Each summer, the S-LC staff is sent out with a collection of carefully selected texts to tuck under their arm and read in between camp sessions, in the airport on a layover, on the beach, or wherever their adventures may take them. I've been diving into the summer reader primarily on the Rapid to and from work. We hope that by reading some of these passages, the staff will be provoked to new thoughts, brilliant insights, and critical reflection.
I just finished reading several chapters by Richard Mouw. Re-reading these passages took me back to my days as a member of the S-LC student staff when the campus focused on Isaiah 60 for an interim, and our staff read and discussed "When the Kings Come Marching In."
Mouw draws the reader in to a rich and complex theology, that I think at the time was pretty groundbreaking for me. I think that this is one of those cases wherein I've been cultivated to understand theology from a certain (perhaps narrow) perspective, and when presented by an alternative I'm initially resistant. "What do you mean, Mr. Mouw, when you say that Christ's redemptive act on the Cross was for more than my individual soul (and the individual souls of all the elect)?"
I recall a degree of grappling with this idea, considering how it would impact my broader understanding of the world, of myself, of God. Eventually these words from Mouw, along with others, started to make sense. And now having accepted what at the time seemed like a radical shift in my worldview, this idea of God's love for the cosmos, for all of human culture, and for each human person comes naturally to me.
In fact, now as I read and engage with Scripture I wonder how I could have ever understood things another way. God's all encompassing love for and redemption of creation is reinforced everywhere I turn, and this is exciting! Each action and choice is now infused with meaning where before they may have been hollow or merely perfunctory.
Embracing this theology is at once overwhelming and relieving: God's intention for the New City is so vast, and so beautiful, and so far from the present experience and yet we can rest in knowing that in God's time it will be fulfilled regardless of our human efforts.
Reciprocity. The hyphen. Shalom. Community. Embrace your place. Discernment. Journey. Reflection.
These are all words I have heard frequently throughout my time at Calvin, and particularly in the three years I worked as a student in the Service-Learning Center.
There was a time during my career at Calvin that these words did lose significance for me, at least in a Christian sense. I clung strongly to the ideas of reciprocity, reflection and tolerance, but I had grown weary of the church and its institutionalism of Christ. I stopped attending church regularly and my prayer life was sparse.
Yet, every week we still gathered as a staff to share in community together, to talk about our work and at every meeting we would incorporate some Christian practices, such as reading or prayer. Although I would not choose to implement these practices into my life, the fact that I knew they meant a lot to my coworkers and supervisors ensured that I respected them and reflected upon them.
This year, my senior year at Calvin, has been a tough and yet beautiful year for me. I came into the year quite burned out from a hectic summer, yet determined to be involved in a variety of activities since the ability to multitask and do many things well was something that I used to define myself.
During this time I began attending a church that observed traditional Christian practices, and also maintained strong themes of justice, peace and gender equity – themes which I had felt were missing at other churches I had attended. I found a sense of assurance whenever I attended.
In November I fell mysteriously quite ill and with low energy and a high heart rate, I was forced to drop all the activities that I had used to define myself. I needed to learn to be okay with failure. I was propelled to admit my weaknesses and ask for help from other people.
And most of all I had to learn to place my concerns, my health, and the people I cared for in God’s hands. I had to discover that who I am is not defined by the things that I do, but by the Being who created me. These were hard lessons, but it was through embracing my community and taking time to reflect that I was able to fully embrace being in God’s loving arms.
A pinnacle of my journey this year took place on a Thursday night in the fall. I had missed about a month’s staff meetings due to my illness. The week I returned the theme of the meeting was faithfulness. I knew that in recognition of God’s faithfulness and the faithfulness of the love and care I had received from my co-workers I needed to be honest with how I was truly doing, both emotionally and physically. So, with a shaky voice, I shared with the group how I was honestly doing. To be that weak and vulnerable was incredibly difficult, but I felt compelled to be a witness of the journey God had been leading me on.
It was then that I realized what a gift it is to work in this office. The deep care that we share, the emphasis on community and the continual Christian practices have truly and deeply shaped me.
And in the end it comes back to hope. Hope of a God’s kingdom on earth. Hope for complete health in mind and body. Hope for a time when there is no brokenness. Hope in a God who deeply loves and cherishes all people.
How will what I have learned and experienced at the Service-Learning Center be demonstrated in my future? How will concepts like community, reciprocity and discernment be played out? Only God knows, and that gives me enough hope to continue on this journey.
