The Worship Well: Word: "Sarah Dylan Breuer of SarahLaughed.net has written this loose paraphrase of the Lord's Prayer, designed for use in services including many unchurched people but suitable for use in a variety of settings."
[This was written for services including many unchurched people for whom the language
of the Lord's Prayer was not immediately meaningful, but who found this very loose
paraphrase resonant in the moment and a means to think about the meaning of Jesus'
words and pattern of prayer.]
Loving Creator
we honor you,
and we honor all that you have made.
Renew the whole world
in the image of your love.
Give us what we need for today,
and a hunger to see the whole world fed.
Strengthen us for what lies ahead;
heal us from the hurts of the past;
give us courage to follow your call in this moment.
For your love is the only power,
the only home, the only honor we need,
in this world and in the world to come.
Amen.
12 April 2011
Pink for boys
Well it could have been and at one point in western culture it was. This article is worth looking at not only if you're interested in the way that gender is marked culturally and want to get a sense of the evolution of some markers, but also to get a bit of an insight into how culture really is an ongoing 'big society' conversation involving artefacts, ideas, social dynamics (power, solidarity etc) and so on (as per my first lecture in Engaging Culture). So check it out: When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian Magazine
A nice example of the way that the flow of history 'randomly' reconfigures cultural meanings:
"Prenatal testing was a big reason for the change (to "pink for a girl"). Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” or “boy” merchandise. (“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Paoletti says.) The pink fad spread from sleepers and crib sheets to big-ticket items such as strollers, car seats and riding toys. Affluent parents could conceivably decorate for baby No. 1, a girl, and start all over when the next child was a boy." See? Artefacts, biology, connatation, economics ...
A nice example of the way that the flow of history 'randomly' reconfigures cultural meanings:
"Prenatal testing was a big reason for the change (to "pink for a girl"). Expectant parents learned the sex of their unborn baby and then went shopping for “girl” or “boy” merchandise. (“The more you individualize clothing, the more you can sell,” Paoletti says.) The pink fad spread from sleepers and crib sheets to big-ticket items such as strollers, car seats and riding toys. Affluent parents could conceivably decorate for baby No. 1, a girl, and start all over when the next child was a boy." See? Artefacts, biology, connatation, economics ...
Out of this world benefits at a discount in long-life world
Recently publish research from St Andrew's University seems to indicate that participation in organised religion in our society for significant numbers of people, rests on their assessment of the perceived cost/benefit ratio. And what used to be a deal-maker has fallen in the ranks of highly motivating factors: the afterlife question appears to be much less significant in religious participation than may once have been the case. Though this may become more important as people get older. The solution suggested by the researchers is to emphasise more the present-worldly benefits of participation such as friendship networks, better life-expectancy and other things that other research has shown up as the side-benefits of religious participation.
However, where I do think that there is a problem may be in the practicalities relating to the matter of obliquity. In this case it would mean that if one joined a church in order to find companionship that may not happen because companionship is something that comes 'obliquely' to us, as the result of other things being pursued.
The problem I could foresee is that (as I have seen in a few cases before) a person can be so caught up in trying to find friendship that the way they comport themselves actually gets in the way of it; their desperation becomes inimical (excuse the pun)to finding companionship; it puts people off. The apparent neediness is something that spooks others and makes them wary; they worry that they will not be in a friendship but in a vampiric relationship where their good-will may be sucked dry; a far cry from the mutuality of real companionship and friendship but rather an exploitation masquerading as friendship. In seeking to 'save their life' they lose it. Ironically then, the people most prone to this are the ones who most need to lose their fixation and focus instead of the main thing, relating to God, in order to be free enough to avail themselves of the fringe benefits, lest grasping at companionship (or longer life or whatever elso) fails and worse cuts them off from the true source of freedom to accept the very thing they seek.
religious organisations need to do more to highlight the social and spiritual benefits of participation in religion in present day life if they are to increase congregation sizes and attract people of all ages, particularly young people.At first I was a little unsure how I responded to this: the idea that we might 'sell' religion by reference to the fringe benefits. But then I thought that this is nothing new: it seems to me that the offer of finding forgiveness, salvation, satisfaction, fulfilment, joy, peace, heaven and probably a dozen other things have long been part of the 'offer' being made. So is it a problem that the offer being commended is more "material" or this worldly"? Well, perhaps: this comes to feeling a bit more like proselytism: the offer of extrinsic benefits (that is extrinsic to the nature of the main thing). However, I don't think that is quite what would necessarily be going on. These benefits are to a greater or lesser degree intrinsic to the offer being made: they are all part of or direct effects of 'salvation' (scare-quoted to alert us to the presence of a metaphor which may not be a 'master' metaphor). In fact, it might be argued that they are the way that salvation and the need for salvation show up in various lives. I think that companionship, etc are similar though they are not the exclusive property of an offer of salvation in Christian terms.
