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Oh the thinks you can think! Dr. Seuss
Intoning the chime
Call to Gather: Hymn 389 Gathered Here
Leader:
Good morning. Let us kindle now the flame of our
liberal religious heritage as we echo the words
of the visionaries who came before us, the
writers of our congregation's Bond of Union. Hymn #331 Life is the Greatest Gift of All
Welcome – Gregg Pelley
Reading 1 - Matters of Consequence, from The Little Prince by Antoine de St. Exupery'
The Little Prince has left his home planet to search the universe for friends. The fourth planet he visits belongs to a businessman. This man is so much occupied that he does not even raise his head at the Little Prince's arrival.
"Good Morning," the little prince said to him.
"Three and two make five. Five and seven make twelve. Twelve and three make fifteen. Good morning. Twenty-two and six make twenty-eight. Phew! That makes five hundred and one million 6 hundred and 22 thousand 700 and thirty one. (501,622,731)
FIve hundred million what? asked the little prince.
"Millions of those little objects," he said, "which one sometimes sees in the sky."
"Flies?"
No, no. LIttle golden objects that set lazy men to idle dreaming. As for me, I am concerned with matters of consequence. There is no time for idle dreaming in my life."
"Ah, you mean the stars?...And what do you do with 500 million stars?"
"501 million 622 thousand 7 hundred thirty one. I am concerned with matters of consequence. I am accurate."
"And what do you do with these stars?"
"What do I do with them? Nothing. I own them."
"How is it possible for one to own the stars?"
"They belong to me because I was the first person to think of it. When you get an idea before anyone else you take out a patent on it. It is yours. So with me. I own the stars because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them."
Joys and Concerns An opportunity to share a personal milestone or events in your life
Sharing Our Abundance
Reading #2 "I own the stars because nobody else before me ever thought of owning them," the businessman said.
"And what do you do with them?" the little prince asked.
"I administer them. I count them and recount them. It is difficult. But I am a man who is naturally interested in matters of consequence."
The little prince was still not satisfied. "If I owned a flower" he said, "I could pluck it and take it away with me. But you cannot pluck the stars from heaven."
"No, but I can put them in the bank."
"Whatever does that mean?"
"That means that I write the number of my stars on a little paper and then I put this paper in a drawer, and lock it with a key."
"And that is all?"
"That is enough" said the businessman.
"It is entertaining," thought the little prince, "It is rather poetic. But it is of no great consequence."
Special Music Samba de Aracata by Ray Holman Stan Dahl, steel drum
Meditation
-- Spoken - Words of Anne Lamott, Plan B Further Thoughts on Faith “My mind is my main problem almost all the time. I wish I could leave it in the fridge when I go out but it likes to come with me. I have tried to get it to take up a nice hobby like macramé, but it prefers to think about things and jot down what annoys it.”
--Silence
--Sung Hymn #90 From All the Fret and Fever of the Day
Responsive Reading # 650 Cherish your doubts - Robert T. Weston
Special Music Sing Ram Bam - Traditional Stan Dahl, steel drum
Sermon What if our brains came with a user’s guide?
Closing Words
Closing in Song: Hymn of Valor
Sermon What if our brain’s came with a User’s Guide?
A brain is a burden. You know what I mean. It is always thinking something.
- For some of us, it is always critiquing ourselves and others and invariably we or they come up short. - For some of us it is always looking for ways to make money or hoard ideas or get to some point we can call “getting ahead.” - For some of us it is scanning the horizon in fear of what may happen next. - Or, if we are very lucky, it may even be looking for new ways to amuse itself.
For all of us, our brain is always thinking something. And it takes years – sometimes a lifetime – before some of us find the volume button.
We struggle to ease the tension between being pummeled by an endless stream of thoughts and the desire to get our brains to do our bidding. That’s probably why I was drawn to Anne Lamott’s observation that even though she had “… tried to get it to take up a nice hobby like macramé, it prefers to think about things and jot down what annoys it.”
