Sunday, April 04, 2004
lazy lazy me. so long never blog. wat can i say. all i know is tat the past week has been quite tiring... sch's take up half of my day. reached sch at 7.30 go home ard 6. sometimes 7. crap.
hahah. thru this one whole week. i realised wat funny teachers they have in cj. hahah. they have a prob speaking. tats all. the rest of the other aspects are all okie. haha. gp teacher is funny. she's got a weird sense of humour. but tats fine with me. haha. chi teacher is the most comical one. he always "shhh" in the middle of his sentences even though the class is damn quiet. haha. he also goes "errr'ing in his sentences also. haha. and he wants us to
"move like lightning" and
"take initiative".. haha. so lame. and his jokes are always damn cold. haha.
"own time own target. FIRE!!!" haha. only my class ppl will know wat tat means. haha. econs lect teacher. hmmm. she speaks funny. she doesn't pronounce "a" in her words. haha. den our econs tutor. he sometimes go out of tune. haha. maths teacher is okie. he's our home tutor. haha. chem is fine. one young lady. haha. anyway. the pe teacher is mad. he's crazy. make us
run 11 rounds on thurs. and 5 rds with a lot of crazy exercises on tues. felt like going to the boot camp or wat. but really did quite a lot of work out the past week. went for track training on mon. so a bit of running there. tues pe.
wed went for band orientation. so no workout on tat day. thurs is the pe. fri. no training. haha. cj really can get u real fit. haha. sat went for band. and juz heard tat
cj shooting team got 3rd! congrats to the air rifle team! congrats to shimon who is top 9th in the jc catetory for singapore! u are way cool man! haha. yup. anyway. juz fiound one meaningful articel which i would like to share. (too lazy to type anymore things oso) haha. its kind of long. but it is interesting. so take some time to read and reflect on ourselves.
Do you remember when you first learned to ride a bicycle, or drive a car or use a computer? Depending on the kind of person you were and perhaps who was teaching you, you might have felt, let’s see…doubt, then nervous glee, then comfortable enjoyment; or fear, then resistance, then resigned acceptance; or excited determination, then frustration, then relief.
People don’t learn the same way. Not at all.
Some of us are the “Show me, show me, show me everything” type.
Others are like: “Do I have really have to learn this? I was just fine the way I was.”
Or maybe: “Well, all right, I’ll try to learn this thing if it makes you happy, but as soon as I’m bored or confused, I’m outta here, all right?”
Or maybe, “I’ve always been curious about this, but I like to learn in my own way. So just go away, and I’ll call you if I need you.”
I could easily name twice as many learning styles, including the non-learner who says, “Me? Learn that? Forget it. I never needed to surf the net before, so I can get along without it just fine, thank you.”
Or the one who says, “Look, I’m up to my eye balls in messes right now, and I really have no time for learning new stuff. Maybe next week, when things settle down. I’ll call you, OK?”
Or the one who says, “I already have answers I like. Thank you. Go away.”
The eager learner, the independent learner, the cautious learner, the resistant learner, the anxious, my-pride-is-on-the-line learner, and the “no way, Jose, over-my-dead-body” nonlearner.
Right now, in the other rooms, on all three levels of this building, we have some new learning going on. Given the numbers of people involved, there are undoubtedly several learning styles at play. People differ.
Then you have to take into account the learning curve. People commonly use the phrase “learning curve” to refer to how long it takes to learn something. At work we cut the new guy some slack because it’s all new to him and, well, there’s a learning curve.
Actually, the term learning curve is more precise, especially in such fields as educational psychology and bioeconomics. It is a curve that can be graphed, referring to how productivity and efficiency go up in relation to gaining mastery of a given skill. You know how it is: “when I started out, it took me over an hour to do this, but now I can do it easily in under ten minutes.”
A paper I read recently studied how learning curves are complicated by external factors. What if your tools break? What if your co-worker calls in sick? What if you had a fight at home? What if your father or your child is in the hospital, and your mind keeps drifting back to what the doctor told you?
The learning curve, getting more efficient over time, is not the only equation at work in the real world.
There’s also this equation: you + family + co-workers + deadlines + all your good experience + headache + a nice raise if you do well = how you end up doing.
Life is complex, and even if we want to learn, even if we want to improve our learning curve, it’s all very complicated.
Right now, in the rest of the building, learning is going on, but those are real people in there, and who knows what happened between six and ten this morning in their households. How many want to learn or have trouble learning? How many are eager or stubborn? The subject matter in those rooms is God and Bible and Jesus and how to lead a good and holy and happy life, but the subject matter is also the heart, the soul, human hope and human fear, what we all need to thrive as individuals and as a community. That’s a huge amount of learning packed into forty-five minutes.
By the way, have I been talking about the children or the teachers? Learning is what they all are doing.
