Tuesday, September 23, 2008

On life's great loves

Two points of reference here, both of them odd. The first is a line from the Whoopi Goldberg character "Guinan" from Star Trek: love doesn't feel the same twice. To have loved and lost, and then to love again, sometimes is difficult to recognize because it feels different. Second is my friend Katlin's experience of life's "great loves", which rise to the surface of her memory of relationships as the ones that most deeply changed her.

In my life I can probably point to three great loves, if by that we're referring to specific women. But a relationship to a life, a community, or a place can sometimes be just as significant, and this would boost my number to five. The imprint of these relationships have left me intensely changed.

But none of them have yet lasted very long or have led to that comfortable feeling of familiar intimacy--the feeling described by Katlin as the "half-bored kiss". Certainly, the excitement of new attachments and new relationships is a thrill; but some of us have been searching for so long that the "thrills" have only become stressful--and exhausting. It is at this moment that one's attention turns away from excitement, towards a sober, abiding peace in the company of another.

There is no such thing as a relationship without drama; how can we expect there to be no turmoil between two souls when we cannot even calm the storms inside of us alone? But an intimacy between souls can be a source of peace. Katlin tells me that it became tradition at one point for the new groom to build an extension to his father's home. A spiritually intimate relationship is like building an extension inside of oneself for the soul to roam. It is allowing one's own interiority to be the host for another soul; to receive a guest. When a relationship has grown so deep that two people feel as two souls in the same interior home (irrespective of literal living conditions), there is a wonderful new experience of freedom.

But the vast majority of people we encounter at random do not inspire us to run and get the tools to start building that extension. They are scared; we are scared; and the insecurities and neuroses create any number of frictions; or else an intangible quality warns me (or her) away; or else the interpersonal exchange is as dry as sand, but with even less salt.

Sometimes, sometimes, however, someone comes along and changes everything. Someone with the warmth and welcome of a monastery; the openness and transparency of a child; the maturity and grace of a professor; and through it all the quiet feeling that she is happy to see you.

There is human love, and there is the divine grace of caritas. The two are utterly different, pouring from two vastly different fonts. Recent experience makes me ask whether there is a third. It is a fusion of a the two. It is a human love, and therefore a feeling, but it lacks the excitement of corrupt concupiscence. It points beyond simple friendship; it is open to exclusivity and romantic transcendence; but it is attended by the subtle, gentle promptings of a divine approval. Those promptings that do not rush, shame, or manipulate; they fill the heart with a new energy for goodness and self-improvement. This love hints at what the next stage of life may hold; it has "calling" as its sober and serenely smiling attendant.

I am intimidated and frightened, doubtful and skeptical. The life of a serial dater is a life filled with hope-disappointment-hope-disappointment-hope-disappointment. Each time, a woman possesses a quality which makes her stand out: here, a charmingly brash honesty; there, a kind heart; over there, a similar personality; next, a steady and successful carreer; then, a shared suffering; now, a shared religious faith--each one to fall aside as my disqualifiers grow more keen. Every hope now is a cautious hope, even if a new hope is filled with promise and novelty.

But can I say it? This hope seems different. So different that its difference is different. There is something here that tugs at me, as though a future happy self reached out to me saying, "Don't let this one get away!"

Future encounters will tell.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The ideal gadget

Ever since the "netbook craze" (beginning with the Eee last year), affordable ultraportable laptops have descended to a price level much lower, in fact, than were the Pocket PCs I was obsessed with (the tombstone of my Windows CE obsession reads: "2000-2005. What was I thinking?").

I've written technology blog entries before, discussing the fallacy of the "do it all" gadget, but as I continue to look for a possible Christmas technology purchase, I reflect again on how technology could make certain tasks easier, more enjoyable, and more efficient. In a more recent post I had my sights on the Gigabyte m912. However, early reviews have dissuaded me: its 1GB of RAM isn't enough to drive Vista comfortably; the version of Vista it comes with lacks tablet functionality; and Intel has just shipped a dual-core version of the same processor it carries, which itself is pretty weak.

When Gigabyte or another company releases a similar machine with the dual-core Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, Vista Home Premium, and perhaps a bigger battery, I'll take it.

But let's get a little speculative now.

My philosophy of computing is that where human activities have different priorities, they need to be embodied in different devices. Thus, for example, it is incorrect to try and integrate a cell phone with a full computer. Mobile phones need to be light, convenient, simple, inexpensive, and unobtrusive. Computers need to be powerful, capacious, and have excellent human interfaces. A no-compromise solution is a multiple-device solution, and there is no way around that.

