Newpaper Article #3

Treehuggers, UNITE!!

Alexandra Mullen

Sophomore – English major – Contributing Writer

I have no strong political affiliation, but one thing that I am extremely passionate about is our beautiful, decaying mother Earth.

The Bible tells us to care for our environment in Numbers as well as a few other verses.

“You shall not pollute the land in which you live . . . ”  (an excerpt from Numbers 35:33, ESV).

We need to protect what little bits of nature that we have left. Our wildlife conservation parks are great, in theory, but they are so densely tracked through that they are hardly even conservative any longer. We as humans need to get back in touch with nature. Instead of appreciating the best of our gifts, we are killing them!! This is not even a slow process. We hack down least hundreds of trees every single day. Some people get very agitated and angry when they see only tree stubs in a field that was once a densely wooded forest.

We need more honest ‘old-fashioned’ lumberjacks. They generally have a deep seeded appreciation of nature and how fabulous it feels to breathe in the air inside of a densely wooded forest.

Last semester, I took Environmental Issues & Choices with Dr. Bodenman and it cannot be put into words how heart-breaking that class can be for tree-hugging-eco-lovers like myself. That class raises awareness of issues that humans cause in the environment, even in these beautiful United States of America. I strongly believe that this course should be a required class, to make all students  see just how quickly we are killing the Earth. Our generation has the power to revive this Earth! We will need to work together, among other nations and peoples perhaps, and find a way to save this glorious planet that we all call ‘home’.

There is an image on Facebook that looks like a hand drawing of the Earth and off to the side of the Earth, there is a quote saying “The one thing that we all have in common.” which hopefully helps everyone to see that we are all dependent on Earth, religious or not, whether we accept it or not.

We all need this oddly shaped marble to keep spinning and we need it to keep blossoming green things, and giving us animals and edible plants as well as water and sunshine. . . . Well, the sunshine part is outside of the power of this Earth, but we really do need everything else. Before Numbers, in Genesis 2:15, it is written “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.”.  This Bible scripture states that Adam was placed in the garden of Eden simply to care for the Earth, as the Lord created it. As a human race, we are destroying so much more of the Earth than we attempt to preserve for future generations. We have really lost sight of our initial purpose on the Earth.

That being said, it’s not that all people are walking around with a chainsaw, killing all of our clean-oxygen catalysts. Some people are on a serious mission to improve this Earth and all living things on it. Wikipedia lists hundreds, if not thousands of Environmentalist Groups, as they are becoming increasingly necessary in our decaying world.

It may be a bit overwhelming to think about changing the whole world  perhaps, but the small action of not buying plastic, but instead purchasing a permanently reusable bottle makes that much of a difference in the world. Call it ridiculous, or whatever you wish, but we need to change our relationship with the Earth.

We take too much, and rarely, if ever, give back half of what has been taken and destroyed. There is no way that we can continue on this path of destroying the Earth.

Not only Christians feel that way, though. It is important to relate other religions and ways of life to this matter. If anyone would like to do research on this, and find out just how many organized groups are attempting to revive the Earth, you might look on aboutreligion.com and find

“An example of Muslims taking ownership of their divine obligation to protect the environment was seen recently when the people of Tanzania reversed a growing trend toward ecological destruction through a policy of sustainable fishing and environmental preservation based on the principles of the Quran.”

See, my academic colleagues? It’s not just the ‘nutty Christians’ like me who want to preserve the little bit of dear Earth we have left! It’s other religions, too! If someone were to go to Huffington Post and look up atheist environmentalism, they would find several different links. We all need to practice life more sustainably!! I am so passionate about this issue, I could go on about this forever and a day and still not feel like I’ve ‘driven my point home’ !!

Wouldn’t it be incredible if our planet were free from all emissions and other ecology-destroying habits we have?

We may not have nearly as many illnesses as our race does now. We would not have to worry about extinction of plants or animals. Wouldn’t that just be delightful? Only God knows what our future ecological status is. However, we can and should work to improve upon what He has planned for this planet already.

This matter is something that I am extremely passionate about and plan to write more about this through the semester and for the remainder of my undergraduate experience and life !!

Please join Protestant Campus Ministry on Wednesday evenings at 6:00 pm in KUB 340 for our Main Events, where we share pizza, hardships, blessings and ideas with each other and Pastor Jill. We would love to have you with us! 🙂

Until then, God Bless you all

Newpaper Article #2

Maintain AND Gain

(From weight loss to Spiritual knowledge this winter break)

In many corporate companies, there is a competition that occurs around the holidays called, ‘Maintain, Don’t Gain.’ The goal of this competition is to improve the health of the employees working in that company. It is a way to motivate these men and women to not gain weight over the winter holiday season. The weigh-in is generally a week or so before Thanksgiving. The purpose of this article is not about weight gain or loss. Rather, I would like to focus this article on gaining spiritual knowledge over the winter break.I want to encourage the  maintenance the faith of my brothers and sisters in Christ, along with the gain of knowledge for my non-Christian readers.