Kelly DeVries
Graduate Summer Intern at the Service-Learning Center
A friend wrote to ask me last week if I could come up with ten key resources that have most shaped my thinking on my work in service-learning. Below is what I came up with - I'm sure there are many more:
1. Nick Wolterstorff's 1982 commencement address at Wheaton College: http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/mission.pdf on the mission of the Christian college at the end of the 20th century - all the theological/philosophical groundwork is here.
2. Deb Rienstra's wonderful book, So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality has a nice little chapter called, "The Work of our Hands: Serving God and Others" that provides great insight into the Christian virtue of service.
3. Richard Mouw's books When the Kings Come Marching In, and He Shines in all that's Fair provide great theological grounding for the idea that the now connects to the not-yet, and for common grace.
4. Gail Gunst Heffner and Claudia Beversluis edited a collection of essays in 2002 called Commitment and Connection: Service-Learning and Christian Higher Education. Both of their introductory essays lay out important frameworks for the conversation about service-learning for Christians and Christian colleges.
5. I reviewed a book a few years ago called The Spirit of Service: Exploring Faith, Service and Social Justice in Higher Education written primarily by faculty at Gustavus Adolphus College in MN. It was in important book for me to read because a few of the chapters were excellent ("Faith, Social Justice, and Service-Learning in Environmental Studies: The Struggle for Integration," by Mark Bjelland, and "Ora et Labora: Prayer and Service in an International Study Abroad Program," by Jenifer Ward) and most were not, at least to someone with Calvinist/Kuyperian sensibilities. It helped me figure out some of the differences between Lutherans and Calvinists in this area.
6. Charles Marsh's book, The Beloved Community: How Faith Shapes Social Justice, from the Civil Rights Movement to Today has been tremendously helpful with some theological accounts that connect social justice movements with the church over the past 50 years or so.
7. A short article called "Educating for Citizenship," by Caryn McTighe Musil that appeared in the journal Peer Review in 2003: http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/educating_for_citizenship.pdf - it has a nice taxonomy that shows one way of thinking regarding how students develop through community engagement.
8. Kurt Verbeek and Jo-Ann VanEngen have each written important pieces that have helped me think more broadly about service in the international context. Jo-Ann's article on The Cost of Short-Term Missions, http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/articles/short-term-missions.pdf, has been broadly read in Calvin and CRC circles, to good effect I think. And Kurt's chapter in Heffner and Beversluis's book, International Service-Learning: A Call to Caution has gotten less attention ( http://www.calvin.edu/admin/slc/about/pdf/verbeek_intl_s-.pdf ) but is worth pondering, particularly for its caution regarding power and reciprocity in international contexts.
9. The best source for helpful thinking from the mainstream academic world is the Michigan Journal of Community Service Learning, based at UM in Ann Arbor. And both Campus Compact ( www.compact.org ) and the National Youth Leadership Council ( http://nylc.org/ ) have excellent general resources.
10. I have also recently dabbled in the literature on Christian Practices and Christian Teaching and Learning, and have a number of very valuable resources in this vein - including the work of Craig Dykstra and Dorothy Bass (Practicing our Faith, Growing in the Life of Faith etc) and the Journal of Education and Christian Belief ( www.jecb.org ).
I was drawn to this book when I saw it on a table at a lecture a year or two back. The image of a lone tree on the side of a dirt road is captivating, but so is the title. What do I think about the resurrection, heaven and the mission of the church? These are all somewhat vague ideas to me; all somewhat distant and ethereal. And where do those ideas come from? I guess there were always some Biblical scenes that spoke into my understanding of these: Easter, the rich man and Lazarus, the great commission. Things that I've learned and experienced in my lifespan have wanted for something more tangible related to these ideas.
Since seeing the book on that table, I've heard it referred to by many folks who I respect a great deal. A sermon by a Calvin Chaplain Nathaniel Bradford just after the new year referred to the book when speaking of hope, something of which our church is in short supply. So, as a member of the worship planning team, it was decided to transform our evening service into a book discussion group with this book as the focal point.
It probably would have been a good idea to read the book in whole before suggesting it, but having finished the book now, I don't think I would have chosen against it. I did realize early on that I was in a bit over my head, with a deeply theological book that I had to summarize for the gathered congregation. It ended up being a rather enjoyable if time-consuming task.
I wasn't sure exactly what to expect as it relates to Wright's theology compared with the Reformed theology I've been raised in. It turned out to be pretty spot on in my read of the book. There was a nice strong emphasis on the good old Creation, Fall, Redemption, Consummation rubric, though not necessarily such a focus on the heavy-handed T.U.L.I.P. framework that also courses throughout the Reformed perspective.
