Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 May 2011 10:13:11
The last few years have taken me on a series of interesting adventures, where real life has sometimes read more like a novel than the quite boring journey through the aging process. Through them all I am realising that there is a very delicate balance to be reached between idealism (dreaming) and realism (being sensible about both ones own resources and others around). Within this I have found there is the complicated issue of faith.
Faith is what can be used to urge people out of their comfort zones and into putting their idealism into action, yet it can also be a word that leads people into misguided decisions which they justify through their religion. Let's face it I think there have probably been times when we have all made mistakes in our hearing and understanding of God and his word. So how do we test this all and get that delicate balance without falling headlong into projects and decision making that is wrong for us?
Over the last few years through making some right and wrong calls myself, and through observing some interesting stuff through my fieldwork I think I have come up with a few ideas which go beyond the simply speaking to others or comparing what we hear in one situation against other things we know.
First, we must learn our history and histories. Seeing the risks others took and reading about their mistakes and successes not only acts as inspiration...it can also teach us useful lessons, particularly about when to speak up and when to shut up and when to stand up and when to sit down or get the hell out of a situation. For me alot of the most useful stuff, which could I suppose be described as tradition, comes from the late Victorian and Edwardian period. There was alot of really interesting stuff going on during this time in terms of both social justice and evangelism; stuff which seems to have been convieniently forgotten, and as the older generation dies is being silently erased in many ways.
Secondly, we need to be ready to admit our mistakes but not dwell on them. Reflective practice is not merely about navel gazing it is about seeing what isn't going quite as we hoped and why and how that needs to influence what we do in the future. Reading through the Old Testament, as I am I have found that a key bit...particularly of the "death bed speeches"....involved getting people to learn from what they'd done before. Moses and Joshua, particularly the latter, were involved in breaking the cultures of silence which meant the adventurers went in the wrong direction and moved away from the faith journey map.
Um, two points I just thought I'd make :D