On March 29, I met Mark and Anita McCafferty in Portland and we went to see Martin Barre in concert at One Longfellow Square. What an absolutely amazing show!
Here is a video that I created with some pictures and video from the show.
Click here to go to YouTube!
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Mark K.
Today I received great news! I have been selected to be a member of the Apple Distinguished Educator Class of 2017!
I submitted an application and a video to show how I have incorporated Apple products into innovative teaching and learning opportunities. Well, I got it!
I’m pretty pumped up about it!
Apple Distinquished Educators Website
Over the next few weeks I need to update on my website and such, so that is going to be cool. I’m also going to meet with a current ADE who works at KV and look into the opportunities that this opens up for me. She travels all over the place and no longer teaches classes, she teachers others how to use Apple products.
Way cool!
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Mark K.
There is a teaching that says “number your days” but this term (number) has another meaning. It means to appoint or plan for or become intentional about your day.
While we may not know what a day will bring us, we can approach the day with intention. Not only a plan of what we are going to do that day, but an overall mission for the day. Likely to act in a manner that draws attention to God, that glorifies him. When we pray we should ask God to show us what his intent is for our day. We strive to match our intent and planning for the day with God’s overall mission.
I have put myself on a rigourous schedule recently. All the projects, goals, and events of my days are outlined in my calendar. There is very little room left in between each item on my calendar and often I can see that I don’t stop all day…if I follow the calendar.
But with all this goal setting and such, I must focus on the appointment of my day. I might say that it is the mission of the day (the overall mission) and the opportunity to react to what the world brings to us and by so doing, shed light on the world. Our ability to be open and accepting and responsive to these moments, is how we go about appointing our days.
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Mark K.
In today’s story the word “ruach” means both the “wind” and the “spirit”.
When we are in the world we can choose to walk against the wind. When we do this we become tired, and our journey is a struggle because of the drag created by the wind. When we turn around we are walking with the wind and our journey is easier, in fact we are sometimes pushed in the direction we are heading.
This is the way with walking with the spirit.
We make choices every day to either walk in the spirit of God or to walk against it. Now this does not guarantee that we will not stumble or be pushed in a direction that we do not like…indeed it is likely that this will happen. But the push of the spirit is in the direction that God wants us to go in.
Reflecting on this we have to be careful that we do not equate the walking with the wind with simply things being easier. We may choose to stay in our “comfort zone” because it feels as though we are walking with the wind. But THAT wind is not the wind of the spirit of God, that is the wind of our selves and our egos. These are selfish and lazy and will seek out the minimal of effort. Our walk with God, even though it is with the wind, is meant to be effortful. In fact, because of our sinful nature, it always will be effortful. The easier and wider path is always the one to destruction.
I think this can take on the flavor of group dynamics as well. We may feel a certain way in regard to a decision or viewpoint in a group but it is EASIER to go along with the group than to distinguish yourself from the group by holding a differenting opinion. Yet the spirit may be pushing you in that direction! You may need to stand firm, to resist the wind of your “instincts” of those of the group.
Ultimately, particularly over time, I believe that walking with the wind of God will make life easier. We are definitiv3ely more secure in our lives when we are walking with the wind. We know that we are aligned with the expectations of our creator and the higher order morality that we are capable of.
The Mission: What part of your life is against the direction of the Spirit’? Today, turn it around and start walking with the Wind at your back.
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Mark K.
In Mark we read in the Bible about Jesus’ promise that whatever we ask for in prayer will be answered. But this is in the context of the analogy of the mountain that can be moved with faith.
Now, the mountain represents barriers (the same way we say “climbing mountains” can be an analogy for having to overcome hardship)
The text reads…”whatever you have asked for, believe that you have already received it, and it will be yours.”
This is not a promise for your prayers, it is a promise that if you have faith and encounter barriers, and you ask for deliverance or help…BELIEVE THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY RECEIVED IT! That is the key to understanding this passage!
Our faith can move mountains when we believe God has already done so!
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Mark K.
Habits of prayer are vital. Certainly in my “8 Habits” book the first habit is Prayer.
In the Bible in a Year system that I’m doing, the author suggests an acronym to describe our daily prayer, or our prayer practice each time you pray.