Fellow congregation members were concerned with Wright's lack of definition for hell, punishment, and sin; but I really resonate with his focus on the joy of God's kingdom building as the motivation for discipleship and evangelism. Some balked at his insistence at the goodness of creation and its persistence at the time of Christ's return, but I'm happy to step clear of that border-line gnosticism and embrace the idea that "God so loved the cosmos."
I loved Wright's persistent encouragement to a fuller celebration of Easter and resurrection, the central tenant of our faith. The idea of "taking something up" in the forty days after Easter leading up to ascension to counter balance the "giving something up" of Lent was a refreshing challenge. I'm not sure what exactly that will be for me, but it may be connected to the image Wright used to explain this concept: that of uprooting and weeding in Lent not with a purpose of blank soil, but a garden to be sown with seeds that will one day blossom and bear fruit.
How exciting, yea surprising, to be invited into the work of justice, beauty and evangelism as kingdom building; God's work done through the Spirit's power in our lives and communities; reclaiming our geographic space, God's gift of time, and the matter of our lives for his glory. I can see how one might declare this as slipping towards a social gospel, but if that's so, it is one that is firmly supported by a Biblical reading of the New Testament that centers on Christ resurrected, allowing for a retelling of the Old Testament in light of God's story of restoration made reality through the people of Israel.
If the dense theology scares you, I'd recommend starting with the last chapter and working your way backwards. I think that if I'd done that, knowing the climax of the book, the earlier chapters would have held more meaning. I may have to go back and read them after letting the final chapter settle in my heart for a while.
I'm re-energized by reading this book. Excited for kingdom work. Surprised by hope.
Three times a year the Service-Learning Center staff embarks on an overnight retreat. Two weeks ago we had our spring retreat in Chicago. We arrived in the late afternoon on Friday and stayed at an International Team (http://www.iteams.org/) community house in the Lawndale area. Over deep dish pizza that evening we heard about International Team’s ministry in Lawndale and then spent the rest of the evening playing games and laughing. The next day we stuffed newsletters for an organization called GRIP (http://www.gripyouth.com/) and in the afternoon headed home in two mini-vans.
Sometimes it’s hard to pull ourselves away from the homework we’re supposed to be doing, the friends we want to hang out with and the sleep we’d like to be getting in order have a retreat, but after each one, I’m reminded of why we have them.
Although a little cheesy, when I was pondering the reasons for our retreats I thought of three more “re” words besides “retreat” that describe well some of the great parts of our retreats.
First, the retreats are a time of reconnecting with other staff members. Because we’re a student staff we’re only in the office a couple of hours a day between our classes and can go a long time without having a conversation. For this reason the time in the car, during meals and relaxing is great for catching up on each other’s lives and processing our work together at the Service-Learning Center. This retreat we had a good time discussing some of the speakers we’ve had in past staff meetings and thinking about our roles as Service-Learning Center employees.
Second, through the activities we engage in during our retreats we are also able to remember the reasons that we do the work we do. This retreat we got to talk with Noel and Ashley from International Teams. They live in the Lawndale neighborhood working alongside members of a local church in youth development. Their philosophy of working with and learning from the people they are serving is central to what we hope to do at the Service-Learning Center. The time we spent with them was a good reminder and challenge for the work we do. In addition, we got to spend the morning helping out at a local Chicago agency, GRIP, which works to match mentors with Chicago teens. Often we at the Service-Learning Center coordinate service-learning opportunities for other students but don’t get to service-learn ourselves. Having the opportunity to do so on this retreat reminded us of some of the “nuts and bolts” of what we do; we experienced an agency orientation, got instructions to do our work and spent the morning helping out. It is good for us to remember the types of experiences our students have on an everyday basis so we can make them as helpful and applicable as possible.
Finally, the retreat is a great time for us to rest and be restored after many weeks of work. I always seem to forget how important it is both personally and as a staff just to have fun with each other. Time laughing, playing games and eating together is so important for our own mental health :) and for the productivity of our office.
Although it’s sometimes difficult to get the gumption up to go on a staff retreat, every time we do venture out I am thankful I did.
As a Calvin student, I worked at the Service-Learning Center during my sophomore and junior years (2001-2003), coordinating service-learning placements for education students in local schools. The job was fantastic--it was "real" and complex--giving me opportunities to meet the needs of both education students and classrooms around the city of Grand Rapids. I was able to visit many of the schools and agencies where Calvin students were placed, giving me a unique picture of the disparities that exist among schools and putting me into contact with many dedicated teachers and administrators. These folks were willing to put forth the extra effort to include Calvin students in their organizations; I think they recognized the mutual benefit that is offered through service-learning.