However, a multi-device solution does not necessarily mean having multiple centers of data storage. No matter how good of software you use, it will be a struggle to keep all of the software synchronized on all of them, all of the time.

People already get around this by having large USB keys that they carry around with them. The more responsible among those regularly copy the contents of said keys onto the computers.
My thought is that two bodies of technology should be separated: on the one hand, the inputs and outputs of a computer, and on the other, the data storage, processor, GPU, etc. that make up the computer itself (including the batter for portable devices). The former can be any size or shape; the latter should be as portable as possible.

The UMPC device category is ostensibly an attempt at this sort of arrangement. However, it has a terrible flaw: such devices are encumbered by UI hardware that is woefully inadequate. By trying to turn card-deck sized computers into self-sufficient PCs, companies have been forced to compromise on absolutely essential features. I am sorry: serious work cannot be accomplished on an OQO. The combination of a touchscreen, battery, thumb-keyboard, speaker, and every IO port possible ramps the price up on such machines so as to make a cost-benefit analysis very dreary.

In my opinion, a portable computer should be a combination of CPU, GPU, storage, wireless technology, and other integrated devices, but have only a single, high-bandwith port. It would have no display, no UI, and no battery. A brick, in other words. That brick would also hold the OS of the user's choice, loaded with plug-and-play drivers for various inputs and displaytechnologies. Such a device could be terrifically portable and inexpensive, relative to today's UMPCs and ultraportable laptops. This would also improve options for more capable processors and discrete graphics.

A battery could be integrated, perhaps, so that the brick could maintain periodic 3G connections to a online backup server. But otherwise, the brick would be a card-deck size machine with a single port.

Then you could have every kind of computer under the sun, each an empty shell with a single port. Desktops, laptops, ultraportables, and tablet PCs. Note that I do not include "UMPC"--I believe that this category of computer needs to die. The smallest computer usable for real mobile productivity is "netbook" sized, with at least a 9" screen.

Not every brick would be powerful enough to drive every kind of display satisfactorily; but every "shell" workstation would accept every brick. You could buy a "gaming PC" brick or an affordable "workstation" brick. Eiter brick would work in a desktop or a laptop "shell", but the "gaming PC" brick might kill the batteries in the laptop shell very quickly relative to the cheap brick.

I know this isn't an original idea.

Edit: Ha!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Creating Ourselves

As a philosophy student at the University of Louvain, I learned a great deal about secular existentialism and what it represented in terms of the history of ideas: as Sarte put it, the logical consequence of atheism--the final taking of our individual destinies into our individual hands; the ultimate removal of all traces of the en soi, of all "givens" in life, so that all that is left is the Will. The Will then becomes like a mathematical point, a singularity of self-identity, empty of content, around which the isolated, atomistic individual creates himself, as if every soul were a hacked game of "Sim City" where every player had infinite money.

It is this existentialism which, I believe, is at the heart of movements pushing for human cloning, genetic engineering, and yes, gay marriage. It is also at the heart of the transgendered movement. To treat something that is older and larger than ourselves, something that belongs to the order of nature itself, as if it were always a human invention that, anyway, we can do better, is exactly the self-divinization that I denounced when I created the Internet moniker, "NotSelfCreated."

And that is what irritates me most about the increasing number of developments like this one. The hailed interpreters of the law--the law, which ought to be a source of stability in any nation, not the source of change--are wittlessly rewriting creation itself. That a manufactured gender should be legally, officially interpreted as being on an identical level as the gender arising from the unaided processes of creation is both the ultimate hubris and a deception that will not be without consequences (as Jeff Goldblum's character said in "Jurassic Park", "Nature always finds a way"). If judges had the least bit of philosophical awareness, they would understand that a surgically altered man-into-woman is far more analagous to someone covered in tattoos, or with an amputation addiction, than a bona fide woman. And while the first two would certainly be grounds for legally sanctioned discrimination, the judges have chosen to drink the Cool-Aid of modern existentialism, and effectively legislate from the bench that gender is a human technology.

To end with another quote from the same character from the same film: "The lack of humility before nature that's being displayed here, uh... staggers me. "

Monday, September 15, 2008

On meekness

Once in the seminary I debated with another seminarian about whether the imitation of Christ legimitated a "tough love" approach to being a pastor. He said that he preferred to imitate the meekness of Christ.