However, where I do think that there is a problem may be in the practicalities relating to the matter of obliquity. In this case it would mean that if one joined a church in order to find companionship that may not happen because companionship is something that comes 'obliquely' to us, as the result of other things being pursued.
The problem I could foresee is that (as I have seen in a few cases before) a person can be so caught up in trying to find friendship that the way they comport themselves actually gets in the way of it; their desperation becomes inimical (excuse the pun)to finding companionship; it puts people off. The apparent neediness is something that spooks others and makes them wary; they worry that they will not be in a friendship but in a vampiric relationship where their good-will may be sucked dry; a far cry from the mutuality of real companionship and friendship but rather an exploitation masquerading as friendship. In seeking to 'save their life' they lose it. Ironically then, the people most prone to this are the ones who most need to lose their fixation and focus instead of the main thing, relating to God, in order to be free enough to avail themselves of the fringe benefits, lest grasping at companionship (or longer life or whatever elso) fails and worse cuts them off from the true source of freedom to accept the very thing they seek.
11 April 2011
Good games aren't zero-sum, beggar-your-neighbour
It would seem that my gaming disposition shares much with the Germans. Since I was little I have hated Monopoly: it takes ages which isn't a problem in some games but in monopoly it is ages of either grinding your opponents into penury or (more often) being ground down by the inevitable. No-one enjoys contemplating such certainty for so long (do they?). In addition it rewards the least likeable traits of human beings and so tends not to build community but rather greed, heart-heartedness, lack of empathy, envy and schadenfreud. The German way of gaming is different, and much more likely to help people like me who find the all-or-nothing, winner takes all nature of some games a bit much to handle and hard to justify in terms of ethical formation.
Instead of direct conflict, German-style games tend to let players win without having to undercut or destroy their friends. This keeps the game fun, even for those who eventually fall behind. Designed with busy parents in mind, German games also tend to be fast, requiring anywhere from 15 minutes to a little more than an hour to complete. They are balanced, preventing one person from running away with the game while the others painfully play out their eventual defeat. And the best ones stay fresh and interesting game after game.Which is best for community formation and neighbourly charity, do you think?
07 April 2011
Lighten up on 'proper' English, already!
Those who know me well enough know that I tend to get exasperated with pedants prognosticating about English grammar and going on wail-fests about declining standards of English. The article-post referenced under the title of this post will give you a good insight into my overall approach to such matters. That's why I'm noting it here. A paragraph towards the end puts it well. This tells you why I think it important that we are careful about the way, and whether, we 'correct' what we may regard as mistakes in English. We should ask ourselves what the motivation is and what advantage and/or disadvantages we may be conveying to our victim/interlocutor and indeed what the power dimensions are and whether we are acting with love and respect.
This is why it is a Christian question but we should be wary: there is a morality in 'correcting' language errors and we should be aware of our own stake in the forms -dialects- of English we use because they are all freighted with social judgements and temptations to disrespect or disadvantage others.
If we encourage (and I say it no more strongly than that) others to speak or write according to certain standards we should be mindful of doing so in such a way as to enable them to increase their ability to 'perform' more resourcefully in society and to improve their life-chances. They are not 'wrong'; they are simply using a dialect different to our own. The fact is that in these transactions, of course, the dialect being 'corrected' is usually one associated with social and economic disadvantage or opprobrium. It is all too frequent that in 'correcting' dialectal forms that are not "standard English" (and let's be clear; that is a form that was simply the variety -and its contemporary variants- that the socio-economic elite of England happened to be speaking when they came into dominance) the 'correcting' is done in such a way as to reinforce judgements of superiority and inferiority and so reinforce the cultural meanings associated with accent and dialect usage ('posh', 'earthy', smarmy, trustworthy, poncey, one-of-us, etc etc).
If one of the outcomes of Christian discipleship is that we treat all people as worthy and worthwhile, we should be wary of how we -if we- offer or encourage other usages.
It is worth recalling too, that so many of the things that some put over as 'stupid' language usages are regarded as the proper ways of doing things in the socially-prestigious forms of other languages. Double negatives are a sign of educated speech in French and absolutely normal in Spanish and Italian, for example; it's no good talking to them about the mathematics of two negatives, that's a gross confusion of categories and usually an unworthy put-down.Writing contractions is often considered insufficiently 'formal' in English, but for goodness sake it's normal in good French writing (though I suspect that some contractions would be frowned on - "J'sais c'qu'ils dise', par exampl'"). And let's also recall that so-called split infinitive were used by Shakespeare, Austen and the Brontes and such writers didn't necessarily use apostrophe 's for genitives German does fine without that and so did English writers before the Victorian period.
