Look Inside

I browsed a couple of catechist-related books yesterday. Not reading the books, but reading through the Look Inside bits on Amazon. Fr. Philip N. Powell mentions them at his blog.

The first one is The Pedagogy of God: Its Centrality in Catechesis and Catechist Formation. My Look Inside rating: No Sale. I'm the wrong audience for this prose.

Whoops- I should define my rating system. It's a lot like Sun Bear's rating system. Who? Sun Bear, "who was born Vincent LaDuke, was a writer and actor who is probably best known for founding the Bear Tribe in the 1970's in Washington." A New Age personage. I don't know much about the guy, but I have been fond of a Sun Bear aphorism for about 35 years. Here it is:

“If your religion doesn’t grow corn, I don’t want to hear about it.”

Speaking as a catechist, I love it. Modified to fit my situation, it's “If your catechetical book/ article/ post/ workshop/ lecture won’t improve my catechesis, I don’t want to hear about it.” I don't mean something mightn't be useful to someone else, but if it doesn't look like it'll help me in my classroom, I got other things to do. Like what things? Like read the second book:

Catechism of the Catholic Church and the Craft of Catechesis. My Look Inside rating: Buy. As I said, I only read the excerpts, but that's one way I decide to spend money on books. Or not. I don't care for this book's writing style either. But it appeals to me based on the 12 Keys of Catechesis listed at the book's end; and how I do or don't reference them in my 6th-grade class:

1. HOLISTIC: the Faith Professed, the Faith Celebrated, the Faith Lived and the Faith Prayed.

I'm good on the first 3. We don't pray a lot in my class. An opening prayer and a closing prayer. For all I know that's typical in all catechism classes. Maybe we do pray a lot. Classwise, I'm more focused the other three. I want to know more.

2. GRACEFUL: We maintain the primacy of grace. 

This, I don't know...."maintain the primacy of grace"? This sort of statement bugs me. What does that mean in the classroom? Why not: maintain the primacy of love? Why not: maintain the primacy of faith? Or: maintain the primacy of Christ? Dunno. I think it means we hope for mercy instead of justice. We cover that explicitly in class. But I'm intrigued. If I buy the book, I expect to have it explained.

3. ORGANIC: We practice an organic reading and teaching of the Faith.

I already apply the term 'organic' to my catechesis. Curious if the authors and I mean the same thing.

4. PERSONAL: Doctrine and its transmission is essentially personal.

Yes to this. I believe personal witness is the sine qua non of catechesis. I look forward to reading more.

5. TRUE: We proclaim the mysteries of the Faith as true...

Yes...seems awfully obvious though.

6. ATTRACTIVE: We highlight the innately attractive nature of the Faith...

Yes. I do this explicitly and continually. I want to read the book to see what specific examples the authors will provide.

7. PURPOSEFUL: We immerse doctrine within the dynamic of God's plan...

Yes. Intrinsic to class. The book may show ways of being purposeful that I don't know about.

8. FAITHFUL: We use the Catechism, drawing on the language of Scripture and Tradition.

Yes. I'm on this 100%, and curious as to the book's take on this all-important synergy.

9. EVANGELIZING: (go Look Inside)

I'm not moved at all by the book's phrasing here, but an explicit goal of my catechesis is to evangelize and catechize at the same time, all the time. Tell me more.

10. SCRIPTURAL: We let our catechesis be soaked in the Scriptures...

Yes. 100% on this, and want to read more.

11. LITURGICAL: (go Look Inside)

Not fond of the phrasing. Still, understanding the Mass is a big deal in class, so I want to read more.

12. PRAYERFUL: We make our catechesis a school of prayer...

Sounds vague and fluffy. I say it should be a school of faith. I'll want some elaboration.

Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius

This post links to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

hinge

Each year in Wednesday Night Sunday School we spend a few minutes on the fun parts of Isaiah 22.  I play the role of King Hezekiah and two volunteers play Shebna and Eliakim. When we get to Matthew 16 a couple of months later, we recall Isaiah 22. Then when we discuss the Mass in April, the kids learn that Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, Cornelius were some of the popes that succeeded Peter. But I have never connected those guys to either Isaiah 22 or Matthew 16. I want all learning to be integrated with other learning, and this was a weak point in that respect. But this year is different, and better.

