Matthew 1:18-24 (NIV)

¹⁸ This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about^[a]: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. ¹⁹ Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet^[b] did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

²⁰ But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. ²¹ She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,^[c] because he will save his people from their sins.”

²² All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: ²³ “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”^[d] (which means “God with us”).

²⁴ When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife.

Reflection

It is amazing to know that, while God had planned out His amazing salvation story even before creation, God chooses to use people to fulfill His salvation story.  Particularly, God calls the poor and humble, those who are nobodies in the eyes of the world but yet favored and honored in the sight of God.  Although He does not have to, God waits for our response like He did with Joseph. Joseph had other plans, but when God revealed His plans, Joseph responded in obedience to God.  While God had chosen Joseph to be Jesus’ earthly father, He also looked for his humble heart and a trusting obedience that was willing to overcome social and cultural stigmas and, in turn, embrace Jesus as his Savior and as a son in his family.

Response

While God’s salvation story has been fulfilled through Christ, the story is not over.  God continues to look for humble hearts and trusting obedience.  Like Joseph, we too can respond and bring the salvation story to others who have yet to receive Christ.  Let’s pray for those around us who need to hear and see the salvation story lived out in us and in the church.

Piotr Gwiazda, associate professor of English, has had a busy semester; his reviews, poetry and translations have appeared in a variety of outlets.

His reviews have appeared in:

• Rain Taxi, where he reviewed “Building the Barricade” by Anna Swir.
• The Times Literary Supplement, where he reviewed “Unseen Hand” (translated by Clare Cavanagh), by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski.
• EOAGH, where he reviewed The Iliad Book XXII: The Death of Hector by Lisa Jarnot.

His poems and translations can be found in:

• “Mudlark,” which published his poem “Time.”
• Vallum, which published his poem “Removable Tattoos.”
• And the Seneca Review, which published his translation of Grzegorz Wroblewski.

He was also published in two recent poetry anthologies.

Jody Shipka, assistant professor of English, is the co-editor of a new book. Play! features 63 photographs made with film using 30 toy, lo-fi, and handmade cameras made by 36 photographers in 12 countries on 5 continents.

“Play! is an amazingly diverse collection of photos by very talented photographers. By using toy cameras, the photographers convey the memory and dream of play that lives inside all of us,” said reviewer Mark Olwick of olwickphotography.com.

One hundred percent of the proceeds from sales of Play! will be donated to the Marine Toys for Tots Foundation to benefit children in areas ravaged by tornadoes in 2011, which tied for the second worst year for tornado deaths.

Buy or preview the book here.

The digital humanities is a common subject of discussion in the academic world, and Helen Burgess, assistant professor of English, recently contributed to this conversation by co-authoring an article in the journal “Digital Humanities Quarterly.”

In the article, Burgess and her co-author, Jeanne Hamming of Centenary College of Louisiana, argue that multimedia work places scholars in an extended network that combines minds, bodies, machines, and institutional practices, and lays bare the fiction that scholars are disembodied intellectuals who labor only with the mind.

The article is entitled “New Media in the Humanities: Labor and the Production of Knowledge in Scholarly Multimedia” and was published in the Summer 2011 edition of the journal.

James Smalls, professor of Visual Arts and affiliate professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, will be featured on a panel, Gender and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance, at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, on Saturday, December 10 from 2 to 4 p.m.

In connection with works from two exhibitions, Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties and Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, Terry Carbone, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum, will be in conversation with Professor Smalls and with scholar-collector Thomas H. Wirth. This discussion will explore the intersections of race, gender, and queer sexuality within the Harlem Renaissance, taking cues from work by Richard Bruce Nugent, Langston Hughes and Aaron Douglas.

More information is available at www.brooklynmuseum.org/calendar/event/4785.

The 2nd Annual Spring Into Leadership event planning committe needs YOU!

Volunteer online at http://bit.ly/springintoleadershipcommittee.

The committee will meet twice a month in January and February and then weekly in March (excluding Spring Break).

This interactive event will have 100 attendees, include industry representatives, and build connections among women (and interested men) in engineering and IT majors at UMBC! 

Representatives from each of the major student organization in the College (ASME, NSBE, CWIT Student Council, SWE, Tau Beta Pi) are needed!!!

The 2011 AASHE Conference Moves Toward One Bag with the Help of the Glad Products Company:

In October, the 2011 AASHE Conference wrapped a successful four days of sessions and meetings on how to achieve sustainability in higher education, while also achieving a sustainability success of its own. With the support of its official waste diversion sponsor The Glad Products Company, they met a 97.63% percent diversion rate, meaning less than 3% of the total conference’s accumulated waste was sent to the landfill!

The conference was one of the first events to participate in Glad’s new One Bag campaign. The effort encourages and facilitates events, venues and consumers to host One Bag events, where only one bag of waste is sent to landfill, with the remainder being diverted to compost and recycling.

So what did this take? Not only did it require recycling and composting waste diversion capabilities at the venue, but the AASHE and Glad teams worked with the event planners to ensure they were wasting less at every step along the way. This included removing “waste drivers” from the event’s menu (nixing wrapped candy and chips from lunch boxes), using compostable or reusable silverware, donating leftover boxed lunches to a local non-profit and displaying informational signage by waste receptacles.

The GLAD® “One Bag" grant program will award up to 10 - $3,500 grants to colleges that are active members of AASHE looking to further their waste reduction efforts. The Glad to Waste Less campaign and “One Bag” grant program is intended help move more football programs towards less waste, supporting AASHE's campus sustainability goals. For Official Rules and complete details, visit http://clorox.promo.eprize.com/gladonebagcollegegrant/public/fulfillment/rules.pdf.

To learn how you can host a One Bag event at www.GladtoWasteLess.com