Archive - Oct 2015
October 31st
The Roads to #DigiWriMo
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/31/2015 - 09:29For the past several years during the month of November, I’ve often participated in National Novel Writing Month. #NaNoWriMo. Over the years I’ve completed two first drafts of novels, and worked on several others. I’ve written the 1,666 words a day to get to 50,000 words for the month. I’ve had friends act as readers of draft, and gotten feedback from them.
It has been a valuable writing exercise, and I enjoyed meeting some of the other #NaNoWri participants and write-ins and dinners, but I’ve never gone back and edited the novels, sought to publish them, or shared them with a wider audience.
In January of this year, I participated in a couple of MOOCs. One was on the poetry of Walt Whitman. It was part of a series, and I later participated in one on Emily Dickinson. They would good courses, but I felt even more disconnected from the participants than I did with #NaNoWriMo.
I also took a course on using Moodles to set up a MOOC. It was very helpful on the technology side; how to configure and administer a MOOC. The community was much more vibrant, and while it wasn’t a focus of the course, we did drift into discussions of pedagogy. It was there that I learned about connectivism, which led me to participate in another MOOC, a different sort of MOOC, a connectivistic MOOC called #Rhizo15.
It was great, and I remain connected with the people I met through that event. There was talk about wandering in that course and I brought in my poetry to it. This brings me to the title of this post, The Roads to #DigiWriMo. It isn’t one path. It is a bunch of paths intertwined.
So let me return to the poetry path for a moment. I decided to make writing a poem a day my 2015 Lenten discipline. It went well, and some of the poems aren’t all that bad. I joined up with a group of Episcopalian poets and met with them from time to time. Through them, I learned that Yale Divinity School was having a conference on poetry and I attended.
It was a deep religious experience for me that has brought back into my consideration a path I had looked at years ago, but not wandered down, the path to possible ordination as a priest. I have met with my priest. We have met with my bishop, and my priest is setting up a discernment committee to explore this path more fully with me. I’ve thought it would be interesting to have a parallel, online discernment group. I set up one part of it on Facebook, and I expect this will intertwine with my #DigiWriMo explorations.
One of the speakers at the Yale Conference was Christian Wiman. I’ve been reading his book, My Bright Abyss. In it, I found a wonderful quote, “existence is not a puzzle to be solved, but a narrative to be inherited and undergone and transformed person by person”. Mixing the ‘journey’ metaphor with the ‘narrative’ metaphor, it seems like this quote is the starting point, the first mile marker on my #DigiWriMo journey.
I am looking forward to mixing a bit of poetry, novel writing, technology, and explorations into pedagogy and my spiritual journey together with what others are posting in #DigiWriMo. I hope you’ll join me and hang on for the ride!
October 29th
Searching for Sunday: Hymns
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/29/2015 - 19:46In the Searching for Sunday book study group blog at St. James West Hartford, Jackie Keen reflects on the confirmation section of the book. She talked about the music that traveled with her, so I’ve reflected on this a little. In my spiritual autobiography, I wrote a bit about different hymns that have touched me.
I thought about this, today, on the third anniversary of my mother’s death as I drove up to the funeral for the mother of a friend.
The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.
We sang this hymn at the vespers service at the poetry conference at Yale Divinity School last spring. The singing of this hymn, the vespers service, and the whole conference, were important parts of me entering the latest phase of my spiritual journey.
The hymn is often thought of as an evening hymn, a vespers hymn. It was has a missionary context harkening to a day when the sun never set on the British Empire.
As o’er each continent and island
The dawn leads on another day,
The voice of prayer is never silent,
Nor dies the strain of praise away.
It struck me, that this is a great hymn for memorial services as well. The day, the life, the Lord gave has ended. There is darkness. Yet there is also hope of a new day, or resurrection, or eternity.
The sun that bids us rest is waking
Our brethren ’neath the western sky,
And hour by hour fresh lips are making
Thy wondrous doings heard on high.So be it, Lord; Thy throne shall never,
Like earth’s proud empires, pass away:
Thy kingdom stands, and grows forever,
Till all Thy creatures own Thy sway.
As I think of this, the words of Abide With Me come to mind.
Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
On top of this, my wife had surgery on Wednesday. I’ve been trying to care for her, deal with food, and cleaning the house, as I’ve dealt with work and a funeral. Besides eternal rest, there is also the daily rest, and I think of that this evening as I head off to bed. There are other hymns that are on the peripheries of my mind about God giving rest to the weary, but I cannot grasp them right now.