At the time, I was caught up in a conservativism that reveled in the angry moments of Jesus Christ--which, to be fair, are not few. Thus, hearing my friend say that he preferred the meekness of Christ left a bad taste in my mouth. Internally, I criticized him for "sentimentalizing" the Gospel, for "cherry-picking" a "nicety-nice" Jesus out of the Gospel, which I believed was a predominantly rough-and-tumble endurance test of pained and bloody charity.

EDIT: You know what? This article says it all better than I ever could.

"Jesus is Magic"? Not quite.

Reference is to Sarah Silverman.

Little known fact:

By Christian reckoning, none of Jesus' miracles--not even the raising of Lazarus or his own Resurrection--are privy to him alone as the only-begotton Son of God, the Incarnate Word, or the Messiah. Even in his working of signs, Jesus' humanity is uncompromised. It is simply a humanity which is already immersed in the Beatific Vision. Every action, miracle, and wisdom of Jesus Christ is available to us, the adopted sons and daughters and God, through the grace of faith.

There is one exception and one alone: only Christ can say "I AM"--only he can speak "with authority" in interpreting and teaching the Law, because he is literally its Author.

Jesus is Magic? In the sense that Sarah Silverman is speaking, not quite. By my understanding, it is technically incorrect to speak of the signs Christ performed as if they were his alone to perform.

Essential Questions and Understandings: The Incarnation

Why study the Incarnation? So what?

  • The Incarnation is among the doctrines that makes Christianity unique among the religions of the world. While many religions have gods that manifest themselves among human beings, only in Christianity does God himself, without reservation, lives a life that is utterly and completely human, without reservation. Jesus Christ is not a “Hercules” figure.
  • For Christians, the Incarnation is the condition of possibility of the fulfillment of all human desire. By placing himself in our hands, God allows us to return to his own hands. In the doctrine of the Incarnation is buried the one hope to a happiness that will not fade away.

What makes the study of the Incarnation universal?

  • Even though the Incarnation makes Christianity unique, the longings and hopes embodied in this teaching can be found in every community and in every individual. This is the longing for community with the absolute, for the final intimate embrace with the eternal, for a release from suffering, death, and evil (others’ and our own).
  • God becomes a single man in a particular year in a particular culture with a particular story, personality, name, family, and face. It is exactly for this reason that the promises he made are extended to the whole human race, which is as much a collective of particular individuals. It is exactly in our differences and uniqueness that we share a common human destiny.

What is the moral of the story (of the Incarnation)?

  • There is a struggle. It is the struggle between our hopelessness and God’s ever-advancing, consoling outreach. God tramples down millennia of despair to crack the concrete prison we have built for ourselves, and he grabs his beloved Humanity by its bloody roots, proving again and again that our meager resistance is no match for his love. The real moral of the story is a call to surrender, to lay down the burden of fighting a battle we cannot win, a battle against our one and only ally.
  • The Incarnation is a tale of the dramatic lengths God will go to return a lost and cold, tattered and broken creature to himself. It is not a story about God’s distant “compassion”, a mere “being with” so that our misery can have some company on its way to the grave; nor is it a “superhero” story in which we are passive damsels limply carried aloft by a masked being foreign and strange to us. Fundamentally it is a struggle that spans the cosmos and rages on in the human soul—the battle between meager self-servitude and meek surrender to divine life and power.

What larger concept, issue, or problem underlies the Incarnation?

  • At bottom, it is a dialogue between the Infinite God and his finite creation. The problem is believing the impossible: that somehow a single part of God’s creation can contain not only the whole creation, but God’s infinite self. It is as if, breaking against the shore, a single wave contained—was—the entire ocean.

What couldn’t we do if we didn’t understand the Incarnation?

  • If we misunderstand the Incarnation—if we indulge in any of the Christological heresies—we ultimately cut ourselves off from God. Or rather, we cut ourselves off from anything more than a partial, temporary, finite and thus unsatisfactory encounter with the divine.
    Apart from the Incarnation (orthodoxly understood) our sufferings and trials are bereft of any lasting redemption. For example, if we are Apollinarians, then Jesus lacked a human soul and therefore did not truly live a human life. His example then becomes hollow, his sacrifice mere pageantry, and his death not a true death. The story of Jesus becomes a story of God showing us a greatness that is, in the end, beyond us; even though he points the way, it lies beyond a chasm and merely taunts us. If we are Arians, on the other hand, Jesus perhaps truly died, but he is himself a creature of God—a supreme angel perhaps, the first creature, but a creature nevertheless and therefore finite. If the Son is a finite creature than his death is doubly futile. First, like in Apollinarianism, he is not truly human; but second and more importantly, he is not truly God, and therefore has no more access or community with the Infinite than we ourselves do. The Incarnation is the only source for unlimited mediation between the finite Creation and the infinite God.

