by Steve Waldhauser ’70
Joe Lencioni is a Renaissance kind of guy. A senior religion major at Gustavus from Princeton, Minn., he has done just about everything he can to counter the stereotypical image of the staid and serious pre-seminarian. He is a poet and filmmaker, leader of a ska band, and a freelance Web designer who is also part of the Web team responsible for the Gustavus homepages. He’s earned awards for his creative writing and for his work on the College’s athletics website. And, he has just won a national award for producing the best undergraduate essay in religion during the past year.
The Albert Clark Award is presented annually by Theta Alpha Kappa, the National Honor Society for Religious Studies/Theology, which has more than 200 local chapters throughout the United States. Joe won the 2005 award for his essay—stay with me here—”Total Kenosis, True Shunyata, and the Plerotic Self of Thomas Merton and Abe Masao,” in which he explores the idea of self from the perspectives of two outwardly different schools of thought. The essay, which will be published in the society’s journal, compares the ideas of Merton, a Trappist monk who became interested in Eastern philosophy, with those of Abe, who represents the Kyoto School of Zen Buddhist philosophy, a school of thought noted for its interest in Western ideas. (Abe, incidentally, had been a Scholar in Residence at Gustavus during the Fall 2000 semester—a year before Joe arrived on campus.)
The concept of self has been downplayed by many religious thinkers, but Joe chose it for his essay topic anyway, arguing that “philosophies and religions deal with people, so sooner or later you have to deal with self.”
That same “they never said I couldn’t try it” approach to life has marked Joe’s education and interests. As a seventh-grader, he was already accomplished at computer programming, and by his junior year he had parleyed that interest into an independent study working on his school’s Web page. He applied and was named to the National 4-H Youth Technology Leadership Team, which took him around the country (and excused him from a few classes!) to work on national 4-H projects as well as a few websites. Midway through his junior year, he decided he wanted to play the tuba in the band—although he’d never picked one up before—and he credits his high school band instructor, Lee Peterson ’97, for “believing in him” and letting him try. He enjoyed the experience so much that he decided to try the bass drum in the marching band the following summer.
By his sophomore year of college, Joe was a filmmaker, producing a documentary titled Masters of War on “the use of religious language in wartime rhetoric” for an independent study with religion professor Deborah Goodwin. He also helped found a popular ska band, Just Add Water, which played locally and in the Twin Cities for two years before he and his fellow band members grew disenchanted with the local music scene and decided to take a break last October. Along the way, he and a friend, Minneapolis artist Lili Payne ’03, started their own company, 51 Design Co., offering freelance Web design and production.
Last year, Joe was a key contributor to the Web team that won an award from District V of the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) for their redesign and restructuring of the Gustavus athletics website from static pages to a dynamic database solution. He also won the Larry S. Owen Prize in Creative Writing from the Department of English in 2004 for a collection of poems. Recently he was named to the Guild of St. Ansgar, an honorary society at Gustavus recognizing seniors for scholarship, leadership, and participation.
Although he is a gifted student of religion, seminary is not part of Joe’s post-graduation plans at this point. Instead, he says he may pursue painting or photography—he’s an art minor—and perhaps develop a photo blog. “I’m also thinking about maybe going to grad school for something,” he adds. Hey, they never said he couldn’t try.