I can relate to that. For as long as I can remember, my mind has preferred to be irritated. I am three times more likely to focus on something that irritates me than I am to just ignore it and do something I enjoy. Maybe I should try to get my brain to take up a nice hobby like macramé, too.
This comment reminded me of something I read about how adults learn. The textbook described how repetition deepens the physical path between and among neurons in the brain – a more clinical explanation of the old phrase “force of habit.”
The image occurred to me that habit is like a deer moving through the forest everyday from her hiding place to the watering hole and back. The grass gets mashed down from her delicate hooves repeatedly moving through it. If a deer becomes temporarily disoriented, the force of habit will direct her to the well-worn path. So it is with what we learn and what we think we know. Our thoughts and behaviors gravitate to the paths that have had the greatest traffic. The deeper the old path, the harder it will be to accept a new idea, take a new path.
Small wonder it is so difficult to eradicate decades or generations of prejudice and knee-jerk reactivity in myself or anyone else.
Some people believe a brain is a brain is a brain. And clinically, all brains do bear similarities – they all look like big lumps of grey clay with crevices and round, rolling Grant Wood hills on the outside. They are all comprised of lobes or hemispheres and neurons and synapses and blood vessels and… I’m not a brain surgeon, I’m kind of guessing what all is in there. Anyway, they look pretty much alike, but that’s about where the similarity ends.
We kind of know what a brain looks like, and kind of know how a thought moves through the brain on an MRI -- lighting it up like Christmas. Because of science, we know a great deal about the physical nature of the brain.
When I Googled “user’s guide for the brain,” I found that someone has written a book by that title. It’s all about the physiology and the physical parts of the brain as an organ. This morning, I’m really more interested in how to use my mind, which is that collection of processes that govern how all the nervous energy flows through the grey matter.
Like many of you, when I was in grade school and high school, we were taught by teachers whose mission was to teach us how to think. They were convinced they knew how to think, and that their way was the right way. And I am grateful for every one of them and their systematic approach. Unfortunately, they also convinced me that I was incompetent to learn on my own.
In my 20’s and 30’s, I had more thoughts than I knew what to do with most of the time. It drove me to work hard at having a career in writing and public relations, and it also drove me to a nearly constant state of anxiety. There was no way it seemed I could know enough, could have thought ahead enough to troubleshoot every possible problem and solution for an event I was planning, no way I could have stated every sentence in every newsletter in its most precise meaning. All of that analytical thinking was making me feel anxious and inadequate.
In those days, I would examine even innocent, cheery thoughts for sinister meaning: If every cloud has a silver lining, it is still a cloud and that is where rain comes from – if you have any brains at all, you should carry an umbrella all the time.
Yes. I could have been the poster child for the Power of Negative Thinking.
For years I had the notion that I was using my brain the way it should be used. I analyzed and debated and added my opinion freely to the clang and clamor of conversations. Eventually, after enough tumbling through my own anxiety and chaos, it began to seem as if others had some key piece of information I did not have. You all seemed so calm, self possessed, relaxed, even “spiritually centered.”
Well, your secret is out. I finally learned that it was an illusion. Some of us are better actors than others. We all stumble around in the chaos of every day life bombarded by messages; and our brains are on auto pilot, whirring away taking in all the messages and chaos, finding shelves to put them on, sorting them by color and shape or size or chronology, hanging them from the cup hooks of our personal cupboard, or waiting to be asked to drive the forklift back into the warehouse and retrieve that one little bitty interesting thought.
Eventually, our mental warehouse is so full of odd stuff we didn’t really choose, it resembles the basement of an old Victorian house that has been in the family for centuries. Every now and then, some of these cob-web covered collectors’ items – stray thoughts - belch forth into our dreams and we wake up dazed and confused – or worse, convinced of our own sudden enlightenment.
The readings this morning of the conversation between the Little Prince and the businessman were chosen in part because they reminded me of the TV ads with MacIntosh and IBM PC. We’ve all seen them. The chubby nerdy guy with the Buddy Holly glasses and the stiff white shirt is PC; the cute young guy in the blue jeans and sneakers is Mac.
