A common understanding of learning is that we get an expert to do one of two things to us (a) transfer their expertise to us or (b) guide us to a place where we can share their expertise. When we start to venture into unknown areas in academia we tend to call that 'research'. I think that this is a very unhelpful divide within the field of learning. Many of us tend to talk more now of 'Inquiry' so as to bridge this gap and also the supposed gap between research, learning and practice. I'm waffling a bit about this because the kind of issues I've been saying that we need to learn through will take us into areas where there are no experts to 'teach' us, where we will have to create rather than discover and so they are areas of practice, of performance. How can we learn in this way?
I've mentioned, a couple of times, that I think sailing provides a really helpful metaphor for the kind of learning that we must do within the wider church family. When you are sailing a dinghy there are various things going on that can tell you what's happening. There are levers and ropes and movements that have to be adjusted so as to get the best out of your boat. Whilst you can read about these things in a book; it is only out on the water that you can really develop the skills, concentration and intuition that enable you to respond quickly and appropriately to how the wind is working with your boat. One of the signs that your sailing skills are developing is that you find yourself making less dramatic changes. You start anticipating, your adjustments to the ropes and tiller become much more subtle - perhaps unnoticeable to others. You spot an inside 'tell-tale' flicking around and you pull the tiller ever so slightly towards yourself.. the boat adjusts to being on the wind and you can feel it pick up speed.
One of my points here is that you never stop learning, because you are learning to sail today (and that is different to the way you sailed yesterday). Some skills stay the same, but you have to 'learn' how to use those skills today, in today's wind, with today's water/waves/tide. It's never the same, it's always a learning experience.
And that is what we need to do as we learn to do Christian Community today in an alienated world. The ways we did it before will not work now. We are in new worlds of instant communication that mean that what happens in New Hampshire can be of immediate importance to people in Nigeria. Diversity is just so much more immediate now than it used to be, it's almost as if ICT provides an accelerator pedal to that which helps or upsets us.
To give an example; I have found over the last year or so that people from different Christian traditions have huge amounts to offer me. One of the avenues for this blessing to me has been the blog world. And yet there has been some pain as well. Recently, several of the sites that I visit have had posts scoring points against my own tradition (Evangelical). Whilst I have recognised the insight of the criticisms, I have found myself hurt. Often I have wanted to say that "we're not all like that", "you've created a stereotype that's not relevant nowadays" or "Yes, and don't your traditions have sillinesses as well?" My point is that the speed of communications means that things people said before to their friends in private are now heard by a wider audience. The 'tell-tales' are flapping and we are going to need to adjust the way we label and caricature each other. We are going to need to learn ways of handling our differences in less defensive ways. (Oh, and I do me WE!)
As we learn to do new ways of church; when will it be appropriate to 'take' new folk back to the main church meetings? When will individual conversations and shared spiritual moments not be adequate to the building of the the Body of Christ? When will my counsel to a non-churchy friend as to how to fit within a particular church family become an oppressive colonisation of their lives with a particular lifestyle rather than a tactical graciousness? When will my desire for a more monastic spirituality become a barrier between myself and my friends?
I just don't know the answer to questions like these, and I'm pretty sure that the answer in one context will be different to another. And I also suspect that the ways that I've learnt to listen to God will need to develop so that I can hear Him in new ways. Will I get it wrong? Well, getting it wrong is not in the future tense! I already do get it wrong! I think that spiritual-direction (or in Celtic Christian tradition - soul friendship) is important here, but not in a formal way - the nature of conversations, day-to-day friendships will need to develop (again the Northumbria Community would talk about this as being vulnerable and available). For me, at least, that is going to require me to develop new kinds of relations, with much less divide between the spiritual and the everyday.
As I write the above, I find that I'm noticing a sense, that I must get on with it - this learning - that, like learning to sail I must at some point stop the reading (and blogging) and get on with it, learning (in the moment) to trim my 'sails' so as to keep moving well.
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