Bradford Hansen-Smith believes the simple activity of folding circles provides a rich learning experience, observations that occur within the greatest context, and discoveries that have profound meaning.

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Anthony Atala asks, “Can we grow organs instead of transplanting them?” His lab at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine is doing just that — engineering over 30 tissues and whole organs.

Dear Seekers,
You could be better than you are
You could be riding on a star.
— Jimmy Van Heusen (1913-1990) Composer
It is often about degree. We humans are famous for overdoing it. Once we do, it is often an impulse to control our appetites. A little bit of a Rascally attitude will go a long way, and must be opened up only on those occasions, and with those people, who can appreciate it. Add a bit of Sapid thought to your chocolate this week.
Happy Valentines Day,
Jim
            RASCALLY
Definition: a good‑natured mischievous person; a rogue; a scamp <especially as used jokingly and affectionately>
            SAPID
Definitions: (1) agreeable to the mind; interesting; engaging; (2) savory; having a pleasing taste
Derivation: Latin: “to know,” “to taste,” “to perceive”
Mythological Place: Cawther, the lake of paradise, has sweet and cool waters (in the Koran). Anyone who drinks from it will never thirst again.
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The teachings of Jesus, even though greatly modified, survived the mystery cults of their birthtime, the ignorance and superstition of the dark ages, and are even now slowly triumphing over the materialism, mechanism, and secularism of the twentieth century. And such times of great testing and threatened defeat are always times of great revelation.
Religion does need new leaders, spiritual men and women who will dare to depend solely on Jesus and his incomparable teachings. If Christianity persists in neglecting its spiritual mission while it continues to busy itself with social and material problems, the spiritual renaissance must await the coming of these new teachers of Jesus’ religion who will be exclusively devoted to the spiritual regeneration of men. And then will these spirit-born souls quickly supply the leadership and inspiration requisite for the social, moral, economic, and political reorganization of the world.
The modern age will refuse to accept a religion which is inconsistent with facts and out of harmony with its highest conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness. The hour is striking for a rediscovery of the true and original foundations of present-day distorted and compromised Christianity — the real life and teachings of Jesus.
Primitive man lived a life of superstitious bondage to religious fear. Modern, civilized men dread the thought of falling under the dominance of strong religious convictions. Thinking man has always feared to be held by a religion. When a strong and moving religion threatens to dominate him, he invariably tries to rationalize, traditionalize, and institutionalize it, thereby hoping to gain control of it. By such procedure, even a revealed religion becomes man-made and man-dominated. Modern men and women of intelligence evade the religion of Jesus because of their fears of what it will do to them — and with them. And all such fears are well founded. The religion of Jesus does, indeed, dominate and transform its believers, demanding that men dedicate their lives to seeking for a knowledge of the will of the Father in heaven and requiring that the energies of living be consecrated to the unselfish service of the brotherhood of man.
Selfish men and women simply will not pay such a price for even the greatest spiritual treasure ever offered mortal man. Only when man has become sufficiently disillusioned by the sorrowful disappointments attendant upon the foolish and deceptive pursuits of selfishness, and subsequent to the discovery of the barrenness of formalized religion, will he be disposed to turn wholeheartedly to the gospel of the kingdom, the religion of Jesus of Nazareth.
The world needs more firsthand religion. Even Christianity — the best of the religions of the twentieth century — is not only a religion about Jesus, but it is so largely one which men experience secondhand. They take their religion wholly as handed down by their accepted religious teachers. What an awakening the world would experience if it could only see Jesus as he really lived on earth and know, firsthand, his life-giving teachings! Descriptive words of things beautiful cannot thrill like the sight thereof, neither can creedal words inspire men’s souls like the experience of knowing the presence of God. But expectant faith will ever keep the hope-door of man’s soul open for the entrance of the eternal spiritual realities of the divine values of the worlds beyond.
Christianity has dared to lower its ideals before the challenge of human greed, war-madness, and the lust for power; but the religion of Jesus stands as the unsullied and transcendent spiritual summons, calling to the best there is in man to rise above all these legacies of animal evolution and, by grace, attain the moral heights of true human destiny.
Christianity is threatened by slow death from formalism, overorganization, intellectualism, and other nonspiritual trends. The modern Christian church is not such a brotherhood of dynamic believers as Jesus commissioned continuously to effect the spiritual transformation of successive generations of mankind.
So-called Christianity has become a social and cultural movement as well as a religious belief and practice. The stream of modern Christianity drains many an ancient pagan swamp and many a barbarian morass; many olden cultural watersheds drain into this present-day cultural stream as well as the high Galilean tablelands which are supposed to be its exclusive source.
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Quite often, men of the world refer to believers as troublemakers; as Ahab called Elijah a “troubler of Israel” (1 Kings 18:16-18). Interestingly, Jesus might appear more of a troublemaker than a peacemaker, as people could not agree about him. Jesus explains, “Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword,” (Matthew 10:34).
Dr. Ron Susek, in his book Firestorm, shares the difference between a peacekeeper and a peacemaker. Dr. Susek explains, “Peacekeepers tend to be passive, preferring to avoid conflict…. On the other hand, peacemakers tackle conflict head on, determined to bring peace based upon truth, mutual understanding, and forgiveness…. While peacekeepers try to sweep things under the rug, peacemakers try to sweep issues out the door.”
As we hear more and more about the World Court from the United Nations, we find a prophecy of the Lord coming as the ultimate judge in Psalm 96:10-13. We are also told he will lift the curse upon creation in Romans 8:18-23. that Jesus Christ will preside over a world court in John 5:22. We are consoled by the words of Abraham: “Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). Is this is the new world order men so desperately desire?
We are told there will be a perfect peace and harmony between heaven and earth (Isaiah 11 and 12). The blessings from peace and harmony flow through the believer’s life.

