Book Review: Everybody Communicates, Few Connect
John Maxwell attempts to demystify communication principles in a way that enable people to actually make a connection. He focuses on a range of audience considerations, investigating how to communicate one-on-one, in small groups, and with a large audience. The book features two sections around principles and practices of connecting. The main principles of connecting involve realizing that connection is not fundamentally about you; the main practices of connecting involve concrete actions.
Overall, I found the book to be accessible and about as interesting as a book on communication can be. I wasn’t looking abundantly forward to reading this book, but Maxwell did a solid job at presenting some fairly new ideas. In particular, his discussion about the role of simplicity in communication stuck with me. As an academic, it’s my job to appreciate the nuances of complex phenomena; but it is equally my job to make the topic transparent. Additionally, I picked up some valuable insights about why it is a bad idea to retreat immediately after class. Connection with my students needs to be about them.
This book isn’t a book for everyone. If people constantly praise your connection skills, you’re probably not going to get a lot out of the content. Yet, it is a clear presentation of accessible pointers for connecting if you are the type of person that has some more difficulties.
When do we start?
So many people have theories about the appropriate time to start science and engineering education that it drives me a bit bonkers. Bringing in STEM-focused initiatives seems to be a growing face of educational innovations, reflected recently in this news story from Richfield, MN.
In particular one of the comments struck me as a grounds for considering STEM education
As a scientist, With degrees in engineering and computer science I can tell you that you cannot teach any meaningful science until 10th grade. Even then it’s marginal. These teachers don’t know one whit about real science. Further engineers and technical people are the first ones laid off (after the ‘project’ is completed) and receive mediocre salaries compared to the sales and marketing staff.
CLAIM: You cannot teach any meaningful science until 10th grade. Even then it’s marginal.
COUNTER: I think this comment presupposes a definition of “meaningful” science that refers to analytical science, rooted in accepting current mathematical models of the world around us. Therefore, until you have mastered the basics of algebra, do not even bother teaching students science. And really, “meaningful” science has calculus pre-requisites. This viewpoint does have some legitimate considerations, particularly when one considers that Isaac Newton invented calculus to explain his observations of how things moved.
Yet, we do not have observation-based science in school. This fact strikes me as most unfortunate because science, in my humble estimation, requires learning how to see the things that count while simultaneously making an argument for why what you see should count. It is of scientific interest to learn how to verify that a car moves across the table with a constant velocity; a student who has the ball on a slight incline who makes the observations that the ball is actually accelerating should be commended. A refined sense of when an-otherwise-anomalous occurrence counts separates experts from the novices. Yet, unfortunately school science tends to regard assorted canonical norms of science (which is particularly true when we start talking about high school level science. If you do not believe that a canon drives scientific instruction, take a look at the learning objectives associated with AP science classes.)
CLAIM: These teachers don’t know one whit about real science.
COUNTER: While I disagree with the commentor’s wording, it does have a ring of truth, particularly when we investigate why people get into elementary education. Elementary educators are notorious for expressing discomfort around math and science topics. Yet elementary educators are often expected to be all things to all people. These educators establish students on a broad academic footing while simultaneously working with (largely) the same students all day. To me, I regard it as somewhat of a marvel that any elementary educator rises to the ranks of affirmed specialist in any area, let alone considerations of math and science.
Yet, we tend to rely on in-service professional development to help teachers expand their skill sets in the classroom. And herein lies a considerable challenge because we can easily default towards “activities that work” rather than “integrated instructional design.” If you add to this mix teachers who are uncomfortable with the content to begin with, then you will likely encounter teachers who take the activities without the assorted pedagogy. Therefore, when I read articles where teachers learn how to “do science” with flashlights and balloons, I cannot help but be skeptical. Some trends in professional development involve sending paired instructors to the workshop to help when rubber meets the road of implementation, using a wiki-source to develop community, and asking teachers to make a multiple year commitment to a training program. We also might need to take a good hard look at everything we expect our elementary teachers to be experts.
CLAIM: Further engineers and technical people are the first ones laid off (after the ‘project’ is completed) and receive mediocre salaries compared to the sales and marketing staff.
COUNTER: I think this statement gets to the heart of current discussions about what majoring in a technical field is good for anyway. And incidentally, I also think it speaks to the need to reconsider technical education. As Paul Polak recently said, “To solve the other 75% of the [technical] problem, an effective way to put these tools in the hands of millions of last mile customers had to be designed. This is as true of design in the West as it is for developing countries.” In other words, it is one thing to analyze and build something; it is something else entirely to have a developed approach be a solution.