Though my job at the SL-C ended, service-learning continued (and continues) to intersect with my life. From 2006-2008, my wife and I were mentors in the Harambee House, a Calvin College Project Neighborhood house partnered with First Christian Reformed Church. Each member of the community engaged in our Grand Rapids neighborhood through service-learning on a weekly basis. Having worked at the SL-C, I was keenly aware of how important it was to recognize the relationships that we formed with our neighbors as mutual-we had to fight our tendencies to be the givers, the helpers, the doers.
I currently teach in a special education classroom at Creston High School in the Grand Rapids Public Schools, and the partnership with the SL-C has continued in various ways. I've enjoyed hosting a Streetfest group at our school, and have had a variety of service-learners in my classroom: tutors from the Education Dept. at Calvin, nursing students presenting health information in my classroom from the Nursing Dept., and students from the local Project Neigborhood House on Travis Street have also been involved in our school and in my classroom. I am so thankful for these partnerships; I know that Calvin students learn much from being in an urban high school setting, but that isn't really my primary concern any longer. I'm simply thankful for what they bring to my classroom and how they enrich the lives of my students when they are in my classroom.
Looking at the weather forecast today, I was a little sad to know that this beautiful sunny day might be the last fall day of this year. Pretty soon, with all of the snow coming in, the view outside my window will look like the beside picture (taken winter of my freshman year).
Yet, in an unexplainable way, I was excited to see snow this Monday for the first time since last April. Perhaps, the end of fall is here for a new beginning of winter season. And perhaps, this time in between Thanksgiving and Christmas is not just the final stressful end for us, but a hopeful beginning of what we can do better next time. As often as we feel down by the darkness of a cold winter, we are often discouraged and worn out by the business of the pre-Christmas season. With all the things that need to be done before Christmas such as final exams or work projects, Christmas shopping, etc…, we are worn down and thus forget how meaningful this time of year is.
At least we know that the meaning is there if we just take a moment to look. There will be snow and winter breeze even when we are burdened by study, work or other responsibilities, if only we would spend one moment to find joy in such beauty. In the same way, when we are troubled by life, we find others that care for us enough to bring peace into our lives again. May we learn to not be isolated by the coldness of winter and the business of our lives, but may we be lightened up by the freshness of cold air and be joyful for such loving gifts we are to one another.
A few weekends ago, the S-LC staff enjoyed our annual fall retreat. For the discussion portion of our evening away, we discussed two essays; one, a chapter in Craig Dykstra's book, Growing in the Life of Faith - we discussed chapter five, "Education in Christian Practices." The second essay was an address by Nicholas Wolterstorff entitled, "Christian Learning in and for a Pluralist Society." Below is a window into our conversation:
Two different Latin roots provide us with the English word "education." They are, first, "educare," which means to rear or bring up, as a child – to train, shape, or to mold, and second, "educere," meaning to draw out from within, or to lead forth. Both meanings are represented in the word "education." Many of the hot debates about education today are rooted in the differences between educere and educare.
Wolterstorff answers the question, “why make what is simple (the gospel of Christ) so complicated?”What is the place of Christian learning in a pluralist society?
Dykstra discusses what Christian practices have to do with education.
Practices are loosely defined as “habitations of the Spirit,” or “forms of participation in the practice of God.”“Patterns of communal action that create openings in our lives where the grace, mercy, and presence of God may be made known to us.”
Wolterstorff says that Christian learning allows Christian faith to shape it, from measuring what is legitimate to investigate, to affecting how one treats fellow learners and investigators.He says that “Christian learning is faithful learning.Learning faithful to faith in the triune God, learning faithful to the Christian community and its tradition, learning faithful to the Christian scriptures.”
Christian learning is also the learning that forms and shapes us.He uses the concept of “Christian enculturation.”He says, “being a Christian will incorporate a certain identifiable cultural formation.And for the acquisition of that formation, education is indispensable.Not necessarily academic learning; but certainly education.”
Wolterstorff sees learning ultimately as eucharistic, or grateful, and eirenic, or peace-bringing.It also carries the potential to bring destruction, and it isn’t always grateful, but in its purest forms it is eucharistic and eirenic.He also says that “Christian learning contributes to our shalom by interpreting reality and answering our questions.”
Wolterstorff shudders to think that the American Christian impulse is to downplay “the learning that helps to keep alive and hand on that tradition which consists of the eucharistic and eirenic cultural activities of our forefathers and foremothers in the faith.”Learning allows us to remember and be inspired by those who have gone before and who can instruct and inspire us for the work of the Kingdom.