PS (Friday 8 April): I've just read this article on education and the linguistic situation above seems to me to be the linguistic reflex of the more general issue that the quote at the start of the article highlights:
Of course, it then becomes clear that what the system often rewards in reality is the ability to blend in with the prestigious crowd or to pick up enough to do so later on. So those with good linguistic ability and motive to pick up the register and accents are in a better position. Those who don't have that ability or whose current social, ideological or other solidary commitments will often then define themselves in contradistinction to the 'elites' and it will become harder for them to transition because their self-image /pride won't easily acquiesce.
In theory, there is real utility in imposing standards through education - these standards are meant to get everyone 'on the same page' and provide a form of cultural unity through language. On the other hand, they (seemingly) legitimize discrimination against those populations whose English is non-standard (certain African American communities being a prime example). By being taught black-and-white rules for "what is right and what is WRONG," we learn to see language in value-laden terms; as adults, we think we can size up a person by their accent, the kinds and variety of words they employ, their conjugations, their idiomatic use, their slang, their spelling and so on [5]. In some sense these judgments aren't wrong: our peculiar backgrounds (class, race, region, gender) and predilections are reflected in our language. On the other hand, prescriptivism implies that there is a moral dimension to language use, and that we should stigmatize variation. It's hard to see the good in that.Quite so.
This is why it is a Christian question but we should be wary: there is a morality in 'correcting' language errors and we should be aware of our own stake in the forms -dialects- of English we use because they are all freighted with social judgements and temptations to disrespect or disadvantage others.
If we encourage (and I say it no more strongly than that) others to speak or write according to certain standards we should be mindful of doing so in such a way as to enable them to increase their ability to 'perform' more resourcefully in society and to improve their life-chances. They are not 'wrong'; they are simply using a dialect different to our own. The fact is that in these transactions, of course, the dialect being 'corrected' is usually one associated with social and economic disadvantage or opprobrium. It is all too frequent that in 'correcting' dialectal forms that are not "standard English" (and let's be clear; that is a form that was simply the variety -and its contemporary variants- that the socio-economic elite of England happened to be speaking when they came into dominance) the 'correcting' is done in such a way as to reinforce judgements of superiority and inferiority and so reinforce the cultural meanings associated with accent and dialect usage ('posh', 'earthy', smarmy, trustworthy, poncey, one-of-us, etc etc).
If one of the outcomes of Christian discipleship is that we treat all people as worthy and worthwhile, we should be wary of how we -if we- offer or encourage other usages.
It is worth recalling too, that so many of the things that some put over as 'stupid' language usages are regarded as the proper ways of doing things in the socially-prestigious forms of other languages. Double negatives are a sign of educated speech in French and absolutely normal in Spanish and Italian, for example; it's no good talking to them about the mathematics of two negatives, that's a gross confusion of categories and usually an unworthy put-down.Writing contractions is often considered insufficiently 'formal' in English, but for goodness sake it's normal in good French writing (though I suspect that some contractions would be frowned on - "J'sais c'qu'ils dise', par exampl'"). And let's also recall that so-called split infinitive were used by Shakespeare, Austen and the Brontes and such writers didn't necessarily use apostrophe 's for genitives German does fine without that and so did English writers before the Victorian period.
PS (Friday 8 April): I've just read this article on education and the linguistic situation above seems to me to be the linguistic reflex of the more general issue that the quote at the start of the article highlights:
in reality, of course, high school is a machine for social sorting. The purpose of high school is to give young people a sense of where they fit into the social structure.And, of course, labelling their language use and rewarding or deriding them for it is a very good way to give a sense of where they fit in the social structure.
Of course, it then becomes clear that what the system often rewards in reality is the ability to blend in with the prestigious crowd or to pick up enough to do so later on. So those with good linguistic ability and motive to pick up the register and accents are in a better position. Those who don't have that ability or whose current social, ideological or other solidary commitments will often then define themselves in contradistinction to the 'elites' and it will become harder for them to transition because their self-image /pride won't easily acquiesce.
Art, spirituality and communication
The church has a convoluted relatinship with the arts. Caught between instrumentalist propaganda on the one side and a fear of unsoundness or disturbing the faithful on the other, Christian artists are easily misunderstood. And yet many of us are aware of the power of artworks to express important and transformative perspectives and insights through which God may speak and people may be edified.
Here's what one artist says:
That noted, I was interested to read how this artist's spirituality is formed in dialogue with art and artists.
