A "difference that makes a difference"

Learning to do the Sermon on the Mount

Ok, the start of a series on the sermon on the mount. Not me explaining what it means. I'm not qualified to do that, no... I'm going to try and look at how we might go about learning how to live out a sermon-on-the-mount lifestyle.  That is, how we can practise that kind of life rather than nod wisely at some sound exposition.

So, how will I do this... well, I'm not sure... this will be an example of what I call in my blog strapline, "half baked thinking". But I hope that as I explore where these posts take me, then I (maybe even we) can learn something. 

What's guiding my thinking?  Well a while ago, I developed a learning process that I called Practice Centred Discipleship and I suggested that there were three recurring phases of such a discipleship Exploration, Experimentation and Explanation. So, I'm going to see if these ideas help me work out a way of learning.

Linked to that, I'm going to take some ideas that I've been working with in my day job (university lecturer) about a Scholarship of Practice.  Now this scholarship is, I think, a scholarship of attention rather than a scholarship of knowing. By that I mean, that I think learning owes more to what we pay attention than to what we know. Noticing things, paying attention to things said, attending to what is going on... all help learning more than knowing stuff.

Now, I think that there are three aspects of life to which we should pay attention if we wish to improve how we life our lives:

• an engagement with ideas
• a practise of inquiry
• a noticing of moment-by-moment relations

so, I'm going to use these 'methods' to help me learn how to live the sermon on the mount. I do hope that I haven't bored anyone rigid yet... I'll end this post here before I do and start the process in the next post.

Improv, improving and working with colleagues

Can learning about Improv theatre help people work well and positively in organisations? Oh yes!  An increasing hero of mine is Keith Johnstone. I' m just reading his book Impro for Storytellers in it he writes of some of the things he has noticed when getting groups of actors to tell stories together (contributing one word at a time or telling each other 'what happens next'), here are just three:

people avoid taking the story forward, preferring to just describe the scene

ever been in a meeting where everyone's just telling each other what the situation is... but avoiding actually working on what to do next?

people tend to resolve dangerous or difficult scenes with one big 'solution' "with one bound our hero was free!"

every been in a meeting where managers or participants tell you the big idea that will solve everything? Ever been in a meeting where a particular strategy was proposed as providing the best way forward?

people tend to be negative with their comments

every been in meetings where 'but' is the most common work, where participants tend to knock each others' ideas?

Now, ask yourselves a question... if you work in organisations, what would you do, say, ask about... just to improve any of the above situations by, say, 10% ...

... if you come up with an idea, then you've just taken the first step on the long journey of IMPROVement!

enticing isn't it? 

Forty years of discipleship!

It's just struck me that I've been a Christian for forty years...

and the depressing thing is how little I've progressed in Christian maturity. Oh yes, I can talk the talk (really quite impressively), but can I walk the Way... sigh how little progress I've made in becoming like Christ,

but there has been a little progress, so maybe I shouldn't be too depressed.

Anyway, these thoughts reminded me of something Peter Maiden said at a University Christian Union event, (30 years ago)

"Moses spent 40 years learning to be a somebody, 40 years learning to be a nobody and 40 years learning how God can use a somebody who's learned to be a nobody"

I love that, but fear that I'm no very far along the road!

Exploration

How have we learned of Space or the deeps of the sea or Antarctica?  Through those people who have explored them.  How then can we learn of the deep places of God?  Again, an answer is through our exploration.  Words like ‘wonder’, ‘maybe’ or ‘where’ exemplify the activities involved in exploration.  Those of us involved in facilitating discipleship therefore need to act and speak in ways that give space for others to wonder and explore.  We would want to avoid those actions and words that restrict learners to the right answer or the correct meaning of a text.  I am not saying here that there is no best way or correct interpretation merely that telling it as it is will restrict learners from appreciating it, contextualising and enacting it in their own lives.  I suspect that the cell, retreats, contemplation and soul friendship are mechanisms that currently exist to encourage exploration but I think that we can do more. We have all eternity to explore the infinity of God and I think that gives us some time for a few diversions.  Additionally, it should provoke in us a certain humility when we define what God is like or what (s)he requires of us!  However, diversions can become being lost and freedom of definition can become sloppy thinking – here again we see the need for community in learning for, dare I say it, availability and vulnerability.

