Monthly Archive for February, 2010

Robotic Warfare: Making This World Safe?

Published on February 25, 2010 by WillowMan. Closed Tags: , , , .

Last week Preda­tor drones attacked in Hel­mand province in South­ern Afghanistan and mis­tak­enly killed civil­ians.  We don’t know how many.  The inci­dents are another warn­ing like the mes­sages of protest that Pak­ista­nis have been try­ing to send Amer­i­cans for the past few years.  Despite the much bal­ly­hooed pre­ci­sion of these air crafts and their weapons, they still kill civil­ians because cor­rob­o­rat­ing intel­li­gence on the ground is unre­li­able and this leads to flawed targeting.

The pro­tec­tion of civil­ians has been a most basic plank of all notions of just war for many nations going back 1600 years.  The slide towards increased killing of civil­ians in war by national armies and as a corol­lary, the use of civil­ians as human shields is often over­looked.   Tac­tics aris­ing from the use of robotic weapons of war may increase the slide of dis­re­spect for civil­ian life in war.  This trend that brought us civil­ian casu­al­ties from Dres­den to Hiroshima, from IEDs in Iraq to drones in Pak­istan reflect the broad lines of increased dis­re­spect for civil­ian life into the 21st cen­tury war­fare in reg­u­lar and insur­gent armies.

Dur­ing the final week of Lent this year I expect to travel to Las Vegas and to Creech AFB 45 miles north­west where the Preda­tor pilots and their staffs are trained and local con­trol rooms guide the planes in the 24 hour sur­veil­lance and attack assign­ments over Pak­istan, Iraq and Afghanistan.  As I go I know that the Preda­tors are just a tip of a vast array of robotic tech­nol­ogy now being devel­oped to make mod­ern war­fare “safer” for sol­diers but more lethal for civilians.

The Preda­tor and their Hell­fire mis­siles are the air weapon deliv­ery sys­tem of choice right now but maybe not for long.  In the future the work of dis­ar­ma­ment will be made even more com­pli­cated by robotic instru­ments of all kinds. The U. S. Army is work­ing with uni­ver­si­ties to build micro fliers, tiny bird like fly­ers to be used for intel­li­gence gath­er­ing and sur­veil­lance through its Micro Autonomous Sys­tems and Tech­nol­ogy Col­lab­o­ra­tive Alliance.  Joseph Mait, man­ager of the Army Research Lab­o­ra­tory says,“   Our long-term goal is to develop tech­nolo­gies that can pro­duce a map of a build­ing inte­rior or detect bombs,”

Big unmanned Preda­tor like air­craft have lots of prob­lems. They are still expen­sive to build, main­tain and fly although they are much cheaper than the ear­lier gen­er­a­tions of bombers.  They can also be easy to spot.  In Pak­istan I was told that chil­dren in remote areas have games they play called, “spot­ting the Preda­tors”.   Shrink­ing those vehi­cles to a few ounces will not only change the children’s games but will give an up-close view of who is doing what, when and where.

Accord­ing to Dis­cov­ery Mag­a­zine,  Haibo Dong of Wright State Uni­ver­sity is work­ing on a four-winged robot, the Wright Dragon flyer. The design­ers com­plain that it is more dif­fi­cult to cre­ate than a two-winged flap­ping sys­tem but promises more speed and manoeu­ver­abil­ity. Dong expects to have a pro­to­type, about the size of a real dragon-fly, com­pleted this year. “This small craft could per­form sur­veil­lance, envi­ron­men­tal mon­i­tor­ing and search and res­cue,” he says.

At Har­vard Uni­ver­sity roboti­cist Robert Wood is work­ing on mechan­i­cal bee-like instru­ments to cre­ate a colony of RoboBees. These swarm­ing robots will incor­po­rate opti­cal and chem­i­cal sen­sors as well as com­mu­ni­ca­tions sys­tems to make autonomous flight deci­sions and to coor­di­nate with colony mem­bers dur­ing tasks such as search­ing for objects or people.