He discusses the fact of our national directional/religious pluralism.In this context, “the business of Christian learning in our pluralistic society is to give content to the Christian voice in that dialogue which ought to be taking place in the public square of American society.”That public square is full of ideas about what justice and peace look like. Wolterstorff argues that Christians ought to bring the prophets, the gospel, the Christian wisdom of the ages, humbly to bear within that public square.
He makes the claim that “if there is to be that voice on behalf of biblical justice, there must be Christian learning.”The conversation that includes the Christian voice in dialogue with other voices may never take place, but if it ever does, Christian learning will be indispensable in order for a Christian voice to participate.Christian learning, according to Wolterstorff, must be accompanied by Christian virtues.
Dykstra then, in explaining what the practices are, and how they fit into a program of education, concludes that Christian practices, while sharing much in common with other types of practices, have the fundamental difference of not being about mastery and control – but of being about receiving gifts and grace instead.
Christian practices (think Crying Out, Asking for Forgiveness, Engaging, Educating, Challenging, Hospitality, Building, Joy, and Faithfulness) are human activities that are cooperative, socially established, and coherent and complex.They contribute to human moral progress.
“Practices are those cooperative human activities through which we, as individuals and as communities, grow and develop in moral character and substance.”Importantly, Dykstra argues, they can be taught, and hence, passed down from one generation to the next.
The way to learning a practice, according to Dykstra, is through good coaching, lots of words, attention and analysis, apprenticeship, some reading, conversation and argumentation, and a lot more physicality than we think.We need models, mentors, teachers and partners in practice.We also need to be models, mentors, teachers and partners in practice.
Dykstra acknowledges that we live in a world with multiple layers of practices, not all of which are Christian.What are some of our regular practices that are embedded in other layers of our layers outside the specific orbit of our Christian faith?
Here is where Wolterstorff and Dykstra overlap.Dykstra agrees with Wolterstorff in his comments relative to the intersection between our civic and our Christian practices and commitments.“Education in Christian faith must concern itself with the mutual influences that various practices have on one another, as well as with whatever complementarity or conflict may exist between the goods internal to Christian practices and goods internal to others.Because we are all citizens, for example, we must inquire in to the nature, effects, and implications of our simultaneous engagement in practices constitutive of Christian life and those central to public life in the broader culture.We need to inquire, for example, into the continuities and discontinuities between medical practice in our society and practices of care for the ill and the dying that are now and have been in the past characteristic of the church.This applies also to a wide variety of other social practices.”
Dykstra ends with an explanation of how Christian practices are peculiar from other practices.Fundamentally, this difference lies in the area of mastery, excellence and control.Rather than mastery, the human task according to the Christian story is to use the gifts of God rightly as gifts for good.Trust and grateful receptivity replace mastery and control as the end goals.Rather than excellence, we aim for faithfulness.
It is no coincidence that faithfulness is the final practice in the S-LC covenant for this year.
Questions
How are the practices in our covenant, like baseball learn-able?Teachable?Able to be analyzed?
How do they actually get practiced?
In what ways is the learning that attaches to service-learning like educere (draw out), and in what ways is it like educare (shape, mold)?
How are the practices that the Service-Learning Center enables and encourages designed to equip Calvin students to participate in the public square dialogue that Wolterstorff talks about?
How are our practices (Crying Out, Asking for Forgiveness, Engaging, Educating, Challenging, Hospitality, Building, Joy, and Faithfulness) designed to educate us with educere, or educare?
In Chapter 4 of his book God’s Politics, entitled “Protest Is Good; Alternatives are Better”, Jim Wallis argues that communal protest can have enormous “transformational” power if channeled into the form of an “alternative”. Wallis breaks his chapter down into two main points:
1. Saying “no” (e.g. protesting) is good, but proposing alternatives is better.
2. During our “most difficult and darkest moments” we must reconnect with relationships that nurture us and our faith in the sanctity of life.
Wallis, Director and Editor-in-Chief of Sojourners, wrote in reflection upon his experience protesting the Iraq war. Up until the “eleventh hour”, Wallis promoted his “Six-Point Plan” (a document detailing a peaceful alternative to war) in both the United States and overseas. Rather than merely protesting Bush’s decision to go to war, Wallis and his like-minded peers advocated for an alternative. Together these Americans presented a strong protestation to their own government’s foreign policy. Wallis claims this form of protest is powerful, “effective and transformational”, and able to “illumine a society to its need for change.” For Wallis, “protest should be making a promise”: An explicit promise made by a community.