We mistakenly assume that things are “done” when they are far from it. Bad design is not a solution inasmuch as it is a problem needing to be solved.
We do not walk alone
We can easily forget that following Christ is a risky choice where Christ invites us to surrender everything we have in order to find ourselves in Him. Dying to ourselves is accomplished, not in one decision made sometime in the past, but in decisions that go from minute to minute. Yet, in Christ, I marvel because He does not ask us to do anything He Himself was unwilling to do. Borrowing another thought from Metropolitan Anthony Bloom,
The Lord says to us that if we want to be followers of His, disciples, we must take up our crosses and follow Him. And when we think of the Cross of the Lord, we think of His gradual, painful ascent to His Crucifixion, we think of the way of the Cross, of His death. And indeed, the Lord calls us, if we want to be faithful to Him, if we want to be His disciples, to be prepared to walk all the way with Him – all the way.
But on the other hand, we must remember that He does not call us to follow a road which He has not trod Himself. He is a Good Shepherd that walks ahead of His sheep, making sure that all is clear, that dangers have been removed, that they can walk safely in His footstep. His call to take up our cross and to follow Him is a call, at the same time, to accept to be true disciples of Him, and also to do it in the certainty that He will never ask from us what He has not done or endured Himself. We can follow Him safely; we can follow Him with assurance, but also with a sense of peace in our heart and our mind.
May God bless you with the grace to pray and authentically seek Christ.
On Limitations
A hunter in the desert once saw Abba Antony enjoying himself with the brothers, and he was shocked. Wanting to show him that it was necessary sometimes to meet the needs of the brothers, the old man said to the hunter: “Put an arrow in your bow and shoot it.” So he did. The old man then said: “Shoot another arrow.” And he did so. Then the old man said: “Shoot another arrow.” But the hunter replied: “If I bend my bow so much I will break it.” Then Antony said to him: “It is the same with the work of God. If we stretch the brothers beyond their measure, they will soon break. Sometimes it is necessary to come down to meet their needs.”
-from the life of St Anthony the Great
May we treat all in light of their human limitations while constantly exhorting all through the power of the Holy Spirit.
On doing the right thing
You know, it can be amazingly hard to be generous at times. The world does not appreciate generous people, and various structures in society assume the absolute worst in people. Needless to say, this song from Wicked resonates with me from that perspective. It also helps that it’s just a solid song from start to finish. Enjoy.
Improvising our way to life
It’s been a while since I’ve had featured good music on my blog; I figure it’s about time. Yet it is hard to find good music when a) I’ve been living under a rock working at camp and b) my friend who I can almost always count on for good music has been also hiding under a rock working on school projects. But you can almost always find someone having a ton of fun with good music. So I present
Imogen Heap has recently made all of her live improvisation tracks available for download. I’m a big fan of the Nashville and Los Angeles songs. Generally, I enjoy improvisation. I competed in extemporaneous speaking in high school, good improv comedy is one of my favorite things ever and I have a profound respect for people who can adjust things on the fly.
Yet so much of what we do as human beings is to improvise. Things don’t always go as planned. Flexibility, adjustments and uncertainty help ground us in the reality of our limitations. But within that frame, we find life as we learn to trust, breathe and feel. It takes guts to produce something never before seen. But every moment in the future has perennial newness that invites the leap of faith.
On the Gospel
“The Gospel is a harsh document; the Gospel is ruthless and specific in what it says; the Gospel is not meant to be re-worded, watered down and brought to the level of either our understanding or our taste. The Gospel is proclaiming something which is beyond us and which is there to stretch our mind, to widen our heart beyond the bearable at times, to recondition all our life, to give us a world view which is simply the world upside-down and this we are not keen to accept….The Gospel is ruthless, and the words of Christ are harsh, however loving they are; because love is ruthless, love will never accept compromise.”
-Metropolitan Anthony Bloom in his sermon asking “Can Modern Man Believe?“
Building an Environmental Awareness
It is August, so we have entered the month where I experience summer camp nostalgia. There is something about sitting beside an outdoor fire in the summer time that is simply sublime. Growing up in northern states, I learned much of what I know regarding the environment from simply being within the environment. We can find an amazing treasure of environmental principles embedded in the wisdom we share with the up-and-coming generation about how to build a fire safely.