Robotic tech­nol­ogy is already heav­ily used in all of America’s wars.  As many as 4000 robots are already on the ground in Iraq. Tiny infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing devices are com­ple­mented by robotic instru­ments designed to iden­tify and dis­arm bombs.  With ground mobil­ity they can enter into dan­ger­ous set­tings where enemy sol­diers are heav­ily armed.  Some of these instru­ments are being adapted for or are already used for in the home­land secu­rity.  Their phe­nom­e­nal growth will change for­ever the arms race, the bal­ance of power(s) in the world and the nature of police work.

The eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of this rev­o­lu­tion of arms, force and infor­ma­tion gath­er­ing are daunting.

1.  The devel­op­ment, deploy­ment, and use of the instru­ments of robotic war­fare are being car­ried out in at least 40 coun­tries around the world.  A robotic arms race is already under way.  There are few if any forums that address the impli­ca­tions of this race for the future of life on earth and for the qual­ity of life-like basic freedoms.

2.  As the robotic arms move­ment unfolds, the pos­si­bil­ity for back yard devel­op­ment of instru­ments of destruc­tion reaches to the lim­its of  imag­i­na­tion.  Vio­lent video games were just a begin­ning although they may have helped dull our sen­si­tiv­ity and cre­ate a cul­ture of accep­tance.  The IED (impro­vised explo­sive device)  an  interim instru­ment for defence and attack for insur­gents will have been just the first gen­er­a­tion of a long line of sophis­ti­cated adap­ta­tion of off the shelf tech­nol­ogy for killing.  The dis­tance between the safe researcher silently work­ing in a san­i­tized lab­o­ra­tory and the field prac­ti­tioner is nar­row­ing.  The absence of mean­ing­ful work for so many in this gen­er­a­tion may become the void  where new waves of  imag­i­na­tion in the ser­vice of vio­lence are unleashed.  Non­vi­o­lence move­ments will match this chal­lenge only with keen under­stand­ing of the impli­ca­tions of robotic devel­op­ments and solid healthy organizations.

3.  As civil­ian casu­al­ties grow, per­sons who believe that life is sacred are faced with enor­mous new chal­lenges.  Peace­mak­ers and human rights work­ers have only begun to grasp the impli­ca­tions of robotic war­fare.  Peo­ple on the ground in Pak­istan told me that just 10% of the vic­tims of Preda­tor drone bomb­ings are insur­gent com­bat­ants. Ninety per­cent are civil­ians. The l Pak­istan Secu­rity Mon­i­tor, a project of the School for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity dis­putes these fig­ures.  I have trav­elled in Pak­istan and have heard the esti­mated 90% fig­ure from per­sons with access to the areas of impact with accom­pa­ny­ing sto­ries of tra­vail and death to women and children..

For Chris­t­ian paci­fists the reach of research, devel­op­ment, and man­u­fac­ture dips into every one of our com­mu­ni­ties.  We are now faced with new chal­lenges to our con­vic­tions about not killing.  Unless we face those oncom­ing ambi­gu­i­ties with­out falling into legal­ism, the con­vic­tions will morph into fluffy cot­ton dec­o­ra­tion over a core of words that are not backed up with action.

4.  As we enter this new fron­tier of ethics and robotic war­fare, our meth­ods of wit­ness for a non­vi­o­lent way will be forced to adapt.  The cen­tral­iza­tion of the devel­op­ment and man­u­fac­ture of killer instru­ments into fewer and fewer cor­po­ra­tions and selected polit­i­cal pow­ers is over.  The time is here when ordi­nary peo­ple can go to the local com­puter store or amazon.com to order com­po­nent parts for assem­bling a weapon.  What will we do if the com­puter store owner even goes to our church or parish?  What will we do if peo­ple in our church own stock in com­pa­nies that pro­duce the com­po­nents? We won’t have to go to Wash­ing­ton or to some well-mannered leg­isla­tive office to begin the dis­cus­sion and to engage in pub­lic witness.

