About This Blog

One of my favorite bands is a California based group called Switchfoot. With a reputation for thoughtful and hopeful lyrics, the band makes an interesting move toward the end of one of their biggest albums, The Beautiful Letdown. In a song called “Adding to the Noise,” the band observes that our society is filled with noise and sound, by which they are referring to the perpetual stream of noise (t.v. commercials and shows, radio DJs, and so on) that surround us but never penetrates us in any meaningful way. Then, in a risky move, the band says,

“If we're adding to the noise
turn off this song.
If we're adding to the noise
turn off your stereo, radio, video...”

Remaining true to their condemnation of meaningless noise, Switchfoot refuses to be another contributor to this pollution. So they take the chance that they will be turned off, but they will hope that they have done their job well enough that they have created not just mere noise, but instead, a meaningful blend of words and instruments to have a deep impact on their listeners and thereby earn their listening ears. It is with this frame of mind that I have approached creating and writing for this blog, the Service-Learning at Calvin blog.

There is no shortage of blogs on the internet. Blogs are easy to start, often free of charge, and offer little structure and few restrictions for posting. As such, there is a lot of noise, so to speak, out there amidst the digital domain of the internet. Some of this noise is tremendously meaningful stuff, and some is exactly that stream of noise that Switchfoot was talking about, the perpetual stream of sound buzzing around us but failing to penetrate us in a meaningful way.

It is the goal of the people contributing to the Service-Learning at Calvin blog to create thoughtful and intelligent conversations about a wide variety of topics, but particularly topics relating to justice, shalom, service-learning, higher education, and the combinations of any of these along with many more. Posts may take whatever form an author might desire, whether it be art, words, sound, video, or anything else. This blog is as much an expression of who some of the people in the Service-Learning Center office are, as it is a medium by which to promote broad based conversations about what we think are meaningful topics, and to hopefully inspire action in pursuit of a world in harmony between humans, nature, and God.

It is my particular hope that this blog might become a longstanding part of what the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College does. I think there is potential in this blog for some incredibly vibrant conversations and posts that inspire new thoughts and, just perhaps, even lead to action. In time, I hope that more people find this blog and become regular readers of it, as well as contributors. It would be a great thing for this blog to have an ever-larger group of contributors, such that it became a strongly pluralist setting wherein multiple perspectives are expressed, and thereby, the conversation enriched.

Blogs, as one tool amongst others, represent a powerful way to open up conversation to a far larger audience than could have been previously imagined. I do not advocate that we worship at the altar of communication technologies, but I do think that it is important to recognize that as the field of service-learning continues to grow and adapt, it will need to make use of such tools as blogs, facebook, YouTube, and other media. This blog is one such foray into that still unexplored domain.

With all that said, though, I recognize that this blog could become just another source of noise pollution, failing to ever truly reach people in a meaningful way. If this blog ever does become that for you, the reader, then, as the band Switchfoot did, so also I will say,

“If we're adding to the noise
turn off this blog…”

However, it is my hope that we can work hard enough to offer up thoughtful and intelligent posts so as to generate a meaningful exchange with everyone that might come across this blog. If you have any ideas about how we can create a better space for intelligent conversation, please share those with us.