There are several important weaknesses to this view of protest:
Wallis assumes that one or both of the two major sides might be willing (or made willing) to listen to a legitimate alternative. It seems historically that frequently the major power players in politics are driven by irrational thinking. Fear, greed, and anger are blinding and compelling at the same time and politicians are not afraid to manipulate their constituents using these emotions. I’m no Machiavellian, but the reality I’ve seen is that legitimate alternatives are not given legitimate consideration because other priorities take over.
Wallis assumes that the public are disciplined and educated enough to seriously consider an alternative (international quake zone summit or Michael Jackson’s memorial service?).
The kind of diplomacy Wallis advocates would require a degree of unity nationally and globally I have never witnessed in my life. In order for a plan like Wallis’s to be taken seriously, Americans and nations across the globe would have to wholly commit to the values of the doctrine and its authors: in this case pacifism and trust. As honorable as I believe these values to be, for any alternative to gain momentum, it would have to appeal to large, but different groups. In the process of gaining support, the original supporters risk watering down the original alternative, simplifying, and reducing it into a simple black and white option. This tends to happen in American politics because Americans naturally prefer bipartisan politics: it’s easiest for us to react in black and white ways.
As for my understanding of protest, I have been heavily influenced by Wendell Berry’s essay "A Poem of Difficult Hope.” Communal protest for a counterculture alternative is an ideal I admire, but when it comes to daily life I find Berry’s view far more powerful and far more comforting:
“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”
I hope you are doing well and enjoying your summers. This blog post will be the first of a series of conversations about the S-LC Summer Reader 2009. Whenever I blog, I will try to present discussion questions in such a way that focuses on the service-learning subjects, rather than the particular readings. Please feel welcome to post any responses, comments or questions whether or not you have had time to study the relevant reading.
How would you teach “social justice"?
This week’s conversation is about social justice pedagogy. In his essay, Educating for Shalom, Nicholas Wolterstorff describes his vision of social justice and several methods he uses to impress this vision upon young people. Wolterstorff’s vision of social justice is founded on “Shalom”: a specific vision of human flourishing in “ethical community” in which justice and happiness exist in harmony. In support of this conception of social justice, Wolterstorff cites Walter Brueegemann’s Living Toward A Vision: Biblical Reflections on Shalom, his own book entitled Until Justice and Peace Embrace, and one of his essays entitled “Why Care about Justice”. There are many interesting and provoking ideas presented in Educating for Shalom, but the focus of this blog entry will be the strategies Wolterstorff outlines for teaching Shalom.
ILLUMINATION: Make students aware of their current framework for understanding social justice issues. Challenge them to consider the ways their past experiences have shaped the way they perceive the world and critique the legitimacy of this view.
DISCIPLINE: Take a highly behavioral approach using a punishment and reward system to educate young people about the value of Shalom. Wolterstorff says punishments and rewards may be physical/material or based on praise.
MODELING: Essentially the best teachers are the ones who live in a way that authentically reflects their values.
EMPATHY: Cultivate empathy in the students by confronting them “with the faces and voices of suffering – with images and voices of the night.” Photography, film, and other creative mediums can be powerful forms of documentation, capable of educating and “illuminating”. However, there are several important caveats to consider. First, although images can cause a healthy dissatisfaction and discomfort in the viewer, sometimes images can desensitize and paralyze the viewer. Second, the education of the viewer should never be bought at the expense of the subject’s integrity. I respect a teacher who wants to challenge their students with real images, but I respect even more a teacher who preserves the integrity of the individual in the photograph, film, etc. What I mean is, the individual in the photo should be respected; the suffering should not be objectified.
EXPERIENCE: Wolterstorff concludes his essay by suggesting the possibility that teachers cannot teach social justice because students only truly acquire social justice as they experience their own suffering. I prefer this option to the other five because personal experience of suffering can create authentic feelings of empathy. Experiential learning is the most intense of all learning styles and in my opinion, offers thegreatest opportunity for growth.
I’m very interested to hear thoughts and comments about any of Wolterstorff’s or my own ideas presented here or in the reading. Do you agree with Wolterstorff’s definition of “social justice”? Do you think social justice (or shalom) can be taught? Should it be taught? If social justice is to be taught, what strategies should a teacher use?
The story goes like this: Two blind men were standing near an elephant, one in front of the elephant and the other behind the same animal. They were then asked to describe the elephant. The first blind man reached out and had the elephant's trunk in his hands. He described what he felt. The second blind man reached out and had the elephant's tail in his hands. He too described what he felt.
Question: whose description is right? Both descriptions ARE correct because it depends on which part of the elephant was described. Both descriptions are equally valid.