Instead of worrying about how much money was spent on you this vacation (let’s admit, we’ve all done this) worry more about how much you know about Jesus and His word. The words that came from His mouth will surely benefit you much more than paper money ever could. We should not allow money to be such a large factor in our thinking during the holidays, especially.

As you all hopefully know and realize, the way that we celebrate the birth of our Savior is far from how Christians initially celebrated His birth.

Now, the literal birth of Christ was celebrated with three small gifts, from the wise men: gold, frankincense and myrrh. Out of those three, gold is the most commonly given gift in this modern age. I have not heard of anyone giving frankincense or myrrh in the last 2,000 years.

Christmas was set to be a celebration of Jesus’ birth, not a time to lavishly spend money where it does not need to be spent.

I guess I should take a break here and admit that I do like receiving gifts in celebration of God, but I do not enjoy the way that families spend thousands of dollars during this season. My parents, like many parents in highly modernized countries, enjoy buying things for my siblings and I that we absolutely do not need. For instance, if one looks up Christmas gifts on Wal-Mart’s website, a $400 Playstation 4 is on the top of the list. Who needs a PlayStation? We should be giving youth gifts of knowledge. Show them that reading is cool, and it can even be fun. They will follow our lead.

I think that we should all start by reading the Bible. This is one of those books, that is probably gathering dust on your bookshelf, as it has been in my home. We should all take a break from our busy lives and read the Bible. It will definitely benefit us in more ways than worrying about money ever will. The Bible teaches us many lessons on morality and how Jesus tells us that we should live. We should especially take the time to remember this during the celebration of Him.

Society, at large, has taken Christmas and commercialized the Christ out of it, literally. Santa Claus is everywhere, he appears in soda commercials on television and can be heard on radio advertisements for cars, homes and just about anything that the average American citizen might be interested in purchasing. Christmas, is far from how it used to be celebrated.

How we have gone from giving frankincense and myrrh to giving electronic game consoles is beyond comprehension. I believe that we, as a generation, should bring this world back to basics and give only what our friends and family need. This will definitely be a challenge, as this is how we were raised to practice the birth of our Savior. It is up to us to change this aspect about our culture.

As said in the book of Jude 1:2, ‘ Mercy unto you, and peace, and love, be multiplied.’

This concludes my column for this semester, may the Lord bless all of your homes with love and joy and peace during this wonderful Winter Vacation. Joyeux Noël. God Bless.

Crazy for Him ; Article #1

Alexandra Mae Mullen

Contributing Writer

I am just, absolutely crazy about Jesus! College students are often unable to find the time to practice religion on a consistent basis while in college. On campus, during the school semester and with all of the stressful things that come with college, it is completely understandable to have a less active life in the church.

I am very open about my religion, maybe a bit too open, though Jesus does say in the book of Mark chapter 16, verse 15 “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation!” (NIV) , therefore encouraging the openness that I have about my faith. I wear a cross around my neck at all times, to signify where my one and only true allegiance lies and I try my hardest to always stay true to His word.

Just to be clear, I do not want to push any religion on anyone, so please do not misunderstand the meaning of this article. I would like other students on campus to see how simple it is to stay on top of school activities as well as keeping God as an active part of life. I want to spread around campus the ways that I know Jesus , and how I hope that everyone will all know Him as well.

I am very active in Protestant Campus Ministry (PCM) and I would like other people to come to PCM as well.  In PCM, we come together twice a week, and we celebrate the good things that we see Jesus doing in our lives, and we lament with each other over the hardships that we go through. PCM is a very welcoming group, and we do not judge or discriminate in any way against anyone.

For me, my God (Jesus Christ) is love. Pure and simple. He is love. The Protestant Campus Ministry (PCM) on Campus means a lot to me, and I absolutely love the group of friends that I have made in this group. We have gone hiking together, where we observed God’s masterpiece (Rickett’s Glen, so beautiful!) and enjoyed Subway on the way back to Bloomsburg after conversations along the trail.  We have meetings (The Main Event) every Wednesday evening at 6:00 pm where we share pizza and stories about how we see God in every part of our everyday lives. We welcome any and all prospective members!

This might be slightly biased, because I am a member of this group already, but I would like to encourage everyone to attend PCM meetings.

