110 (The Wager)

Published on February 8, 2010 by Paul Loewen. 0 Comments

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.

18 (Job Reference)

Published on February 1, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

When you apply for a job, you need a ref­er­ence. Usu­ally this is some­one in a posi­tion of author­ity, and some­one who knows you quite well. If they agree to be your ref­er­ence, it means they’re will­ing to praise you up and down when they’re called by your poten­tial boss. I’ve had the chance to be a ref­er­ence for some of the Youth at Dou­glas Men­non­ite Church, and it’s a fun expe­ri­ence. You get to tell some­one about how much you like some­one, expound­ing on all their awe­some traits.

Now pic­ture a dif­fer­ent set­ting: instead of two peo­ple con­vers­ing over the phone, it’s the Almighty and the Devil stand­ing in the same room. They’re hav­ing a con­fer­ence. And before you even know it, the Almighty brings up your name. For some rea­son, you get a glimpse into this moment. Me? You whis­per, Why’d you have to bring up lit­tle ol’ me? Fear runs straight to your toes — you’re wor­ried about the biggest and most valu­able ref­er­ence you’ve ever had.

A char­ac­ter ref­er­ence from the Almighty.

Rec­og­nize the sce­nario? Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. Here’s what the Almighty had to say about a char­ac­ter whose name, coin­ci­den­tally, is Job. “Have you con­sid­ered my ser­vant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blame­less and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil.”

If Job had any idea what was going on in the hal­lowed halls of heaven, I’m sure his jaw would have dropped. Lit­tle ol’ me? he might have asked. I mean, I know I try my best…

That’s pos­si­bly the best ref­er­ence I’ve ever heard, and it just so hap­pens to be from the char­ac­ter wit­ness that knows Job like no other.

Put your name here: “Have you con­sid­ered my ser­vant ______?”

What comes next?

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

No Dual Citizenship

Published on January 30, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

pasport1Last week Greg Boyd spoke at Park View Men­non­ite Church in Har­rison­burg, about his book The Myth of a Chris­t­ian Nation. His main idea was that there is the king­dom of the world, and the king­dom of God and that they are dif­fer­ent. You can tell because the king­dom of God on earth looks like Jesus. So if you ever want to know if some­thing world king­dom or God king­dom, just check whether it looks like Jesus or not.

The Anabap­tist tra­di­tion has cen­tred on this fairly closely, his­tor­i­cally. Boyd urged the Men­non­ites in the audi­ence to keep this voice strong, while at the same time chal­leng­ing to be flex­i­ble and open on every­thing else that is not about God’s king­dom. A chal­lenge, to say the least.

He empha­sized how God’s king­dom is inclu­sive, rad­i­cally inclu­sive, so much that the Matthews (tax col­lec­tors) and Simons (zealots who “some­times assas­si­nated tax col­lec­tors”) could fol­low Jesus together in the same group of dis­ci­ples, dia­logu­ing, inter­act­ing, and focus­ing on liv­ing the God’s king­dom –kind of life.

As fol­low­ers of Jesus, we can have dif­fer­ent opin­ions and view­points on pol­i­tics and the way the world should go, but ulti­mately we are gath­ered together as one in the king­dom of God, which takes pri­or­ity over all other issues.

So this is my cit­i­zen­ship. I need to remem­ber this and not be con­fused while liv­ing in a ‘for­eign’ king­dom of this world. I was reminded that while I can dia­logue and chal­lenge and engage the world king­dom, my iden­tity and pri­mary alle­giance lies in God’s king­dom. If I choose to fol­low Jesus, I give up my cit­i­zen­ship to the world. There is no dual cit­i­zen­ship here.

34 litres later

Published on January 25, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

I was walk­ing across the park­ing lot, its slush-covered sur­face mak­ing the cart bounce.

“I’ll grab that one before you put it back,” a man called out to me.

“Sorry,” I responded, “I’ve got one of the tokens.”

“No prob­lem,” he chuck­led, fol­low­ing me to the carts. I pushed it in, then clicked the holder out, the token falling to the ground in the process. “Is it a good cart?”

“Didn’t give me any trou­bles; I didn’t run into any­thing,” I laughed. He laughed out loud, and we said good­bye in the same tone of voice you speak in when you say good­bye to a life­long friend.

Three min­utes later, I had pulled in to fill up our car at Co-op.

“What do you need today?” the guy asked me.

“Fill reg­u­lar,” I responded, and he pro­ceeded to fill it up. He then made casual con­ver­sa­tion about the car, my iPod, and a few other items. By the time I drove away (how long does it take to pump 34 litres?) we, too, sounded like best friends.

Maybe you’ve had expe­ri­ences like this. Maybe you haven’t. Either way, it reminds me that we’re not iso­lated. We’re not lit­tle islands in a big ocean. We’re trav­el­ing down this jour­ney called life with many peo­ple near us. They may be head­ing in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, but our roads can cross for a sec­ond. More than any­thing, I learned today how a sim­ple con­ver­sa­tion can bring a smile to my face, can make the day a lit­tle brighter.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

Truth and Lies…

Published on January 20, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

InventionI watched “The Inven­tion of Lying” the other night. Despite the trite descrip­tions of “the man in the sky” and the obvi­ous Moses-mocking with pizza boxes in either hand, the movie prompted some inter­est­ing thoughts on the nar­ra­tives humans tell our­selves and the role that those nar­ra­tives play.

The main char­ac­ter, Mark, lives in an alter­nate real­ity where peo­ple can only speak the truth in full, com­plete with embar­rass­ing an d hurt­ful details. One day, he dis­cov­ers that he can speak some­thing that “is not” while at the bank. He starts out by using this new abil­ity for his ben­e­fit, but soon real­izes that some­times speak­ing what is not can bring hope, hap­pi­ness, and encour­age­ment to oth­ers, includ­ing telling his sui­ci­dal neigh­bour that “every­thing is going to be alright.”

