Letter from the Editor

Cornell is not a place that prides itself much on mystery. In fact, much of the school’s branding revolves around its ability to vanquish mysteries.

“Cornell researchers solve mystery of mass turtle die-off,” reads the headline of a veterinary school promotional article. [1] “Cornell is one of the few institutions in the world with the range of expertise and depth of commitment necessary to address the issues facing our world today,” the University wrote in a blurb for its newest fundraising campaign. [2]

The Christian view of mystery is much different from the dominant one at Cornell. A prayer often recited by Catholics and Anglicans before communion goes, “The mystery of faith: Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again.” That is, the central tenet of Christian belief is a mystery. This is radically different from how Cornell tends to view knowledge. Can you imagine Professor Thomas stepping onstage in Bailey Hall and saying, “Behold, the mystery of microeconomics …?”

This doesn’t mean Christians shy away from science. At dinner with the Claritas staff, Praveen Sethupathy, a Christian professor at Cornell, said discovery is beautiful, but a mystery is a “sacred secret.” We should learn about the created world, but some things, like the sacrament of communion or what happens after we die, cannot be understood through double blind trials.

And in a Cornell context, we miss out when we neglect mystery. Cornellians have built instruments to detect water on other planets, but finding life in the cosmos can’t tell us the meaning behind them. [3] Discovery without a belief in mystery can rip the enchantment out of creation—the sentiment echoed in Walt Whitman’s poem where the speaker leaves an astronomy lecture to look up in silence at the stars. [4]

On November 3, 1997, bleary-eyed Cornellians walking to their morning classes squinted at McGraw Tower, where a pumpkin had been speared on the clock tower’s pointy top overnight. It took months for drone-wielding undergrads to confirm the pumpkin was even a pumpkin, and how the pumpkin got there remains a mystery. [5] I find the pumpkin story symbolically rich—for months, Cornellians were confronted with a reality they couldn’t explain every time they gazed upward.

I hope our scribbles on these pages make you think about things you cannot fully understand. And I hope our poems and essays help you “gaze upward” to a truth no pumpkin can—that behind all these mysteries is a God beautifully at work.

In Christ, Jack Kubinec

Editor-in-Chief

[1] “Conservation CSI: Cornell researchers solve mystery of mass turtle die-off,” Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, 2017. https://www.vet.cornell.edu/ news/20170306/conservation-csi-cornell-researchers-solve-mystery-mass-turtle-die

[2] “About the Campaign,” To Do the Greatest Good: The Campaign for Cornell University. https://greatestgood.cornell.edu/about/

[3] Tyagi, Srishti, “Cornell Astronomers Developed Instrument for Discovery of Water on Sunlit Moon,” Cornell Daily Sun. https://cornellsun.com/2020/12/09/cornell-astronomers-developed-instrument-for-discovery-of-water-on-sunlit-moon/

[4] Whitman, Walt, “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” 1867.

[5] Friedladner, Blaine, “Pumpkin prank perpetrator puzzle persists 20 years later,” Cornell Chronicle. https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/10/pumpkin-prank-perpetrator-puzzle-persists-20-years-later