Archive - May 2015
May 16th
The #rhizo15 Echo Chamber
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/16/2015 - 18:24In this week’s #Rhizo15 writing prompt, Dave asks, “Must rhizomatic learning be an invasive species?” People have explored this idea, talking about echo chambers and filter bubbles, but I think people are looking at this incorrectly.
Yes, rhizomes choke out other plants, but not all other plants. They fight for resources with other plants, particularly other rhizomes. From a practical side, this past week for me is a good example of this. Normally, I write about #rhizo15 soon after the prompt comes out. However, this week, I was at a conference at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music on poetry in the church. It has been the focus of much of my reading and writing over the past few days. To stay with the rhizome metaphor, for the past few days, that conference choked out even the #rhizo MOOC.
Likewise, I believe the ‘filter bubble’ discussion is off track. I’ve long been focused on filter bubbles, especially because of my background in politics. To the extent that #rhizo15 is the only filter someone has, is the only context of someone’s online communication, then yes, it could be a filter bubble. I recognize that this could be the case for others, but I suspect it is the exception rather than the rule.
If we stay focused on formal education, it would be like saying a person is taking only one course. Yet that is not often what happens in formal education.
To return to Dave’s questions: “Are we just replacing one authority structure with another?” Yeah, perhaps. But so what? Instead, we might want to ask, is the authority structure of rhizomatic learning more or less beneficial than traditional authority structures in education? Is it more democratic? Is that a good thing? Likewise, when Dave asks, “Community as conformity?” I see this as a potentially serious issue, but I have to wonder, is rhizomatic learning more or less driven by conformity than other forms of learning?
Sweet Briar Graduation Day – Between the Ascension and Pentecost
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 05/16/2015 - 12:46The Teacher Ascends
to bid the students farewell.
The past few years
have changed everyone.
Yes, there are still a few
Judases around
more interested in money
than perpetual memory.
Earlier in the spring,
it looked like all hope had been destroyed
only to return
a few days later.
It is still a confusing time
now that we must go out into the world.
What spirit will sustain us
in our daily lives?
May 15th
"Random Acts of Kindness"
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 05/15/2015 - 20:44At the bookstore checkout
I asked the manager
if there were any more copies
of Levertov’s
“Sands of The Well”.
He motioned to a young man
standing near the counter.
“He just bought the last one.”
The young looked at me and said,
“Here, take it.”
“But you’ve already paid the price”
I protested.
“It is a gift,” he said.
All eyes turned to me.
“I don’t deserve this gift”
I thought to myself.
Another customer explained
that Robbie always did stuff like that,
“random acts of kindness.”
I accepted the gift with thankfulness
and wondered,
“Is this how Peter felt when Jesus washed his feet?”
And at the final day
will I ask, “is there any more forgiveness?”
only to hear
the manager say,
“Jesus bought it all”
Will Jesus say,
“Here, take it.”
Will I protest
“But you’ve already paid the price”?
Only to hear
“It’s a gift”
Will the prayer of humble access come to mind
as others explain
that Jesus always did stuff like that,
“random acts of kindness”.
May 14th
#LoveBadeMeWelcome Day 2 - An Emotional Cartographer
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 05/14/2015 - 06:21During his plenary talk at “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church, Tom Troeger spoke about the “landscape of the heart” as a cultural context you understand God from. To illustrate this, he spoke about two churches he went to when he was young. One sang hymns like “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling” with very free interpretation of the music almost ad libbed from the piano, and the other sang hymns like “Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah” played precisely from the pipe organ. They both reflect different landscapes of the heart that we go back to when we think about God, worship and music. He suggested that the wholeness of God is not known if you stay within one landscape of the heart.
I thought about my own nomadic religious journey, starting off Congregationalist, drifting through Baptist, various evangelical and charismatic churches before settling down to currently being an Episcopalian. The idea of knowing many landscapes of the heart, or perhaps mapping the relationship between these landscapes to see one larger broader landscape is especially appealing to me. As our society becomes more multicultural, how do we map in the landscape of Jewish or Muslim hearts? What about adding in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Shintoism?
