Category: Teaching

Writing about social media

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I have spent my entire evening writing a prayer service on technology for a daylong retreat.

I want to go to bed AND I want to keep up my daily post. So I’ll cheat (repurpose) and include here a bit from my retreat booklet.

I want the retreat goer to ask, What does social media do to your soul? (This may or may not make it into the final chapter.)

Assignment: take 15 minutes to quietly reflect on how we give or receive words of love through social media. Write in your journals these three writing prompts.

I was cursed by technology when ….

Then I was blessed by technology when…

Now I know I can write words of love through cyberspace by…

To toot my own horn here (without blowing it), I was pleased with the nice response to my creative writing prompts on this blog last month. http://gettingmyessayspublished.wordpress.com/2011/01/18/creative-writing-prompts/ Thanks to Dawn Herring, @JournalChat and #journalchat for choosing that post as the post of the week.

The State of the Union Address

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The President said, “Only parents can make sure the TV is turned off and homework gets done.”

At that moment, I realized my daughters had homework to do but they were laying on my bed watching, Mean Girls 2. Yes, at 10 pm, because of the President’s words, I felt compelled to get up off the couch and tell them to turn off Mean Girls 2. I was not popular.

One of my daughters pleaded, “Let us stay up and do our homework.” The other literally pushed me away from the TV. This is what I deal with.

“We don’t make you not watch your show,” one of my girls tried to reason.

“That’s because my show, The State of the Union Address, is on once a year.” Why even bother.

I wish I knew and was like the president’s mother. When he was a boy, his mom made Barry get up early to do his homework.

Ann Dunham told him at 4:30 in the morning, “This is no picnic for me either, buster.” (But it paid off, because he’s now the president!)

But Obama’s right. It’s up to us. Even if it’s no fun. And it is no fun telling the kids to turn off the TV.  Or reminding them to do their homework.

The President was so right he received a bipartisan standing ovation for that line. Those bipartisan standing Os are not easy to come by.

It’s no picnic, buster.

Family Screen Time

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Sometimes I like staring at a screen with my kids, instead of staring at our own individual screens. Tonite the darlings and I played wii. We were yelling at the screen instead of each other. I played horribly in every single wii game, especially wii Fishing and wii Ping Pong. The kids enjoyed how bad I was. They bonded over my ineptitude. That was nice that they bonded.

We were all fairly exhausted. One of my daughters had been to the Met, the other to the Natural History, my son to the basketball court and me? I played games with my colleagues in the 3rd floor conference room at the Leadership Academy. Yes, the workplace academy was a big success. As I’ve mentioned, I love this kind of thing — a chance to deepen friendships, share positive ideas, strategize, commit to change, help other people become leaders. What’s not to love! 

One highlight for our group was learning about and applying the three levels of listening.

1) Listen to yourself. Your thoughts, feelings. (And yes, insecurity lives here.)

2) Listen to the other. With focus, as if to a lover.

3) Listen to the global environment. The vibe.

It made sense. Often I’m stuck in a personal, reflective space when there is a bigger mood I could be aware of.

I would pay (and I have paid) to experience this kind of personal growth — to learn how better I can understand and use my gifts. Instead, I get paid to learn. I love that my job involves so much learning — about myself, about the other, and about the global environment.

Okay, so given that I am competitive and I have to face the reality that I may never beat the darlings at any wii games, I can console myself that I am good at other types of games. Like the game of personal growth. I am curious about the world and what makes other people tick. I love encouraging others. I hope to continue to share this openness and positivity and teach my kids to value learning and their own unique skills.

I hope that the kids and I do not lose ourselves in screens, but if we do, at times, I hope that we can always stop our individual games and learn to play together. Even if we are not gifted with the necessary hand-eye coordination.

When work becomes play — be it the work of parenting or paid work — it really rocks.

Writing Childhood Memories

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Loved teaching “Food and Faith” at St. Paul and St. Andrew’s last Sunday.

I love that childhood memories are treasure troves, little magical boxes full of light. Memories point our way. Remembering where I come from reminds me of where I am going and who I am.

One exercise in my workshop was to write about a childhood memory of food that brought you closer to your family. I wrote about my Norwegian grandmother’s Christmas lunches. The open-faced sandwiches. The mutton, head cheese, slim-sliced hard-boiled eggs. The meatballs. The herring. It was the one day a year we all sat down to eat on Grandma’s enclosed porch together.

In the workshop, Barbara wrote about her father teaching her to count by planting seeds in the garden. Memories are like shoots of green. The memories are the parts of the plant that are still showing. The memories lead to an ancestry that lies buried deep in the soil, connecting us to relatives who are long gone.