ACTS
This is pretty cool!
The key to prayer, however, is forgiveness. I can adore God all I want, and confess, give thanks, and supplicate my needs, but if I am holding anger and frustration inside of me (ooo boy!) I may receive from God the same!
The purification laws that we read about in Leviticus are all symbolic to the ways in which we have to approach God. We have to clean our own house first. Forgive those who tresspass against us so God can forgive us in a like manner.
I should add a section in 8 Habits about the importance of forgiveness before prayer.
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Mark K.
“Shannah” is the term for a “year” in the holy language…it means to repeat…or to change.
This double meaning is the challenge put in front of us each moment, each day, each week, each month, and each year.
Will this next time be like the last? Will we repeat what we have done before?
God makes all things new so we have the opportunity to fall into the lines of habit and choose that the next time will be like the last time. We are creature of habit and this is the worldly way to go. All animals, for instance, operate in instincts that compel them to repeat the habits of their lives. They are doomed to this pattern for their whole lives. God has provided us with the truth that is we are not instinctual beings…we can choose to change the patterns by which we live. In fact, that is the great calling of our relationships with Jesus. To be born new, or to be born again, is to NOT repeat that patterns that trapped us in the sinful life that we have led to that point.
Learning is defined as the relatively permanent change in behavior as a result of experience. This is a very technical and rather unglamorous definition, but it gets to the point. Things happen to us, we are exposed to experiences such as reading, events in our lives, conversations, books we read, news we hear. These have the capacity to change us, to compell us to question our assumptions and to consider changing our thoughts and minds about the world.
Instinct to Learn
In my courses on Developmental Psychology, I often state that humans have no more instincts save one. That instinct is to learn. Right from the first instances of our lives, our nervous systems begin to gather information. The spirit of our souls enter our flesh and we begin to learning process of entering into life. We spend a lot of our time in formal aspects of education (school) but we spend a lot more time simply, and automatically, gathering information from our world.
In the same course of study we discuss schemas which can be thought of us our conceptions of ideas. Expertise in any given area implies that the person’s scheme in that area is highly developed, adaptive, and effective. So an expert in farming has a very complex and useful schema related to “farming”.
This only happens, however, because the farmer (or would be expert in anything) is actively learning and incorporating new information (assimilation) and modifying existing constructs (accommodation) which results in the development of a professional in any given field.
This person, however, must be in a mindset that allows existing schemas to be changed by new information. This relates back to my essay about the cup that I just wrote. We might consider the consumption of information, the exposure we may have to things in the world, as an attack to our foundations. But, if this is the cup that has been put in front of us, and we hold true that the statements that Jesus said regarding that which defiles us (not the things that go into us, but that which proceeds out of us) then we must be open to the changing of our internal schemas and we assure that this day, week, month, year…will not be like the last.
We will have learned.
Keeping the Anchor
At the same time, we need an anchor. There is an absolute truth and it may not be attainable by us in this life. That truth is in the natural world (the creation) and in the word (Bible).
The natural world was crafted by God and just like the recognizable technique of a great artist is evident in their work, so is the evidence of God’s hand in creation. The patterns, the links, the natural analogies…these have been purposeful with a complexity and wonder that is far beyond our comprehension.
The Bible is the inspired word of God crafted, particularly in modern times, to be accessible to all of us. In it lies the complex definition of something that is not definable by our simple minds…the nature of God. The complexities, the seeming contradictions, the culture- and time-specific rituals and cultural facts that do not lend themeselves easily to modern thinking, are all part of the definition of that which cannot be simply defined by words.
Our human nature (our threefold composition of mind, body, and soul) and then word (written on our hearts) is our anchor as we consume the world.
Jesus talked about that which we consume goes through us and out of us. The internal processes of the body select that which is useful from our food and expel the waste. This natural process goes unseen by us and we rely on our natural systems to define what is useful and what is not. In the absence of diseases, our bodies can do this very well.
As we encounter the world, the cup that God has put before us, and we consume it…we are to let our natural bodies and the world of God written in us to shape what is useful and what is waste. In order to do so we need to two things:
Sometimes the filtering out of that which is useful and that which is waste is automatic. (Being careful that we don’t simply filter things out of habit!). However, sometimes, this is effortful and we need to reflect…to really “chew” on things for a while.