We at PCM would definitely like to see a few more people regularly attend The Main Event (TME). We have a group of about seven or eight people who attend every week, except in extenuating circumstances, and I would like to have ten or eleven ‘regulars’ (if not more) that attend every week. We talk about everything from what Jesus says about scandalous things in the bible, to how we think He would respond to modern issues that societies and different peoples in the world are currently facing. Every week, we take prayer requests and pray openly at the end of our meetings for struggles that our members are having or are worried about.

If you would like to request a prayer, but do not want to speak one-on-one with anyone about it, the group encourages you to e-mail Jill Young, their leader, at jyoung@bloomu.edu. She would be more than happy to request that your prayer be given to God at the end of the meeting as is encouraged in the Psalms, book 55, verse 22 “Cast all your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken.”

You may also send prayer requests to me at amm.bu.voice@gmail.com. Prayers will be confidential and nobody will know the name of the person asking for prayer, and the group would love to pray for any/all of you.

Those of us in PCM know how beneficial it can be to have the comfort of God in our lives as well as having  the support of other students who are going through the same struggles as we are.

Selma Rhetorical Reaction

This movie is incredible.

I almost wish that it would be enough to say just that. However, per usual, that would simply devalue the importance of what I am talking about.

This movie is extremely important to show to our youngest generation, ten and under, once they come of age to understand the oppression that people of color once faced.

Personally, I am beyond pleased to learn that my younger brother (fifteen years old) saw a preview for this movie, and decided that he wanted to see it. My little brother is so unbelievably wise and cultured for a fifteen year old kid. But the, isn’t that the condition of younger siblings?

Back to the topic at hand, this movie, detailing the plight of Martin Luther King Jr. is a perfect representation of how challenging the legal struggle to attain voting rights was for any person of color-other-than-Caucasian.

In my family, I have two cousins that are half-African-American. This might be conflict-of-interest because of that, but I have never really thought of skin color as a telltale sign of importance in this world. The older of those two cousins (about 8 months older than me) is a smart, beautiful, accomplished girl named Carissa. Carissa is among my very dearest friends.

Carissa means more to me than mere words could describe. My best-friend-cousin is to be married in the summer of 2016 and I was just asked to be in her wedding. As noted, words cannot describe how joyous I felt when she asked me. She’s my other half. We are ‘ebony and ivory’. Partners in crime. She’s my other half. Tears come to my eyes as I attempt to describe how much she means to me. I am so easily side-tracked by my emotions on this matter. I don’t understand how anyone could  be so AUDACIOUS to think their life more valuable in the eyes of the Lord. Carissa is my equal, if not more than that. She means so much to me.

Carissa’s little brother, Phillip Paul is more of what our culture sees as the ‘typical black youth’ and unfortunately has lost his way with illegal substances and violence. Nonetheless fo I love him, though. He’s my cousin. I wasn’t nothing more than to grab him by the scruff of his shirt and tell him how to act in the face of authority an opposition. Phil is about ne year and as half younger than me,  and his and Carissa’s father was in another marriage when they were both conceived. So, they did not have any particular ‘father figure’ when they were growing up. It all depends on a person’s inner strength how they come out of an ‘unusual’ growing-up experience. This leads me to understand that each person is completely and fully in charge of their own reaction when faced with hardship and opposition.

Phillip’s future has been optimistic at times, but then he did something that caused authority to discipline him. He does not react very well to authority when ‘authority’ is telling him that he has done something wrong. I believe that this poor reaction is due to a pre-conceived notion that it’s “everyone in our modern society against ‘the black man’ in current times”.

The recent riots in Ferguson, Missouri definitely do not help to improve the confidence of non-Caucasian people. That just shattered what our country has worked hundreds of years trying to eradicate from our culture. The aftermath of those riots, people killing policemen in other cities and towns across the United States made our nation look like a bunch of savages in the eyes of other civilized countries around the world.

A ‘sense of unity’ has certainly been lost to our country. It breaks my heart to see a nation that was once so strong start to come apart at the seams of our very own origin, the Constitution.

While this movie does make me question the stability of our ‘authorities’ when I think about Phil, the very existence of this movie reminds me that our democratic society is still working to improve the notion of ‘other’ as lesser in American culture. Reminding me of one of my favorite songs, by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis entitled “Same Love”. The song is about the relatively common thought that human beings of other sexual orientations are ‘lesser’ than heterosexuals. Personally, I believe that God created man and woman to procreate and that homosexuality is not what God intended for our species. But, the song has a point. Love is love. Each person will face their own judgment day.  I am not a worthy judge of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, and I will not pretend to be.