We are now swim­ming in the cul­ture of robot­ics, a tech­nol­ogy that is being adapted every day by nations around the world to myr­iad roles that include secu­rity and killing.  We can watch in admi­ra­tion or dis­taste as the magic is unveiled .  In peri­ods of tran­si­tion and unfold­ing vio­lence it takes a lit­tle time for our con­sciences to be awak­ened and the gift of stub­born resis­tance to become clear.  The time has arrived.

Boiled Down

Published on February 25, 2010 by David Driedger. 1 Comment Tags: , .

It is encour­ag­ing at cer­tain points to expe­ri­ence life, at least at that moment, as hav­ing been boiled down, clar­i­fied, dis­tilled. I am not sure there is much more to Chris­t­ian life, which is to say life, than prayer and wor­ship. Per­haps there is only wor­ship or only prayer or some third unknown descrip­tion. But for now I still find it help­ful to speak of the two.

Pray with­out ceasing

Let every­thing that has breathe praise the LORD

All things may be prayer and wor­ship. My breath­ing, my eat­ing, my com­ing and my going. My buy­ing and sell­ing, giv­ing and tak­ing. My sit­ting and lying. My speech and my act.

I went for a run today and I did not care (much) for the ben­e­fits I used to hope from this expres­sion (bet­ter fit­ness and self-image) I did not incor­po­rate tech­niques to make my run more effi­cient or effec­tive . I ran and breathed and looked and thought. I ran to the ceme­tery at the edge of town and sat on a bench. It was one of the first sunny almost warm days and on the bench the sun shown directly on my face and the tree behind me blocked the wind. And every­thing was just glo­ri­ous, utterly glo­ri­ous in that moment.

I real­ized then that had I not done this, had I not run in that way at that time I would have been guilty of blas­phemy a fully uncon­scious expres­sion of sin and heresy. This led me then to the much more hum­bling real­iza­tion that much of my life is blasphemy.

717 (One in Seven Billion)

Published on February 24, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

With some 7,000,000,000 peo­ple on earth, it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. With the total weight of the earth’s ter­mites out­weigh­ing humans 10:1, we can hardly say we’re the biggest thing on this planet. If we believe pop­u­lar sci­ence, we’re noth­ing but advanced genet­ics and organ­ics. Yes, we’re

the most advanced life form, but we’re merely a future pro­gres­sion of apes. With this in mind, it’s hard to blame a lot of peo­ple (par­tic­u­larly teenagers, but cer­tainly not lim­ited to them) for hav­ing low self-esteem.

Job asked, “What is man?” to God. What is man that you pay us any atten­tion? Us? Really? There’s 7,000,000,000 of us. Sure, I’m unique in my DNA. But I’m just another per­son. And, when it comes down to it: what is man?

If we read the end of Job, God slams us pretty hard. There’s a lot we don’t know, and God makes it pretty clear who’s in con­trol. There’s a pretty big gap between the Almighty and the Meek. As big as the East from the West in a flat world.

But, wait, there’s hope. I didn’t fin­ish Job’s state­ment. “What is man that you make so much of him?” he asked. In a way, Job’s just answered his own ques­tion. Man is some­thing purely because God makes some­thing of us. Man is some­thing because God cre­ated us. And more than any­thing, man is a whole lot because we are cre­ated in God’s image. We’re a tiny lit­tle bit of God, reflect­ing His bril­liance on this earth.

There’s a lot of hope rooted in being made in God’s image. There’s a lot of self-confidence.

That’s who we are.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul

Bobby Or

Published on February 23, 2010 by Will Loewen. Closed

A long time ago, a strug­gling Team Canada turned to Bobby Orr to guide them to inter­na­tional glory. In those days his knees were so bad that hey were wrapped in ice more often than they weren’t. Today, if a pro ath­lete had knees like his, they would get arthro­scopic surgery in the off-season, and he’d be good as new when the puck dropped again in the fall. Even though Bobby’s sup­port­ing cast was weak, and their oppo­si­tion was strong, he put them on his shoul­ders and car­ried them to victory.