How is the Incarnation used and applied in the larger world?

  • It is first of all applied sacramentally in those Christian faiths with a sacramental dimension. It is in the sacraments, especially in the Eucharist, that “God partakes of our humanity so that we might partake of his divinity”.
  • It is fulfilled in the unfolding of the Kingdom of Heaven into ordinary life, where the grace of charity from the sacraments manifests in choices emulating God’s self-emptying love.

What is a real-world insight about the Incarnation?

  • Love is a choice and love is a skill. Love that emulates the Incarnation does not require amorous feelings to fuel its action; it requires only God’s grace and our responding charity.
  • Real-world Christian love is always a “pay it forward” movement. One cannot give unless one has received; but once one receives, the gift burns forever.

What is the value of studying the Incarnation?

  • Knowing about and understanding the Incarnation gives one the understanding necessary to appreciate and respond to the gift of the Christian mysteries.It also gives one a supreme model of “kinetic” love to follow and to guide one’s life.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Christian Growth Unit 4 Lesson Planning

First let's look at the Diocese's official standards. Which ones will I be accomplishing with this unit?

PRINCIPLES OF CATHOLICISM



  • demonstrate a basic knowledge of the divisions of the Nicene Creed.

  • demonstrate a familiarity with Mary and her role in salvation history.

  • demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the connection between Christian faith and prayer and the service of others.

Now let's see what kinds of stuff my textbooks talk about:


  • Doctrine of the Incarnation - definition and relational significance

  • Grace and sin

  • Heresies and councils

  • Jesus' Annunciation, Nativity, childhood

  • Mary, Immaculate Conception, Magnificat

  • Baptism in the Jordan; John the Baptist

  • Temptations in the desert; beginning of preaching

  • Twelve Apostles

  • Proclaiming the Kingdom - themes of the Kingdom

  • Beatitudes

  • Peoples' response to Jesus

  • The New Commandment(s)

Now let's speculate on possible student misunderstandings:



  • The usual misunderstandings about the Incarnation--Jesus as being not quite human; half-man half-god; not suffering or it being "easy" for Jesus to do what he did because he was God;

  • Non-understanding of Grace--not in their vocabulary

  • The Immaculate Conception = Jesus' conception

  • The Commandment to love = "liking" everybody--sentimentalized idea of love

  • Importance of money to life. Money = happiness

First, we need to divide the material into their three priorities: (1) Big Ideas and Core Tasks; (2) Important to Know and Do; and (3) Worth Being Familiar With


(1) Big Ideas and Core Tasks


Big Ideas:


  • Sin and Grace;

  • The Incarnation;

  • Mary the Mother of God;

  • Jesus' beginnings;

  • The Messiahship of Christ

  • Kingdom of God;

Core tasks:



  • Engage in acts of "Incarnational" love

  • Identify temptations

  • critique of worldly values vis-a-vis the Kingdom/beatitudes

(Understandings are below)


(2) Important to Know and Do


  • Essential terms: incarnation, parable, grace, Original Sin, Nativity, Abba, Messiah, heresy, Nicene Creed, Immaculate Conception, Apostle, Beatitudes

  • Places: Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galillee

(1) Worth Being Familiar With


  • Early Councils in the Church

  • Names of the Apostles

  • The Beatitudes; Luke's version


Now, I need to remind myself about the characteristics of Understandings and Essential Questions:

Essential Questions:



  • Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the Big Ideas and core content.

  • Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions.

  • Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers.

  • Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior lessons.

  • Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences.

  • Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

Also, EQs have the following types:



  • Topical vs. Overarching

  • Open vs. Guiding


Let's construct two pairs of matching topical and overarching questions related to this unit:



Topical: Overarching:

Topical: Overarching:


YES.
Understandings.
In the case of Understandings, it will be especially important to tie these to the "Big Ideas": symbolic communication, ritual, sacramental awareness, dual sense of sacrament, grace, sacred time
As with my "essential questions", I can synthesize these basically into two "Huge Ideas": the first dealing with human action and communication that is deliberately meaningful, and the second dealing with the presence and movement of God within that action. Let's take those two and extract some understandings that we can pick from.
Why study ritual? So what? - Ritual is as old as human kind, from which we infer that something in human nature craves ritual. Ritual seems to be a very basic and universal way that humankind communicates with reality, both seen and unseen. No other human phenomenon--not entertainment, labor, or even sex--has commanded quite the depth, seriousness, and profundity as ritual--except when these things have been integrated with it.
What larger concept, issue, or problem underlies ritual? - Ritual is deeply ingrained in our nature, but in our alienation and our modernity, we have lost touch with the skills and habits of ritual people. Specifically, our perception has become literal, and it has become more and more difficult to see with poetic and spiritual eyes.
What couldn't we do if we didn't understand ritual? - Besides completely missing the point of the Mass and being unable to participate in it mindfully, if we do not educate ourselves about ritual, our understanding of human beings will be very incomplete. More to the point, if we do not develop skills in perceiving and acting through symbol and ritual, we ourselves will be incomplete--our view and our understanding will be truncated, bare, and literalistic.
blah blah blah. I have to watch the clock here, so I'm going to skip the rest of this and get straight to the point. Some things I need to keep in mind:
An Understanding is: (note that there is an 'or' between each of these)
An important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated as a specific and useful generalization.
A transferable, big idea having enduring value beyond a specific topic.
An abstract, counterintuitive, and easily misunderstood idea.
Best acquired by "uncovering" (i.e., it must be developed inductively, coconstructed by learners) and "doing" the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems.
A summary of important strategic principles in skill areas.
Also...
It has endured over time and across cultures because it has proven so important and useful.
It should endure in the mind of the student because it will help the student make sense of the content and it will enable transfer of the key ideas.
Two matched pairs of understandings:
Topical: A sacramental awareness consists of symbolic communication and a spiritual openness to God's presence in the ordinary. Overarching: Ritual is a basic way that we collectively communicate with reality, both seen and unseen.
Topical: The traditional forms of Catholic worship serve as mutual communications in the relationship between the Church and the Lord; this is the source of their power. Overarching: Our choices in prayer are relevant to God insofar as they manifest our will (or lack thereof) to holy love.
GOOD. I spent a lot of time on that. Moving on.
Assessments:
IF the desired result is for learners to...
UNDERSTAND that:
A sacramental awareness consists of symbolic communication and a spiritual openness to God's presence in the ordinary.
Ritual is a basic way that we collectively communicate with reality, both seen and unseen.
The traditional forms of Catholic worship serve as mutual communications in the relationship between the Church and the Lord; this is the source of their power.
Our choices in prayer are relevant to God insofar as they manifest our will (or lack thereof) to holy love.
And thoughtfully consider the QUESTIONS:
Why does the Catholic Church use ritual as a means of transmitting the goods offered by Jesus?
What difference does it make in life whether one operates with a symbolic awareness or a purely literal awareness?
What role do time and rubrics play in the Catholic sacramental vision?
Does God care about how or when we pray?
Then, you need evidence of the student's ability to...
EXPLAIN
Sacramental awareness
Grace
INTERPRET
Student-designed symbols
Natural objects and phenomena for theological meaning
APPLY, BY
Designing a meaningful opening ritual
Interpreting actions and gestures of ancient ritual
SEE FROM THE POINTS OF VIEW OF
Faithful Catholics in locales where sacramental awareness is still strong
EMPATHIZE WITH
Those for whom ritual--a Rosary, a prayer--has become their last grasp on life's meaning.
REFLECT ON
One's own level of "sacramental awareness".
What messages God may be trying to communicate that have gone unheard.
So the assessments need to require something like...

Friday, September 12, 2008

Disconcerting

OK, so here is Time's Palin and Troopergate primer.

I won't lie; that's a pretty disheartening story. You expect leaders to struggle occasionally with separating official duty and personal matters. But if the substance of this article is accurate, the Republican VP pick has crossed some ugly lines.

I'm a Republican on issues of domestic law that are important to me. I believe the nation should secure the identity of marriage from those who would seek to rip it away from its roots in childbirth and blood-related family. And we need to protect the lives of American human beings regardless of whether they are physically located inside of a woman's womb, inside a maximum security prison, or inside a geriatric ward.

But corruption in government leaders poisons the promises they make. At this stage I have to ask myself whether the integrity of both names on the Republican ticket has been irrevocably tarnished.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

A new discovery!

I learned from my most admired professors of liturgy and preaching that the Mass, and in particular preaching, is not primarily meant to be didactic. The church ought not to be treated like a classroom.