Moral of the story: When two accounts seem to contradict each other, we tend to think one must be incorrect, or maybe less correct. But it really depends on where we stand and our perspective of the issue.
Hey another story to share. So I heard there would be an ethnography performance sometime in April, here on our campus, on a recently concluded research on what white female students think about race and the challenges they encounter when facing race issues. Scribble a comment or two for more info.
"In America, there is someone else to despise. In Canada, there is not. In the new racism, as in the old, somebody always has to be the nigger." -Malcolm Gladwell
Read the whole article at http://www.gladwell.com/pdf/black.pdf. Might be something you want to read to your grandchildren when they turn 3. They can handle it.
If only we could stop comparing people and start appreciating people as who they are. We are all, after all, humankind. Be kind to humans.
So I did go to Dr. Trepagnier’s lecture last Thursday. Ryan, Devin and I thought we had the best seats when we grabbed the front row, only to be pleasantly surprised later that 5 more rows were added between us and the podium. The turn out was unexpectedly overwhelming.
Dr.T, the way most of her students address her since almost no one can pronounce her last name correctly, shared her thoughts from her book for about an hour and fifteen minutes. The gist of her thesis argues that everyone has racist ideas, including well-meaning white people. The core of her strategy to take on racism is to educate people that “heightened race awareness is more important in changing racial inequality than judging whether individuals are racist”. Check out http://silentracism.com to make sure I didn’t misquote her. When people are more “race aware”, they will be more likely to identify racism, their own and institutional racism.
Dr. T also suggests that the question, “Am I racist?” shouldn’t be the one we ask. Instead, we should ask ourselves, “How am I racist?” Dr. T contends that unlike 5 decades ago, the notion of either one is racist or not racist doesn’t work today. Rather, she proposes that racism should be seen as a spectrum, where silent racism overarches this spectrum. On one end are those who are “less racist,” who are “race aware” and strive to combat racism. On the other end of that spectrum are those who are “more racist,” those who ignore racism or are overtly racist. Therefore all people are on this continuum.
If silent racism is silent, then does it still matter? Dr. T’s answer is an affirmative yes. She considers silent racism “instrumental in the production of institutional racism” and believes that if thoughts are how we see the world, then they will likely one day spill out through our words or actions. At that stage, I think, the damage could be too great to clean up.
What should we do to contain, and then reduce, racism? Dr. T thinks that “race awareness” is the start to countering racism. To tackle racism, we need to do it without guilt. To interrupt racism, we need humility and courage. The last two ideas mean we should speak up in whatever way and action against racism, and that it is not alright to be racist.
“Places” is a key idea that the office has been discussing and thinking about over summer, the staff training last week, and also especially during this period of StreetFest. The theme for this year’s StreetFest, to embrace fully, projects the hopes “aimed to promote care for place, located within a context of personal relationships and focused on attentiveness to particularity and otherness.”
I think a “place” is somewhere where its residents have a sense of belonging, somewhere where reciprocal and organic relationships between the residents and their environments grow together. People shape places. Some people decide to live in a specific place with no intention to leave, while some people move from place to place.
If places reflect the people within them, then transient people and returning residents are “windows” to that place. These “windows” bring life, new perspectives, and an air of energy from the outside. A place without “windows” is locked within, sinking slowly into a comatose state. Reflectively, if places influence people too, then would non-vibrant “window-less” place suffocate its residents? What do you think?
What does “place” mean to you? Is it any different from “space”?
This summer, our Service-Learning Center staff will be reading a number of different articles related to the work of our office. Every two weeks or so, one of our staff members will post a brief summary of an article and then pose some questions for discussion. Our hope is that next year’s staff, currently scattered from Singapore to Guatemala to Eastown, will be able to use the comment section as a forum to discuss different issues/ideas raised in these articles.
The first article on the docket is a chapter in Debra Rienstra’s book So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality entitled “The Work of Our Hands.” In this chapter, Rienstra offers some reflection on the spiritual discipline of service, exploring, among other things, service as a form of “grateful obedience” and as an act that points and works toward the Kingdom. In the chapter she also explores the relationship between sacrifice and service as well as the idea of vocation or, as she would prefer to say, vocations.
What I found most interesting about Rienstra’s chapter was one of the “paradoxes” of service that she highlights. On the one hand, as Rienstra puts it, “our behavior has enduring consequences.” People are working hard to create just governments, to discover scientific answers to disease, to reform health care and education, etc. Surely, this work being done is work for the Kingdom. On the other hand, however, we must keep in mind that our service and work for social justice is small and will not in and of itself bring the Kingdom. Rienstra writes, “...the danger is that we might get all triumphant and think that we’re doing it and not God. Humanity is evolving; we’re contributing to progress; and if we keep at it, someday angels will descend on clouds to thank us” (214).
