Archive - 2015
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.
May 12th
Other
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 05/12/2015 - 14:00It is hotter and more humid than it should be in May, as I take my lunchtime walk at work. I am preparing my mind for going to a conference on bringing poetry into the life of the church. In many ways, it is a major shift from being a social media manager at a health care center dedicated to caring for the underserved, but there are many similarities as well.
I have the typical anxieties of going to a conference in a new place, on a new topic, with people that will most likely be new to me. It is heightened by the signup form, where they asked what I did. The choices were all around roles in the church; clergy, worship leader, music leader, and so on. I chose the final option, other.
I always hesitate to call myself a poet. Sure, I try to write poems, but it isn’t my career. It’s only recently that I started writing more poetry, and I haven’t had anything published, or sought publication of anything in probably over three decades, other than what I publish on my blog.
Other
It is a word full of meaning, ambiguity, and perhaps a little fear; fear of the other. Yet we often don’t own our own otherness. When we do, we perhaps wear it as a badge, and a little bit of a shield.
Can I be open, vulnerable, there to learn, and not be defensive, and trying to assert my self-worth? What can I learn? What are my learning objectives, or to borrow from the rhizomatic group, my learning subjectives? How can I get something out of this if I’m disappointed? What can I learn about embracing my “otherness”?
May 11th
Digitally Questioning Authorities
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/11/2015 - 20:27Dave Cormier commented on my previous blog post and it seems that my reply deserves a blog post of its own.
Dave expressed a lack of fondness for the digital immigrant language. To which I reply:
I recognize the difficulties of the digital native / digital immigrant construct. Determining whether someone is a digital native or digital immigrant is not simply a question of age, and I suspect there are more options than the dichotomy. Personally, I’ve often referred to myself as a digital aborigine.
He then goes on to talk about how digital media is affecting power structures in health care and education. To which, I reply:
In terms googling medications, or asking for a link, this is a big topic in healthcare and I suspect it parallels discussions in education and beyond. It probably reflects some larger issues. In health care, we talk about the e-patient movement and participatory medicine.
Is it polite for me to ask my doctor for a link to the medication she is suggesting?
Yes. It should be encouraged. Ideally, the doctor should be able to provide a handout with a link, or send a message via a patient portal with a link for more information.
Can i come in with the website that told me what's wrong with me?
This gets a little messier. One problem is that some people have a tendency to Cyberchondria. Also, the amount of information that patients bring in can, at times, be excessive, especially in these days of life logging. On the other hand, for special situations, patients may have access to more information than their doctors and bringing in information can be a great help. It also depends on how well the doctor responds to information being brought in or whether there is some other power struggle going on.
The final question Dave asks is Is it polite to digitally check an expert?. This, it seems, is the key underlying question. Years ago, I wore a T shirt saying Question Authority. I’ve always believed it is not only polite, but important to check experts, no matter whether we do it digitally or using other media.
Teaching Cultural Competency to Digital Immigrants
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 05/11/2015 - 17:42Working in health care, I often come across the phrase, Cultural Competency the idea of providers delivering services that are respectful of the diverse cultural needs of the clients. Often, the cultures considered are ethnic or based on country of origin. However, there is an important culture that doesn’t get considered, digital culture.
In2001, Marc Prensky mapped out the digital culture divide in his seminal work, Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants. He focuses more on educational methodology and content, but it is interesting to think of this in terms of cultural competency.
When I was young, the telephone hung on a wall in the kitchen. If the phone rang, you answered it. It was rude not to answer the phone. Then came answering machines and caller id and it became culturally acceptable to screen calls.
Now, I hear digital natives telling their parents it is rude not to respond immediately to a friend’s text message. The cultural shifts continue. To use the phrase from Linda Stone, today’s digital natives are expected to pay Continuous Partial Attention to their digital peers. Asking them to do otherwise is to ask them to violate the rules of their culture.
There are times when we have to choose which culture’s rules we are going to follow, but we have to remember if we are providing services to members of a certain culture to seek follow the rules of the culture we are serving. If you can’t, you need to at least be aware of how you are violating the rules and seek ways to mitigate this. Whatever the situation, it is important to stop and consider to what extent we find a behavior objectionable because of the social context we grew up in and how others might find our behaviors objectionable.
May 10th
Other Objects
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 05/10/2015 - 20:46I continue to be in a state of overload. It is a condition I often find myself in, and with the Rhizomatic Learning xMOOC going on, I find this to be even more of the case. There are things I want to read, things I wrote to write, too much commotion around the house and too little time to write.
One idea that I’m thinking of exploring is contemplation in the twenty first century. What is the relationship of praying without ceasing, being in the world, but not of the world with Continuous Partial Attention?
I’m taking time off of work this week to attend “Love bade me welcome” - Bringing Poetry into the Life of Your Church.
The conference description starts:
Designed especially for church leaders, this two-day conference will feature inspiration and practical guidance in the many uses of poetry for worship, liturgy, meditation, and education.
The signup sheet lists different roles in the church, Clergy, Worship Leader, etc., and ends with ‘Other’. I selected Other, overloaded with meaning from Hegel, Sartre, Lacan, Derrida, and Levinas. With other, I conflate, object, the lost object, the partial object, the transitional object, l’objet petit a
At this point in my writing, I wander through links about concepts like ‘other’ and ‘object’. I look at the biographies and writing of some of the speakers. I wander off briefly into Greek mythology.
But now, sleep beckons.
