Practices, programs, projects, and structures that lack rigorous attention to an informing philosophical foundation tend rarely to be effective over the long run. Lacking a philosophical base that informs practice assures that most educational enterprises will flutter from one technique, approach, or fad to another trying to find “what works.” That practice ensures a perpetual lack of direction, an inability to practice discernment, and a lack of guiding principles and values to inform and shape practice.

[Read more...]

I finally got around to watching a DVD from Netflix that’s been sitting on the coffee table for about a month (thank goodness for that “no late fees” policy!). The movie was House of D. In the movie a thirteen-year-old comes of age through loss, grief, and escape. As an adult, and a father, he returns to the place of his childhood in order to reconnect and move on.

[Read more...]

Eight years into the new millennium has diminished the novelty of that turn of the calendar. I can’t remember when was the last article or workshop I’ve seen with a reference to how to anticipate and address some concern “in the next millennium” or “in the new millennium.” And I, for one, am glad of it.

Reading history gives perspective and I try to read as much of it as I can. I finally got down the “to-read” books pile deep enough to pull out a book nine years in the waiting. And Robert Lacey’s The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the Turn of the First Millennium (New York: Little, Brown and Co., 1999) was worth the wait.

[Read more...]

What’s the difference between religious thinking and “religiosity”? Or, what’s the difference between faith and magical thinking? When I worked at a state mental hospital during my CPE it seemed rather easy to tell the difference in the “closed ward” where patients spent the first stage of their admittance. When a patient claimed to be Jesus Christ it was easy to identify that as delusional thinking. When a patient used religious language disconnected from the reality of their circumstance it seemed easy to diagnose “religiosity.” But what about for most of use church-going religiously committed (no pun intended) run-of-the mill believers? How do we distinguish authentic belief from magical thinking? What distinguishes prayer from wishful thinking?

[Read more...]

Margaret J. Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science ( San Francisco, CA: Berret-Koehler Publishers, 1999) is one of those books I picked up for a pull quote reference but which wound up as a “keeper” on my bookshelf. It’s a compact work (200 pages) that I return to on occasion and dip into for exploration or as a reminder of deep concepts.

By “new science,” Wheatley means the “new” branches of quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology that are overturning centuries-old models of science. The older science, reflecting the physics of Isaac Newton and the engineering principles developed in the industrial revolution, conceived of the universe as a kind of machine, with its various working parts animated by specific energy sources. It is a mechanistic model of the universe—and of business and, sad to say, congregational organizations—that remains with us today.

[Read more...]

There was a large ecumenical gathering in Rome two weeks ago to pray for Christian Unity and to attempt to thaw out the ecumenical “big chill” that has grown as a result of recent Vatican statements. I found the following article about the event very hopeful.

[Read more...]

Some time ago we posted a link to a great site called “I used to believe.” It’s a fun look at the naturally quirky world of children’s epistemology. We all used to believe something as children that we no longer do as adults. And certainly, continuing to leave behind naïve beliefs, unsophisticated notions and misunderstandings is a sign of intellectual and emotional maturity.

[Read more...]

Maybe it’s just my imagination, but I think I heard more voices than ever this year suggesting that we consider toning down the cultural excesses of Christmas gift-giving.  We’ve certainly not eliminated gift-giving in my world of family and friends, but it has become more modest in recent years.  Counterintuitively, Christmas has not become less important to us; if anything, the opposite is true, because it offers us time as family to be together.

[Read more...]

It seems that we have a tendency of falling in love with certain concepts now and again. Some of these concepts come and go, others are more pernicious. Some concepts become popular, then wane with time or over-familiarity. What I mean by “falling in love” is that people develop an uncritical romantic notion toward the concept. They love the sound of the word or phrase, love to use it often.

[Read more...]