I think PC is like the businessman; Mac is like the Little Prince. It is clear that they don’t think alike at all. Yet both Mac and PC were created to simulate the human brain.
PC requires a very thick and detailed user’s guide analyzing and giving instructions for every possible scenario -- and which requires a massive effort to update. Mac insists every user is intuitive enough to figure it out on his or her own as you go along. And the user’s guide is an 800 number and balloon help on screen.
Show of hands: are you like Mac? Or like PC? My guess is, many of us pretend to ourselves that we are Mac, but secretly fear we are actually more like PC with our external hard drives duct-taped to our foreheads. Whichever way you choose, the computer geek world has taught us a lot about how human minds work.
Here are some of the things I’ve learned from being a computer user, observing how computers seem to work. 1) It all starts with yes and no questions, binary language – 1 or 0, 0 or 1 – and logic. And even at its most complex, still comes back to logic statements. A = B, B= C, Therefore, A=C. Pick one. Make a choice. Build the next choice on that. (Brain) 2) Processing errors happen when some command is confusing or overwhelming or multiple commands cause the processor to pause, whirr along without results, or just stop until you give a better command. (Mind) 3) The device can take whatever you give it and spit it back in an impressive array of packages. In the end, you still have to decide “so what?” (Spirit)
There’s an analogy here for processing errors; it’s kind of like the mind and mental health…We can call it the three R’s of processing errors: Rigidity, Repetition, Reactivity. (Rigidity: the computer can only do what it has been programmed to do; it cannot adapt. Repetition: It will repeat its programming over and over and over, even though it was not effective in response to the command. Reactivity: confusion shuts it down, as if it has been scolded and suddenly feels like an embarrassed two year old.)
Likewise, there are the three R’s of remedies for processing errors: Receptivity, Retrieval, and Reflection. Receptivity and Retrieval are methods of preventing errors; Reflection is a cure once errors occur. To prevent errors, you can enhance Receptivity, that is, build in multiple ways of receiving commands so that the computer is less easily confused. You can also store information with more handles permitting Retrieval in multiple ways – kind of like the way Google can search for a fact based on multiple synonyms for common terms. Curing processing errors requires that you Reflect on what caused the problem, make a change based on what you learned about the cause, and move on.
Well, I bobbed along and did well on academics and was convinced that when I finished high school, and then college, I knew how to think.
I vaguely remember hearing that critical thinking skills are the “highest order of thought.” It made me feel self-satisfied – even smug. It never occurred to me to ask “higher than what?”
When I came upon an article not long ago about teaching thinking skills, I read about several different kinds of thinking. There on the page it said thinking skills includes “higher order thinking, creative thinking, critical thinking, and constructive thinking.” And my long buried question emerged. Higher than what?
In the year 2000 the U.S. Secretary of Labor got in on the discussion by creating a set of over 200 competencies that describe what every adult should be able to do to functionally contribute to society. The report defined thinking skills as falling into two broad categories: critical thinking which involves decision making, logical reasoning, and problem solving; and creative thinking which involves creating new ideas or inventing new ways of doing things. So, as I read that, were you thinking what I was thinking? PC and Mac?!
Those of you here who have been teachers at some time in your career probably studied Benjamin Bloom’s classic explanation of the hierarchy of thinking published in 1956; in which he categorizes levels of thinking for critical thinking. His stair step model is called Bloom’s Taxonomy, and has 6 levels of cognitive processes. Level 1 is the simplest thinking skill; level 6 – at the top – is the most complex, the highest level of thinking. I first encountered this information last year, and it helped me understand my own thinking processes in a new way. According to Bloom:
Level 1 is the ability to recall what you already know, which takes the least effort. Level 2 is the ability to comprehend or understand new information. Level 3 is the ability to apply what you learned in a context. Level 4 is the ability to analyze what you learned – see all of its components. Level 5 is the ability to synthesize and make connections between the new information and what you know already. Level 6 is the ability to evaluate and make value judgments about what you learned.