The material absolutely required to build a good fire where I lived was birch bark. And it worked best if you managed to secure a healthy handful of the white stuff, finely broken down into slivers. The trees often helped with the process as they would tend to flake off fine pieces of bark that you could peel off of the trees. But, birch bark collecting came with many rules; the most important rule was to never peel past the white portion of the tree to turn the bark tan or (in the worst case scenario) pink. If you saw pink, you exposed the inner bark of the tree that could cause the tree to be subject to illness. But, year after year, the birch stands remained. Fire after fire, we could always find enough bark to get the fire going.
Additionally, to build a fire, you needed a range of wood types. Small, dry kindling was a must; the dry, tiny sticks on the paths all of a sudden had value. You size up the wood in the fire from the kindling to get to your main logs that will become the majority of the fire for the majority length of time. After all, once you get a fire going, it’s relatively straight-forward to “throw another log on the fire.”
Yet, in the process of building a campfire, we find a plethora of environmental lessons, particularly in environments where people do not need to build fires to survive. Campfires serve as a luxury that can scale itself down to conform to its situation. Smart strategies of gathering wood allow people to leave no trace on their environments. Even in places where people build fire after fire, such as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, we can still practice appropriate gathering procedures that do no harm to the surrounding ecosystem. We generally do not want to make wood gathering a more onerous task than it needs to be, so we pick up on the readily available resources. Simple rules make for continued enjoyment.
The Invisible World
I met a friend this summer who works north of Madagascar. As much as I try to be a globally informed citizen, I realized that I know very little about Madagascar other than its placement on a map as “that big island east of the main African continent.” Because he lives and works there, I asked my friend if he had any thoughts about where I could keep up with Madagasi news. Occasionally the BBC features stories, but I would have better luck if I read French. Well, today, he posted this article about Madagascar written by National Geographic (and seriously, what’s not to like about National Geographic news stories? They always have some of the best pictures!).
But as I read the article, it pointed towards some complex realities in living in parts of the world we never hear about. In a word, Madagascar is a mineral-rich nation where a sizable portion of the population live on less than a dollar a day. Why should anyone care about a poor island nation essentially consuming itself with slash-and-burn agriculture and an economy built on exotic wood exports?
It is easy for people living distant from the situation to assert a sort of parental attitude when exposed to the facts. Judgment always tends to be relatively straight-forward. Preserve the forests, enact stronger penalties for illegal foresting activities, end slash-and-burn agriculture and cultivate stronger cropping practices. Yet, with the exception of the fourth activity, most of these “must-do” statements come from a very limited understanding of context and an even more limited position of ability to assist.
We generally have “must-do” statements regarding the fairly invisible world of developing countries, assuming that mere assertion will make things true. So often we tell someone to do something as a way to remove ourselves from the process. So often we tell someone to do something as a way of attempting to speak “sense” into a situation we do not have to live. So often we tell someone to do something as a way to keep the true situation invisible.
And, then, if we permit the invisible to become visible, the question then becomes “What are we to do?” seeking answers that honor and affirm the common humanity of the people present. So, perhaps a big part of practicing our humanity involves opening our eyes to the world around us, both in the large nearly-anonymous consideration of the “global village” and in the immediate sense of our backyards, front yards and workplaces.
Making Room for the Scriptures
I think that everyone has parts of the Scriptures that they wish really were not there. There are some places in the Scripture where the meaning hides, where we wonder why the language is so harsh, where we confront lasting confusion, or where we assume that everyone around us has missed the interpretative mark. As much as I try to blog regularly and get things posted in a timely fashion, sometimes I struggle with coming up something meaningful to say regarding the Gospel. Additionally, it can be hard to find an already prepared sermon on the particular Gospel lesson at this time of year because we’ve hit obscure dates like “the 13th Sunday of Matthew.”
Yet, we can find ourselves in places and seasons of our lives where our immediate reaction to the reading is to shut out the voice that tries to speak to us. So often, we have little space for things that cause us to ask different sorts of questions. Additionally, we can encounter broader challenges when the Scriptures appear to be speaking into a more public discussion than the one that occurs in the quiet places of our hearts. Whether Christ talks about forgiveness, divorce, love, mercy, judgment, or His crucifixion, we find Him fundamentally speaking to what it means to be human beings in relationship with ourselves, with each other, and with the divine.
