In her collected essays on Advent, Miracle on 10th Street and Other Christmas Writings, beloved children’s author and spiritual writer Madeleine L’Engle calls us to approach the season of Advent from a posture of listening – not of declaration.  Listening is hard for us in a world where we are repeatedly called to principled moral action (“take a stand”) at the same time we are surrounded by a culture of consumerist imperatives (“build a brand”). Listening requires us to reject the contemporary mandate to “make Christmas magical” and instead use the penitential season of Advent to seek the places where God is already and always working in our lives and the world around us. Listening requires humility, patience, and hope – three virtues that we find in short supply in the world of late modernity and especially in a season filled with hurry and bustle. Without humility, we are too inward focused to hear something outside our own experience. We may miss the singing of the stars or even the choirs of angels heralding the birth of a savior. Perhaps only the shepherds heard the angels because they alone were sufficiently humble. Childbirth and child-rearing are impossible without the virtue of patience – the long, slow waiting for a child to mature first inside the mother’s womb and then outside of her. Mary listens to the angel and then responds with patience through the long, slow revelation and realization of the promise that she will bear a savior. And death – especially a death accepted for the sake of others – only makes sense with hope that even in the face of the ultimate loss we will still see “the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). While humility, patience, and hope require surrender, they also offer freedom – freedom to wait for God’s action in the world (the moral order does not depend solely on us) and freedom to reject the consumerist logic of our culture to find different goods, goods that truly satisfy.

As our busy semester programming wraps up at the IFL, we look forward to pausing, listening, and cultivating humility, patience, and hope in the midst of a time of cultural busyness. We hope you join us.

Elisabeth Rain Kincaid

Director, Institute for Faith and Learning

"Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man."

Madeleine L'Engle

“This is exactly why belief in a God is ridiculous…” remarked an Engineering professor in a leading public university as they described a few equations on the board remarking on the beauty and self-sufficiency of the physics which explains the natural world. Isn’t science supposed to be untethered from worldview? Could one’s learning and faith be inseparable ideas? These were the types of questions I wrestled with throughout my college and post-graduate years. Interacting with the Cranes Scholar’s program at Baylor as a faculty mentor put a finger on this exact need and has provided vocabulary to describe what so much of modern education is missing today. Worldview matters. How faith inflects our respective fields matters. How we learn a subject matters. The Cranes Scholar’s program gives students the opportunity to wrestle with deep-seated questions in a small, intentional, community-oriented yet diverse group around good food. The Cranes scholars program also allows students to come to the heights of intellectual endeavors and find that the air is thin unless one’s worldview is considered in its appropriate context. And for the Crane scholar, the singular aim is being able to walk away from the Baylor experience knowing that ultimately, “Great are the works of the LORD, studied by all those who delight in them”. There is great joy and unity in the continuity of deep thought and growing faith.

Dr. Min Y. Pack

Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Crane Scholars meetings are in full swing. Pictured here is our senior Cranes cohort on the night when Elisabeth Rain Kincaid spoke with them. It’s great to see how these Cranes have grown over three years! Upcoming events include the Advent dinner and Cranes Study Days.

The Missio cohorts in Waco and at the Louise Herrington School of Nursing gather for lunch once a month for a delicious meal and nourishing conversation. We were grateful to Dr. Malcolm Foley for speaking with the Nursing Missio on November 15th.

We are eager to host our two-part December Vocare event. We will watch the new Bonhoeffer movie at Cinemark, followed by a Tuesday Tea discussion with Dr. Barry Harvey, a leading Bonhoeffer scholar, at Brooks College. He will delve into Bonhoeffer’s life and vocation. This will be a wonderful opportunity for students to engage with Bonhoeffer’s legacy and his profound commitment to justice and discipleship. We look forward to sharing this experience with Baylor students.

The Virtues and Vocations project at Notre Dame is a national forum for scholars and practitioners across disciplines to consider how best to cultivate character in pre-professional and professional education. One of the ways we do this is through a community of practice called Integrating Virtue Together (IVT). IVT is an opportunity for faculty from across institutions and disciplines to join a community of practice in integrating moral virtues into a course they will teach in the 2025-2026 academic year. Chosen faculty will participate in a working conference at Notre Dame along with virtual follow up meetings and will receive a stipend for their participation. Application deadline: December 13, 2025. Find out more.

Are you hosting an event or working on a project related to faith and learning? We'd love to hear about it! Send us an email at ifl@baylor.edu. 

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