Open Democracy and Centenary of Magna Carta

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openDemocracy – our kingdom (a conversation on the future of the United Kingdom) reported that to mark the anniversary of King John signing the Magna Carta on 15 June 1215, Shirley Williams gave the Magna Carta Lecture.

You can find a WORD document version at the top of the page HERE

See also its link to America HERE

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

Heschel quotes – God, Man, Prayer, Life and Death – and video

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The following quotes from Abraham Joshua Heschel have been used to start a page on him on WikiQuotes. Many seem to me to give wonderful glimpses of the wisdom and beauty of this great soul:

God

* “Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine. … to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple: to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. What we cannot comprehend by analysis, we become aware of in awe.”

* “God is not a hypothesis derived from logical assumptions, but an immediate insight, self-evident as light. He is not something to be sought in the darkness with the light of reason. He is the light.

* “He who is satisfied has never truly craved, and he who craves for the light of God neglects his ease for ardor.”

* “We are closer to God when we are asking questions than when we think we have the answers.”

Prayer

* “Worship is a way of seeing the world in the light of God.”

* “The issue of prayer is not prayer; the issue of prayer is God.”

* “The focus of prayer is not the self…. It is the momentary disregard of our personal concerns, the absence of self-centered thoughts, which constitute the art of prayer…. Thus, in beseeching Him for bread, there is one instant, at least, in which our mind is directed neither to our hunger nor to food, but to His mercy. This instant is prayer. We start with a personal concern and live to feel the utmost.”
* “The deepest passion in any human being is the craving for meaning of human exsistence- God is the meaning beyond”

Man

* “Man is a messenger who forgot the message.”

* “Man’s sin is in his failure to live what he is. Being the master of the earth, man forgets that he is the servant of God.”

* “The road to the sacred leads through the secular.”

* “Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living.”

Life and Death

* “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”

* “The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior for our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a herenow.”

I just found a fragment of video – HERE – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6q1puhkUNg

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

SunWALK a model of (holistic) education in a nutshell

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SunWALK a model of (holistic) education

The SunWALK model of
spiritualizing (or humanizing) pedagogy sees
human education as: the
storied development of
meaning, which is
constructed, and de-constructed,
physically mentally and spiritually, through
Wise & Willing
Action, via
Loving and
Knowing – developed in
Community, through the
‘Dialectical Spiritualization’ of
Caring,
Creativity &
Criticality processes, all undertaken in the light of the
‘Sun’ of chosen higher-order values and beliefs, using best available, appropriate
content.

So Sun = the values we internalize through which we read the world and see the path ahead.

WALK = Wise and Willing Action driven by Loving and Knowing.

We do the WALKing in the light of the ‘Sun’.

Working with such a model enables teaching and learning to be a spiritualizing/humanizing process and reduces the tendency for education to be just materialistic, mechanistic and atomistic.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE

TOO CONDENSED? – LONGER VERSIONS HERE!

DIAGRAM of the SunWALK model

Diagram of the SunWALK model

Who are you? Who am I? What is human being?

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Saw this today – with some quick ideas for a lesson;

“You are the average of the five people
you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn

Are you? Am I?

Do we have an essence? Or are we each an admixture of the roles we play and the relationships in which we are embedded?

Or both?

The best answers I ever found were in Who is Man? by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The Photo is of Heschel with MLK at Selma – they consider each other to be a ‘prophet’

Is my essence the sum of that with which I identify?

Or is there an essence that is independent of the accidents of personal history ?

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the PhD. Summaries are HERE