{"id":25845,"date":"2020-02-12T12:14:22","date_gmt":"2020-02-12T20:14:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=25845"},"modified":"2020-02-12T12:14:22","modified_gmt":"2020-02-12T20:14:22","slug":"the-pendulum-swings-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/the-pendulum-swings-back\/","title":{"rendered":"The pendulum swings back?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The introduction to this week\u2019s text is laugh out loud funny.\u00a0 YouTube star and author Jordan Peterson describes his early political experience in the liberal socialist party of Canada.\u00a0 Disillusioned with his homelife, and, in particular, his lack of solid answers from the church, Peterson joined the left and socialist leaning political machine looking for meaning and direction. After rising quickly through their ranks he still was disenchanted with their energy and direction.\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t until he read George Orwell\u2019s Road to Wigan Pier<\/em> that he first encountered the Orwellian thought that socialists did not necessarily like the poor.\u00a0 On the contrary, their primary motivation was that they \u201cmerely hated the rich.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 I wonder how that comment would go over if Peterson said this to a Bernie Sanders supporter.<\/p>\n

It is from this autobiographical gem that Peterson commences his long, Maps of Meaning<\/em>, during which he posits that myths have been incredibly valuable to human culture.\u00a0 \u00a0Myths provide wisdom and ground people in a shared story.\u00a0 \u201cThey laid the foundation for large, stable and successful civilizations that lasted thousands of years.\u201d[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Ultimately while Hicks was discussing how postmodernism breaks so many things down, Peterson was trying to find the things that could in fact keep \u201cthe ship aright.\u201d<\/p>\n

This power of myth, and the many ways it manifests itself in a community, has struck me as a common theme I have found in my Earth Care Research.\u00a0 One of the most powerful methods for a community to learn and share an experience of creation in a worship setting is through public testimony.\u00a0 Testimony is used often to share someone\u2019s faith journey, a powerful experience with the divine, maybe even a confessional experience.\u00a0 But when reimagined as a tool for sharing a powerful experience with the divine in nature, testimony is one of the most compelling methods of communication.\u00a0 Many Reformed (or at least PCUSA) churches have a Minute for Mission type section of their worship, during which a specific mission of the church is lifted up, described, and celebrated.\u00a0 Often during stewardship season a church may hold a Minute for Stewardship, and distinct voices in the church would share reasons why people should make financial support a part of their plans for the next year.\u00a0 A constant recommendation from the people I have interviewed has been to include Minutes for Creation as frequent elements of worship.\u00a0 These can be as unique and varies as inviting a member of a local community impacted by climate change, to representatives from the local gardening group, to a member of the congregation sharing a time in their life when they felt particularly close to God while in nature.<\/p>\n

If the stories that are shared during the public times of testimony are woven into the overall story of the church, these moments have the potential to be incredibly formational to all who experience them.\u00a0 These stories or \u201cmyths\u201d are then woven into the greater \u201cmyth,\u201d the myth of the life of the church, the myth of the shared human experience, or the myth that keeps a community of faith strong, unified, bound to one another.\u00a0 Peterson describes this best when he writes:<\/p>\n

Myth portrays what is known, and performs a function that if limited to that, might be regarded as paramount in importance. But myth also presents information that is far more profound\u2014almost unutterably so, once (I would argue) properly understood. We all produce models of what is and what should be, and how to transform one into the other. We change our behavior when the consequences of that behavior are not what we would like. But sometimes mere alteration in behavior is insufficient. We must change not only what we do, but what we think is important. This means a reconsideration of the nature of the motivational significance of the present, and reconsideration of the ideal nature of the future.\u201d[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

If the power of myth and the power of testimony can empower a community to reconsider the ideal nature of the future, and then change the way they live their faith for the better, the power and possibility found in their union is resounding and abundant.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Jordan Peterson, Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief<\/em>, (New York: Routledge, 1999), xiii.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> \u201cMaps of Meaning Summary: 10 Best Lessons from Jordan B Peterson,\u201d www.growth.me, accessed February 12, 2020, https:\/\/growth.me\/book-summaries\/maps-of-meaning\/.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Peterson, Maps,<\/em> 14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The introduction to this week\u2019s text is laugh out loud funny.\u00a0 YouTube star and author Jordan Peterson describes his early political experience in the liberal socialist party of Canada.\u00a0 Disillusioned with his homelife, and, in particular, his lack of solid answers from the church, Peterson joined the left and socialist leaning political machine looking for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1340,1779,1778],"class_list":["post-25845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dminlgp-9","tag-maps-of-meaning","tag-peterson","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25845"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25846,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25845\/revisions\/25846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}