Metropolitan Anthony Bloom had this to say about how to hear the Gospel:
The first thing we must do when we approach the Gospel is to take it with reverence, with the sense that we are not only handling a book, not only going to read the words, but that this book, and the words which we read are THE Word, God speaking, speaking through human words; and it is important that it should be through human words, because we cannot enter into the mysterious mind of God. Did He not say through Isaiah the Prophet ‘My thoughts are above your thoughts, and my ways above your ways’? But in Christ, it is in human words that He addresses us.
And then we must listen to what He says and look into what He does, look in to all the situations which are depicted in one or another passage of the Gospel with reverence, with interest, with devotional awe, because it is He Who speaks to us; it is Him we see moving, acting, saving. And we must try to find our place in the crowd that surrounds Him, listen as though we were present when He actually spoke, listen as though we stood in the crowd while He was healing, saving, calling to repentance the people who came to Him, and listening as though the words He spoke, as Saint Peter puts it in the Gospel, were words of life — not words of death; words capable of awakening in us all that is alive, both humanly and eternally, divinely; words of life and not the words of death, in the sense that His words are meant to bring us to life, not condemn us even before our death.
In this way, we may find the Scripture to be a bit wider than we first expected. Even as Jesus teaches on marriage and divorce, He discusses that some may not marry for any host of reasons. Using such a Scripture in the public square to discuss marriage should also include discussions of divorce and singleness. It is much easier to take pieces of this particular passage to heart if it do not apply to your own situation as you can use the Scripture to formulate a rhetorical argument. If the Gospel carries the good news of Christ to all people, then how do we open them so that all people can hear Christ saying, “THIS is the way wherein you should walk,” especially when we realize that not all lives are marked by the same events and opportunities?
The Story Matters
You know, I had never really ever been a fan of the Wizard of Oz. The flying monkeys always succeeded in creeping me out beyond recognition. I also do not care for some intense female villains (Ursula is the main reason I never took to the Little Mermaid). Yet, it is easy to come to view the story one way, even when the storyline fails to make logical sense, especially if you only hear the story one way.
Recently, I saw Wicked, a musical that tells the “true” story of the Wicked Witch of the West. Generally, I do not consider myself to be a revisionist, but I have to say that putting Elphaba into a more complete life context helps even the story Dorothy told us make a bit more sense. [Not only does it make a little more sense, it is also supremely less scary.]
Yet I think we tend to gravitate towards the simple stories that unite us around a common enemy. It’s an unfortunate aspect of being human that we frame the narratives of our lives around principle struggles that put the “bad guy” as someone other than ourselves. We would rather focus on where we can see the darkness in another. When we succeed, we often take the credit. When we fail, we often place the blame.
True-to-life stories often are convoluted, complicated and riddled with nuance. But the complexity can bring us to dialog within ourselves, forming stillness amidst the chaos.
Friday Forum: On Smart Development
Over the past week, I’ve haphazardly opened a discussion about intelligent ideas for working within a range of engineering design scenarios. I guess it is clear what I have been thinking about as I have been working all summer.
I think engineering design is a process that has to diversify its portfolio relative to how things get done. In some instances, the current protocols work pretty well. In other instances, the current protocols totally fail. The problems remain in the eye of the beholder. However, a bigger problem is an attempt to force a one-size-fits-all solution where it is likely such a solution will not work. Particularly as we discuss development in today’s world, we are generally having conversations about food, water and energy. Now, it is intriguing to note that these three questions do not exist exclusively in the developing world, but we face these questions as well in the developed world.
Yet I think it is better to treat the developing world from a “ground-up” paradigm rather than a “top-down” paradigm. Knowing what we know about the limitations of existing solutions, can we do better to fit within the developing context? Can we look at the present practices in the area and try to think outside of the box? Some interesting things have been accomplished through so-called “frugal engineering,” and I think it’s notable that these interesting things have come about as engineers begin their designs by looking at the context in which the engineers are working.
However, as we consider context, it is equally important to consider trade-offs. For instance, I generally support eating local, particularly out of one’s own backyard garden as I think it is a good thing to have a lived connection with your food. [The sense of a lived connection with food is also part of the reason why I generally support cooking at home.] However, I do think that in areas of particularly high population density (such as the Eastern seaboard of the United States) it may be much harder to eat locally than it is to eat locally in the Midwest. Additionally, people who eat locally may find unexpected trade-offs, particularly if their desire to eat locally comes from a desire to reduce one’s so-called environmental footprint.
