Small RE programs, pt. 2

Read the whole series.

We started off this second session in the workshop with me teaching a sample lesson. I taught the lesson pretty much as I would teach it to a small, mixed-age group of children.

A.

We began by saying together a simple affirmation of faith, with hand motions. Then we went around the circle, and each participant said their name, after which they could say one good thing and one bad thing that had happened to them since we had met together yesterday. One participant had something very important to say, and we spent several minutes listening to her.

After the introductory bits, I read the story about the God of the Israelites parting the sea so Moses and his people could escape form Pharoah’s army. I read the story straight out of the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible (Exodus, all of ch. 14), and of course I made sure to read it dramatically.

The participants wanted to discuss the story right away (a quite different reaction than children would have had). But instead of allowing the discussion, I said, “Let’s act the story out. Who wants to be which character?” Sheila agreed to act out the part of the God of the Isrealites; I was Pharaoh, Mary and Helen said they would be the sea (“the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left”); and so on. We had great fun acting out the story, and we really hammed it up — I had Phraoh talk in a pirate voice, Sheila played God as a deadpan New England Yankee, Mary and Helen were very active as the waters of the sea, etc.

When we had finished acting, it was time to discuss the story. “What happened in the story?” I asked. The participants reviewed what had happened in the story. Then I asked, “What did you think about the story?” Some of the participants didn’t like the story, because it was violent, and the God of the Israelites seemed vindictive to them. But as the participants kept talking they came to some interesting conclusions: Moses was a strong leader; the God of the Israelites was like a superhero character; the parting of the sea could have been explained by natural phenomena. I asked whether this story was non-fiction or fiction. Continue reading →

Small religious education programs, pt. 1

Ferry Beach Conference Center, Saco, Maine

I’m at a religious education conference here at Ferry Beach, leading a week-long workshop on small religious education programs. We had our first session in this workshop today.

My basic contention for this workshop is that small churches are not well-served by the usual Unitarian Universalist (UU) approach to religious education. The usual UU approach to religious education is pretty straightforward: find a printed curriculum guide that you like, buy it, and tell all your volunteer teachers to follow it. Problem is, almost all of the printed curriculum guides that are appropriate for UU religious education are written for churches that have perhaps 50 children in their programs — enough so you can have have 8-12 children in each class, with the classes divided up by age group. But small churches have too few children to divide up by age groups. This is the big problem facing most small church religious education programs — we feel we have to use the existing printed curriculum guides, but they don’t work with the small number of children we have.

So what’s a small church to do? Continue reading →

The insanity of moving

Our apartment is filled with cardboard boxes — empty boxes, filled boxes, boxes waiting to be assembled. Our lives are filled with all the details of moving — renting the moving container, closing down accounts, arranging details.

With all the chaos and stress of moving, I find myself forgetting things — little things, mostly. I drove up to Ferry Beach Conference Center in Maine today, to lead a week-long workshop in small church religious education programs, and when I got here I realized that I had forgotten my cell phone. Forgetting my cell phone is a relatively small thing — I did remember to bring my laptop, which is my primary communication tool. But it’s annoying to forget things like that.

I’ll be glad when we have finished moving, and life settles down a little bit.

Yes, this is big.

Forget the accusations that George Bush planned the war in Iraq from his earliest days in office. The really big news was released yesterday on the Official Google blog:

[T]oday, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome [Web browser] — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we’re already talking to partners about the project, and we’ll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

That sound you just heard was Microsoft’s lawyers figuring out how to prompt anti-trust regulators to take action against Google. That other sound you just heard was everyone else in the world sniggering at the thought of Microsoft cooperating with anti-trust regulators.

Aside from the sniggering, Google’s new OS has the potential to really change the way we think about the Web. Imagine an operating system that is fast, small, stable, and extremely resistant to online security threats. And imagine that operating system is opensource so that a community of programmers can keep it safe, and develop new functionalities for it. If Google can actually deliver such a product, this really could be a big deal.

Why? Because with a free OS, you should be able to buy a netbook for a couple hundred bucks. That netbook will be smaller and lighter than your current laptop, so you won’t care if it gets stolen (and if it does get stolen, all your data will be online, not on the netbook). So you’ll leave your current laptop at home, and when it’s time to replace it, you’ll buy a less-expensive but more powerful desktop machine (and you won’t have to worry about transferring data from the netbook to the desktop machine because the netbook’s data will be online). Or if all you have right now is a desktop machine, you will be more likely to get a netbook.

At this point, all the Linux fans will rear up and point out (rightly) that the Google OS is little more than a stripped-down version of Linux. This is true, but lots of people are already using GMail and Google Docs (and who would never use Linux because of its geeky reputation), and they will just assume that Google’s OS is going to be easy to use.

So this is big. It is not huge, nor will it threaten Computing As We Know It. But it’s big.

Country anthem

It ain’t writ by Jewel, nor by Willie Nelson neither. But here’s a genuine country anthem with lyrics by Indiana resident Jean (based on this comment), and tune by me. It’s a little ditty we call “(I Was) Standin on the Side of Love,” an it goes like this:

(I Was) Standin on the Side of Love (crappy MP3 of a crappy MIDI version of the tune and chords)

(I Was) Standin on the Side of Love (PDF of lead sheet, with tune and lyrics)

And now… the karaoke version, so you can sing along! MP3 file with country guitar, bass, and drum with occasional banjo and mandolin, and an “oo” track that you can sing along to. Lyrics are below.

(I Was) Standing on the Side of Love/karaoke version

Continue reading →

Horse barn anecdote

Jean, my older sister, just bought a new horse, after her last horse died tragically. In describing her new horse on her blog, she used some jargon I didn’t understand. I left a comment to that effect, and Jean responded with a lengthy post explaining the jargon. (“SLB” obviously stands for “Snotty Little Brother”).