The article referenced by the hyperlink under the title asks how we can close that gap. I think that one way is to encourage two cardinal virtues in our communities of faith: one is humility and the other is valuing questions. Humility because part of the problem we have is a sense that we 'have' the truth, our attitude should rather be that the truth has us and we are in the process permanently of apprehending and integrating 'it' into our lives; we are people in process and in dialogue with The Truth. Valuing questions is related to humility: growth comes through questioning. Our questions are a sign that we are aware that we are 'on the way' (or on the Way). Our questions are also part of making sure that we are truly contextually related: in the world (even if not 'of' it). The artists' questions often pick away at cognitive dissonance, and in hearing and respecting those questions we come to know implicit questions we ourselves have but may deny. And in hearing and respecting them we can form a community of empathy with others in which we can learn together how to handle them. That is a proper 'posture' for spiritual growth and even evangelism: side by side, in community, in respect in commitment to understanding together.
This is what, I think, Paul means by language about holding onto the bonds of peace: a commitment to staying with people no matter how awkward their questions.
Here's what one artist says:
I am at the bottom of the artistic food chain. I work alongside those who have proven their mettle – both with skill and with the merit of their idea. They leave me speechless at their fluency in those areas where I am merely learning my vocabulary.I'm interested in that insight because it links with one of the things that I'm wrestling with in my homo loquens project: that art is one of the (admittedly more elaborate) ways that humans have of naming the animals of our experience. We don't only give words; single words are only the simplest way we have to pick out things that interest us and try to make them available to the mental gaze of others. But when we consider the way that words -singly or in conglomerations- draw attention, offer perspective, indicate evaluation and connote status, power or other relationship, then we are in a position to realise that a painting, sculpture, song or performance are involved in the same sort of thing only in more sophisticated or elaborate ways.
That noted, I was interested to read how this artist's spirituality is formed in dialogue with art and artists.
these artists, are such a crucial piece of my own spiritual formation and my own efforts to be consistent in my soul-identity. Not because we speak the same language – in fact I sometimes feel like a babbling toddler in the presence of some – but because they are not afraid to tear open the curtain on mystery and paradox.This is, of course, just why some Christians and churches are suspicious or even hostile to the arts. The threat of awkward (but real) questions and the questioning of authority is enough to encourage Christians with interests in the status quo to stay well-clear of this potentially disturbing area of human endeavour. Perhaps the story of Vincent Van Gogh should give us pause for thought. The shame of this response on the part of Christians to the arts is the way that it witnesses to or generates or exacerbates a gap between the institutions of Church and seeking after truth and integrity. It is saddening to find that for many people who are earnestly seeking integrity and truthful expression, the church is seen to be an obstacle.
The article referenced by the hyperlink under the title asks how we can close that gap. I think that one way is to encourage two cardinal virtues in our communities of faith: one is humility and the other is valuing questions. Humility because part of the problem we have is a sense that we 'have' the truth, our attitude should rather be that the truth has us and we are in the process permanently of apprehending and integrating 'it' into our lives; we are people in process and in dialogue with The Truth. Valuing questions is related to humility: growth comes through questioning. Our questions are a sign that we are aware that we are 'on the way' (or on the Way). Our questions are also part of making sure that we are truly contextually related: in the world (even if not 'of' it). The artists' questions often pick away at cognitive dissonance, and in hearing and respecting those questions we come to know implicit questions we ourselves have but may deny. And in hearing and respecting them we can form a community of empathy with others in which we can learn together how to handle them. That is a proper 'posture' for spiritual growth and even evangelism: side by side, in community, in respect in commitment to understanding together.
This is what, I think, Paul means by language about holding onto the bonds of peace: a commitment to staying with people no matter how awkward their questions.
Responding with Christian love to our homosexual neighbours
This gives a constructive approach to dealing with homosexuality. Interestingly it emerges from a case-study scenario which asks the reader to imagine they are confronted pastorally with a young person who is just realising the predominant direction of their sexual affectviity is homophile. I've added emphasis to a phrase I think is particularly important.
What welcome should you receive? I pray it might be something like this ...
“God loves you - just as you are. He made us all for a purpose - there are no "reject goods". In Christ, gay and straight are equally welcome!
We want to affirm you as a person! Gay orientation is not in itself sinful. Some in the church believe that all homosexual activity is wrong. Others believe that the Bible supports all loving faithful relationships. But though we disagree among ourselves, we will not make you a victim of our theological conflict.
We give you the whole Bible, focussing on what is really important, like John 3 v 16, Matthew 28 vv 16-20 and Romans 5 v 8, but engaging with you on the challenging bits.
Above all we will accompany you on your Christian journey and learn from you as you learn from us. As we travel together, we pray that the Holy Spirit will break forth yet more light and truth from God’s word.”
Martin Stears-Handscomb
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