All too easy in design it is easy to become blinded by the criteria that matter in the moment. Moreover, when speaking about development, we often refer to choices that effect how people live their lives, in which case we should be careful about embracing an assumed position from the outset.
When conversations turn shrill
I have had all sorts of responsibilities in my life that require me to wear a whistle. At one time or another, I have been a crossing guard, a lifeguard or a coach. I generally like wearing a whistle, because it is one of the quickest ways to get someone’s attention when you really need to do it. At times, I have been known to catch “whistle envy” where one indescribably desires the feel of a whistle around one’s neck.
The whistle affords a certain power, as we generally pay deference to its warning call. However, do we pay attention because we assume that something important is going to happen or because we want the thick sound of annoyance to stop?
Yet it seems that some conversations happen as people desire to use the shrillness of a whistle as a standard tone of speech. My own attitude towards the shrill conversations is to back away and find people who seem to be more interested in having a conversation than simply being the loudest whistle in the room.
What do you think? Do conversations turn shrill because of their importance, because of someone’s desire to be heard, or a bit of both?
A Prayer for Peace
We thank you, O Master, Lover of Mankind, King of the ages and Bestower of good things, Who destroyed the dividing wall of enmity, and granted peace to the human race, and Who now has granted peace to Your servants. Instill in them the fear of You and confirm in them love one for the other. Extinguish every dispute and banish all temptation to disagreement. For You are our peace and to You we ascribe glory: to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto ages of ages. Amen.
– Prayer for the Pacification of Animosity from the Great Book of Needs
Step 1: Define the Problem
I was teaching a course in engineering design this summer where I asked my students to try to define engineering in an essay citing examples from class and our main course text (“Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from Thought to Thing”). Because I do not believe in asking people to do something you yourself are unwilling to do, I’ve taken some time to write my own draft.
When engineering educators gather to converse about engineering design, generally one can expect to hear some delineation of “the engineering design process.” In some ways, a meta-construct of the process helps generalize the conversation to exist independent of the actual products designed by engineers. As engineering products differ considerably across various engineering disciplines, focusing on engineering design can open a window to define what engineering is. Engineering design is a process that can transform an idea into a masterpiece while simultaneously conflating the needs and wants of a dynamic social system.
Engineering refines and materializes various ideas towards a functional beauty that sometimes can only be fully appreciated by the parent designer. Many engineering designs, such as Velcro, start with a very primitive design that can only be appreciated by the inventor. A simple walk in the fields led to the idea for a radically different type of fastener. Manufacturing challenges abounded, but engineering persistence enabled the creation of robust processes to deal with assorted limitations. Additionally, this engineering persistence to improve existing solutions leads to many more innovations. Even among common objects, like the paper clip and the pencil, we find shifting engineering conceptions that address challenges of usability, product diversity, suitability, machining, and sustainability. Prototypical solutions also carry within them a beauty of making something transparent to an engineer as ideas move from paper, even if the prototype is a far cry from the “real” object. Paper and card stock can become real tools when designing an airplane as these simple materials provide a way of thinking about aerodynamic principles. Clay models can help engineers see how various components fit together from an outdoor toy sculpture to a proposed new car design. While prototypes rarely have the same utility as a “fully produced” product, the prototypes still carry the ability to bring beauty to an idea, if only in the eyes of the beholder.
Yet, as more people come to appreciate “fully produced” products of engineering, engineering also acts as a prime agent that conflates our needs and our wants. Engineering allows us to develop capabilities to form and shape our material world in incredible ways, even as we fail to appreciate the full gamut of a product’s effects. While we need clean water to drink, centralized water infrastructure brings with it all sorts of challenges related to expansion, operation, and maintenance in a complicated network. When people need to move this water in large volumes opposite of gravity, engineers tend to develop large, heavily centralized systems of pumping networks and large supply pipes. Some technologies, such as those associated with water, remain relatively constant in time while other technologies, such as those associated with communications, change rapidly. While people need to communicate, development of certain communicative technologies must be developed as a system, with supporting technologies. The development of the fax machine network to support global business communications lead to several questions regarding the necessity of globalized commerce. Trade of some descriptor appears in virtually all social groups of humans, so creating some means of supporting trade is a need. Yet, engineering has enabled trade to occur on a global scale. Is our desire to conduct business around the clock playing global leapfrog a need or a want?