Exploring who we can be

I suspect that if there is one psychological concept that I abhor more than all others it is the idea that we each have a personality. 

A bit surprised?

From a western point of view and, let's face it, psychology is very strongly influenced by western people, it would seem obvious that we have our own personality. It's a no brainer isn't it?  We take our personality for granted and would never doubt that we have our own personality.

Well, if you opened me up you wouldn't find a personality!  It isn't a thing that it exists.  Personality is a concept that we have developed over the years to make sense of our experience that people are, by and large, fairly consistent in the way they act.  Personality is a  metaphor, an assumption a construct.  It does not exist except in our talk about ourselves.

"OK, Caroline, I see your point (sort of) but why does it get you upset?  It's a pretty harmless idea"

What gets me upset, frustrated and angry is that people find themselves hemmed in by personality.  So, the shy person will behave in a shy way, the inarticulate person will keep quiet and the gregarious person will regret (occasionally) talking too much.  There are subtleties in this of course and there are debates and differences.  Are our personalities caused by our genes or our social context.  But, to a large extent, we are fixed in our personalities.  We can't escape from them.

OK, OK, I'm aware that there are some pretty subtle approaches to personality and our interaction with others and our potential to develop ourselves but nearly all of these ignore a wonderful set of 'tools' for creating new 'us'. 

In my last post about 'exploring' type learning I was writing about contemplative exploration in this post I want to mull over how we can explore physically and how that learning can take place and be encouraged.

A sweeping statement here - that doesn't do justice to the more subtle approaches to personality - but it'll do to help me get on to what I really want to write about.  Personality theories imply that our actions and who we are are generated from within us from a store of attributes that were either born into us or have been worked into us by our experiences.  This implication ignores two important points about Christian belief.

1. that who we are is determined not by our past but by our future. We are going to be perfect and we are gradually being transformed into that perfection (in my case, so slowly that I doubt that my friends can see it :-(
2. that, as Christians, our fullest expression of ourselves is not as individuals but as The Body of Christ, we are not working at our best until we are working as contributions to the ongoing, emerging, ever developing, yet to be completed body of Christ.

Now this is crucial, who I am, who I can be and what I can do is, to some extent created by you.  I do not create my actions on my own, you and I perform them together. That I talked to you about tennis owes as much to the fact that you mentioned Andy Murray (apols to non Brit readers) as to any internal tendency I might have to like talking about tennis.  That I was bold in venturing out owes much to your encouragement, that I thought of that idea is partly down to the way that the three of us were talking about a certain topic in a particular way.  Our actions are not our own, they are the product of ongoing conversations and co-ordinated actions.

So, you see, I can help you explore new possibilities of who you might be if I can only speak and act in ways that encourage or restrict you.  Children do it all the time.  They play act, pretend play... cops and robbers, doctors and nurses, friends, teachers.... from the earliest years they start to experiment with ways of talking, gradually learning the rules of our 'talking games' and so becoming competent talkers.

This is, I want to say the wondrous freedom that we can have to explore who we might become.  This blog, for example, is my attempt to playact my way into becoming a writer.  I find writing incredibly difficult ("Huh," you mutter under your breath, "we find your writing difficult too, Caroline") so I try to explore ways of writing on this blog... some poems, songs, stories, liturgies and rants....  But there is more... because who we are is performed socially, we can help each other to perform our new selves, we can help each other to try on a 'new us' (of course, this may be a vulnerable position we put ourselves in as we open up to others our aspirations of how we'd long to grow!).

You want to learn how to listen better?  I can help you practice that and give you 'helpful' feedback!  Or maybe you want to increase the frequency of your prayer times with God.. I can ask you how you're getting on, perhaps offer to say morning prayer with you, or come and look after the children whilst you get yourself an hour or so away. In conversations, I can question, doubt or encourage your actions.  I can role play different characters with whom you want to be on better relations.  Just being interested enough to ask after you would probably be a radical difference.  (come on, lets admit it, we're much more likely to ask after each other's health than asking after each other's learning!)

We can explore who we want to become and try out the journey towards that goal and that leads us into the third 'ex' of learning: experimentation.  more of that in a few days.

