I promised this post a while ago and then got busy with school and tv shows on netflix. (erm) Anyway, about naming: our rector's main point was basically that the name or value that you give an item shows your attitude towards that item. For example, a steer. If a cow is only an economic unit, you will be okay with cows living in filth in confinement operations. If you think of a cow as food, then you might reconsider the manner in which it was raised. If you think of a cow as a beautiful and complex creation made by God, then the whole situation is blown wide open and you will need to carefully consider that same cow from many different angles. How it was raised? How it was butchered? Where did its food came from? Was it was fed antibiotics? Should you be eating it? What was God's purpose in creating that cow? The conclusion being that God's authority is complete and we should not be naming our world based on any other idolatrous authority such as the so called "economy". Naming your world according to God's authority requires careful reflection. What does it mean for me to be a teacher? A wife? A daughter, friend, sister? What does the word "job" mean? What do I mean when I call my students "students"? All familiar ideas, but turned in a new and interesting way.
As for the job, it's going well. I tend to be very self-critical, and I've had a couple of discouraging weeks lately, but it's almost spring break and two kind of fun things happened today. First, my grade eleven class had a couple of fairly large assignments due this week, and we spent the week conferencing and working hard on their writing, so I told them earlier in the week that we were going to have a fun day on Thursday. One of my students asked if he could bring cake. Thinking that there was no way he was actually going to bring cake, I said, "Sure!" Well, he brought cake. So we played Scattergories and ate cake. Pretty fun. Then later in the day after a chapel where we sent the grade eleven students off on their mission trip to Mexico and the grade twelve students off on their mission trip to the inner city of Winnipeg, I asked my grade eight students what they thought about going to Mexico in a couple years. They responded with a resounding, "You should come with us!" That also sounds like fun.
PD day tomorrow, a week with 3/4 of my classes next week, and then spring break the week after that. I can do this.
2 comments:
So right on! Sometimes I'm surprised how religious it sounds when people talk about the economy... how "the economy tells us", how it seems front and center for so many people, as if it was the most important thing to be considering.
But very interesting. I remember a Dr. De Haan talking once about trees, and how screwed up it is when people look at a tree and only see x-amount of boards or dollar value instead of seeing it as a living part of our world.
Keep the posts coming! Good to hear from you.
Happy spring break!
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