Moreover, engineering occurs within a dynamic social system and space, where dominant players and considerations direct the process. Asking questions about wants and needs changes the shape of engineered artifacts. Even something as common as the aluminum can morphed as engineers began to consider differing criteria considering that most “aluminum cans” began as steel cans that required a church key to open them. For example, the changing availability of materials affected the costing, the changing consumer acceptability of a two-part system affected how the manufacturing, and the changing attitudes towards the environment affected the distribution and disposal. Even within a single design process, different team members bring differing considerations to the table. Yet, as a team works to move towards a solution that works, sometimes engineers experience a needed myopia. For instance, in a Rube Goldberg machine, every individual step of the process must be a consistently high reliability event. If one step doesn’t work, then it is naturally to zoom in to troubleshoot the step. Yet, in that troubleshooting, engineers re-scope the problem to focus on one very small component of a very large system. Moreover, as engineers become more and more focused on making something “work” according to one set of criteria, the engineers can miss other criteria. For instance, a bridge design plan might meet all of the technical parameters of the topography while lacking political support for the financing and maintenance of the bridge. Without all pieces coming together in a cohesive system, the engineering processes can fail.
The engineering design process provides an interesting focal point to the nature of engineering. Engineering design remains future-oriented by considering how to make an idea a reality. Moreover, engineering design provides the space for critique of current systems and processes. Some of these critiques can lead to uncomfortable places of revisioning needs and wants. Constant internal critique of the engineering processes invites questions of appropriate size, scale and scope. As such, engineering design can bring cohesion towards previously disconnected things, or engineering design can bring discord to such a degree that the engineering design process employed in a particular project is deemed a failure. Engineering reflects a dynamic space where ideas, people and materiality meet, working together to accomplish the task of transforming a rough-hewn idea into a masterful work of art.
Finding Solutions to Unattractive Problems
As an engineer interested in development, I cannot escape the realities of solving problems rooted in human needs. Yet, one quickly observes that these problems are far from attractive to solve. Treating wastewater does not immediately rise to the surface as a problem inviting innovative solutions. After all, we have grown absolutely comfortable with the idea of flushing our problems down the toilet.
With. potable. water.
Conventional wastewater treatments use drinking water as the sewage solution. Additionally, economic issues lead to extreme water scarcity as clean water is hard to come by owing to developing water sources and distribution infrastructure. People spend full working days gathering water.
I really enjoyed reading Sustainable Wastewater Management in Developing Countries as the authors really took conventional paradigms to task. In particular, they presented strong arguments regarding the benefits and limitations of on-site systems and a fantastic primer on more developed systems that bridge the gap between “septic tank” and “water-flushed sewers.” I appreciated the case studies coming from their own consulting experiences, which highlighted successes and failures. The three opening chapters situate the paradigm the authors advocate. Really solid locally-driven focus on sustainability. Definitely a find for my professional library.
When Limitations Create Scandal
Today is an interesting day in the Orthodox Church as we celebrate the Dormition of the Most-Holy Theotokos. On one side, it helps that the feast has a rather obscure name; on the other side, most people I talk to become rather instantly scandalized when they start to think about Christians celebrating this day. I know I started as one ready to reject just about anything to do with the Mother of God, or as she is more popularly known, the Virgin Mary.
I do not think I have written much about the Theotokos on the blog so I would like to consider a basic premier. “Theotokos” is a term that delineates more about Christ Himself as the term emerged during the 3rd Ecumenical Council when the Church gathered to consider the Incarnation of Christ. Was there a point where Christ became the Son of God, like at His baptism, or was Christ always the Son of God? Should Mary be known as the “Christotokos” as she bore Christ as human, or should Mary be known the “Theotokos” as she bore Christ as the Son of God? Since Christ is always both fully divine and fully human (even as He dwelt in Mary’s virginal womb), we declare Mary to be the “Theotokos.”
Yet, many people seem to restrict Mary’s presence to the Nativity of Christ. Mary is always welcome in the Nativity creche, but that seems to be the only location. Often cited in people’s objections is this passage of Scripture from Luke (which incidentally is featured in today’s Gospel reading):
As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him,”Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
People will quote this passage to say “Look, and even Jesus asserted Mary is no big deal!” But can we consider what Jesus actually said? “Blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” What is “the word of God” if not Christ Himself? Could Christ’s statement be rendered appropriately as “Blessed are those who receive the Word of God and keep Him”? Even without this rendering, we can see Mary’s willingness to “treasure up all [the things spoken about her Son], and ponder them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Additionally, she kept Christ in her womb, in her home, and in her sorrows seeing Him on the cross. Wherever we see Mary, we see Christ.