Pushing this idea of emotional cartography further, I had to wonder about those not brought up in the church, the unaffiliated skeptics. What does the landscape of their hearts look like? How do we map it? How do we find the connection between these landscapes and the landscapes of those brought up in the church?
As science progresses, how does this change the landscape of our hearts? Is science moving beyond the abilities of our imaginations to use it for good? How must the landscape of the heart change as science changes? How do we keep the idea of being good stewards of God’s creation in a world overheated by climate change?
A secular part of the landscape of my heart includes the great song by the Canadian folk singer, Stan Rogers, “Northwest Passage”.
Ah, for just one time I would take the Northwest Passage
To find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea;
What are the landmarks for a northwest passage of the heart, including various Christian landmarks, landmarks from other belief structures, landmarks from the skeptics, landmarks for scientists, to bring balance back to reason and imagination?
May 13th
#LoveBadeMeWelcome – Compline Reflections, Day 1
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 05/13/2015 - 06:25With these first few words, I’ve already probably broken several times one of the most important messages of Christian Wimaan in his opening plenary talk the conference, “Love Bade Me Welcome” : Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church at Yale Divinity School.
Especially in light of the new Pew Research Center on Religion and Public Life report, America’s Changing Religious Landscape, Wiman recommended that when we write, we should think of the skeptic in the audience. What are we saying that makes it harder for the increasing number of religiously unaffiliated Americans to access what we are saying, to cross, as it were, the sacred threshold?
I imagine that talking about poetry, a conference at a divinity school, talking about churches, and using words like “bade” is enough to drive off many of my readers, but if you’ve made it this far, thank you, please stick around. I will do what I can to talk about divine mystery in metaphors to make it more accessible.
Instead of focusing on Wiman’s talk, I will focus on compline. Compline is the final church service, a completion of the working day. As my wife and daughter prepared to watch the final two hour episode the current season of SHIELD, I joined with several dozen other voices singing the great hymn, The Day Thou Gavest,
I would describe my singing as that of a weak bass. I like singing the bass part of songs when it is easy to pick out. Unfortunately, like church attendance, harmonic singing seems generally to be in decline. Not so around Yale Institute of Sacred Music. There were several basses around me carrying the part firmly enough so that I could feel comfortable singing along in harmony.
It is interesting to read that the hymn was written for missionary meetings since it is such a wonderful close of day hymn. This idea of the day being given by God seems so foreign to how I believe most of my skeptical unaffiliated friends think of their days. Instead, it seems many of them live lives of quiet desperation, to borrow Thoreau’s words, in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, to follow on with words from David Foster Wallace’s famous “This is water” commencement speech.
Before compline, several of us stood outside in the warm May evening, as a strong but gentle wind caressed us and the sun provided spectacular end of day light. Yes, the day, the evening, the compline service, was a gift from God, and it is hard to remember these blessings in our desperate day to day battles. It is hard to remember these blessings as we read the news of man’s continued exploitation and oppression of their fellow men. It is hard to remember these blessings as the pinnacle of beauty or wit is too often thought of in terms of Facebook memes, or at best the season finale of a television show.
At compline, we listened to scripture, to the words of more great poets like Langston Hughes and Denise Levertov. We sang in harmony. We worshiped the Lord in the beauty of holiness.
How do we speak to the skeptical unaffiliated people of our nation? Perhaps, first we reconnect with the beauty of holiness, and then let the Lord speak through us.
When I ran for State Representative, I remember being struck by the importance of the verse from the psalms, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.” It struck me that most politicians will say what they think is expedient and not what is rooted in their core beliefs to get elected. I wonder how often people in the church, trying to reach the skeptical unaffiliated do the same thing.
The title, “Love Bade Me Welcome” comes from George Herbert’s poem “Love”.
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lack'd anything.
I entered this conference like the guest in Herbert’s poem, guilty of dust and sin, but Love did bade me welcome and made itself manifest at compline on the first day of the conference.
