers in English football.
Yet perhaps the most indicative number of all is just two. Two yellow cards in the entirety of Bobby Charlton’s 24-year career. That’s almost unheard of. Wayne Rooney, the man who eventually broke Charlton’s goalscoring records for both England and Man United, logged 145.
Out of the ashes of the Munich Air Disaster rose one of the best teams the English game had ever seen, flanked by George Best on the right and Bobby Charlton on the left. Best was the rascal; Charlton, the gentleman. Best, unscathed by Munich—he was only 11 at the time of the accident—restored a sense of mirthful youth and optimism to the club. Charlton did not have Best’s natural talent or his sense of revelry. But what he brought back with him from Munich was arguably more remarkable.
Watch Charlton’s goal against Mexico in the group stage of the 1966 World Cup. It is a powerful, commanding strike, hit from 30 yards out with almost no spin on the ball. Deft, clean, precise. Everyone else is running around getting their feet dirty. Charlton, with his dinner jacket combover—the envy of pipe-smoking, prematurely balding men across the continent—is playing an elegant, refined sport.