It’s been relatively quiet here as I’ve been away doing a course all of last week. It was centred on learning which celebrates diversity. The course was called 4MAT and gives a framework for learning and growth which encourages all learning styles and not simply the traditional linear way to learn. I really enjoyed it.
Here’s some random, unconnected thoughts (so far):
“Every person born into this world represents something new, something that never existed before. It is the duty of every person…to know that there has never been anyone like her/him in the world, for if there had been there would be no need to be. Every single person is a new thing in the world” (Martin Buber)
- We all have preferred comfort zones of learning and yet need to have courage to learn in ways that are beyond our current comfort zones, as we miss out hugely if we are restricted to only one style. This relates so much to our discipleship as well. Are we incorporating such risk, courage and wholeness in our discipling/apprenticing?
- Learning is about doing.
- “We all try to create worlds in which is comfortable for us to live in. If I don’t hear what you are saying in the language I grew up with, I don’t hear anything.” (A quote during one of our lectures.) How many of us have experienced that slow deterioration as you simply aren’t fitting into the world around you, and the language you are using seems to be foreign for those around you? Or perhaps we have seen it in others around us as they become passive or disconnected or loss of inspiration.
- “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music he hears, however measured and far away.” (Thoreau)
- Did you know that women have a larger corpus callosum (in their brain) so they can more easily multi-task than men? It’s true!
- Jesus continually made connections to the world around Him.
- Who doesn’t have a voice (in our own communities of faith or beyond) and why is that? By that, I mean, who is not given the chance to be themselves? Who have not been able to speak in their own voices around us because they are still ‘in a box’? If we don’t speak up, we deny who we are. It causes us to stop knowing ourselves and God, and others.