Writing down the memories of family meals or family gardens takes you back and takes you deep — into the heat of a summer garden in Pennsylvania or the  bright light of Christmas in Chicago.

Writing down your memories reminds you of where you come from, who you are. Writing takes you home.

Power of Interfaith

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“Mercy and compassion of the Christian community,” Ingrid Mattson says. She refers to the National Council of Churches republishing of a book on Islam by Marston Speight shortly after 9/11.

Also, Ms. Mattson spoke of how many Jewish leaders supported Muslims after 9/11 because they could relate to being the marginalized. Not all people of faith were supportive. Some saw the terrorist act as an opportunity to evangelize or condemn Muslims.

Interfaith engagement was an avenue for growth for the Muslim communiity after 9/11.

Ms. Mattson leads the Islamic Society of North America. She is the plenary speaker at the Religion Communication Congress 2010.

Another outcome of the attack was that Muslim leaders built consensus across diversity. She concluded her remarks with hope and optimism on new ways to build relationships. “When our plans are shifted, we should not mourn too long.”

Ms. Mattson quoted from the Koran, “You may hate something and it may be good for you.”

Sacred Chow

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At lunch time, the author and pastor Donna Schaper spoke about creating community and communion through food. She was awesome.

The discussion reminded me of last summer when I taught the the adult spiritual study, “Food & Faith” in the schools of mission at Western Connecticut State University and at Dillard University in New Orleans. I loved hearing people’s rich stories of food memories.

One older woman remembered being on the farm, sitting at a picnic table with relatives of many ages after a barn raising. Food was definitely both a fueling and a feasting. Donna wrote about this kind of communion in her book, “Sacred Chow.”

Food has the capacity to bring us together. But there is also, as Donna mentioned, a divisiveness or a righteousness when we discuss food. We’re right about the way we eat and others aren’t.

There are small, good, spiritual things we can do with food, including writing about food, teaching about food and faith, saying grace, opting out of corporate food manufacturers’ offerings, choosing farmstand foods. We can also remember our childhood dinner tables.

When I was a kid, we took the phone off the hook. All seven of us ate dinner together in the dining room every night. We argued, we discussed the day, we ate. I’m going home to get that party started right now.

Donna Schaper spoke as part of Raising Women’s Voices, workshops on women and health offered by the Interchurch Center. Interesting that the event came on the heels of the healthcare legislation.

Schools of Christian Mission are dynamic adult learning opportunities offered in thousands of venues usually in the summer for United Methodist Women and their friends.

Two Classes I Can Teach

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These are two classes I can teach. I wrote the course descriptions for the Chautauqua Insitution’s Summer Program. but they did not bite. It’s probably just as well since the classrooms do not have internet access and for the first class, you really need access.

So, then I emailed the course descriptions to the wonderful Ecumenical Institute  of Bossey in Geneva, Switzerland. I showed it to my friend, Drew (Giddings), too. He said lots of churches would benefit from the first class idea. Of course, I think lots of people would benefit from the second one too. And odds are that that class would be kind of funny.

1. Beyond Google and Email

 Are you Linked In? Do you blog? Tweet? Tag?  If these terms are foreign to you, it’s time to find out about the internet and social networking. Learn the lingo. Like millions of people, you too can use the internet as a creative, democratic and social force to bring people of faith together. Learn to use Twitter, Facebook, and all the new global communications tools.

2. Writing the Comic Essay

Write about your life – from childhood through the present day – the small, quiet moments and the large, public events. With comic insights about your life’s spiritual journey, you will discover a thread of levity and deep meaning. This is a supportive and fun class, intended for the experienced, casual and non-writer. In this class, you will remember and record a humorous experience from childhood. You will transform a recent angry incident into a humorous one. You will write an essay of publishable quality.

Prezi.com So much fun

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Learning Prezi.com

You picture your presentation as a big white board. You zoom in, zoom out, link here, link there, post pictures and words, mind map, point to tangential ideas. Am playing around and using this to summarize my sabbatical. If anyone at work asks for it.

http://prezi.com/lf5xhnrhhz1y/communicate/

So much more creative than power point. Click, square, click, square. Although I have loved making power points, have wasted days changing the ways a page flips onto the next.

I just simply like creating. And I don’t care what it is I’m creating. But given that I have to make something, I like using new technology to make something new. I like getting feedback and feeling affirmed (“Wow! Mary Beth! That’s so cool!”) I like and need to think in a non-linear fashion.

Yet, in my writing, let’s face it, I do and have jumped around and sometimes, yes, occasionally at work, people (one editor in particular) want me to be all chronological and probably she prefers the  click, square, next. Click, square, next.

The big circles, the jumping off points, the tangential thinking, the creative asides – some people don’t get that. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I can play by the rules and I can (and prefer to) play without any rules. Both And!