What I have learned from the Understanding by Design program, and from recent experience, is that the classroom itself ought not to be treated like a classroom.

Who knew?

Thursday, September 04, 2008

Yet another fabulous article: the post-denominationalist Christianity of Sarah Palin

This one is from the NCR.

A much better "What McCain needs to say" article.

This little attempt by Glenn Beck to do McCain's thinking for him, I thought, was actually really good. It was a little intellectual and tepid for an RNC speech, but I thought it summarized the Republican platform excellently, and provided a foreign policy edge to the domestic policy-heavy speech of Palin.

I'm not crazy about the idea that Palin might someday be asked to lead the country by herself. But neither did I like the thought of McCain ruling solo, considering how silent he is on domestic issues. Republicans are doing the right thing by stressing her and McCain's mutual complimentariness. I'm not nearly as confident in either one alone, as I am in the two of them together.

Google Chrome

I tried Google Chrome last night. I love it. Except for one deal-breaker: the zooming functionality. IE7 got it right, and then Firefox 3 got it right--both browsers scale the whole page, including graphics and flash elements at an almost perfect ratio. Chrome does not scale graphics.

Working with multiple open windows and a 1080p display at home, this is a critical feature. When Chrome gets zooming right, I'll switch to Chrome.

Watching Palin's speech...

It might be telling that hers is the only speech that I'll bother to watch from the national conventions. Generally, I liked it. One line that bugged the heck out of me:

"As for my running mate, you can be certain that wherever he goes, and whoever is listening, you can be certain that John McCain is the same man."

ORLY?

I almost would have preferred that she just let that issue remain obscure. Yes, she pointed out Obama's elitist remarks, which is good. But AFAIK, between the two men, McCain has more video footage of double-speak.

Monday, September 01, 2008

Sacraments Planning, Unit 2: The Catholic Sacramental Vision

Overall I would call Unit 1 a success, but there were problems, biggest of which is that I never had a quiz as a measure of basic knowledge. And that wound up being an issue later on.

This time I'm more aware of how the system works. Let's see if we can't whip something up.

The title of the unit is "The Catholic Sacramental Vision", and the general idea is to give students a grounding understanding of what a sacrament is that will assist them in grasping particular sacraments later in the course.

A look at standards and content: The first thing we'll do is collect material from standards and textbooks that will all be broken down into Big Ideas, Essential Questions, and Understandings.

First let's look at the Diocese's official standards. Which ones will I be accomplishing with this unit?


  1. demonstrate an understanding of concepts underlying the Catholic sacramental life and its relationship to lived grace, ritual, prayer, and service.
  2. describe the relationship between Jesus, the Church, and the seven sacraments.
    explain the meaning of the Mystery of the Incarnation, Paschal Mystery, Pentecost, Church as the Body of Christ, and their effect on the development of the seven sacraments.
  3. identify major developments in the history of the sacraments.
  4. explain what realities of human life are celebrated by each of the sacraments.
  5. identify the major symbols used in each of the sacraments and the key aspects of ritualizing these sacraments.
  6. explain Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian lifestyle.
  7. examine and explain the liturgical year as an expression of the sacramental life of the Church.

I bolded the areas that are appropriate to this topic. Notice that I left the issue of "service" out. Originally I planned to devote an entire unit to this topic. However, I now see that it fits particularly well in the unit about the Eucharist as the "Source and Summit" of Christian life--hence also the source and summit of service.

Now let's look at my expanded version:

  • The Catholic Sacramental Vision
  • Investigate different ways in which the desire for God manifests in every person.
  • Explain the distinctive nature of Christian prayer and its vitality to human life.
  • Differentiate between “chronos” and “kairos” and assess attitudes towards time using these distinctions; identify liturgical time as “kairos”.
  • Examine the origins of the words “sacrament” and “mystery” and trace their development toward referring to the seven sacraments.
  • Categorize signs, symbols, and sacraments based on the notion of sacrament as a sign that makes present what it signifies.
  • Differentiate between private prayer, communal devotion, liturgy, sacramental, and sacrament.
  • Recite the definition of a sacrament from CCC #1131.
  • Outline the four-fold pattern of all liturgical prayer.
  • Differentiate the seven sacraments from the broader category of human ritual.
  • Explain grace and locate where grace is operative within Christian prayer and the sacraments; leitourgia
  • Compose a diagram of the roots of the seven sacraments, especially in the words and actions of Jesus.