These days another fledg­ling squad has called on #4 to give them a boost. Mr. Orr can now be reg­u­larly seen on Chevro­let com­mer­cials endors­ing their most recent line of auto­mo­biles. It’s no secret that Gen­eral Motors is in trou­ble; their vehi­cles seem to be falling behind their com­pe­ti­tion in terms of per­for­mance and effi­ciency stan­dards, and finan­cially, they’ve been in the red so deep for so long that they needed mas­sive gov­ern­ment bailouts just to stay afloat. The for­mer defense­man even made ref­er­ence to this in the com­mer­cial when he asserts that “They are def­i­nitely back in the game.” Is GM admit­ting that for a cer­tain amount of time that they were out of the game? It seems to be an unchar­ac­ter­is­tic show of weakness.

But before he makes this bold asser­tion, Bobby quoted some­thing else that I was much more inter­ested in. It looked as though he was refer­ring to a new vehi­cle pro­duc­tion mantra: “Build them the best, or don’t build them at all.” I won­der if that’s just a catchy one-liner that their mar­ket­ing depart­ment came up with or if it is some­thing they are directly hear­ing from their cus­tomers. It seems to me that even if GM con­sis­tently tests lower than their major com­pe­ti­tion in per­for­mance and effi­ciency, they will con­tinue to make auto­mo­biles, no mat­ter how prin­ci­pled their man­age­ment is. How­ever, rank­ings aside, if sales num­bers don’t pick up in time to sta­bi­lize their long­time finan­cial pic­ture, they will be forced to shut down pro­duc­tion and this mantra will become true in a whole dif­fer­ent way than they were intend­ing.
This mantra could eas­ily be mis­taken as a mis­sion state­ment, but the inclu­sion of the word “or” (and the implied “or else”) makes it par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing. I’ve seen a tonne of mis­sion state­ments of churches and var­i­ous Chris­t­ian char­i­ties and I can’t remem­ber any that included this kind of “or else” con­clu­sion, but it does present some inter­est­ing possibilities.

Con­sider the Chris­t­ian Peace­maker Teams. They owe much of their found­ing to an “or else” kind of speech by Ron Sider. Could they use some of those same words to form a mis­sion statement?

“Ready to die devel­op­ing new non­vi­o­lent attempts to reduce inter­na­tional con­flict, or else we never really meant the cross was an alter­na­tive to the sword.”

Men­non­ite Church Canada’s mantra is also void of any “or else”‘s. I think the mean­ing becomes a lit­tle more urgent if we add some, even if the or else that I add is already implied.

“Form­ing a peo­ple of God … or else when we gather we’ll think we’ve already arrived.
Becom­ing a global church … or else we’ll assume ours is the only way to do things and we’ll for­get that Jesus came for the whole world, not just us.
Grow­ing lead­ers … or else the busi­ness of doing church will scare off any­one who might oth­er­wise want to lead.”

It’s maybe a bit wordy, but I think it leaves a nice touch.

What about indi­vid­ual con­gre­ga­tions though? They have their own mis­sion state­ments too, some­times dis­played as promi­nently as any scrip­ture verse. But if we add an or else to those state­ments, what tone should it take? We could take a prac­ti­cal slant and say “or else peo­ple will stop com­ing” or “or else our funds will dry up”. It might also be appro­pri­ate to take a spir­i­tual slant and say “or else we aren’t pay­ing close enough atten­tion to our pas­tor” or “or else the Spirit isn’t in us”. Or how about some­thing that com­bines them both?

“Liv­ing out our faith and bring­ing good news to our neigh­bours, here and around the world …
or else we have no right to gather as a church and should board up our doors and walk away.”