And sometimes, the answer will not come to us when we want it. We won’t have the answer to a question, or to a mystery. And it may not be in our cup to find the answer to that mystery and we must go on what we DO understand related to that question or circumstance.
The reliance on our minds (connection to the God’s Word) and bodies (the very carefully and artfully creation of God) our souls (our selves) can consume the cup put in front of us.
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Mark K.
In my Bible reading today we learn of the cup that Jesus is to drink. This is the cup that is filled with the anger of God about our sin. Jesus’ fate is to drink this cup and suffer for us the eternal punishment that is associated with our sin.
The image of the cup is really interesting. The vessel that holds our drink, so necessary for our lives. We must drink, without it we cannot survive. Yet it also represents the vessel that holds many other things. God’s anger, our rewards (when our cup runners over!), and the cup of the last supper, maybe the Holy Grail.
It is our portion. It is provided for us. We do not pour our own cup. It is given to us and we must accept it as the drink that has been put before us at the meal (life). We may not like its contents but God has filled the cup.
I think it is also interesting that Jesus has also taught lessons regarding that which “defiles” us. He states that what goes into us is not that which makes us evil, but what proceeds out of us. He was, of course, referring to the challenge made to him for gathering grain on the Sabbath, but it really lends a lot of support to the notion that that which we consume can simply go through us and out. But it is what we DO with that which we consume that makes the difference.
We might, for instance, come across someone attractive and be attracted. It is not the consumption of beauty with our eyes that makes us evil but what we do with it. We can simply have it come in and pass out of us.
This is really a lesson, as well, about accepting the cup that has been brought to us. In fact, going along with the meal analogy, unless we take in the cup that has been filled for us, the host will not know to fill our cup again. By doing the things that God has laid before us now, we open ourselves to the next thing that he has for us. But we need to focus on the cup in front of us, maybe still filled with luke warm water…and we drink it, before the cup of wine comes later.
It is our actions in regard to the cup that is in front of us that is that which proceeds out of us and either glorifies God or defiles us. It is our actions once we have taken in the contents of that cup.
I’m thinking to he analogy that Jesus uses to describe the impact of the word on different people that hear it. The seeds cast out on the road. Some will fall on stony ground, some will fall in thorns, some will be snatched away, and some will find good earth. Similar we have our approach to drinking the cup put before us.
I might have to think about this a bit, but there are ways we can approach the cup:
There is room here for a longer essay on cups!
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Mark K.
The name of God in Hebrew means “I am”
So, consider that when we refer to our state of being or to ourselves we say “I am”…we say, “I am happy” or “I am sad” or “I am Mark”
The passage today relates to this. We put the name of God before all these references to ourselves. God is first in the natural order of things, and this has evolved into our modern languages.
We flow from God, we exist because of all the things that he is.
Mission: Today learn the secret of living each moment from His life, doing from His doing, loving from His love, and being from His being.
(Note: I need to do THESE readings in the morning. I’ll be more awake and get more out of it, and it sets the mission for the day.)
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Mark K.
I’ve started to read and reflect upon the daily chapters of the book by Jonathan Cahn called “The Book of Mysteries”
I will do journal entries related to these readings and the application of these readings here.
The first one is called “Infinity in a Jar”
Only an open container can contain something that is bigger than itself…a river, for instance, can flow into an open jar and the jar can, over time, contain the entire river (over time).
The truth of the world is not only infinite, but it is challenging. My ego wants the universe to be a certain way…likely with me in the middle of it. But this perspective makes me a closed vessel. This way I’m not always open to the truth, which is infinite, I select truth that is convenient and can be contained in me. This is a very limited view of the universe and closes me to the infinite wisdom and beauty in it.
My current Bible (and other sources) readings are challenging my world view. They sometimes seem unfair or impossible. I am full of doubt. Despite this, I am being exposed to truth and wisdom and I need to prepare myself to accommodate it. This may mean, as is discussed by Piaget, that I need to tear down my existing schemes regarding the world and build them anew based on the new evidence, the new schemes that are being added to me.
The Mission: Today, open your mind, your heart, and your life to that which you don’t yet know, that you might contain that which is greater than yourself.
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Mark K.