Jean wrote a good explanation of the jargon, and now I feel I know a little more about the World of Horses. That’s probably a good thing, because once when I went to visit Jean, I almost got myself in trouble.

Jean invited me to go out and visit her horse at the barn where he lived. It was a lovely place, although I think I was about the only man there. Jean showed me around, and we stopped at the riding rink, where the woman who runs the barn trains both horses and the women who ride them. An attractive young woman was riding a horse around the ring, and after watching her for awhile, Jean said, “Wow, she has a good seat!” Now, as a heterosexual male, I had just been thinking exactly the same thing, but then because I try to be a good minister and a nice guy, I studiously looked at the horse and not the young woman.

Fortunately, before I started blushing, I realized Jean was using some horse jargon that I didn’t understand (and still don’t).

After that embarrassing moment, I wound up talking with a woman who was a professional ornithologist, who humiliated me by hearing birdsongs I simply couldn’t hear.

All in all, visiting a horse barn was a challenging experience for me.

Deconstructing “standing on the side of love”

An anonymous correspondent wrote recently about the General Assembly experience, noting in part: “…all the Standing on the Side of Love stuff about did me in….”

I realized that felt the same way about the “Standing on the Side of Love” catchphrase and logo as did Anonymous Correspondent. Because I feel that way, and because I am a postmodern guy, let’s deconstruct both the catch-phrase and the logo:

  • Linguistic deconstruction: Love doesn’t have sides, certainly not sides that you can stand on. This is sloppy language, which implies either sloppy thinking or doublespeak (see below).
  • Theological deconstruction: The catchphrase implies that love is on one side (our side), and hate or evil is on the other side. Instead of an “I-Thou” relationship, the catchphrase promotes an exclusivist theological position. (This is actually consistent with most Unitarian Universalist theological praxis, if not with professed Universalist theology).
  • Political deconstruction: Politically speaking, the catchphrase is applied to subjects as different as same-sex marriage and immigration reform. Thus, the catchphrase becomes a form of political doublespeak: “It means what we want it to mean.”
  • Pop culture deconstruction 1: The catchphrase is a blatant attempt to use late twentieth century modernist marketing techniques. The catchphrase, through its inanity and puerility, aims to reach a broad market segment; in its meaninglessness, it attempts to be all things to all people.
  • Pop culture deconstruction 2: The graphics for the campaign, roughly-drawn hearts, attempts to look cute (sort of like Hello Kitty for the liberal religious set). But because the graphic image is repeated over and over without variation (except in size), it comes across as a modernist attempt to force an unvarying narrative on us, with no chance of customizing it for specific and tiny segments of the population.

Feel free to add your own deconstructions of the “Standing on the Side of Love” catchphrase and logo. You will receive extra points for use of irony, multisyllabic-words, and “quotation marks”. Feel equally free to defend “Standing on the Side of Love.” But since this is a postmodern blog, you will be expected to express your feelings, and shy away from reason (just like the “Standing on the Side of Love” catchphrase does… hey, wait a minute….)

Hospice choirs in New England

I’m passing along the following announcement about hospice choirs (see the end of the post for a definition of “hospice choir”):

The hospice choir movement has begun to blossom in New England, primarily thanks to Hallowell and its founder, Kathy Leo, who has given workshops all over New England.

We started our choir, Eventide Singers, in western Massachusetts in October 2007. There are others, too. Some are directly associated with hospice organizations such as The Noyana Singers; some are directly connected with a church such as the Harbour Singers; and others, including Eventide, are separate organizations.

If you are interested in this subject you might wish to visit the Chalice of Repose which, for thirty years has been studying and teaching “prescriptive music” to be performed by “contemplative musicians.”

Long story short, I am researching for all existing hospice choirs to assemble into a network for the purpose of sharing information, repertoire and experience.

Any information you may have on such choirs will be greatly apprecated.

Thanks in advance,

John Bos
Founder
Eventide Singers
eventidesingers AT verizon DOT net

Hospice choirs are groups of singers who sing for dying people, or sometimes more specifically for people in hospice care. Kate Munger’s Threshold Choir is probably the best-known example of a hospice choir. The repertoire is carefully selected, and the performance is usually by two or three singers practiced in singing in a low-volume, healing tone of voice. Many hospice choirs work with the rest of the healing team, helping people at the end of life to navigate the natural process of dying with dignity and serenity.

While I’ve never had the opportunity to work with one directly as part of a care-giving team, I’m a fan of the hospice choir concept. If you know of a hospice choir, please let John Bos know. And if you want to start your own hospice choir in your church, follow some of the above links to learn more and to make connections.

Video postcard: The California Zephyr

A video postcard filmed on board Amtrak’s train no. 6, the California Zephyr. The postcard is of the segment of the trip from Green River, Utah, to Denver, Colorado.

Some background information as you watch the video:

  • Ruby Canyon is a beautiful red-rock canyon near Green River.
  • Glenwood Springs (photos of Amtrak locomotive and train) is a pretty resort town in the mountains. As its name implies, it boasts hot springs.
  • Glenwood Canyon carries both the railroad and Interstate 70 (the bridges and roads you see in this stretch are I-70).
  • The only way in to Gore Canyon is by rail or raft. The rafters like to moon the trains.
  • As the train passes into the Moffat Tunnel, what you see is the infrastructure for the Winter Park Ski Resort.
  • The Moffat Tunnel is 6.2 miles long.
  • The “Big Ten Curve” goes through 270 degrees, giving a sweeping panorama of the sunset sky as the train slowly negotiates the turn.
  • Denver’s Union Station has been beautifully restored. Today, unfortunately, only two trains a day use the station (plus a few weekend ski trains in season).

More about the California Zephyr on Wikipedia.