>George’s difficult medicine

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>Churches can be very exclusive. A mother of a young man with severe communicational difficulties has her story told by Swinton and Mowatt:

We have a lot of young people in our church … but I never see any of the young people getting alongside George. None of theem ever sit beside him in church … none of them have invited him roun to their homes … and as a parent carer I find that difficult. I see them maybe going off for lunch or whatever and george is going home with his mum and dad and I just think how he has missed out on social interaction in his teenage years. In fact I could tell a little story:

A couple of years back one of the teenage girls who was having her 16th birthday and after the church service all the young people were going back to her house for a birthday dinner and afternoon. You know we had sung happy birthday to her in the church and the word had got round that you know the party was on and so forth. But of course, George wasn’t invited and so as we drove off from the church we just felt saddened that it was just again another example of exclusion and just how painful that was to us. Not knowing how George felt about that. We came home. We had our usual Sunday lunch… I went through to his bedroom later on in the afternoon and he was cutting up bits of paper, and I said to him, “What’s this you’re doing George?” And he said “I’m making up tickets for the party”.

What a story! We perhaps try to be inclusive but finish up excluding. We don’t know how exclusive we are until we hear stories like this. Makes you think. Does it make you change?

>Wizard Day Out

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I am becoming fascinated by our canals. Our local canal – the Shropshire Union – protects some of our local natural beauty and I have been enjoying running the towpath through Stoak and Croughton by Ellesmere Port.

Our half term outing was on a hired barge along the Bridgewater Canal courtesy of three volunteers who crew the Wizard for the Disability Partnership.

This is a wonderful facility which I hope escapes the cutbacks in social services.

I remember people talking to me about their families walking the Shropshire Union Canal in search of work – walking all the way from Wolverhampton till they found work in Ellesmere Port. I wonder how many times they had stopped off on the way to ask potential employers if they had any work.

>9/11 #9

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>Maggi Dawn’s blog led me to Charles Strohmer‘s excellent piece on the contorversy surrounding this year’s 9/11 anniversary. News coverage has been centred on the threatened Qur’an burnings – which has taken over from this solemn time of remembrance.

Elsewhere, Strohmer draws attention to Greek theatre and the development of theory. he writes:

“in the theatrical culture of ancient Greece, … their words for theater and theory meant very nearly the same thing. Theatron (our theater) meant “the seeing place,” or the “place for seeing” or “viewing” the performing arts. (Similar meanings are found in the Latin and French for theater.) Theoria (our theory) meant “looking at,” “seeing,” “viewing,” which for us today has come to indicate speculation or contemplation as opposed to action.”

This is a good way to look at learning. When we see “interplay” and “interaction” we draw conclusions – or formulate theories – which then inform our responses. In the UK we have a strong tradition of “Remembrance” to remember those who have lost their lives in war. There is great theatre attached to Remembrance, with veterans parading and showing their respect, the wearing of poppies, and the re-play of wartime experiences. This helps us “to see” and “find meaning” and shapes our responses.

Imam Rauf

The media have been sucked in by Rev Terry Jones’s stunt for his planned Qur’an burning. The real action for spotlighting is the thing that Jones is complaining about. He has missed the plot – and the reality is summed up by Strohmer who describes the real purpose of the project Jones is re-acting against. That purpose seems to me to be a really faithful attempt to make sense of what is happening based on the theory that “a broad multifaith coalition can help to repair the damage that has been done to Muslim-American relations over the past fifty years.” (from What’s right with Islam by Imam Rauf)

Here’s what Strohmer says:

The Park51 project is somewhat modeled after the famous multi-use 92nd Street Y. The wide-ranging programs for their proposed community center would include recreational facilities, such as a swimming pool and gym; exhibition space; conference rooms for education and forums, such as about empowering Muslim women; space for weddings and parties; day care and a senior center; areas for interfaith activity and prayer spaces for Jews, Christians, and people of other faiths; and cultural spaces, including a 500 seat theater for the performing arts. In other words, the center will be open to everyone and anyone.

>Fabio Capello and leadership

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The latest Belbin newsletter focuses on the management of our national football team and Fabio Capello’s capacity for leadership. It’s a fun article and worth a read. Capello is contrasted with Maradonna and suggestions made about the leadership qualities (Belbin style) needed for the next manager – maybe needed sooner than we think if we lose tonight’s game against Bulgaria.

Belbin does draw the distinction between qualifications (looking backwards – and referring to a different context) and suitability (looking forward and relating to present context). The suggestion is to recruit on the basis of suitability rather than eligibility/qualification. There’s one for the FA!