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“We cannot predict what Protestants and Catholics will be fighting about in a hundred years from now. Only that, on past form, they will be fighting about something.”
The first thing that would strike a time-traveller from the 1970s is how secular the protests in Belfast, Northern Ireland are; suggesting that what is still with us is just division – and that division survives both political reform and huge cultural change.
Two books written in the early stages of the current troubles articulate the persistent issues. One was Andrew Boyd’s Holy War in Belfast, which culled old News Letter reports to describe the sectarian rioting in the city in the 1880s. One of the irritants then was the use of Scottish Army regiments against Catholic rioters.
The other book was ATQ Stewart’s classic The Narrow Ground. Stewart asked a simple question: how did the riots of the 20th century in Belfast come to be so similar to the riots of the 19th? He said that the eruption of rioting was like the past itself crashing up through the cobbles and history repeating itself.
Is it true that history itself is a player; that the unfinished business of the past is the problem? Surely one problem with that theory – axiomatic as it seems to be – is that most people know very little history.


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Marc Gopin of George Mason University explores what makes peacemakers tick in Bridges Across an Impossible Divide. The book emanates from the “Unusual Pairs” film project, a series of videos that focuses on Israeli and Palestinian partners in the quest for peace.
The narrative unfolds in the words of the peacemakers themselves as they search for common ground with their adversaries. No well-known politicians are featured – these are truly unsung heroes. Gabriel Meyer, son of the late Rabbi Marshall Meyer, and his partner, Ihab Balha, are among the pairs. Meyer describes the difficulties that they encountered during the 2006 Lebanon war; Balha writes, “Peace is not a simple word, an easy word.”

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A new book that tells a story set in war-torn Iraq sends a straightforward message applicable to everyday Americans: Get to know your neighbors.
Greg Barrett, who worked in The Charlotte Observer’s Rock Hill bureau in the early 1990s, recently spoke at Covenant Presbyterian Church, where he told the story of his book “The Gospel of Rutba.”
The book recounts the story of a small group of American Christian peacemakers rescued by Iraqi Muslims after their vehicle crashed in 2003. Four years later, Barrett returned to Iraq with the peacemakers as they thanked the Iraqi good Samaritans.

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For the past decade, the Peace Corps has released an annual ranking of the top large, medium and small schools that graduate students who then serve overseas for a little more than two years. The organization, an independent U.S. government agency that has been around for more than 50 years, has more than 8,000 volunteers in more than 75 countries.
This year, the top schools in each category were in Washington state: the University of Washington on the large-schools list with 107 graduates-turned-volunteers, Western Washington University on the medium-schools list with 73 volunteers, and Gonzaga University in Spokane on the small-schools list with 24.
It’s the first time that one state has swept all three categories, said Carrie Hessler-Radelet, acting director of the Peace Corps. “It just seems to be the kind of state that’s very progressive and shares some of the same values as the Peace Corps,” said Hessler-Radelet, who volunteered in Western Samoa in the early 1980s and is part of a family in which four generations have participated.
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Most 3D printers use a technique called extrusion, through which the printer melts plastic and lays it down in layers to create a 3D object. But the Form 1 features stereolithography, which uses a laser to cure liquid resin into microscopic layers, resulting in much more precise creations.

For $3,300, the Form 1 package includes the 3D printer, software, and post-processing kit that comes with a finishing tray to hold components, rinsing solution to remove excess resin, water bath, dipping basket, scraper to remove excess material, tongs and drip trough.

The idea of a relatively affordable desktop 3D printer has shaken up the competitive landscape. Lesser models can be as cheap as $1,300, while some of the top models can run over $100,000.

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