Just finished a service at my church that was both our Education Sunday Service, where we pray for the schools in our area (including the pupils who are about to embark on the iniquitous and seemingly unending 11+ tests in the month ahead) and a baptism service...
It seemed like a good combination at the time, but as it turned out I had some difficult things to say, off the back of today's lectionary reading from Mark 10: 46-52 where Bartimaeus (whose name means Son of the Unclean one) encounters this Rabbi from Nazareth... Anyway, I won't go into the details of what I had to say except that it was largely around our reluctance to move on, to truly follow Jesus, and learn from him as our teacher or rabbi.
But then I came home to find this piece by Kim Fabricius over on Connexions, where he concludes...
Over 25 years ago I bought a book. I revisit it so often that the pages are falling out. It’s called "What Prevents Christian Adults from Learning." There is, the author suggests, a constellation of obstructions to learning: the need to be right, the fear of being wrong, the security of the known, the pain of un-learning, the hard work of re-thinking, the disturbance of dissonance, the ubiquity of distraction. Quite a challenging agenda. As a teacher, the author has been working at it his entire career. As a minister I’ve tried too. The author’s name is John Hull. The book is full of insight. The thing is: John Hull is blind. But he sees. Do we?
Shalom
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