St Aidan’s Day

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Today is the feast day of St Aidan. Aidan has a special place in my heart because I have such fond memories of my time as a curate at St Aidan’s Church – part of Sheffield Manor Parish. I remember my first Sunday there. It wasn’t in church, but on a sponsored walk with members of the local probation hostel. Forty years on I remember the wonderful people I met on Norfolk Park, Claywood flats, Skye Edge, City Road, Manor and Manor Park.

Aidan was an Irish monk at a monatery in Iona. King Oswald was committed to restoring Christianity to the region. Oswald first sent a bishop named Corman for this task. He failed to make any headway, saying that Northumbrians were too stubborn to be converted. Aidan was then sent. Apparently he criticised the methods used by Corman. I wonder what Corman did wrong. We get a clue from the way the Aidan is reported to have gone about his task. Aidan did it slowly. He walked. He spoke politely to the people he met. One legend reports that the king gave Aidan a horse so that he wouldn’t have to walk. This undermined Aidan’s methods and he gave the horse to a beggar. Without the horse, Aidan could talk to people on their own level, and walk at their own pace. So, he slowly brought Christianity to the Northumbrian communities.

Lessons for us?

  • Some methods of evangelism don’t work – and they never have.
  • Level with people
  • Slow down – be patient – take time

The Collect for St Aidan’s Day emphasises Aidan’s personal qualities:

Everlasting God,
you sent the gentle bishop Aidan
to proclaim the gospel in this land:
grant us to live as he taught
in simplicity, humility and love for the poor;
through Jesus Christ.

And why do I have such fond memories of St Aidan’s Sheffield? That’s because of the patience, humility and love of the person – John Jacob whose responsibility it was to train me as a curate. From that moment I have realised the importance of time. Learning, training and change all take time. They have to be timed well with gentleness, simplicity, humility and love.

I remember so many. They all had a part in my growing up. They include, in no particular order, Tom Collins, Betty and Geoff Frost, Jean Kemp, Eileen and Eva Goring, Margaret and Richard Gabbitas, Margery Allen, Eileen Pickering, Sidney Dyson, Stan Simpson, Richard Sissons, Ernest and Jean Clayton, Jean and Joanne Sainz, Doris Pennington, Janet Cobb, Harry Cox, John and Jean Jameson, Kev Windle, Andy Marshall, Mark Franey, Jeanette Ashton, Jane Mercer, Hilda Horton, George Gunson, Nora Coward, the Sambrook sisters (Ebb and Flo), Anne Asher, Betty Super, Dennis Garlick, Fred Kelk, Mark Mohammed, Barry Allen, Walter Green, Rosie Green. There were my colleagues. Besides John there was Ian Cameron, Jim Moore (who showed me such kindness), Joe Lister, Ray Draper and John Wood. There are many others whose names I can’t remember but whose lives I do. They will never have known the effect they had on me – together and as individuals.

>Visual Theology

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Visual theology, faithful images is Dave Perry’s fascinating blog.  He prefaces his blog with a quote from Marcel Proust:

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

He posts a weekly image, linked to the lectionary readings for the week. This one is his offering for “bespoke tailoring for an outspken life”. Read more

Borderlands

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For the first time in a long time I have been having to stand my ground. This is because of an inter-personal, intra-departmental boundary dispute. In other words, we are not sure what we are each doing. This is not a major international incident, though there are significant tensions at the border. We don’t know where the boundaries are supposed to be, and because of that we haven’t worked out how we live together at the boundary.
The damage of borderlands is beautifully brought out in a poem I have just read by Gloria Anzaldua – who describes herself as a “chicana dyke-feminist, tejana patlache poet, writer, and cultural theorist” and “as a border woman [who] grew up between two cultures, the Mexican (with a heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as a member of a colonised people in our own territory). I have been straddling that tejas-mexican border, and others, all my life It’s not a comfortable place to live in, this place of contradictions. hatred, anger and exploitation are the prominent features of this landscape”. (The photo is by Brian Auer)
Here’s the poem – as I read it in Edward Soja’s book, Thirdspace:
                         I press my hand to the steel curtain – 
               chainlink fence crowned with rolled barbed wire –
        rippling from the sea where Tijuana touches San Diego
unrolling over mountains
     and plains
              and deserts,
this “Tortilla Curtain” turning into el rio Grande
      flowing down to the flatlands
           of the Magic Valley of South Texas
      its mouth emptying into the Gulf.
1,950 mile-long open wound
                     dividing a pueblo, a culture,
                     running down the length of my body,
                         staking fence rods in my flesh,
                         splits me   splits me
                         me raja   me raja
                                                                               This is my home
                                                                               this thin edge of
                                 barbwire.
                       But the skin of the earth is seamless.
                       The sea cannot be fenced,
             el mar does not stop at borders.
       To show the white man what she thought of his 
                           arrogance,
                   Yemaya blew that wire fence down.
                     The land was Mexican once,
                          was Indian always
                              and is.
                         And   will be again.