The teachers have to learn the students before they can effectively teach them. And then they will find they have to look at their own faith with fresh eyes, because the children will shake loose their old notions and tease them into new learning.
But what about you and me? Are you a learner? I hope so. Because the curriculum of the Gospel is not like riding a bike; it’s not like once you learn you never forget. Once you get your Bible in the third grade or your Confirmation certificate, you’re not “done.” Building and growing faith is a lifelong enterprise.
As I look around at our congregation,
i know that many people come to church hurting, and many are afraid, and people often look at the Christian faith as if it were a pharmacy. They want the holy pill that takes the hurt away. They want the potion that gives them peacefulness. They come in here focused on getting what they need, and often they do find it. They thank God for it, and go home. Well, we’re all like that sometimes.
And the Christian faith obliges, but the Gospel is so much more, and I always pray that more of us will
expand our minds and hearts and souls to seek what God offers, to learn what Jesus teaches, to want what God provides - to go into deeper water as Jesus told the disciples. This is not a store where you shop for things that please you. This is not a movie theater where you are entertained. This is the Church of Lifelong Learning, to borrow a phrase, and to a Christian “lifelong” certainly doesn’t end with a casket.
But people don’t learn unless they want to and choose to. Do you remember that marvelous image of Jesus in Revelation, where he stands outside the door of our lives and knocks? “I stand at the door and knock,” he says. He will not break the door down or bargain or cajole or bribe or threaten or plead. He says, “Come to me, all you who labor and are over-burdened (all you who are frightened and overwhelmed, all you who are worried and confused). Learn from me, and you will find rest for your souls.”
When I encourage us to think about our own learning (on this day when a new Church School year begins, and adult education starts in two weeks),
one problem is that some of us have less than pleasant memories of school. Do you associate learning with memorizing dates, doing frustrating complicated problems, studying authors whose words left you empty? Today we understand so much more about learning disabilities and learning styles and the crucial importance of being ready to learn with a good breakfast and without getting bullied on the way to school.
But twenty years ago? Thirty? Forty? When my father was in the second grade he was kept back a year because he couldn’t pronounce a hard “L” sound; in his mouth it was always a soft, hollow “L.” So the school made him repeat a year, although his pronunciation of that letter never changed throughout his life. Years ago people who found school painful met with far less understanding despite genuinely caring and professional teachers. Remember sixty years ago doctors smoked, thinking it was a good way to clean the lungs.
So maybe you hear about learning opportunities today and reply, “No, thanks. I finished school years ago. Thank God.” How sad. So much to discover, so much to savor. So much to help us deal with life more constructively and with greater satisfaction.
When I teach the parables of Jesus, people are always drawn into lively discussion, because Jesus knew how to tell a story that brings people to the threshold of new insight. (Whether they cross the threshold is up to them). All their personal characteristics are revealed, their prejudices, their forgotten dreams, their immobilizing fears, their rich compassionate heart, their thirst for justice, their fertility of soul. He was the Master Teacher.
And what about Jesus himself? Have you really figured out who he is, and what he means? Have your ideas changed in the last ten years, twenty, thirty years? I hope so. If you think today what you thought in 1978 or 1958, if despite your accomplishment in other areas, if today you still think like a sixth grader or a college sophomore - that’s stagnation. It’s not uncommon for me to meet people who have a very advanced proficiency in various areas of life, only to have an eighth grade under-standing of religion. Even some believers have contented themselves with an elementary grasp of the Gospel, when there is so much more. We are called to grow in heart, mind and soul.
But God knows that people are people; life is complicated. A Christian + family + job pressure + financial worries + ...well, it goes on and on. But God understands. God knows how much we sometimes just want to make it all go away. But God also knows how much of life awaits us, how much rich joy can be ours down the road.
That’s why in our reading from Isaiah we find these words
Morning by morning God wakens, wakens my ear
so that I may listen as those who are taught.
The Lord God has opened my ear, and I did not resist.
You see, God is the rooster who wakens us for the dawn of a fantastic new day. God is the alarm clock which rattles us out of sleep and calls us into engagement with the world. God is the nudge from our bed partner, the one we told to make sure we get up. God is the wake-up call from the front desk because we said we have to be up by six. God is the internal alarm clock, which rouses us the same time every morning no matter when we went to bed. God is reveille, trumpeting us to alert attention. God is the smell of coffee wafting under our nose, the aroma of bacon in the kitchen. God is the sound of the beep-beep-beep of the trash collectors, when you realize that you forgot to put out the bins. God is the bell in school which says it’s time to be alert and be a learner.
Morning by morning God awakens us to live and to learn about life and love, about salvation and hope, about joy and fulfillment, and what a shame if we just roll over and go back to sleep.
over and out 10:03 PM