February 2024

In This Issue:

Gratitude & Worship

Spring Schedule

Meet Our Student President & VP

Don’t You Want to Thank Someone?

The Consortium of Christian Study Centers (of which Alcuin Study Center is a member) has been involved in a longitudinal study on the formation of virtue in university students, the principal investigators of which are researchers from Oxford and Baylor. Every other Thursday morning for the past year I have had the honor and pleasure of participating in a community of practice in which a group of study center directors meet via Zoom with these researchers to explore ways in which our centers might cultivate virtue—moral, civil, and intellectual—in the lives of our students.

It’s been fascinating and challenging.

We are currently focussing on the work of gratitude. According to a soon-to-be published book on the subject, gratitude is both episodic and dispositional. That is, it may manifest as a temporary emotional response and it may be cultivated as a virtue. Recent studies have shown that gratitude for something, what the researchers call propositional gratitude, does not increase empathy but may actually hinder it, whereas gratitude to somebody, or prepositional gratitude, increases one’s empathy and thereby aids in the cultivation of social virtue and civility. This was a fascinating take-away for me.

It seems that to be grateful for a material object may steer one’s heart selfward: “Look what I have!” Where as gratitude to the giver steers one’s heart otherward: “Thank you for giving.” What might it look like to cultivate this second type of gratitude in our everyday life? How might our hearts be changed? Would we want to be the type of person to whom others direct gratitude? That is, might we give more energy to giving of ourselves than looking for what we might get?*

It seems in many ways that gratitude has a strong affinity with worship: “Thank YOU for giving grace.” And as image bearers of the One Who Gives, our gratitude to and worship of him will transform our hearts and minds and we will in turn pour out ourselves in service to others. Andrew Peterson’s song Don’t You Want to Thank Someone? beautifully captures this reality:

Can't you feel it in your bones
Something isn't right here
Something that you've always known
But you don't know why

'Cause every time the sun goes down
We face another night here
Waiting for the world to spin around
Just to survive

But when you see the morning sun
Burning through a silver mist
Don't you want to thank someone?
Don't you want to thank someone for this?

Don't you ever wonder why
In spite of all that's wrong here
There's still so much that goes so right
And beauty abounds?

'Cause sometimes when you walk outside
The air is full of song here
The thunder rolls and the baby sighs
And the rain comes down

And when you see the spring has come
And it warms you like a mother's kiss
Don't you want to thank someone?
Don't you want to thank someone for this?

I used to be a little boy
As golden as a sunrise
Breaking over Illinois
When the corn was tall

Yeah, but every little boy grows up
And he's haunted by the heart that died
Longing for the world that was
Before the Fall

Oh, but then forgiveness comes
A grace that I cannot resist
And I just want to thank someone
I just want to thank someone for this

Now I can see the world is charged
It's glimmering with promises
Written in a script of stars
Dripping from prophets' lips

But still, my thirst is never slaked
I am hounded by a restlessness
Eaten by this endless ache
But still I will give thanks for this

'Cause I can see it in the seas of wheat
I can feel it when the horses run
It's howling in the snowy peaks
It's blazing in the midnight sun

Just behind a veil of wind
A million angels waiting in the wings
A swirling storm of cherubim
Making ready for the Reckoning

Oh, how long, how long?
Oh, sing on, sing on

And when the world is new again
And the children of the King
Are ancient in their youth again
Maybe it's a better thing
A better thing

To be more than merely innocent
But to be broken then redeemed by love
Maybe this old world is bent
But it's waking up
And I'm waking up

'Cause I can hear the voice of one
He's crying in the wilderness
"Make ready for the Kingdom Come"
Don't you want to thank someone for this?

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
Come back soon
Come back soon

*referencing Nelson, J. M., Tsang, J., & Schnitker, S. A. (accepted pending minor edits). Gratitude: From relational emotion to contextualized virtue inclusive of indebtedness. In M. D. Matthews & R. M. Lerner (Eds.), Multidisciplinary Handbook of Character Development. Routledge.

---

Spring Schedule

We have a great line-up again this Spring!

---

March Highlights:

---

---

---

These Guys!

“What I find so compelling about Alcuin Study Center is the passion for Christ, the encouragement of scholarship, the cultivating of creativity, the lack of fear when hard questions arise, and the honest desire to see the community around it bear fruit that affects units as large as the county and as small as the relationship between two siblings. Alcuin Study Center puts a great deal of thought and effort into all of its endeavors to educate and connect people as a community in ways that have been neglected or even lost in a world centered around expressive individualism and self-gratification. The goal of creating redemptive culture-makers is a bold and difficult one for sure, but is fully and increasingly necessary as the impact of the Church decreases in our secular society, and Alcuin’s commitment to that is greatly encouraging and exciting.”

– Tyler Williams, BSU Freshman and Alcuin Study Center student vice president.

---

---