Exploration.. why explanations sometimes aren't enough

The Whole body

The picture hangs

The sculpture stands

The work of fingers

Eyes and hands

And I respond;

          I see

Perhaps I move around

to see

A brush in hand

          - the tiniest move

make more

          shadow, shape or shade

with the tiniest flick

a light or depth is made

and..

          I see

Perhaps I move around

          To see

And then there’s Pollack

On the ground

          Footsteps long

                   Feet, legs hands, arms

Perhaps a dance:

          Rhythmic flow?

          Angry stomping?

          Elegant sway?

His whole body pouring out his art.

          I see

Perhaps I move around

          To see

Perhaps “I see”

is not enough.

Exploring exploration

A little earlier today I had to come to terms with it...

you see I'd come up with this rather nice idea that there were three exes to learning and

... I really didn't know what on earth might be meant by exploring...

each time I tried to put something down it really came out like experimenting, hmm

so here goes, I'm going to try and explore what what exploratory learning might look like..

... if you're interested, I've just spent a little while looking at this post unable to get started, please be patient, I've got some words that I want to play with; I just can't get them into an order...

ok, I'll tell a few stories...

I think that Samuel was exploring when he heard God's voice in the night and thought that it was Eli calling him.  Notice how (eventually) Eli was able to help him.  Exploring involves seeking what God is saying to ME, NOW, in THIS place.

I suspect that Jonah was exploring when he was sitting in the fish and then, later as he sat sulking outside Nineveh.  Mind you, I don't think that his exploration was his own choice!  I wonder if, sometimes, we have exploration thrust upon us?

I think that Peter was exploring as he sat with the risen Jesus:  "Do you love me?  ... Do you love me? ... Do you even like me?" 

And Paul was exploring when he disappeared into Arabia.

Exploring involves dwelling with an issue, noticing effects and your response.  Recently, and not entirely to my choosing, I have been exploring success and failure.  I have been taken aback by how hurt, angry and frustrated I am and appalled at just how violently it comes out in my thoughts, thank goodness there usually aren't people to hear just what I want to say to them!  Exploration involves not hurrying by an issue (I don't suppose that it needs to be unpleasant... look at how often I return to the issue of learning in this blog.. oh that it rather unpleasant for you readers, oh.... :-/ but it's stimulating and intriguing to me). 

And that's why explanations (preaching) can be so destructive to discipleship. Sermons will tend to lay things out in a well organised package. Explanations give the answer and so risk us not needing to tarry awhile and find an answer for us.

A little more about Explanations, spiced with something about intentions and belief

Well I've just finished a chapter on discipleship in Dallas Willard's book The Divine Conspiracy. I think that it's taken me a couple of weeks... long old chapters our Dallas writes!  And frankly it was a little disappointing, I'm hoping that the next chapter on a discipleship curriculum is going to be better.

Willard makes great play on the importance of beliefs and intentions on our actions.  Now, I'm in danger here of overstating my case but I'm really not convinced about this.  But, of course, if Willard is correct about the importance of beliefs and intentions then that would make sense of teaching programmes in church being built around explanation and preaching.  For the explanations would lead to belief and linked to exhortations, which changed our intentions to follow and learn from Jesus, that would mean we would all be well on our way...

but does that sound convincing to you?  How many sermons can you remember that changed you around and changed your intentions as well as your beliefs? And having said that, did your actions actually change from there on?  Come on now, be honest!

I trivial example, which I think that I've mentioned before.

I'm overweight, badly overweight. Now, I believe two things (a) that I am unhealthily overweight and (b) that I know what I need to do to lose weight.  Furthermore, I strongly intend to lose weight.  Funnily enough, however, I'm not losing any weight yet. Perhaps I've stopped putting weight on but I'm not losing it yet.  I could go on and on with examples, perhaps I could tell you of how bad I am at getting down to write and how I try and try to improve that.  And I'm sure that you could furnish me with examples, serious and trivial, from your own life where your beliefs, intentions and actions just haven't fitted together.  Now this is serious stuff for, as Willard correctly and powerfully points out, we are apprentices of Jesus and not scholars about him.  Our discipleship is 'measured' in the resemblance of our actions to his not in our head-knowledge about him.  In terms of our discipleship, explanation just doesn't scratch where our lives are itching.