>Small pieces loosely joined

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Eavesdropping a conversation between Bishop Alan and Euan Semple I notice agreement between them about the strength of “small pieces loosely joined” (the title of a book by David Weinberger). They talked about the nature of churches and the degree of structure and institution needed to hold them together and that “dogma and rules are vehicles for power rather than entirely necessary for collective understanding”.
The “dramatic” viewpoint takes the standpoint of a participant in the drama while the “epic standpoint” is that of the external spectator able to see the whole play. Western Christendom has usually taken the “epic viewpoint” which has resulted in totalising and patronising theories of what is right and what is wrong. Hans Urs von Balthasar uses the dramatic viewpoint to look at what the church is. His dramatic theory is that there is no “external spectator”, and that in the “everyman” theatre even the audience is caught up in the drama as they see their own condition and dilemnas played out on the stage. They are caught up in the drama. There is only one “external spectator”, who is God. His is the epic viewpoint – though  there are other pretenders pretending they know what it’s all about.

Balthasar’s image is rather powerful when applied to what the church is. We don’t know what the church is. The church is there to find – to be received and not pre-conceived. For Balthasar the stage is set in Christ. From this viewpoint we all become players – church and non-church, caught in the act of being human, in  inter-play and the inter-action with all the other characters. Small pieces loosely joined sounds about right from this dramatic point of view where what is expected in terms of fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness ….. (Galatians 5:22) 

The Realm of Possibility & the World of Accountancy

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>I have just started reading a book called “The Art of Possibility” – which talks about us living in the “realms of possibility” as opposed to living at “Measurement central” governed by “survival thinking”. The authors, Zander and Zander write:

“In the realm of possibility we gain our knowledge by invention. We decide that the essence of a child is joy, and joy she is. Our small company attracts the label, “The Can-Do Company” … We speak with the awareness that language creates categories of meaning that open up new worlds to explore. Life appears as variety, pattern, and shimmering movement, inviting us in every moment to engage. The pie is enormous, and if you take a slice, the pie is whole again…

The action in a universe of possibility may be characterised as generative, or giving, in all senses of that world – producing new life, creating new ideas, consciously endowing with meaning, contributing, yielding to the power of contexts. The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the people and things themselves. Emotions that are often relegated to the special category of spirituality are abundant here: joy, grace, awe, wholeness, passion and compassion.”

People and things increasingly have price tags. They are entered on balance sheets and they are counted in and counted out. (Horrible thing the Government, when they talk about the “head count” being affected by the promised cuts (aka redundancy)). The accountants can’t get their hands on what happens between people. The generation of ideas and life defies logic. We are in the world of mystery rather than accountancy when we focus on the relationship between people and environments. It is sheer magic the way the pie becomes whole again.

>Knowledge is experience

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>Great quotes on education, teaching and learning:

An Einstein maxim is ‘Knowledge is experience – everything else is just information.’ We are now in an age where information is more abundant than could ever have been imagined…..students may emerge from an hour’s session with several thousands of words on equivalent in handout materials, downloadable files from an intranet or web. But it is still just information until they have done things with it to turn it into the start of their own knowledge about the subject concerned, and link it up to other things they already know …….. Perhaps at one level the quest to make learning happen in post-compulsory education boils down to how best can we help our learners turn information into their own knowledge.

From Phil Race ‘Making Learning Happen’

and

A teacher ought to be a stranger to the desire for domination, vain-glory, and pride; one should not be able to fool him by flattery, nor blind him by gifts, nor conquer him by the stomach, nor dominate him by anger; but he should be patient, gentle, and humbler as far as possible; he must be tested and without partisanship, full of concern for people, and a lover of souls.

from Amma Theodora – who was one of the early Christian monastics who went into the Egyptian desert during the third and fourth centuries, to live a life of prayer and contemplation. She had been married to a Roman tribune, and following her husband’s death, she retired to the desert to pray. Her wisdom was much sought after and a number of her sayings have survived, including this one about Christian teachers.