Tag: storytelling

Religious Life

In her article “Creating a Spiritual World for Children to Inhabit,” Karen-Marie Yust talks about children’s formation and the role of practices, rituals, and ideas. She addresses especially how repetition enforces learning. She takes a helpful example.

An African American toddler boy who repeatedly watches cartoon videos in which the “good guys” with light-colored skin always beat the “bad guys” with dark-colored skin concludes from this observation that light-skinned people are good and dark-skinned people are bad. (A Caucasian child comes to a similar conclusion.) When he is four or five and becomes aware of his own skin color, he will likely experience a tension between his sense of himself as good and his cultural observation that dark-colored skin belongs to bad guys. His white peers will also be more likely to label him as bad when trouble erupts on the playground.

This also applies to gender-images. As part of the childhood culture those experiences that they see in “the adult world” are then “played out” or “tried on.” And here comes the connection to the Religious Life.

When adults act as if religious education is mainly a tool for children’s moral development, children quickly catch on to the irrelevance of religious culture for the grown-up world. They have no incentive for committing themselves to a particular spiritual identity on adolescence if faith is portrayed by adults as something one shed with childhood.

(The Article appeared in Family Ministry, Vol. 18, No. 4, Winter 2004)

Stories We Tell

In the 1930s an anthropologist Morris Olper recorded that among an Apache group of southern New Mexico, a person who had not acted ethically would be asked, “How could you do that? Didn’t you have a grandfather to tell you stories?” The spiritual and religious life depends on the stories you choose to write and tell and those we do not.

Sandy Sasso writes about her books and the importance of storytelling in an article called “The Role of Narrative in the Spiritual Formation of Children” in Family Ministry vol. 19, no. 2, Summer 2005.

Search Institute

Search Institute® is an independent, nonprofit, nonsectarian organization committed to helping create healthy communities for every young person. Because we believe that “all kids are our kids,” we create books and other materials that welcome and respect people of all races, ethnicities, cultures, genders, religions, economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and abilities. Our Mission: To provide leadership, knowledge, and resources to promote healthy children, youth, and communities.

Search Institute: 50 Years of Discovering What Kids Need to Succeed | Search Institute.

Of special interest at Search Institute are the well known “Developmental Assets.” The Developmental Assets are 40 “qualities essential to raising successful young people.”

Developmental Disability Ministry

Friendship Ministries is a not-for-profit organization that exists to help churches and organizations around the world share God’s love with people who have intellectual disabilities.

Friendship Ministries.

LDM equips the Church to minister with persons who are mentally impaired. Through innovative programs, we evangelize, develop relationships, model servanthood, and disciple leaders

LDM began as an independent ministry serving the Lutheran Church. However, we understand that the mission of LDM is much larger than any single denomination. We are available to assist any Christian congregation to start intentional programs for people that are mentally impaired. Our programs teach the basics of the Christian faith as revealed in God’s Holy Scripture. As Christians, we are saved by God’s grace through Jesus Christ.

LDM.

The Myth of Positive Thinking

I came across this via orvitinn.com. Watching this video led my to www.thersa.org which describe themselves as:

For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress.  Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action.

Child of God

My name is not “Those People.”
I am a loving woman, a mother in pain,
giving birth to the future, where my babies
have the same chance to thrive as anyone.

My name is not “Inadequate.”
I did not make my husband leave –
he chose to, and chooses not to pay child support.
Truth is though, there isn’t a job base
for all fathers to support their families.
While society turns its head, my children pay the price.

My name is not “Problem and Case to Be Managed.”
I am a capable human being and citizen, not a client.
The social service system can never replace the
compassion and concern of loving grandparents,
aunts, uncles, fathers, cousins, community –
all the bonded people who need to be
but are not present to bring children forward to their potential.

My name is not “Lazy, Dependent Welfare Mother.”
If the unwaged work of parenting,
homemaking and community building were factored
into the Gross National Product,
My work would have untold value. And why is it that mothers whose
Husbands support them to stay home and raise children
Are glorified – and why don’t they get called lazy and dependent?

This is a beginning of a poem by Julia K. Dinsmore. Her book took me back to my short experience in Detroit. The injustice, the lie called the American Dream, the difference between neighborhoods, the blatant racism, the systematic violence, the corrupt system, and the working poor stuck in a cycle of poverty, all is there in Mrs Dinsmore’s poetic memoirs or at least I sense it there.

Thoughts after reading the book My Name is Child of God … Not “Those People.”

Icelandic Unitarians

From its beginnings in 1886 until its gradual decline following World War II, nearly thirty Icelandic Unitarian congregations were organized in Western Canada, the Upper Midwest and Washington state. At its peak in the 1930s, there were eighteen active churches and preaching stations.

via Icelandic Unitarians.

The influence Unitarians had in Iceland and the number of Icelanders in North America that became Unitarians is not well known. Here is an attempt to give some overview.

Annals of Religion: Project Trinity : The New Yorker

‘It was the riots in Detroit, in Newark, both in ’67—that was what shook me,” he recounted. “I said to myself, ‘I have to have a theology that speaks to the hurt in my community. I want a theology that would empower people to be more creative. To be just as aggressive as they are in the riots, but more constructive.’

via Annals of Religion: Project Trinity : The New Yorker.