Why is this?

Well one explanation is that there is no direct link between our thoughts and our actions and, furthermore, there is a very doubtful link between our intentions (will) and our thoughts.  This may sound a bit surprising to most of us educated to believe in a rational mind and the value of thinking before acting!  Those sorts of ideas owe much of their origin to Rene Descartes and his famous aphorism "I think therefore I am".  The idea that has taken hold is that there is a dualism, a separation between thought and action.  The real me thinks and in that thinking forms the speech actions and physical actions that our bodies - servants of our thoughts - then perform.  Now if that's true then it would make sense to design a form of learning that affected our thoughts (beliefs) and will (the linking of thoughts and actions).  Explanation (or preaching) would be a perfectly logical way of communicating and supporting learning.  But

It's perfectly arguable to say that our thoughts don't control our actions - e.g. my weight and dieting problems! :-(  An alternative logic suggests that our actions are always socially performed.  You can only understand our actions in the light of the preceding and succeeding comments or actions.  We could say that the authorship of our actions is shared with the people we're with. From this perspective, our actions are like an improvised performance always new, always being performed again for the first time.  Yes we contribute to what happens around us but that is not the whole story; others, conversational partners, social structures, fashions, events ... all these shape and co-create our actions every bit as much as our thoughts and intentions. 

And that, I would suggest, is one of the reasons that explanation and preaching doesn't scratch where we Christians itch, for their logic is based on an assumption that we are individuals, individual followers of Jesus, linked together in groups by geography, taste and theological preferences.  But we are NOT individual followers of Jesus.  We are the body of Christ and I do not think that we have even begun to unpack the wonderful, emancipatory, holy power of that 'truth'.

The three exes of learning: explanation

As a general rule, I would urge that you never trust any teacher who says that there are three-of-anything, especially if they start with the same letter or syllable.  ...but, of course, I'm different, so I'll say that there are three domains of learning

• Explanation
• Exploration
• Experimentation

Neat, huh?

The trouble is that I reckon that there's a fourth domain, intimacy (and I can't find another ex- word for that! :-(  but never mind.  Intimacy is that process and moment when we draw near to our God, when we hear His voice (or not) but somehow know that He is close by and that somehow, our life will never be quite the same again.  I have not explanation for this, no clever words to teach you how to do it (I doubt that you need them)...

but now on to my three exes!  tada!!

Let's do the most difficult one first.  It's the one that is the most common in the churches that I've been to. although I suspect that it might be less dominating in other traditions.  It is potentially the most dangerous to our learning journey and yet it is championed by almost all clerical errors.  Explanation, usually done by one person, who's spent a long time studying and who knows about whatever he (or she) is explaining.  What's the danger of explanation?  I hear you ask (well I don't actually, 'cos I suspect that you've read the previous post (rant) and so can guess what I think the problem with explanations are.

There are three attendant dangers to explanatory teaching/learning. They do not mean that explanation is unnecessary or that it is bad or that explainers are bad people.  It's just that whatever we do, there are always unintended consequences.  We only ever own half of our actions, the other half is created by those around us and explanations have a way of provoking unhealthy responses from our action-creating-partners.  So the four problems:

1. If you watch any soaps on TV, you may notice that no scene lasts more than about 90 seconds. This is because some clever researcher has found that most of us can't concentrate on one thing for more than about 90 seconds.  So why preachers, oops sorry, explainers think that we can listen for 15 or 20 minutes (or even 5 minutes for the quick preachers, oops sorry explainers) to one voice, often without any visual cues or support, is either folly or arrogance.
2. Explanations have a tendency to provide people with answers and nothing, but nothing kills off learning quite like answers.  If you have an answer that looks suspiciously like the answer then you just don't need to do any more learning do you?  And before any putative explainer says "But I don't preach, sorry, explain like that... sorry but you don't control how you're listened to! You may studiously try to avoid giving answers, but that does not say... in fact I'd almost certainly predict that the majority of your listeners will attribute to you the giving of the answer.  Now of course they may disagree with your answer, but answer they will make it and that'll be the end of the learning.
3. Recently, a friend from church came up to me and asked when I was next preaching.  She told me that she always looked forward to my sermons.  Vain pleasure at this complement was only just covered by my discomfort at the thought of another sermon.  I told her that I didn't enjoy preaching, except that I'm an appalling show off, that I thought it was a waste of time and that I suspected that people wouldn't ever remember the two or three questions with which I always finished my sermons.  "But everyone enjoys your sermons, Caroline they're fun but they're also challenging" "that's just the point," I replied, "They're fun, and folk settle back in their pews for a few minutes stimulating, thoughtful, funny talk and then walk away without considering the questions that they were supposed to take away and ponder of the following week.
4. The final trouble with explanations is that they have been such an ubiquitous form of teaching over the last 100-150 years that most of us have no idea what other ways of learning their might be. Explanations drown out other learning methods.  They squeeze out other learning contexts like bindweed squeezes the life out of plants in the garden... and bind week looks quite nice, just like a sermon. 