That might take up too many of those move­able let­ters on church signs though.

A Gold Medal for Protesting?

Published on February 17, 2010 by David Driedger. Closed

To con­tinue with the Olympics …

I have come across var­i­ous anec­do­tal con­cerns and crit­i­cisms of the Olympic games. The crit­i­cisms have revolved around aspects of waste, excess and greed. It is my under­stand­ing that many of the venues in China and Greece are largely unused and dete­ri­o­rat­ing mak­ing them another image of our fast-food cul­ture. I was hop­ing to be quite attuned to these con­cerns as the 2010 Win­ter Olympics approached. I have found that as they began I became enthralled with them.  Never had short-track speed skat­ing and the biathlon seemed so exhil­er­at­ing (not to men­tion snow­board cross). I found it dif­fi­cult to turn away from this real-time drama. Then a nudg­ing of con­science came to me and I needed to ask myself if I could hon­estly sup­port these games. So I per­formed some (very brief) research into the crit­i­cisms of the games. See here for an overview. As I read the crit­i­cisms I had to admit that I largely agreed with them. Yes I agree that the Olympics rep­re­sent tremen­dous waste and excess with their envi­ron­men­tal tolls. Yes I imag­ine that there is an over influ­ence of cor­po­rate spon­sor­ship. Yes I agree that the eco­nomic ben­e­fit of host­ing the games is ques­tion­able at best. How­ever, what came to mind was that these are not crit­i­cisms of the Olympics but crit­i­cisms of our cul­ture as they are reflected in the Olympics. And if this indeed in the case then is it pos­si­ble that the Olympics is at least one of the bet­ter (not deny­ing the many faults still inher­ent in the games) expres­sions of our cul­ture? Should it not be the case that the inten­sity of our protest and resis­tance be ramped up dur­ing the rest of the year and allow our­selves to enjoy and appre­ci­ate what is good in the games?

Per­haps the games are actu­ally more decep­tive, more insid­i­ous with the use of hard­work­ing under­paid ath­letes.  Per­haps the games are actu­ally pure con­sumerism with the drama of the games sim­ply being medium to sell tourism, adver­tis­ing, con­ser­v­a­tive dis­ci­plined cit­i­zens, illu­sions (Believe … in what?) etc.

Please cor­rect me if I am wrong.

Christ-ian

Published on February 15, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

With all the hoopla over the Olympics, I was think­ing about what it means to be a Cana­dian. Many peo­ple define them­selves by their coun­try. They take pride in their atti­tudes, friend­li­ness, and a few stereo­types that come along with your coun­try. Canada is no dif­fer­ent. As a Cana­dian, I have respon­si­bil­i­ties and priv­i­leges. Respon­si­bil­i­ties to pay my taxes, to vote, to be a good cit­i­zen. Priv­i­leges that include health care, human rights, and a great hockey team.

Dur­ing the Olympics, we’re proud to be Cana­dian. We wear the maple leaf with pride.

It got me think­ing about being a Chris­t­ian. After all, “Chris­t­ian” and “Cana­dian” end in the same three let­ters: i-a-n. When it comes to my coun­try, it’s a suf­fix that describes my cit­i­zen­ship. I am a Cana­dian because I am a cit­i­zen of Canada. I took it to the next level: I am a Chris­t­ian because I am a cit­i­zen of Christ.

What does it mean to be a cit­i­zen of Christ? It means to have respon­si­bil­i­ties and receive priv­i­leges. It means that, while I wear red and white dur­ing these 16 days in Feb­ru­ary, I wear Christ’s col­ors all the time. It means that, ulti­mately, my cit­i­zen­ship lies with Christ. And so I don’t think of myself as a Chris­t­ian, I think of myself as a Christ–ian, putting the empha­sis on the last three letters.

I belong to Christ.

I live in the coun­try of Christ.