This year we did our Eliakim skit as usual in November. Then last Wednesday I treated Matt 16 like so:

I got two volunteers to come up and be Shebna and Eliakim. We did a quick refresher on Is 22. The kids remember only Eliakim's name, but that's ok. I care about the story and why it matters. They remember it just fine. We quickly re-enact it. Corrupt Shebna sits down. Now we cover Matt 16. I read bits from the chapter, and the kids figure out I'm now Jesus and the other actor is now Peter. We act out the keys again, and draw parallels between the two Kings and their Prime Ministers. The rest of the class play the 11 other apostles. They figure out the significance of Jesus borrowing from Isaiah.

Then I get five more boys to come up and stand in a row next to Peter. I stand behind them with my invisible keys. Peter dies and falls to the floor. The kids tell me to pass the keys to the next boy, he'll be the next pope. As each pope dies and falls to the floor, the King of Heaven gives the keys to the next boy. At the end they're all dead. I get them all to stand back up.

"Y'all tell me who these people are. Umm...they're the first popes! Yes! Some of them. Who's the first one? Peter! Yes, that was easy. Who's next? No guesses, that's OK, he's Linus. Linus, your name is...Linus! Yes, ya too smart, Linus! And these other popes are Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, and Cornelius. Do those names sound familiar to anyone? Yes! Where do you know Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, and Cornelius from? Umm....I don't remember. That's OK, we'll find out in April."

"Who's the pope now? Francis! Yes. He's the 266th pope. Who was before him? B...Benedict! Yes, good. Is Benedict dead? No, I think he just stopped being pope. Yes. That's very unusual, for a pope to retire. Trick question: in the Isaiah story, who picked Eliakim, the new prime minister? The King! Yes, Heze...Hezekiah! Yes. And who picked Peter? Jesus! Yes. Who is...the King! Yes. Did Benedict pick Francis to succeed him? No the other people did. Who exactly? Bishops? Well, sort of. They all wear red...like a bird...that is red...cardinals! Yes, a small group of bishops called cardinals. The bird is named after the men. Cardinal means hinge in Latin. Y'all remember we talked about hinges in December. For example, doors hang on, depend on, hinges. So to say something is cardinal, like a cardinal rule, means it's important like a hinge because other things depend on it, hang on it. But the cardinals don't just pick who they like for pope...remind me who picked the first pope. Jesus. Yes, so who still picks them? Umm...Jesus? Yes, good job! The King still has the power to pick his key-man. But Jesus put the cardinals in charge of making his pick. That's why the cardinals all pray for the Holy Spirit to guide them in making the right choice."

It only takes a few minutes to knit this together. And it prepares the children to jump all over Linus, Cletus, Clement, Sixtus, and Cornelius when those names pop up in our Mass classes in April.

Torque Curve

This post and the next link to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

that kind of car, but not that kind of burnout

Catechists, other church volunteers, and paid staff always run the risk of burnout. You know, knocking yourself out for Jesus until you're punch-drunk from stress and disappointment. It's nicely treated in a piece at Team RCIA, which prompts this post. On cars.

Generally speaking, when people say their cars are powerful, they're really describing their engine's torque, not its power. As my father's college textbook Internal Combustion Engines says, "power is a measure of the rate at which work is done," while "Torque is a measure of the ability of an engine to do work". People like what's called good tip-in, when a car pulls smoothly and quickly away from a stoplight at the first press of the accelerator; or being able to pass or go up a hill without a downshift. All that is torque-related, that is, how easily the engine does the work.

Intuition says that the faster the engine turns and the more gas it burns, the greater the torque. But that's usually not the case. Maximum torque is typically produced at a moderate RPM. Let's look at this graph of my Camaro's LS1 V8:

The light blue line is the torque curve. You can see that max torque of 330 lb-ft is available at about 3900 rpm. But if the engine revs beyond 5000rpm, less torque is available. Less ability to do work. Less durability.

