Weekly Meanderings, 14 August 2021
Good morning friends!
Photo by Jingda Chen on Unsplash
Ruth Malhotra, doing what was right at RZIM:
Within a few months of his death in May 2020, several massage therapists at an Atlanta-area spa he co-owned came forward, alleging that Zacharias had repeatedly demanded sexual favors. A subsequent investigation found a long-term pattern of sexual misconduct, and Zacharias went from being a beloved, sainted figure mourned by celebrity pastors and politicians to a posthumous pariah.
Rather than quit, [Ruth] Malhotra was determined to help make things right for survivors of Zacharias’ abuse. Her best efforts, she now says, were frustrated by Zacharias’ team.
When she raised questions about how the ministry handled allegations against Zacharias, Malhotra said, she was accused of being mentally unstable. When she went public with her concerns, she was labeled as disloyal. In July, Malhotra drove to the ministry’s offices and waited outside as RZIM staff brought out her belongings, since she was no longer allowed in the building.
“I feel the way you feel when someone you love passes away,” she told Religion News Service. “It’s that same type of grief.”
A fascinating, challenging, irritating, but very Cornel West kind of interview:
Cornel West is not particularly interested in being nice. He recently left Harvard—after his second tour as a professor there—and he made sure to post his resignation letter on Twitter: The school’s “narcissistic academic professionalism,” “anti-Palestinian prejudices,” and what he saw as indifference toward his mother’s recent death constituted “an intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths.” Last week, the CNN commentator Bakari Sellers told Jewish Insider that West toys with anti-Semitism in the same way that former President Donald Trump deploys racist tropes. “That’s a cowardly lie of a desperate opportunist,” West told me.
And yet, when he’s not rumbling with one of his enemies, West is eager to find common cause with people he disagrees with—including, occasionally, political pariahs. He proudly recounted to me his days of debating with Meir Kahane, the Jewish nationalist who was convicted of domestic terrorism, and he has unapologetically spoken beside Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader who frequently espouses anti-Semitic views. West takes issue with those on the left who believe that white people are hopeless, or that people who violate progressive orthodoxy should be canceled. “White brothers and sisters, brown, red, or yellow—they are capable of transformation,” he said. “Salvation is not in our hands anyway.” If West does not feel completely at home on the left because he is a Christian, neither does he feel completely at home in the church, which, in his view, has failed to stand up for working people. Perhaps the famous academic is only truly comfortable in the role of outcast.
I spoke with West about whether the left needs Jesus and much more. Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.
CHICAGO – (NEXSTAR) If burgers and hot dogs are becoming monotonous and mundane, what you really need to grill are a whole bunch of bananas.
Elizabeth Karmel, the award-winning chef also known as the “Grill Girl,” says bananas are among her absolute favorite foods to grill, partly because they make for a quick and easy dessert, but also because they’re deceptively decadent.
“If you’re never grilled a banana, you’re really missing out,” Karmel says. “It’s perfect if you love all the flavors of bananas foster, but you don’t want to use a pound of butter and make a big mess.”
According to Karmel, grilling a banana gives it a greater depth of flavor and just a hint of smoke.
“Cut them horizontally — leave the skin on — and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar and a little bit of sea salt,” she recommends. “Grill it flesh side down over direct heat until you see grill marks, about two minutes … just enough to sear that sugar.”
Once caramelized, Karmel flips the bananas peel-side-down and continues grilling until the peel separates from the flesh. Then, it’s ready to serve.
“Pair that with some vanilla ice cream, pour a slug of bourbon on it … It never, ever disappoints.”
(RNS) — The Tokyo Olympics are Stuart Weir’s fourth Games.
No, he’s not running any races or seeking to earn more medals than Olympic record holder Michael Phelps.Weir, secretary of the Major Sports Events Chaplaincy Committee and executive director of Verite Sport, is attending the Olympics as media and acting as an unofficial chaplain to athletes.
With Verite Sport, his Christian nonprofit based in the United Kingdom, he usually attends 15 to 20 elite track meets a year to support the athletes spiritually and write about the intersection of sports and faith (“Sport is part of God’s creation,” he said).