An important article about Black Theology, Wright and Obama.

Death with dignity: the ultimate human right?

The medical establishment’s narrow view of there being only one way to handle the dying patient–by using every last resource available to try to save her or him–has greatly hindered the quality of our deaths. Physicians are trained to believe that they have done their job only if every last measure is taken, regardless of what value this saps from the patient’s quality of life. This is the model by which the medical establishment measures its success.

What is needed is a paradigm shift in the educational curriculum of medical schools. No one can place value on what any individual considers to be “quality of life” because we all have different bodily functions that we consider more important than others. What one person considers an extraordinary means of intervention, another may see as typical. Furthermore, what is extraordinary at one point in history isn’t necessarily extraordinary at another time.

via Death with dignity: the ultimate human right? – The Popular Condition – Brief Article – Editorial | Humanist | Find Articles at BNET.

The Alban Institute

If you want to move the world, move a congregation. The Alban Institute was founded in 1974 as a major resource for American congregations facing the challenges of a changing society. While today’s challenges are even more pressing than they were three decades ago, the opportunities have never been clearer for congregations to be vital communities of faith, health, and leadership. Alban stands at the forefront of knowledge and experience regarding congregational vitality and positive trends across denominations and faith traditions. Our work is helping shape the strong congregations of tomorrow.

via The Alban Institute – About Alban.

God and the Digestive System

Luther suffered from lifelong constipation and urine retention. Thus, “In this creative moment the tension of nights and days of meditation found release throughout his being – and nobody who has read Luther’s private remarks can doubt that his total being always included his bowels.” Thus, for Erikson, there is something profoundly physiological in Luther’s new understanding of God as one who is “no longer lurking in the periphery of space and time,” but is rather “moving from inside” of us, and is thus, in a very real sense, “what works in us.”

From “The Soul as the ‘Coreness’ of the Self” by Donald Capps.

Pewless by Martin E. Marty

This spring a certain Christian layperson has been criticized for not exiting his local church when he disagreed with something his pastor preached.

The experts on the subject have been, as far as I can tell, media personnel who never go to church, do not know what sermons are for, and have not experienced lively congregational participation; people who value fidelity very little and church hopping and sermon shopping very highly; those who have political stakes in their judgment; and people who pay no attention to the contexts of messages.

via The Christian Century.

Preaching as Reimagination

It is not that the church’s theological absolutes are no longer trusted, but that the old modes in which those absolutes have been articulated are increasingly suspect and dysfunctional. That is because our old modes are increasingly regarded as patriarchal, hieararchic, authoritarian, and monologic.

Walter Brueggeman asks how this affects our way of preaching in “Preaching as Reimagination.”

The cost of short-term missions

While on the phone, I asked her what she thought of those groups. Her answer might surprise you: “Everyone knows,” she said, “That short term missions benefit the people who come, not the people here.”

Is that true? If so, then thousands of people are raising millions of dollars each year to do something not for others, but for themselves. Are we fooling ourselves by pretending these trips help people when they are really just an excuse to see a foreign country? If our good works are not doing good, why do them?

via catapult magazine The cost of short-term missions. The original article is to be found on pdf at www.ajshonduras.org/joannsarticle.pdf.

The Theology of the Crumbs

The second symptom of the illness of man’s faith stems from relationship among fellow human beings: The Politics of Marginalization; more forcefully, Ang Politika ng Pagkamanhid.   The Rich Man did not mind Lazarus, covered with wounds and praying for mere crumbs that fall from his table.  There was a great chasm between them, even,though Lazarus was just at the Rich Man’s door.  Because the Rich Man was already comfortable, his world no longer accounted for Lazarus.  Farther and farther, every single day, araw-araw, until every single day reached forever at death, and the chasm became permanently unbridgeable.  Man responds to a similar situation every single day; a tap on the car window for every street children begging for coins; an absent nodding of the head for a lola on the umpteenth retelling of the story of her life; bribing for one’s convenience.  In a sense, this politics of marginalization is necessary to the economics of affluence.  Once man starts serving mammon, one can no longer be present to the people around him.

via THE THEOLOGY OF THE CRUMBS.

Islam

Another visit during my stay in Detroit was to a mosque in Dearborn and a visit to an American Arab museum. The fact that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs is obvious but very often forgotten. The website www.discoverislam.com offers some helpful information about the faith. In the context of the US, a fatwa from July 2005 is very important:

Islam strictly condemns religious extremism and the use of violence against innocent lives. There is no justification in Islam for extremism or terrorism. Targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is haram – or forbidden – and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not “martyrs.”
The Qur’an, Islam’s revealed text, states: “Whoever kills a person [unjustly]…it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind.” (Qur’an, 5:32)

Prophet Muhammad said there is no excuse for committing unjust acts: “Do not be people without minds of your own, saying that if others treat you well you will treat them well, and that if they do wrong you will do wrong to them. Instead, accustom yourselves to do good if people do good and not to do wrong (even) if they do evil.” (Al-Tirmidhi)

via Fatwa against Terror (PDF).