This is how I understand my own productivity, especially when I volunteer. I think of myself as an engine. There's a point where my ability to be productive is maximized. It's not when I'm relaxing, and not when I'm overstressed. I always aim for that peak of productive stress and avoid going under or over it. With respect to volunteering, the best way to stay at the peak is to know when to say no, and then actually say no. As the Team RCIA post says, "We tell ourselves that we are sacrificing for the sake of the church or the people or Jesus." And that is true; but the point of volunteering isn't to sacrifice, it's to build up the church. So don't run too fast, and don't run too much, and you may run for a long, long time.

Pitchers 19

Second Board, January 22, 2014

1. Loaves & Fishes just like in prior years. Jesus gives thanks to the Father and effects a food miracle. Grumpy apostles mediate between Jesus and the people.

2. Plan of church shows same relationships: Father>Jesus>food miracle>ministers>people.

3. Triangle shows divine power flows through Jesus; then it's mediated through a small group of authorized agents to everyone else. It's a lateral hierarchy; but hierarchies are usually laid out vertically. So...

4. Triangle rotates to become Mount Sinai. (The kids already know how the Old Covenant works.) We see the same pattern in blue as described in Exodus: Israelites at the bottom, Levites halfway up, Moses in the Shekhinah cloud at the top connecting with YHWH on behalf of the others.

5. Same hierarchical pattern in blue is fulfilled and perfected in the Church in green: the faithful, the ministerial priesthood, Jesus at the top connects to the Father per Hebrews & Revelation.

It'd be virtually impossible to discuss these connections with 12-year-olds with words alone. But with a few pictures, the kids don't just learn, they think and draw conclusions.

Class Stuff

This post and the next link to RAnn's Sunday Snippets

 

you must have a detailed lesson plan

 Some stuff about the last couple of Catechism classes:

We finished the Jan. 8 class by spending about 20 minutes on the Healing of the Paralytic: acting, drawing, discussion, Bible-reading, the usual. This week among other things, we covered Jesus healing a man's withered arm on the Sabbath; a leper; Jairus' daughter; the woman with a hemorrhage; and the centurion's servant. Every story involved a little skit, with kids obliged to think on their feet about why the characters acted as they did, and draw conclusions. We ended with Jesus blessing the little kids, which sets the stage for next week's Loaves and Fishes miracle.

But these healing stories aren't just treated as disconnected snippets of Jesus Is So Nice; like all Bible stories, they are explicitly connected to Catholic themes, both individually and also as a group. From the Paralytic to the Centurion I emphasized these concepts:

1. Having a physical encounter with Jesus is the normal way to get a miracle. Nobody just stays home and prays if it's at all possible to engage Jesus both spiritually and physically. People will make a hole in a roof if that's what it takes. Nobody ever got a miracle in the NT without having a physical encounter with Jesus or one of his authorized agents.

2. Having a physical encounter involves an act of faith which anyone can see. That is, by what people do their faith can be seen.

3. Jesus will do someone a favor if someone else acts in faith on their behalf. That's intercession, and it still works.

4. Jesus can work a long-distance miracle; but the miracle is still initiated though a physical encounter.

5. Jesus can work miracles through physical stuff just like the Moses and Elijah, as when the woman grabbed his tassel: boom! Healed! Who touched me?

6. Faith by itself is good; faith in action is better. We comprise a body and a soul; so our bodies acting in harmony with our souls just makes sense. If ya ain't doin' ya prob'ly ain't believin' either.

7. Jesus has a body and a soul, too. That's why everyone was so excited: to be able to access God physically was a big deal.

8. It's still the norm to have a physical encounter with Jesus. That's what sacraments are for, especially the Eucharist and Confession. Eating God is a big deal. But just like the centurion, you have to believe without seeing.

9. Healing physical sickness matters; but healing spiritual sickness matters more.

Viva la Caccia

an ascending graph

We spend a lot of time on the first two chapters of Genesis in Wednesday Night Sunday School, especially these marriage bits:

Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him." 19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.

1. Man on his own is alone, and that is not good.
2. Man has dominion over the other creatures, as shown by Adam naming them instead of God.
3. An animal isn't a good helpmeet for a man.

So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh; 22 and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he built into a woman and brought her to the man.

1. Man is incomplete without his rib.
2. Woman is formed from the missing rib.

 Then the man said, "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.

1. Man is complete when he gets his rib back.
2. A man may have to leave his family to get his rib. The rib has priority. The rib doesn't come to the man; he goes to the rib.
3. He holds tight to her.