The paradox circles around the importance of our actions: the service we do, the choices we make, the ways we live, etc., can all point to and push toward the Kingdom, yet ultimately God is the one working to establish God’s Kingdom; our works both matter and they don’t. In the end, Rienstra seems to be pushing her readers towards humility, towards acknowledging that God does not need us or our service but graciously allows us to enter into the work God is already doing to restore the world. She uses the metaphor of a child in the kitchen with his mother:
"The truth is that most of the time, we ought to concentrate our efforts on staying out of God’s way. We are probably less like secret agents and more like the little kid who wants to “help” bake cookies. He spills flour and measures things inexactly and eats a lot of the chocolate chips. Mom has to intervene to clean up the messes if any of the cookies are going to turn out. It’s a terribly inefficient operation. Yet it has value other than efficiency, in teaching the child and in the loving companionship built by a shared task. I imagine God sometimes would like to shoo us out of the way and get down to business without our help. But like a wise mother, God generously welcomes us back again and again into the kitchen."
I think the discussion of if/how/why our service matters is an interesting one. It is both humbling and relieving to know that God is the one at work in restoring the world, that it doesn’t all rest on our shoulders, and I am grateful to Rienstra for making that clear. I do fear, however, that this idea of God’s sovereignty can give Christians an excuse to not be as attentive to the work of social justice, to their personal decisions about how/where we live, shop, eat, and work. I think a certain level of responsibility and agency seems to get lost when we go too far in emphasizing God’s sovereignty instead of our own choices, but that could just be my rebelling against my Calvinist background...
What are your thoughts? What are the dangers of one side of the paradox being emphasized more than the other? What role do we actually play in realizing the Kingdom? What are some other parts of Rienstra’s chapter that you appreciated and/or took issue with? Please join the discussion with your own thoughts, comments, or questions about the article.
Art has irrefutable restorative and conciliatory powers. This is the notion that has spurred on some of us S-LC staff members to a quest to better understand art and the ways in which it relates to service-learning and social justice. To be sure, this is no small task. With that initial conviction as our foundation, however, we decided to begin this escapade by exploring the ways in which art creates meaning. This nebulous outset in turn has led to many fascinating discussions about how art is ontologically polymorphous (even amorphous, such as in the Jackson Pollock sampling to the right), how it manifests itself concretely and in its interpretation, and how it acts as a medium of restoration and reconciliation. The list goes on.
In our latest musings, we have been particularly intrigued with one phenomenon: the genesis and preponderance of community art programs across both the US and the world at large. Why are these programs successful, especially in communities that lack the funds to support it? Who makes time for this sort of thing? What is it about these programs that convince neighborhood associations and local budget committees to set aside monies for an activity as “frivolous” and purportedly impotent as art?
Among the many apparent answers to this question (for instance, the construction of a communal identity, an avenue for self-expression, etc.), the most intriguing idea we’ve toyed with relates back to Marxism—an ever-apt lens when it comes to any examination of power dynamics within society. Louis Althusser, a 20th century Marxist philosopher, frequently addresses the idea of interpellation, or that which he deems “hailing the subject.” This principle is essentially an act of saying, “You are a person.” According to Althusser, the basic human truth that makes such an act necessary is that the status of personhood is granted not by the self, but by the Other, whether the Other consists of one person or the consensus of an entire community. Each of us, then, is dependent on others to bestow upon us the title of fellow human being. Likewise, communities can easily deny the personhood of others simply by refusing them entry into their community. Power is given, not taken.
We have been exploring the notion of art as interpellation, as an interpellative act. By granting the privilege to participate in art, this exclusive activity that is so often rendered either impractical or a lavish luxury, you allow for the act of interpellation to take place, for the establishment personhood. In the case of community art programs, someone who belongs to a marginalized subclass of society is, for the moment, no longer relegated to his or her place of inferiority, but is empowered by the simple accessibility and extension of art. A paintbrush, then, is so much more than a basic mechanism for creative work. It is a scepter of sorts, both an instrument and a possession of empowerment. To paint, to write, to create is to participate in one construct of society as a fuller, more empowered citizen than you were before you walked through the door.
The implications of this quickly lead to a perspective of art as a means toward social justice that we hope to explore further in meetings to come. We’ll keep you posted.
I just finished reading several chapters by Richard Mouw. Re-reading these passages took me back to my days as a member of the S-LC student staff when the campus focused on Isaiah 60 for an interim, and our staff read and discussed "When the Kings Come Marching In."