It strips the name of all the stereo­types. It gives it root and sub­stance. It gives it heart and mean­ing, heart and mean­ing that makes me want to scream as loudly for my ulti­mate cit­i­zen­ship as I will when Canada scores in the gold medal game.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

110 (The Wager)

Published on February 8, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

One of my favorite teach­ers always gave my friend and I spe­cial tasks to do. They often involved leav­ing the class­room, and we usu­ally received them because we were the first to com­plete the assign­ment, project, or task. I remem­ber one ran­dom day car­ry­ing a TV set out to his car. He even gave us his keys, which in grade 6 was a huge thing. We always knew that when we returned we’d each get a Jolly Rancher. It wasn’t like he had us trained, but we knew the reward was coming.

If he would’ve held back the Jolly Rancher one day, we prob­a­bly would have been frus­trated. While we may not have said any­thing to him directly, we would have grum­bled about it when he was out of earshot. Some­one out­side this sim­ple lit­tle sys­tem could watch, observe, and walk in with a wager. “You’ve got great stu­dents,” he’d say. “Have you seen Paul?” The teacher would respond. “He does his work quickly, then helps me out after.” “Well, no kid­ding. You always give him a Jolly Rancher. I don’t know any kid who wouldn’t.”

In that moment, the teacher’s entire sys­tem is shot down. It’s the dif­fer­ence between those who fol­low because of reward, and those who fol­low because they actu­ally like the teacher.

Satan put God in this dilemma at the begin­ning of Job. “He only loves you because you bless him,” Satan sneers. To say ‘yes’ admits to a poorly-designed sys­tem. To say ‘no’ requires proof. God says “No,” then decides to back it up. And thus fol­lows the book of Job. It’s a chal­lenge to the com­mon belief that obe­di­ence equals bless­ing. Many peo­ple believe that today.

At the end, in some of the most beau­ti­ful and harsh poetry ever, God puts Job in his place. “Who are you to judge what I do? I can do what I want to do!” He says, sweep­ing his hand over all of cre­ation. Obe­di­ence equals bless­ing! With one story, God dis­patches the notion that fol­low­ing Him means always being blessed. It could end there.

But it doesn’t.

God restores Job, giv­ing him more than he had before. Some would think this end­ing points to the fact that obe­di­ence = bless­ing, but that’s what God just railed against. No, it’s because God = good.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul

Do you know what I know?

Published on February 3, 2010 by David Driedger. Closed

For bet­ter or worse I find myself con­tin­u­ally inter­ested in know­ing, not so much knowl­edge, or per­haps more specif­i­cally I guess I am inter­ested in knowl­edge about know­ing (epis­te­mol­ogy to drop the 10 dol­lar term). Just how is it that we know some­thing to be true, or come to any sort of knowl­edge for that mat­ter. Lis­ten­ing to a church Christ­mas con­cert this year two lines sud­denly entered my mind as though encoun­ter­ing them for the first time,

Said the shep­herd boy to the mighty king,

Do you know what I know?

The words rushed through me leav­ing in their wake wave after wave of emo­tion. Or maybe they dropped on me like stone, like a liv­ing stone on my stag­nant sense of knowl­edge and drove the waves out­ward, out to the ends, to sur­face of my body that I trust to sense and know the world around me. When waves first peaked they were numb­ing leav­ing room for no other thoughts or think­ing and as the waves ebbed my returned feel­ings kept telling me, “But the king has access to knowl­edge.” What can be known the king is able to know. Now I may not be an explicit fan of the king but if there is some­thing to be known the king can extend the reach of his hand to grasp and acquire it. And what of the rhetor­i­cal flaunt that the shep­herd boy adds,

In your palace walls mighty king,

Do you know what I know?

No I try not to fly the ban­ner of the king but the truth is that I am on the side of the king. Per­haps I posi­tion myself as the king or pros­trate myself before kings. This is true because of how these lines offended me deeply, uncon­sciously. I have been build­ing palace walls in my days even in my sleep.  God for­give me.