Now let's see what kinds of stuff my textbooks talk about:

Stoutzenberger:

  • Sacramental awareness: sense of the sacred; dullness to the sacred and its causes--busyness, suffering, ignorance. The cure: taking a closer look.
  • Grace: God's loving presence in the world
  • Ways of communication -> body language -> God's body language (all the hints of God in everyday life--'sacrament' in a little sense -> friendship as a sacrament of God's love.
  • Listening and responding = sacramental skills
  • Symbols - in-depth explanation. Symbol vs. Sign (plural vs. singular meanings; symbols are natural; symbols are deeper); Cultural vs. universal symbols. Literal vs. symbolic thinking; Symbols as the "language of faith"; sacraments as symbols
  • Rituals as symbols in action. Practical vs. symbolic action; sacramental rituals combine these. Ritual vs. routine. Ritual as play. Characteristics: meaningful movements/gestures; repetition; symbols; connection to important past events; significant words; active participation. Sacrifice. Ritual vs. magic.
  • sacraments are the "especially priviledged moments in which Christ communicates his grace through certain words and actions"
  • Prayer - all kinds. Prayer roots us and then uproots us.
  • The Church as a Sacrament of unity
  • Definition of a sacrament

Patricia Morrison Driedger:

  • Signs vs. symbols
  • Christ as the primary celebrant of the liturgy
  • Liturgy as an anticipation of heaven (play); souls in heaven in liturgical communion with the Trinity and each other.
  • Common vs. ministerial priesthood
  • Why you go to Mass vs. not
  • God is outside of time but he enters into time so that we might know him
  • Annual Christian feasts, esp. Easter, the first.
  • In the liturgical year, the Church unfolds the Paschal mystery--pillars
  • Sunday, Lord's day, 8th day of the week, 1st day of creation, 1st day of new creatino
  • unform liturgy unites people
  • liturgy of the hours: praise offers in the midst of life
  • liturgy not tied to any one place
  • liturgical objects

Very different emphases here. In my case, time is of the essence. I will not be able to cover everything. I bolded stuff that I would especially like to communicate.

Now let's speculate on possible student misunderstandings about the sacraments:

  • The main difference between a "good" and a "bad" Mass is how it makes you feel, during and afterward.
  • The primary purpose of the sacraments is to teach people good behavior.
  • Rituals are meaningless repititions for the sake fostering conformity.
  • God doesn't care about how or when we pray.
  • God doesn't normally speak to us.
  • Symbols are nice for poetry, but in the real world, ordinary speaking is all that we need.

Good. I think that covers it. Now let's gather this mess into a unit.

First, we need to divide the material into their three priorities: (1) Big Ideas and Core Tasks; (2) Important to Know and Do; and (3) Worth Being Familiar With

(1) Big Ideas and Core Tasks

Big Ideas: symbolic communication, ritual, sacramental awareness, dual sense of sacrament, grace, sacred time

Core tasks:

  • Communicate using symbols; interpret created and natural symbols; interpret nature along theological lines.
  • Design meaningful and purposeful ritual.
  • Reflect on the meaning and the movement of Grace in a particular Mass.

(Understandings are below)

(2) Important to Know and Do

  • Essential terms: sign, symbol, sacrament/Sacrament, ritual, grace, kyros.
  • The difference and interrelation between sign and symbol.
  • The distinction and interrelation between practical and symbolic in ritual.
  • Observe and recall specific words and actions at Mass.

(1) Worth Being Familiar With

  • Word origins and meanings: sacrament, sacrifice, mystery, liturgy.
  • Active participation as a central concern of liturgical reforms in the 1960s.
  • Forms of prayer, their advantages; Prayer as rooting-then-uprooting us.

Now, I need to remind myself about the characteristics of Understandings and Essential Questions:

Essential Questions:

  • Cause genuine and relevant inquiry into the Big Ideas and core content.
  • Provoke deep thought, lively discussion, sustained inquiry, and new understanding as well as more questions.
  • Require students to consider alternatives, weigh evidence, support their ideas, and justify their answers.
  • Stimulate vital, ongoing rethinking of big ideas, assumptions, prior lessons.
  • Spark meaningful connections with prior learning and personal experiences.
  • Naturally recur, creating opportunities for transfer to other situations and subjects.