Whoa, talk about a tangent! To get back on track, once again, I have a very small understanding of what God looks at as right or wrong and I strongly feel that it is no mortal-human’s place to attempt claiming Divine understanding or ‘damning’ of any other creed or race of human beings.

I loved this movie, it brought me closer to understanding our nation’s past and the struggle that once was unjustly forced upon people of darker complexion. I could go off on another tangent about how I believe that darker skin means stronger skin, less apt to acne and other terrible skin problems, such as Psoriasis, but I will leave it at the fact that our nation has had a very terrible history of excluding anyone that we see as ‘other’ and we should learn a lesson or two from the literal text of God, in the Bible.

Thank you for assigning this movie to us. It opened my eyes to the plight that MLKJR took for humanity we know it.

Rhetoric: #SOTU2015

During the January 20th, 2015 State of the Union by President Barack Obama, the country had the opportunity to witness his account of his many accomplishments of his last 6 years in office as well as his rhetorical prowess in convincing the people of this nation of his credibility with emotional appeal as well as the elevated language he used.

In his speech, very similar to Bill Clinton’s 1999 State of the Union, President Obama largely covers three main issues that our country has or had, the Job Market, our Economy and Education Policy as well as a few other matters such as President Clinton’s inclusion of his Social Security conservation plan and Obama’s energy conservation plan.

Presidents Clinton and Obama both had a rapidly improving job market by the time of their sixth State of the Union Address to Congress.

Rebecca and Ben Erler were a newlywed couple, expecting their first son sat the beginning of Obama’s presidency, and experienced a very harsh loss of stability soon after they settled in Minneapolis, Minnesota. They worked hard to prevail through adversity and as Rebecca said “We are a strong, tight knit family who has been through some very very rough times.” () Obama uses the story of Rebecca and Ben Erler to transition into the new education policy (free community college) that he is going to propose to Congress. While this is a very great plan, ideally, it is nothing more than that, ideal. This policy, if put into law, would devalue the community college experience and it would increase costs for four-year-University-programs.

Obama spoke of the changes that he made thus far in his position as President of the United States, by telling of the decrease in debt and the heavy constriction of troops overseas, as well as by the numerous jobs that have been created during his term. He showed the nation his credibility by the increase in high-school graduation rates since his commencement as president and by his plan to establish a free community college policy in the near future.

In this State of the Union Address, for the first time in Obama’s presidency, the congress was controlled by the Republican party and President Obama wittily quipped to the cheering Republican Congressional members after his stating of the fact that he would not be running again, “Because I already won both of them.” proving not only his wit, but also his credibility, as President of the United States.

For the sixth State of the Union Address since Obama was put into office as President, Mr. Barack Obama proves his opulent credibility with phrases that the ‘average Joe’ would have a full understanding of, yet the language is still elevated to that of a professional. His language was effectively concise and to the point as well as inspirational and compelling to ‘join forces’ with him in his goal of putting America back on top in regards to medicine, mathematics, aeronautical science and other educational fields such as literature and language.

President Obama included several visual statistics to show his improvements in the United States during his Presidency, much like President Clinton explained his accomplishments of his presidency in his sixth State of the Union Address. President Clinton did not use such technology, as technology was far less developed during his presidency. These propaganda included graphs, charts as well as a few images of Mr. & Mrs. Ben Erler, his example of credibility along with a picture of the President, himself, with their two sons.

President Obama articulately proves his credibility not only by the fact that he is President of the United States, but by the fact that he is able to change this country for the better as he states has been his goal “ever since he was sworn into office” six years ago. He shows the Congress how able he is by telling us of how he will ‘veto’ the legislation of a bills that Congress proposes which he believes will not benefit this country in the long run.This may not have been the greatest ideas, as the opposing political party, the Republican Party, holds majority in Congress as of the November before Barack Obama delivers his speech.

Citations

“President Veto Counts.” Senate.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2015.

“Barack Obama Timeline.” American Presidents History. Cityscape, n.d. Web. 21 Jan. 2015. <http://www.american-presidents-history.com/barack-obama-timeline.html&gt;.

WhiteHouse.gov. “President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union Address.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cse5cCGuHmE&gt;.

“Issues.” The White House. The White House, 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues>.

Chang, Lulu. “Bustle.” Bustle. N.p., 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 20 Jan. 2015. <http://www.bustle.com/articles/59748-who-are-rebekah-ben-erler-wheres-ben-at-the-state-of-the-union&gt;.

The Book Archive. “State of the Union Address: Speech by President Clinton (1999).”   YouTube. YouTube, 5 May 2012. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ9ztNBDlBo&gt;.