Critical
thinking – making comparisons and value
judgments – higher order thinking skills.
There it is…it is higher than recall,
comprehension, application, analysis, and
synthesis. Scholars and educators have spent a lot of effort on critical thinking, not so much effort on creative thinking. Some define creative thinking as creation or generation of ideas, processes, experience or objects…breaking one’s logical and emotional thinking barrier…or “right brain” thinking. Intuition is one of the skills of creative thinking.
The last decade has been touted as “the knowledge economy,” which disturbs me. Even as an undergraduate, I bristled at the idea that the reason for my education was in any way related to the economy. It wasn’t that I didn’t expect to work for a living; rather I have just always felt very strongly that I own my intellect and what I do with it. Being a person is more than being a unit of economic productivity.
By now you may be thinking, this is all well and good, but this is a church service; and you are hard pressed to find the “spiritual content” here.
Well, here it is. In addition to our brain, every one of us has a philosophy about how we learn, why we learn, and what we should do with what we learn. A philosophy is what makes it possible for our spirits to survive and structure our thoughts – choose a new path from the forest to the water.
There are about 5 prominent philosophies of adult learning and when I discovered these and asked myself where I fit, I found that much of my earlier anxiety melted away. I finally had a coherent description which felt like a kind of spiritual homecoming for my intellect.
I want to offer you the same opportunity to clarify your philosophy of how you learn, why you learn, and what matters of consequence are in your learning system.
Here are the five philosophies. I call them the four ISMs and an ING. Behaviorism, Cognitivism, Humanism, Constructivism, and Social Learning.
Philosophy #1: Behaviorism popularized by Pavlov’s dogs and B.F. Skinner is rooted in the belief that learning results from external stimulus, and that the purpose of education is to produce change in a desired direction determined by the teacher. I learned many skills from elementary school teachers who were behaviorists.
Philosophy #2: Cognitivism identifies the purpose of education to develop the capacity and skills to learn better, and learning results from the way the learner’s internal thought processes have been established. Most of my high school teachers were cognitivists.
Philosophy #3: Humanism parallels developments in psychology from thinkers such as Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow who believed that learning results from the learner’s readiness based on satisfying progressive levels of emotional and intellectual needs. The purpose of education from the philosophy of humanism is to become self-actualized. Many who came of age when cognitivism was the dominant theory have been dismayed by their children being taught by teachers who want to see them reach their potential. More than one friend of mine has said, “I don’t care if he reaches his potential – I want him to be able to read!”
Philosophy #4: Constructivism follows the belief that each person learns by constructing reality from his or her experience; the purpose of education is for the teacher to facilitate the learner’s process of making meaning. As a learner, you and I create our own meaning from experience – the meaning of life is the meaning of our individual lives.
Philosophy #5: Social learning teachers believe learning arises from the interaction of the person, behavior and environment. Learners learn in a social context, as part of teams, and communities.
The bumper sticker version of these five approaches is a little easier to remember.
A cognitivist would say “I think, therefore I am.”
A Humanist would say “I am, therefore I think.”
A behaviorist, would say, “I think, therefore you should think what I tell you to think.”
A constructivist would say, “I think therefore I evolve.”
A social learning teacher says, “I think therefore I wonder what you think.”
My moment of insight was something of a religious experience. I grew up Catholic, therefore a behaviorist user’s guide was issued to me at birth. I am now Unitarian, engaged in a free and responsible search for meaning with my constructivist user’s guide; when I engage with you in small group ministry, I reach for my social learning user’s guide. When I want to learn a new skill, I look for an expert who can help me with my behaviorist user’s guide. And when I want to solve everyday problems, I am grateful for my cognitivist user’s guide.
If
you know the three Rs of Error and three Rs of
remedy, along with which of these bumper
stickers fits on your car, you can throw away
the user’s guide. A brain is a burden – but once you clarify how you think about thinking, it’s intuitive. Just like Mac said.
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