There is more than one know­ing. There are thrones of knowl­edge. But there is also know­ing that is no knowledge.

And the shep­herd boy did not cre­ate his own know­ing. His know­ing was born of see­ing and hearing.

Do you see what I see?

Do you hear what I hear?

In this already estab­lished new year may we be granted eyes to see and ears to hear a knowl­edge drift­ing some­times rush­ing low to the ground steal­ing past palace walls fill­ing the hearts and minds of those with­out king or coun­try. For the Gospel is a refugee knowl­edge or maybe a refugee of knowl­edge tented under the stars and in touch with the wind.

A Collective Work of Art

Published on February 2, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , , .

One of my edu­ca­tion assign­ments involved iden­ti­fy­ing a metaphor for edu­ca­tion and the jour­ney of teacher. Below is my response. Read­ing it again, I’d like to empha­sis even more that the work of art is a col­lec­tive effort — co-artists with learn­ers and the learn­ing com­mu­nity. I also rec­og­nize par­al­lels to other areas of min­istry and ser­vice. It’s not so much about the skills and tools as the Spirit.

Edu­ca­tion requires an artist’s touch. In my jour­ney as a teacher I have come to see learn­ing as a work of art cre­ated by the learn­ing com­mu­nity. A suc­cess­ful artist pos­sesses a com­bi­na­tion of a love of the art, tools and tech­niques, exten­sive expe­ri­ence in mix­ing colours and paint­ing, and oppor­tu­ni­ties to share ideas together with other artists. I expe­ri­ence a sim­i­lar jour­ney as a teacher. While I began with a love of the art of learn­ing, I con­tinue to acquire strate­gies for teach­ing, expe­ri­ence in cre­at­ing learn­ing envi­ron­ments, and shar­ing through dia­logue with other edu­ca­tors.
Palette

The artist’s palette as a per­sonal sym­bol reminds me of the art and sci­ence of teach­ing. Artists pre­pare a vari­ety of colours on their palettes, based on their vision for the work. They know about the sci­ence of art, includ­ing what results would likely occur when mix­ing colours, the effect of pro­por­tion and line, and the tex­tures of dif­fer­ent strokes. They can pre­pare the appro­pri­ate brushes, can­vas, and paints. Yet no artist can pre­dict the exact out­come. It takes a cer­tain sense and spirit to respond to the can­vas. In the same way, the learn­ing com­mu­nity cre­ates the learn­ing expe­ri­ence together. While the teacher-artist may have skills to decide when to use which instruc­tional strate­gies, the stu­dents, other teach­ers, and the school envi­ron­ment also shape the learn­ing expe­ri­ence. Despite the best les­son plans, the vision that the teacher-artist had in mind may turn out very dif­fer­ently. The teacher’s role con­tributes to the learn­ing expe­ri­ence as a work of art, high­lights points of beauty, and iden­ti­fies areas that “work.” As the colours, shapes, and ideas flow into one, the learn­ing expe­ri­ence becomes a beau­ti­ful piece of art.

Don’t ya just hate that guy?

Published on February 2, 2010 by Will Loewen. Closed

I’m not really that artic­u­late in per­son.  I man­age to fool a lot of peo­ple because usu­ally when they are lis­ten­ing the most atten­tively, I’ve had a chance to write things down ahead of time.  I nor­mally only make sense when I’ve first sat down to edit and rearrange my oth­er­wise gar­bled thoughts.

I was worse as a teenager, more so in the pres­ence of pretty girls. When I wanted to be clever, I sounded weird.  What I wanted to be charm­ing, I was just awk­ward.  Then, as if I wasn’t doing a good enough job mak­ing myself look bad, when we would gather as a group of friends to watch movies, the guys on the screen, who were already sig­nif­i­cantly bet­ter look­ing than me, deliv­ered lines that made them sound clever, charm­ing and sensitive.