Weir has attended every track and field session so far at the Tokyo Olympics, he said. He knows about 100 Olympians competing in the Games and said many see him as a “Christian friend” and familiar face at an unusual Olympics, held without spectators and the usual support systems amid the continuing COVID-19 pandemic.
“I constantly sensed that athletes were pleased to see me as a familiar face when friends could not be there,” he said.
With even accredited chaplains limited to interacting with Olympians virtually, he has been trying to see athletes at the stadium after they compete and sending them daily devotions via email. He knows another chaplain in the U.K. who has been watching competitions in the wee hours of the morning to exchange WhatsApp messages with athletes she knows in Tokyo, “rejoicing with those who rejoice and mourning with those who mourn.”
Across the time difference between the United States and Japan, Weir answered questions from Religion News Service by email about how faith is helping athletes through the unprecedented challenges of a pandemic Games. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
(Nexstar) — Want to find your inner Matt Damon and spend a year pretending to be isolated on Mars? NASA has a job for you.
To prepare for eventually sending astronauts to Mars, NASA began taking applications Friday for four people to live for a year in Mars Dune Alpha. That’s a 1,700-square-foot Martian habitat, created by a 3D-printer, and inside a building at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The paid volunteers will work a simulated Martian exploration mission complete with spacewalks, limited communications back home, restricted food and resources and equipment failures.
NASA is planning three of these experiments with the first one starting in the fall next year. Food will all be ready-to-eat space food, and at the moment, there are no windows planned. Some plants will be grown, but not potatoes like in the movie “The Martian.” (Damon played stranded astronaut Mark Watney, who survived on spuds.)
“We want to understand how humans perform in them,” said lead scientist Grace Douglas. “We are looking at Mars-realistic situations.”
Like finding a box of Roger Maris baseball cards:
DALLAS (AP) — An unopened copy of Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda that was made in 1987 has sold at auction for $870,000.
Heritage Auctions in Dallas said the video game sold Friday.
The auction house said it was a rare version that was created during a limited production run that took place during a few months in late 1987. The Legend of Zelda is a popular fantasy adventure game that was first released in 1986.
“The Legend of Zelda marks the beginning of one of the most important sagas in gaming; its historical significance can’t be understated … it is a true collector’s piece,” Valarie McLeckie, Heritage’s video game specialist, said in a statement.
In April, the auction house sold an unopened copy of Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros. that was bought in 1986 and forgotten about in a desk drawer for $660,000.
Risk perceptions are changing:
YOUR CHANCE OF being crushed in bed tonight by a falling satellite is minuscule. It is also nonzero. Ronald Howard, a Stanford engineering professor and founder of a discipline called decision analysis, made a point of noting the latter, the risk of splat.
Perhaps best known for studying questions of dangerous thrills—formal processes, often using statistics, to help you decide whether you really want to jump out of that airplane—Howard made the point that risk is a constant undercurrent in life, whether we think about it or not. Most people sleep soundly with the knowledge of satellites orbiting overhead and cross the street without calculating the odds of a fatal collision. But people don’t blindly fling themselves into traffic, either. Managing the spectrum of life’s risks is a matter of staying safe, but also sane.
Recently, that balance of safe and sane has become more difficult to strike. Choices that had become refreshingly simple and thoughtless early this summer, like entering a grocery store or a bar without a mask, are again more like skydives—relacquered with a layer of viral risk. For me, this realization dawned about three weeks ago, after a series of maskless errands and gatherings—plus a visit to a dance floor or two—when I wondered, would I do the same thing next weekend? Should I? Could I? A few days after I was getting low to a 2002 playlist amid a scrum of sweaty strangers, Los Angeles County reinstated its indoor mask mandate. It was becoming clear that our euphoric reopening had been ill timed, occurring just as the country became acquainted with the highly transmissible Delta variant. Our collective dial had turned too hot, too fast. My inner risk calculator was miscalibrated. Once again I was asking: How much freedom is too much?