Yet, it is critically important to preserve the wonder of her uniqueness while also marveling at her commonality. If we focus exclusively on her and her motherly role of bearing and nursing the infant Christ, then we can miss the picture of the Gospel. Additionally, Mary’s commonality comes in that all have the invitation to join her as those who “hear the word of God and keep it.” Through Christ’s Incarnation, where we know Him as “Emmanuel” — God with us, we all have the invitation to receive Him. He comes through the preaching of the Gospel. We make a choice to sit at His feet, to treasure His Gospel in our hearts.
Indeed, we see just that idea in the experience of Mary of Bethany in the rest of the Gospel reading appointed today:
Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village. And a woman named Martha welcomed him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”
Mary, in sitting at Christ’s feet and receiving His teaching, chose the good portion that could not be taken away. She treasured our Lord and His Gospel. We must affirm the blessedness of all those who have received Christ. And we encounter the challenge of keeping Him, particularly as we deny Him authority in our lives to heal us of our sins. We can so easily crowd out anything and everything that matters in life. Yet, by His grace, the giver of Life calls us back to Him, quickening our spirit to seek Him as the Great Physician.
Mary, the mother of God, creates a scandal if we focus on her independent of Christ and elevate her in her uniqueness. But cannot anything or anyone create a scandal if elevated above Christ?
Book Review: Cradle to Cradle
When it comes to relevant professional books, I have a stack of titles I would absolutely love to read. Unfortunately, this stack tends to become taller than I am quite quickly so certain titles wait longer than they should to be read. Yet, occasionally, I find enough time and space to read a full book-level volume. This summer, I had a chance to read (finally!) Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Good gosh, this book came out in 2002 but it has been a bit of a touchstone for the sustainability movement (although I didn’t hear about it until 2007 when I started thinking a little bit differently about how things are made).
The book seeks to be a paradigm shifting agent, leading by example. The preface is all about how the book’s paratext (new word I learned this summer which refers to everything about a book that is not the text on the page) lends itself to a new way of thinking about books, and really to a new way of thinking about stuff. In particular, I was encouraged to see an emphasis on local, quality design articulated concurrently with a vision where wastes from one process can be fuel for another process that still acknowledges that “wearing out” may not be such a bad thing after all. The authors go to great lengths to discuss how things from the manufactured world can return to the natural world. The book contains many ideas that strike me as slogans to guide sustainable design choices in the future.
The “monstrous hybrid” serves as one illustration. The authors consider a conventional running shoe where the soles are totally synthetic and rather nasty to the environment when they break down and the uppers tend to be manufactured from natural materials such as leather that can be (arguably) safely returned to the earth. The authors contend that smart design would reverse the choice of types of materials to use for the sole and for the upper so that a biologically-safe sole would safely and responsibly degrade with use and the upper could be made of more robust synthetics that would enable the material’s recovery as still a shoe-upper, effectively rendering the shoe with the ability to be resoled.
The book differs from most key works in the sustainability discourse in that the authors go to great lengths to suggest that ecologically-intelligent design makes ecologically-intelligent consumerism. If designers can be smart enough, then Americans can continue with whatever sort of consumer choices they want. While I understand the argument (especially when you consider that consumer choices at best constitute less than 20% of the dynamic control of the industrialized system), I think that maintaining a systems approach is vital to continued understanding of sustainability. This observation holds especially true when placed in the triplicate of economic-environmental-social sustainability (or as McDonough and Braungart prefer economy-equity-ecology).
Generally speaking, I applaud McDonough and Braungart for delivering a fairly rigorous critique of current industrial practices while showing how shifting our thinking during design stages represents an available (and obtainable) path forward.
On the Transfiguration
In the absolute craziness of the end of camp, I missed posting on the Feast of the Transfiguration (6 August). I would be remiss if I failed to mention that the Feast of the Transfiguration is one of my favorite feasts to reflect on regularly. Perhaps it is simply because it is a new feast for me as I didn’t realize it was observed until 2007, or perhaps it is because I find the hymn of the feast to be an exceptionally rich ground for reflection.