Now, as an adult I find myself still stum­bling on sim­i­lar inse­cu­ri­ties.  It should come as no sur­prise to you that I am inter­ested in the­ol­ogy and spir­i­tual mat­ters, and I hope to some­how earn at least part of my liv­ing in this field.  So, to sati­ate my inter­est I read books, I lis­ten to radio pro­grams and I attend sem­i­nars, etc.  In part also do this to see what the com­pe­ti­tion is doing.  It can be dis­heart­en­ing to see just how com­posed, con­fi­dent and artic­u­late they are, at least com­pared to me.

As for those roman­tic movies, the older and more mature I get and the more real life I live, the less cred­i­ble they become.  Nat­u­rally they are intended to be mind­less fun and an escape from real­ity, but numer­ous stud­ies show that they do in fact impact our per­cep­tions of what can and should hap­pen with regards to love.  If our expec­ta­tions in this area are affected, even a lit­tle bit, it can seri­ously impact our hap­pi­ness.  For­tu­nately, since that time, most of those girls have real­ized that they didn’t in fact want one of those kinds of guys and have set­tled for real guys.  Unfor­tu­nately, it was right around that time I had actu­ally made some strides towards becom­ing one of those types of guys.

When I see reli­gious pro­fes­sion­als doing well at their jobs, that should push me to become bet­ter myself or to get out of the busi­ness alto­gether.  But there are a few reas­sur­ing points I’ve learned.  When I lis­ten to a radio inter­view, it always sounds like the host is com­ing up with tough ques­tions off the top of her head as the con­ver­sa­tion goes on, and the expert guest is imme­di­ately giv­ing well thought out answers off the top of his head as well.  What isn’t obvi­ous though is that the host, with care­ful study and prepa­ra­tion, writes out those ques­tions weeks in advance and gives them to the guest ahead of time so that he has time to com­pile answers that he is sat­is­fied with.  Then, the two of them act as though their dis­cus­sion is a smooth and free-flowing con­ver­sa­tion, when in fact it is just as scripted as the romance movies I once watched so uncom­fort­ably.  It’s a win-win arrange­ment for them, since they both come out sound­ing artic­u­late and intel­li­gent, and the radio pro­gram is more inter­est­ing as a result.  If they are suc­cess­ful, I will run out to buy the author’s book, and I will con­tinue to lis­ten to the radio program.

Besides my pro­fes­sional inse­cu­ri­ties, lots of peo­ple (lay­folk and clergy alike) strug­gle in a sim­i­lar way with their own spir­i­tual con­vic­tions.  But in the same way that a boy­ish Leonardo di Caprio can alter one’s idea of true romance, a phe­nom­e­non that I call ‘sound bite spir­i­tu­al­ity’ can alter how we feel about our own reli­gious self-understanding.  Peo­ple are drawn to experts and pub­lic fig­ures with short, catchy and sim­ple answers to life’s pro­found spir­i­tual ques­tions.  But these ques­tions are ones that the human race have been strug­gling with since the begin­ning of time.  It’s wrong for the church to claim sole own­er­ship of the answers to these ques­tions but an overly sim­ple answer also insults any­one strug­gling with that ques­tion now, and any­one who’s strug­gled with them in cen­turies past.  What is it about our age that we are sud­denly able to solve these mys­ter­ies?  What was wrong with those who went before us, and why couldn’t they see the answer as clearly as we now do thanks to the old man with the British accent on the stereo?

The Chris­t­ian faith is a jour­ney.  Along that jour­ney it is nat­ural to face both hills and val­leys.  The hard­ships that we face don’t mean that we don’t belong on the jour­ney or that oth­ers are jour­ney­ing bet­ter than us.  We are allowed to strug­gle on our Jesus jour­ney.  Imme­di­ately sim­ple sound­ing solu­tions to our strug­gles should not be met with our shame or frus­tra­tion at not hav­ing been able to see the answer sooner, but rather with sus­pi­cion at why this per­son is speak­ing with such con­fi­dence when so many for so long have struggled.