We have fun with this in class, partly because my own marriage has followed this story line. I bring some authenticity to the topic. I was alone and it was not good. I was incomplete without a wife; my life had been a frothy joke. I chased my future wife, not vice-versa (I had to ask her out three times; but having a cast-iron ego, I was not discouraged). I got my rib back. I cling to her, not vice-versa. And we become one flesh.

By the way, she had other suitors. And although she is nothing like Scarlett O'Hara or Marilyn Monroe, here's how I remember the competition:

or this:

or maybe this:

 and we have a winner

A couple of other bits of Genesis further remind of my marriage. F'rinstance, consider the process of creation:

1. Dead stuff: light, sky, land, water.
2. Living stuff lacking animation: vegetation, plants, trees.
3. Basic life forms: swimming and flying creatures.
4. More sophisticated life forms: wild animals and cattle.
5. Man, made from a dead thing, dirt.
6. Woman, built from a living thing, a rib.

An ascending line, if you graph it. The later the creation, the nearer to God. And nearer the top is the woman. No wonder Man should put Woman up on a pedestal, look up and admire her. No wonder that Woman should be comfortable there. But there's also the one-flesh business, which is illuminated by this last line of Genesis 2:

And they were both naked: to wit, Adam and his wife: and were not ashamed.

That's like my life too; well, like my marriage, which I understand as a life-form made of the next highest two, a man and a woman. So even if the woman is on her pedestal, the man and the woman together forming a marriage are higher still.


Finally, because no-one wants to read the full-blown story of our courtship, this video condenses the whole saga into 15 seconds: 

Viva la Caccia

Hadley's Legs

 these precious days I spend with you

I read a lot of Hemingway in my teens and twenties. Purely by coincidence, the last thing I read was also the last thing he wrote: A Moveable Feast, a patchwork of memories from his years in Europe between the wars. It's not as well-regarded as his other stuff, but I liked the sense of affectionate retrospection; regret; and sadness for things lost. And I was moved by the elegaic notion of Hemingway, now an old man, writing this book as a prelude to letting go of life. The book doesn't make that point explicitly; but it's the same gentle, if reluctant, acceptance of death expressed in these verses by Hermann Hesse, later set to music by Richard Strauss:

September

The garden is in mourning.
Cool rain seeps into the flowers.
Summertime shudders,
quietly awaiting his end.

Golden leaf after leaf falls
from the tall acacia tree.
Summer smiles, astonished and feeble,
at his dying dream of a garden.

For just a while he tarries
beside the roses, yearning for repose.
Slowly he closes
his weary eyes.


Speaking of men and mortality, Rembrandt likewise regards his own flawed life in this final self portrait:

feeling a lot like Hemingway at the end

So men grow old, and reflect, and regret; and appreciate.

Getting back to Hemingway, the thing he best remembered from his Paris days wasn't the cafes, or F. Scott Fitzgerald, or Gertrude Stein; what he remembered best was his first wife, Hadley. I wasn't married when I read A Moveable Feast, but I was beguiled by Hemingway's spare yet winsome depiction of their life together with their little son Bumby. And from then on I longed for a wife like Hadley, someone who made life wondrous in a quotidian sort of way. Now Hemingway has a direct, even flat, way of writing; and was never florid in his descriptions. So when it came to Hadley, it's through this quote about skiing that I imagine her: "..she had beautiful, wonderfully strong legs, and fine control of her skis, and she did not fall."

A few years later I married my very own Hadley. One day we were hiking up Table Rock in nearby Pickens County, my wife was in front. As I watched her shapely calves flex at each steep step, I imagined Hemingway's Hadley hiking up the mountains in Austria, and saw those same "beautiful, wonderfully strong legs" on Janet. Since that epiphany on Table Rock, I like to tease Janet about having beautiful strong legs like Hadley's; and how like Hemingway, I was smart to pursue a woman a bit older than me. Janet's riposte is that she doesn't mind having Hadley's legs as long as she doesn't have Hadley's husband.

My life's about three-fourths done; now I anticipate death. I too reflect and appreciate. Unlike Paul Anka, I have a thousand regrets. But marrying my wife isn't among them.