Commencement 2014

The CSU Stanislaus commencement ceremony for doctorate, masters, and credential programs was last night. Joshua graduated with his masters degree in philosophy and literary studies. We came up earlier in the day, then headed to Turlock with Dave and Gayle to meet up with my parents for an early dinner.

 We arrived at the amphitheater early and got prime seats in the middle of the second row; the seats in front of the fence are for the graduates. 

 Joshua was chosen as a standard bearer and led in all the students on that side. He graduated "with distinction" (high honor) and was awarded the Dean's Medal as an outstanding graduate. I am so proud of him and all of his hard work to earn his degree.

 We had a few speeches, then the graduates went forward to receive their diplomas, which of course aren't their real diplomas which will be mailed later. Those graduating with doctorate or masters degrees were also hooded.

 Joshua waiting to be introduced.

 Getting hooded.

 The dean of each college gave the graduates their diploma certificates, so Joshua got to get his from Dr. James Tuedio, who is the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. Jim has been an influential teacher and friend throughout Joshua's time at Stan State and even came to our wedding, so the fact that he was the one who gave Joshua his diploma was special.

 After all the graduates were introduced and presented with their diplomas, the president of the college officially conferred their degrees and they recessed out of the amphitheater.

 We found Joshua during the golden hour and after hugs and congratulations, we took pictures with our graduate.

Congratulations to the class of 2014 and especially to my husband, Joshua Kerr!

Graduation Celebration

 We kicked off graduation week on Monday with a family celebration dinner. We had barbecued hamburgers, pasta salad, fruit, and punch. I made blueberry pies for dessert.

After dinner, we enjoyed a few rounds of charades. 

The boys were so cute trying to decide what word to act out.

An Apologetic Blunder

There is a popular Christian apologetic that I have heard far too many times in my life. Most recently, I have encountered it in this form:

"The objection goes something like this: 'All moral and spiritual claims are the product of our particular historical and cultural moment.' [...] If you infer from the social conditionedness of all belief that 'no belief can be held as universally true for everyone,' that itself is a comprehensive claim about everyone that is the product of social conditions--so it cannot be true." [...]

"A more postmodern version of this claim is the assertion that reality is 'language-ridden' and every truth claim is nothing but the insights of a particular linguistic community. But, as Siegel points out, to say that all reality accounts are language-ridden and relative to their own linguistic communities is itself a universal account of the working of language across all communities and therefore is a claim about the human condition as such. [...] They do the very thing they forbid other communities to do." [...]

"Many say that all truths are power plays. When you claim to have the truth, you are trying to get power and control over other people. [...] If you say that all truth-claims are power plays, then so is your statement. [...] Foucault was pressing the truth of his analysis on others even as he denied the very category of truth. Some kind of truth-claim, then, seems unavoidable."

The basic insight being discussed is that, while truths are important parts of our individual and collective lives, we are sometimes prone to thinking that we have access to univocal and transcendent Truth. In reality, truths are necessarily context-dependent in a number of ways (the three examples above -- that truth claims are contingent, linguistic, and productive of power relations -- are suitably illustrative). If we fool ourselves into imagining that we are dealing with "Unconditioned Truth," we are mistaken about the way truth works.

The apologetic response: "Aha! But then your claim about how truth works cannot work in an Unconditioned Truth sort of way!"

But this is not a response to anything; it is merely a refusal to grasp the critique to begin with. The claim is that "truth" works like A, not like B. To say, "but that's not B," is to simply miss the entire point of the argument.

The apologist has at least two legitimate responses to the argument that truth claims are context-dependent. First, she could contest this, arguing that Unconditioned Truth Devoid of All Context is something to which we really do have access after all. Second, she could accept the argument and defend the truths of Christianity in view of a more suitable theory of truth. To simply go the way of the ostrich, however, is unconvincing.

Dinner Guests

We enjoyed having some very special guests join us last night for dinner. Rachel and her two girls were in Visalia yesterday and stopped by to eat macaroni with us. Jory entertained us after dinner with her great dance moves.

Mother's Day and Birthday Fun

Saturday morning we met Gayle in Fish Camp and headed into Yosemite together to spend the day soaking up some nature and celebrating Mother's day and her birthday. It was a beautiful day. It was warm, but not too hot, and it was the peak time for the waterfalls. I wasn't expecting too much water since we are in the midst of a severe drought, but there was actually quite a bit, which was great.

We stopped to check out Yosemite Falls.

By the time we got to the area we wanted to hike and found a place to park, we decided it was time for an early lunch.

I had made cookies.

We decided to hike the mist trail to the top of Vernal Fall. I had only done that once and it was during a hike to Half Dome, so we didn't even stop at the top. It was Gayle's first time to go beyond the viewing bridge, so we were all pretty excited about it.

There were so many beautiful spots along the way.

View of Vernal Fall from the bridge. 

This was as close as I dared to take a picture of Vernal Fall as we were heading up, after that things got quite wet. We were soaked by all the mist by the time we reached the top, but it was warm enough that we dried off quickly.

This is just after we made it through the worst of the mist.

 Some views from the top.

It was a great hike; the waterfall was spectacular and we had fun getting wet.

The river at the top was great too.

Happy hikers!

We headed up the trail to the Nevada Fall viewing bridge.

View of Nevada Fall from the bridge.

Instead of going back down all those wet stairs, we headed for the John Muir trail. That increased the distance to get back, but was a much gentler descent.

There weren't as many amazing views from the John Muir trail, but lots of smaller beauties and still a few great viewpoints.

Back at the car, we had a recovery snack then made our way out of the park.

One last view of Yosemite Falls.

We stopped in Oakhurst on the way back and ate lots of delicious food at the Old Mexico Taqueria. It was a wonderful day and a great way to celebrate with a wonderful person.