Also, EQs have the following types:

  • Topical vs. Overarching
  • Open vs. Guiding

Let's construct two pairs of matching topical and overarching questions related to this unit:

  1. Topical: Why does the Catholic Church use ritual as a means of transmitting the goods offered by Jesus? Overarching: What difference does it make in life whether one operates with a symbolic awareness or a purely literal awareness?
  2. Topical: What role does time play in the Catholic sacramental vision? Overarching: Does God care about how or when we pray?

YES.

Understandings.

In the case of Understandings, it will be especially important to tie these to the "Big Ideas": symbolic communication, ritual, sacramental awareness, dual sense of sacrament, grace, sacred time

As with my "essential questions", I can synthesize these basically into two "Huge Ideas": the first dealing with human action and communication that is deliberately meaningful, and the second dealing with the presence and movement of God within that action. Let's take those two and extract some understandings that we can pick from.

Why study ritual? So what? - Ritual is as old as human kind, from which we infer that something in human nature craves ritual. Ritual seems to be a very basic and universal way that humankind communicates with reality, both seen and unseen. No other human phenomenon--not entertainment, labor, or even sex--has commanded quite the depth, seriousness, and profundity as ritual--except when these things have been integrated with it.

What larger concept, issue, or problem underlies ritual? - Ritual is deeply ingrained in our nature, but in our alienation and our modernity, we have lost touch with the skills and habits of ritual people. Specifically, our perception has become literal, and it has become more and more difficult to see with poetic and spiritual eyes.

What couldn't we do if we didn't understand ritual? - Besides completely missing the point of the Mass and being unable to participate in it mindfully, if we do not educate ourselves about ritual, our understanding of human beings will be very incomplete. More to the point, if we do not develop skills in perceiving and acting through symbol and ritual, we ourselves will be incomplete--our view and our understanding will be truncated, bare, and literalistic.

blah blah blah. I have to watch the clock here, so I'm going to skip the rest of this and get straight to the point. Some things I need to keep in mind:

An Understanding is: (note that there is an 'or' between each of these)

  • An important inference, drawn from the experience of experts, stated as a specific and useful generalization.
  • A transferable, big idea having enduring value beyond a specific topic.
  • An abstract, counterintuitive, and easily misunderstood idea.
  • Best acquired by "uncovering" (i.e., it must be developed inductively, coconstructed by learners) and "doing" the subject (i.e., using the ideas in realistic settings and with real-world problems.
  • A summary of important strategic principles in skill areas.

Also...

  • It has endured over time and across cultures because it has proven so important and useful.
  • It should endure in the mind of the student because it will help the student make sense of the content and it will enable transfer of the key ideas.

Two matched pairs of understandings:

  1. Topical: A sacramental awareness consists of symbolic communication and a spiritual openness to God's presence in the ordinary. Overarching: Ritual is a basic way that we collectively communicate with reality, both seen and unseen.
  2. Topical: The traditional forms of Catholic worship serve as mutual communications in the relationship between the Church and the Lord; this is the source of their power. Overarching: Our choices in prayer are relevant to God insofar as they manifest our will (or lack thereof) to holy love.

GOOD. I spent a lot of time on that. Moving on.

Assessments:

IF the desired result is for learners to...

UNDERSTAND that:

  • A sacramental awareness consists of symbolic communication and a spiritual openness to God's presence in the ordinary.
  • Ritual is a basic way that we collectively communicate with reality, both seen and unseen.
  • The traditional forms of Catholic worship serve as mutual communications in the relationship between the Church and the Lord; this is the source of their power.
  • Our choices in prayer are relevant to God insofar as they manifest our will (or lack thereof) to holy love.

And thoughtfully consider the QUESTIONS:

  • Why does the Catholic Church use ritual as a means of transmitting the goods offered by Jesus?
  • What difference does it make in life whether one operates with a symbolic awareness or a purely literal awareness?
  • What role do time and rubrics play in the Catholic sacramental vision?
  • Does God care about how or when we pray?

Then, you need evidence of the student's ability to...

EXPLAIN

  • Sacramental awareness
  • Grace

INTERPRET

  • Student-designed symbols
  • Natural objects and phenomena for theological meaning

APPLY, BY

  • Designing a meaningful opening ritual
  • Interpreting actions and gestures of ancient ritual

SEE FROM THE POINTS OF VIEW OF

  • Faithful Catholics in locales where sacramental awareness is still strong

EMPATHIZE WITH

  • Those for whom ritual--a Rosary, a prayer--has become their last grasp on life's meaning.

REFLECT ON

  • One's own level of "sacramental awareness".
  • What messages God may be trying to communicate that have gone unheard.

So the assessments need to require something like...