Five minute friday - RELEVANT

I just started a course in “religious education” or, rather, pedagogy in religion, again, as a student. Enjoying wise, enthusiastic and responsive teachers we revel in talking about the ways to create rooms in life where we can talk about the wisdom, faith and believes we carry within. To quote Norma Everist: “to create safe places for us to be different together”.

We are twelve students burning to be the best religious educators we can, whether for ourselves or many (although I think, and hope, many will benefit either way).

And what remains with me from our first few days together? Many, many, impressions swirl around in my, oh, so tired head, but one thing shines through clearly, again, always making itself heard, through life and Bible; the need to listen.

We need to listen, where listening isn’t thinking about what we will respond to what the others are saying, and isn’t just the polite half listening where we hear what we want to hear. We need to listen in the way that the one talking slowly reaches her/his core of the matter, and so that he/she knows that life isn’t only about being a lonely individual, but an individual in a communion of humans making life together.

We need to listen in the way that we hear what is being said!

This is what is relevant!

"We write bold and beautiful and free. 

Unscripted and unedited. 

We just write without worrying if it’s just right or not."