Is there nothing good about explanations?

..well, occasionally they can

• open our eyes to see new things
• start new and different conversations
• disturb our comfortable passiveness

but to do so the explanations have to be

• located and shaped by the listener's experience and learning needs, not some formal, top-down teaching programme.
• judged and used according to the difference they make to listeners' actions, not their head knowledge
• followed by inquiry and ongoing engagement at a level that sees the difference that is made, that encourages progress, re-explaining and extending bits that are needed as disciples' contexts change

(that all sounds like a conversation rather than a monologue to me)

and I'm afraid that I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that has happened in my life and I've listened to some of the great preachers of the last 30 years.

I'll get onto some of the more positive forms of learning in the next few days...

Preaching and the making of disciples

I don't like sermons.

..which can make life just a bit of a paradox when I'm asked to preach but there we are, a trendy postmodern like me can handle paradox (so I hide behind one whenever an inconsistency or contradiction comes my way! :-)

So, why don't I like preaching.  Essentially because I believe that it is antithetical to learning and I believe that the Christian's prime calling is to be a disciple (i.e. a learner).  "But" you exclaim, "how can people learn if they haven't heard?" ..or some such paraphrase of the apostle Paul.

Learning is a relational activity.  Learning is about going on in relation with others; it's a process of being able to take what others say and add or develop that into action or words.  So, if we want to learn and foster learning within the Christian family then we will look at what sort of relations create what sort of relations.  Certain ways of relating will further learning. Other ways, however well and prayerfully intentioned, will damage learning.  Preaching damages learning and so it damages discipleship.

The Brazilian educationalist, Paulo Friere, challenged what he called a banking type of learning, where teachers transferred something called knowledge into empty vessels - the learners.  He typified the relations in such a form of education as being subject-object relations, where the teacher was the active subject and the learner was rendered a passive object.  His main argument was that such learning was oppressive, giving huge power to the teacher (or leader) and leaving the learner in a dependent relationship to that teacher/leader. He illustrated this by reference to revolutionary movements in Latin America.  He had a further point.  These kind of relations just did not foster learning; they did not enable to the learner to be emancipated (or empowered) into their own learning and self-determined action.

My argument against sermons is this... that whatever the intentions of the preacher (and I'm sure that many preachers will try to point out that sermons are not lectures or simple teaching activities) they create relations of passivity amongst the vast majority of any congregation.  Maybe that's the fault of the congregation members - I don't know - but who we are, and the learning we do, is like an improvised performance created together with those around us, with whom we are in relation. Think of it like a dance, if our dance partner moves one way, then we will follow or the dance comes to an end.  It is the same with learning, if one travels as the active teacher then others will be rendered as passive 'learners'.

It doesn't have to be this way, there are other ways of learning and we can all contribute to learning relations that change us and the world we make. I've blogged about learning loads of times (forgive me if I've repeated myself) but to me, this is crucial.  The Church has, for too long, had converts, communicants, adherents or the faithful.  Too often, we have mentioned disciple in the same breath as discipline and obedience.  That's not wrong but it misses out on the wonderfully emancipatory potential of the gospel; that wonderful, learning pilgrimage from here and now through eternity... everyday a new opportunity to learn a new way of being, the journey where we have all eternity to explore infinity. 

hmmm, a rant I'm afraid... and I fear another series on learning coming upon me