Category: learning

ontological expression

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I have just been writing my bits for the January newsletter (we have a compassionate editor, who let me delay after Christmas).    The newsletter is a new-ish thing in the life of the congregation, and we are just at the point of shifting from ‘new and bright’ to ‘established pattern’.  So it is that I begin to recognize how even a newsletter reflects the biases of the priest and editor.

The editor and I had conversations early on about what a rector’s letter was for, and she offered me the good advice that it needed to be shorter and simpler than I might wish to make it.  The trade off was that we put in place a monthly column called ‘Growing Together’.  This is a catch all space for news that needs to be shared (decisions made at the liturgy day, for example) and things that we might fruitfully think about together.  But as I wrote for it again today, I realise I’ve turned it into yet another ‘teaching’ slot.

It is inevitable I suppose.  ‘Once a teacher always a teacher’ is a phrase that lacks humour only because it is about as surprising as ‘water is wet’.

But I do prove the adage rather more often than most.

So, this month’s rector’s letter has small suggestions for preparing for the winter session on deepening in prayer.  And the Growing Together column has a full blown invitation to written work on core theological concepts, as well as a quick explanation of the free writing method.

It’s crazy, I know.  But the thing is, it seems to work.  I can’t tell you how often someone comes back to me weeks or months after some throw away suggestion I’ve made to the congregation to tell me how much they got out of it (or enjoyed it, or what it led to…).  I’m sure some of the congregation groan and think ‘not another piece of homework’, but they are free to ignore the suggestions and carry on with their day.

This business of offering tiny suggestions for things to do, things to try, things to think about seems to be working for a lot of people.  And it is as easy as could be to offer.

So, the question for you, dear reader, is this:  what are the best ‘little suggestions’ you’ve been given?  Small bits of teaching, method, stimulus that have lead to something meaningful.

I have a blog domain sitting dormant right now.  I wonder if it is time for a new ‘church homework’ blog and weekly posts, with a space for talking about what happened when we tried. ‘Hermione’s Heaven’, perhaps?  It’s madness, isn’t it?  But the thing is, madness is no bar to things happening in the Piskie church…

early perceptions

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As I drove across the hills today, I was pondering how our sense of God begins to take form.  Not the conversion experience per se, but the fore-runners that only become significant in retrospect.

When I tried to remember ‘first impressions’ two things came to mind:

First, sitting on the (slightly prickly, horse-hair filled) blue velvet couch with Dad reading a children’s bible and saying ‘I don’t know if it’s true, but if it’s not, it should be.’ — Still, I think, a hugely powerful statement, though he doesn’t remember making it.

Second, my sixth form British Studies teacher sneaking John 1 into preparations for a Mediaeval Christmas celebration.   I can’t remember now if she explained it, or if it was just the way she read it, but for the first time I made the now-taken-for-granted link between the Word and Jesus.

I suppose if you’d asked me the right question, I’d have been able to say that 1 John was about Jesus before that, but in that moment, the vast implications began to emerge.

So, what are your stories?  … first thing you were told about God that ‘stuck’? … first perception of God as present, real, relevant or desirable?

p.s.– I think I’ve told you that 1 John story before.  Perhaps too often.  So I suppose that offers a third question:  what story of faith do you keep returning to and why?

words & seasons

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The lay team met for training today, having escaped having to do an assignment because of the complexity of schedules.  So, it was an on the spot task:  How does the liturgical year relate to preaching?

We started with a simple word-association game — writing down key words & themes for each season.  Then we shared what we had written, adding words, clarifying, questioning ‘why did you put that there?’

It was fascinating.  There was lots of overlap, as you would expect; but there were real differences too.  So, for example,  where would you put ‘Kingdom’ as a theme?  I put it in Advent:  already and not-yet, vision of a world transformed.  Isaiah, ox and lamb.  It’s there with themes of Justice, restoration, non-violence.

However, the group ‘forgot’ the justice theme for Advent, and had Kingdom listed just about everywhere else: under Christmas (Kingdom come), Easter (‘resurrection shows what the Kingdom is like’), Pentecost (‘living it out’) and the Green Season (on the theory that Christ the King ends the reign of green).  For the first time, I saw sense in naming November as ‘The Kingdom Season’.  At least it locks it down.

Lent came in heavy on penitence and cleansing, with a fair dose of journeying and introversion; but healing and forgiveness were curiously absent. When I said ‘Lent: healing’, someone argued that we had to wait for Easter for that.  She did not convince me; but in a few words, the difference in our theologies was clearly exposed.

It’s a game worth playing the next time you find yourself with a handful of piskies and a half an hour to spare. In the meantime, I offer you these for the seasonal sorting-hat:

  1. mystery
  2. humility-splendour
  3. pain-of-God
  4. eternity in time
  5. chocolate
  6. growth
  7. blinded by light
  8. humanness
  9. transformation
  10. ‘gloomy’  (surely not, I cried in horror.  Gloomy never goes with God.)

revolution

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I was a child of the 80’s.  More specifically:  I moved between primary and secondary school at precisely the time the first Apple Macintosh hit the market.  I can remember the people from apple coming to my primary school, giving us rainbow-apple window decals (so exciting), and trying to convince us to buy the future.

We didn’t buy a Mac (I had a Vic20, and then one of the early IBM PCs), but that rainbow apple adorned my bedroom window and glinted beneath the sway of pink feathered ‘roach clips’ that I would never wear, but secretly loved.

Most of you have heard me say that I learned to wordprocess in dot-commands and know how much impact those first Macs had, but it has been a long time since I have been really excited by something new in technology.  OK, there have been amazing advances, and the iphone still temps me, but really, windows followed mac, fast followed slow, small followed large, and it was all fairly inevitable given enough time and money.

Today, though, I caught wind of the revolution.  You may know about it already, but I had missed it:  the OX from One Laptop Per Child.  They have just linked up with Amazon in the States.  The idea is that whenever you buy an OX laptop, you actually buy two:  one for you, and one for a child in a developing nation.  Good idea.  But not revolutionary.

What excites me is that they have completely revised the concept of computers to fit the needs of children, and most especially to fit the needs of children in developing nations.  So, the laptop works off a touch screen, and is programmed by the child — adapting to how the child works, expanding as the child’s knowledge expands.  The new-generation OX-2, which will be launched in 2010, will have two touch screens.  If you open it like a book, it acts like a book:  an e-book that will open up unimaginable resources in parts of the world where books, paper, pens are scarce.  But if you open it like a computer, it becomes a computer — the lower touch screen acts as a qwerty keyboard, so you can type as normal.  But there’s more.  It’s designed to take the rough treatment of a small child.  It will run off a pull-cord if there is no source of electricity.  It is wireless ready, and by mechanisms I don’t begin to understand it seems to be offering internet access in places you would think it impossible.

There are only two problems I can see:  it’s only available in the States, and you have to buy one to get two (surely there must just be a way to send two??).

You can read more here,  see all the surprising pictures (of the old OX, not quite as revolutionary) here, and learn more about the project here.