October 28th
To an Oversized Stuffed Bear
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 10/28/2015 - 17:28There was nothing joyful
about
the oversized
stuffed bear
from the aisle
next to
the children’s pain relievers
at the local drug store.
It brought the mother
and child
brief happiness
before
being placed
in a memorial
to a child
who died
way too early.
October 25th
#sms15 Social Media, Outreach, Stewardship, and St. Crispin's Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 10/25/2015 - 17:06Today was Social Media Sunday, yet I didn’t get a chance to post from church. It was St. Crispin’s Day, and I shared about that from Facebook in the afternoon. It was our turn to host participate in Chapel on the Green, and between services I helped make sandwiches. It was also my turn to speak to the church as part of the stewardship drive. Below are my comments as I prepared them.
We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Most merciful Lord, we confess that we have sinned against you, in thought, word and deed. All things come of thee oh Lord and of thine own, with gratitude, have we given thee. These words wash over us on Sundays and I want to take a moment to think about some of them.
All things come of thee oh Lord, and of thine own, with gratitude, have we given thee.
I think of this during those long vestry meetings when we struggle over the budget. All things, the pledges and the expenses come ultimately from God. I often mention Psalm 127 at these times, “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain.” The Lord is building something special here at Grace and St. Peter’s.
Years ago, I served on the vestry of a church that had no endowment, or rather, as our Priest would say, our endowment was the members of the Church. Coming up with a workable budget was hard, but we did it.
I was an IT executive on Wall Street at the time, making a lot of money and pledging generously, I thought, to the church. My wife of the time ran the Sunday School program. We had two daughters, as beautiful as Job’s.
All things come of thee oh Lord….
If I were preaching a prosperity gospel, I would stop right here, but that’s not how the story really goes. My wife told me she wanted a divorce. I suffered greatly and was hospitalized. I met Kim as I tried to put my life back together, but it was still difficult. Kim’s mother died. I lost my job. We lost our house and went bankrupt. Kim got Lyme disease and we drifted from church to church. There was a lot of brokenness.
All things come of thee oh Lord…
I can’t pretend to make sense out of what happened. If I was stuck with a prosperity gospel, I would have ended up stuck with a crisis of faith, or worse. Where did the prosperity go? But that’s not how the story goes either. People from church, from the various churches I’ve attended along the way were there to help. Maybe a meal, or a place to stay, or sometimes just a smile, always showing God’s Love.
All things come of thee oh Lord …
When I think of giving back to the church, I also sometimes think of Matthew 25: "And the King will say, 'I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!'
… and of thine own, with gratitude, have we given thee.
To each of you who have given so much to me, and to our family, a word of encouragement, a smile, a hug, a meal: thank you.
There have been times, when the money was tight, that we couldn’t make a financial pledge. There were times that it was a struggle even to sing, or to smile, but ultimately what I can give back, what has been given to all of us, by God, is love, and the financial pledges, all the other stuff we give back is but a manifestation of God’s love.
So, I ask you, as you fill out your pledge forms, pledge your prosperity, pledge your brokenness, but most importantly, pledge the Love God has given you.
All things come of thee oh lord, and of thine own, with gratitude, have we given thee.
Thank you.
October 22nd
The Hangar
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/22/2015 - 20:38Little did I know,
those forty years ago,
when I wrote my
lame comedy column
for the school newspaper,
The Mount Greylock
Echo
how it’s words would
echo
in my life today.
Little did I know,
those forty years ago
when I logged into
a distant computer
over a slow telephone line
from the small computer room
just off the guidance counsellor’s office
how computers would change
and change us
as I glance
at The Mount Greylock
Echo
webpage
with the latest news
from my old
high school.
Little did I know
as I practiced Morse code
in the basement of a friend’s house
or played with
army surplus
radio equipment
my father had
in our own basement
how much radio and communications
would change
and how much
it would stay the same.
Little did I know,
during those after school hours
huddling in the dark room
developing film
shot with old cameras
in the nasty chemicals
how one day
I would take a picture
with my telephone
and share it over
radio signals.
Little did I know
that forty years later
I would see an old
black and white photo
scanned into a computer
shared over the internet
to a thing called Facebook
and the memories
it would elicit.
It was junior high school
in the early seventies
when we were discovering
ourselves,
our bodies,
girls,
and archeology.
We were learning critical skills
as we dug in the sand
in the carefully constructed grid
laid out by our teachers.
Now,
some of our classmates
have died
way to early
friends have become distant
as other classmates
that we didn’t know
or couldn’t stand
have become friends,
and one of them posted
not only
the scanned in
black and white pictures
which brought forth
so many memories
but also the article
in the Mount Greylock ECHO
about the hangar
being demolished.
