![Appleton Chapel](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/styles/hwp_21_9__1920x825/public/2025-03/170201AppletonBannerjpg.jpg?itok=cJU7Ld_M) # Morning Prayers: Jenny Hoffman '99 February 28, 2025 - [ Blog ](/news-categories/blog) ![Professor Jenny Hoffman '99](/sites/g/files/omnuum7126/files/2025-02/250129JennyHoffman.jpg) *Jenny Hoffman '99, Clowes Professor of Science, Harvard University. Photo by Jeffrey Blackwell/Memorial Church Communications*–– Embed Harvard Memorial Church · Jenny Hoffman '99 - Jan. 28, 2025 | Morning Prayers –– *Bible Reading: Matthew 13: 24-30* *24 Jesus told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. 25 But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. 26 When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.* *27 “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’* *28 “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied.* *"The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’* *29 “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. 30 Let both grow together until the harvest.* –– *By Jenny Hoffman '99* *Clowes Professor of Science* *Harvard University* A little over a year ago, on Nov. 5, 2023, I returned triumphantly to Cambridge, having just used my sabbatical to run over 3000 miles across the United States of America in a record-breaking 48 days. Between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, I wore through 11 pairs of shoes and ate over 300 eggs, and God only knows how many Oreos. I crossed through 12 states, hundreds of species of roadside weeds and wildflowers, and a mind-boggling 27 days of wheat and cornfields. Across America’s deserts, mountains, and prairies, I experienced over and over the extraordinary kindness of strangers. A factory worker in Utah gave me his reflective vest that kept me safe the rest of the way across the country. A farmer in Nebraska handed me a dozen eggs fresh from her backyard chickens. A mother in Indiana let me wash the bugs off my face in her clean bathroom. An old man in Pennsylvania welcomed my soggy self into his warm little home and pointed me in the right direction when I got disoriented in the cold rain. Red states, blue states, whatever their yard signs, ordinary Americans were so generous and kind. Exactly one year later, on the evening of Nov. 5, 2024, after a challenging year of news and political ads that pitted these same generous Americans against one another, I handled the stress of democracy by baking my comfort food: lemon bars. I then went to bed, planning to put my head down and get back to work. But when I awoke, I saw that a student had emailed me in the wee hours and reminded me that after several previous elections - both red waves and blue waves - I had opened my office for a few hours as a space to come together and talk and process. Given the heightened tensions this year, my initial reaction was to ignore the email, but then I realized that not everybody has the same buffer from political outcome as a tenured professor, so I should honor this student request. I typed a few imperfect words about how I imagined some students might be feeling, and I invited them to share the lemon bars in my office during lunch time. Several dozen students came, diverse fears and viewpoints were expressed, and the lemon bars were demolished. Little did I know that my email would be forwarded to the Crimson, where it was quoted out of context with a sensationalist but misleading headline about class cancellations. The fake news from Harvard’s student paper was picked up by Fox, Breitbart, and other national outlets. For the next week, I received a stream of vulgar and threatening emails and voicemails from fellow Americans who were appalled that a professor would fail to do their job – i.e., teach a physics class – due to a democratic election result. Some of these callers may have come from the very same stock of generous factory workers and farmers – hardworking Americans who felt understandably self-righteous that they showed up every day to produce the wheat that feeds the lazy professor whom the Crimson had labeled as truant. To be clear, I had not cancelled my class, but the personalized hate in my inbox did clutter my mind and distract from my job performance for some time after. Furthermore, one advisee - a student with far less security than a tenured professor – confided their fear that they too would be personally attacked just for their affiliation with me. Through my poorly worded email and my lack of focus, I was a weed dragging my students down. This week has again been deeply disorienting. From the quintupling of ICE deportation quotas, to the freezing of National Science Foundation and National Institute of Health grants, halting the payment to researchers and the medical interventions they enable, lives are being upended. But we can also find headlines and selected anecdotes about the reduction of waste and crime, and redirection of research money to protect Americans. I can personally attest to the NSF’s gross inefficiencies – just last week, after spending 3 days of my life providing thoughtful reviews for 15 quantum physics proposals, which I tediously entered into 90 tiny text fields on a slow-loading website, I received notification from the NSF that my work was unacceptable because my reviews used each applicant’s own pronoun that I read in their recommendation letters – instead of tediously converting each one to “they” – which would require hours of extra work. If yesterday’s freeze could eliminate this type of inefficiency for thousands of hard-working NSF researchers, then I can certainly see both sides. Escher CubeLike an Escher cube whose perspective changes from front to back as you stare at it, there are two sides to many stories. But a democratic ballot is like a quantum measurement – each voter must collapse a world of probabilities into a binary choice. Somehow, to get through this disorienting time, we must refocus on the multi-dimensionality of the human beings around us, and challenge ourselves to un-collapse the binaries. We must search for the other point of view and return to a place where we can be kind to our fellow Americans regardless of their nuanced beliefs or binary votes. It’s easy to recoil against “those people”, but the anger that flooded my voicemail from outside Harvard was triggered by fake news from within Harvard. So how can we know which are the wheat and which are the weeds? Jesus answered that now, before the harvest, it’s not our role. By pulling out the weeds – by applying ideological litmus tests, personally unfriending or publicly shaming those who speak insensitive words or opposing viewpoints – red or blue, we risk uprooting the wheat with them. Maybe this is how America got here: by too much weeding we have uprooted ourselves. To be sure, there is evil in the world. When the servants in Jesus’ parable asked the wheatfield owner: “Didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?”, the owner replied “An enemy did this.” But today, the individuals we encounter in our classrooms, on our streets, through the personal comments on our social media feeds, are not an unseen enemy. They are wheat and weed, and our roots are intertwined. Will you pray with me? God, thank you for the rich soil in which we grow. Please remind me – often – that I share this soil with others. When I feel self-righteous, please remind me, as Jesus taught, that by pulling the weeds, I may uproot the wheat with them. Only you in your infinite wisdom can distinguish weed from wheat, so grant us patience to grow together with respect and kindness until the harvest. Amen. See also:- [ Morning Prayers ](/blog-categories/morning-prayers) - [ Morning Prayers ](/archive/morning-prayers) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)