In his book “Help­ing,” Edgar H. Schein describes the cul­tural norms and social lan­guage Helpingwe fol­low in help­ing one another, includ­ing sto­ries, roles, and nar­ra­tives as depicted in the film. In fact, he uses the term “the­atre” as a metaphor for the pat­terns of human inter­ac­tion that we depend upon to keep func­tion­ing socially. Mark’s use of these nar­ra­tives even in his world that usu­ally doesn’t fol­low them pushes him up in social sta­tus and admi­ra­tion of oth­ers. Aware­ness of these nar­ra­tives and their emo­tional impact can empower us to help and be helped and to avoid caus­ing hurt through our help­ing attempts.

I’m reminded of the pas­sage in Eph­esians describ­ing unity in the body of Christ, and the growth of fol­low­ers of Christ, “speak­ing the truth in love” along the way. This requires an inves­ti­ga­tion of the nar­ra­tives we use and to what extent they con­sti­tute “truth” while at the same time “in love.” Words of encour­age­ment, affir­ma­tion, and hope do not nec­es­sar­ily stem from what “is not” but from the truth framed in Christ-like love for others.

By the end of the film, Mark real­izes that lying holds no appeal when with some­one he loves. Instead, he learns to look for the affirm­ing truths in oth­ers and to speak those in place of truths that hurt. Not bad for a sim­ple comedy.

Re-Think

Published on January 20, 2010 by Paul Loewen. Closed

Jesus, the Son of God, to God, the Father in Heaven.

I always am grate­ful for you, because you have sus­tained me and car­ried me through so many tri­als and temp­ta­tions, through pain and dif­fi­cul­ties. You have given me power and per­se­ver­ance when it was nec­es­sary, and deliv­ered me from the grasp of death.

Because of this, it would be within my power to tell you what you should do, but instead I’m appeal­ing to you on the basis of love. I, as Jesus – your slain and res­ur­rected Son – appeal to you for my sons and daugh­ters, who have put their faith in me and in my power. For­merly they were sin­ners, now they have been redeemed by grace. I am send­ing them to come before you, so that you, too, can expe­ri­ence the joy I have expe­ri­enced. I am not forc­ing you, or com­mand­ing you, but giv­ing them to you with a smile on my face. While they used to be sep­a­rated from you, it was only for a time so that they could come to you in full­ness – not as a sin­ner but as a redeemed child. I love them with all my heart. So, as your Son and part­ner, wel­come them as you have always wel­comed me.

As they have dis­obeyed and done things wrong, I will step in and pay the penalty for them. Know­ing that you will wel­come them and go fur­ther by lav­ish­ing your love, joy, and bless­ings on them, I thank you.

This let­ter is based on the for­mat and out­line of Phile­mon. When I wrote it, it blew my mind to think about Jesus’ rela­tion­ship to us in this way. It made me seri­ously re-think things. I hope it does for you as well.

Tak­ing Heart,

Paul Loewen

Space Discoveries

Published on January 13, 2010 by Cheryl Woelk. Closed Tags: , , .

As the new year begins, I find myself reflect­ing on the year that has passed and plan­ning for the year to come. Like many peo­ple, I’m sure. Set­ting goals and res­o­lu­tions, renew­ing com­mit­ments and promis­ing to change usu­ally come to mind.

Recently, though, I’ve been think­ing about my need for space. Prompted by a study of Barry Hart’s “Peace­build­ing Wheel” in rela­tion­ship to peace edu­ca­tion in a class last year, the con­cept of phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and rela­tional space con­tin­ues to come to my attention.

I know that I need phys­i­cal space. I real­ized the extent of my claus­tro­pho­bia in Korea on the packed 11pm under­ground trains where my breath­ing was inter­rupted by the push of peo­ple against me. What does it mean, though, to have emo­tional and rela­tional space? How does that relate to time?

In the last year, I expe­ri­enced the loss of a good friend. Through the grief process, I’m start­ing to under­stand the need for emo­tional space. While I rarely give myself the free­dom to just feel what I feel, I see the neg­a­tive impacts this lack of space has on me and the peo­ple close to me. When I do give myself space to grief, to lis­ten to my feel­ings and how my body is telling me it needs me to lis­ten, I come to a sense of release and renewal. If I have emo­tional space, the griev­ing process can con­tinue in healthy and life-giving ways.

The rela­tional con­cept of space cre­ates a place for friend­ships and con­nec­tions to be nur­tured. When I have my to-do list and I am so busy check­ing off on thing and the next, being pro­duc­tive, I more than likely will miss the nuances of my spouse’s facial expres­sions and for­get to ask how his day has gone. I tend to rush out of the stu­dent lounge after say­ing hi to a few from my class to get back to my office and “get things done” rather than sit together with hon­esty and pres­ence. Rela­tional space draws me into the lives of oth­ers, and makes their sto­ries my own. It cre­ates the oppor­tu­nity for authen­tic encounters.

So per­haps this year my res­o­lu­tion is not doing some­thing new, but let­ting go and cre­at­ing space. I seek to focus less on doing and more on being. In some ways, it’s eas­ier to resolve to add more com­mit­ments and promises to my sched­ule than to hon­estly reflect in space which may frighten and threaten me with its empti­ness. I find it more dif­fi­cult to stop, release, and be present. I sense, though, that Hart’s “Peace­build­ing Wheel” has some­thing that I’m miss­ing as one who seeks to cre­ate peace. This year, I’d like to dis­cover some space.