One of the hymns of the Transfiguration is recorded thus:
On the Mountain You were Transfigured, O Christ God,
And Your disciples beheld Your glory as far as they could see it;
So that when they would behold You crucified,
They would understand that Your suffering was voluntary,
And would proclaim to the world,
That You are truly the Radiance of the Father!
Another variant of the second line is “Revealing Your glory to Your disciples as far as they could bear it.” Incidentally, when I visited one of my favorite monasteries last weekend during my travels, I heard yet another variant: “Showing Your glory to Your disciples for as long as they were able to bear it.” The icon of the Feast shows Peter, James and John falling over themselves as Christ shines with glory. (You can also read the Gospel accounts of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.)
I like this feast because of the energetic bumbling of disciples who have been with Jesus for years. The texts clearly describe them as “terrified,” and the hymns reflect a rich, loving condescension of Christ beyond measure as He restrains Himself to allow His disciples to be present in the moment of the Transfiguration with Him. It is also notable to me that 3 of the 12 are taken to this special time, incidentally thought to be icons of the 3 principal theological virtues of faith, hope and love, as it seems that the disciples must be prepared for this moment. Were Peter, James and John close enough to Christ where they could stand to see His glory revealed if only for a moment?
And then I have to wonder in amazement about how Christ prepares people with the strength to bear His fully revealed glory for all eternity as He unites us with Himself. May He grant to us the courage to be people of divine thanksgiving who approach Him in fear and trembling.
A Return to the Blog
Greetings ladies and gentlemen (and whatever spambots happen to be frequenting my site). Things have finally stabilized enough where I can get back to the task of blogging. I had a fantastic summer, teaching engineering at an elite summer camp over three week periods of time. When you’re with students that long, you really start to get to know them a bit, but I learned quite a bit about myself as it relates to teaching engineering.
It’s not everyday one has an opportunity to teach engineering to high school students. Occasionally, you see an opportunity to teach in a really neat technology program, but it’s rare to have the space and freedom to do whatever you please with students related to engineering. Additionally, I appreciated the challenge of teaching without the internet. It’s amazing how much your lesson plans improve when you can’t have the default of “Ask the students to search for information on Google.” [And yes, the one time I had internet access with my students, it’s quite clear the need for scaffolding lessons using the internet. It wasn’t awful, but it could have been better.]
Teaching can also change your perceptions of what you are teaching. It’s one of the finest ways to acquire mastery of something [and by no means am I suggesting that I’ve mastered the ideas]. I enjoyed encountering a shift from the global to the local while I taught. It’s very easy as a PhD student to get caught up in the bigger picture of engineering’s relationships with industries, the pseudo-consumptive* nature of our economy, the various odd shapes of engineering education and the broader story about why engineering matters to begin with. Yet, to have my hands on various systems to offer assorted comment, critique, challenge and suggestion definitely brought with it the pragmatic ideal. All of a sudden, engineering became a process in itself, interesting for its own sake. I had my moments of critical decision that called me to transition out of the theoretical towards the practical (and really, posit my best guess about what sort of material resources I would need on build days). Engineering manifested itself as ideas became material reality.
To be sure, I worked hard to weave together a unified story about the nature of engineering, even going so far as choosing incredibly non-traditional projects in the process. Yet I still wonder about the best way to tell the story while creating space for different authors of that story. My journey as an engineering educator continues.
So now that I can transition towards reflecting on my teaching experiences, I can get back to the blog. Incidentally, my job involved a ton of rather involved writing as we assess through narrative evaluations. Writing my mini-research papers on all of my students exhausted my writing creativity. But I’m currently spending some time in an undisclosed location to get work done so I thought it made sense to get the blog going again.
*pseudo-consumptive: I’ve been reflecting on whether we have an economic system based on consumption or waste. Stuff may be trashed well before we’ve honestly “consumed” it if we consider that we “consume” something like an apple.
Beginning again with Prayer
Almighty God, our Help and Refuge, Fountain of wisdom and Tower of strength, who knowest that I can do nothing without thy guidance and help; assist me, I pray thee, and direct me to divine wisdom and power, that I may accomplish this task, and whatever I may undertake to do, faithfully and dilligently, according to thy will, so that it may be profitable to myself and others, and to the glory of thy Holy Name. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages. Amen.
-Prayer before commencing any task
A Practicing Human 
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