My First Church Preaching

I was a little occupied these last days because I was asked to speak in the church last Sunday. So, I spend these last days jumbling themes in my mind for my sermon. I have a lot of things to say but it’s difficult to discern what would be meaningful and relevant to the need of the church. I have to forget myself this time, unlike in my blog where I can write about anything where I can be selfish and even egotistical. The pulpit (by the way I didn’t use the pulpit) is a different thing. It’s like driving a car; if the driver is not careful he may end up plowing the whole congregation into spiritual…hmmmm…I don’t know the word…roadkill? If the speaker is not challenging enough, he may end up boring the congregation to sleep. I the speaker is too challenging, he may end up boring the congregation to death. Of course, these considerations are minor compared to what the message would be all about.

The biggest challenge in preparing and delivering a sermon is taking the self out of it and letting God speak.

Anyways, my wife told me that she understood the sermon. That’s enough for me.

Books/Typhoon holiday Hang over

I am now at the school using the student publication computer. I have finished reading reading the book that a blogging friend has sent. And here's how I feel and think about the book. (I am trying to make use of my school break.)

When I opened the first page of the book and read a few chapters an alarm went off in my head, "Prosperity Gospel!"

I belong to a church that is composed mostly of the poor; a church situated in a poor neighborhood. I grew up in a poor family. Most of our pastors came from poor families who studied in poor schools. I grew up poor and up to now I'm still poor. I grew up thinking that being poor is good. I grew thinking that being poor is a blessing. So, naturally our theology is mostly the theology of the poor. I grew up thinking this way; thinking that God made some people poor so that his grace can be manifested wherein the day-to-day struggle for survival is seen as a virtue, an imitation of Christ. So upon reading the book I can't help but feel threatened or scared of what it is saying.

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The book is a study of money. It is a biblical study on the rights of every Christian to be financially well off. In fact the books says that it is God's will for Christians to be prosperous, to share in the riches of God. The author cited biblical passages with sound interpretations to support his assertions. His challenge is true and practical for how can we expect the church to evangelize if the church has no money!

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One thing about this book is its study of the foundations of Christian prosperity: salvation, service, sanctification and holiness that made this book sound.

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Seek ye first...

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If we are prosperous in spirit why not in material wealth?

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And I say why not?

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A good book that made me rethink our theology of the poor. It made me rethink that being poor is not necessarily a virtue in the same light that being rich is not necessarily sin.

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But I can't help but be scared.

Communards (Jimmy Somerville) - Never Can Say Goodbye

I was third (or fourth)year high school when I heard this song and I loved it since then. This is a Micheal Jackson original but the communards turned it into a disco classic.

A Wet Week

Monday the weather was fine; I went to school. Then on Tuesday it rained so hard that at noon, after the students were in already at school, the government suspended classes. After analyzing the weather and their mistakes and afraid that they’d do it again—the late suspension of classes, the government suspended classes on Wednesday. Of course the weather has cleared then, so, my daughter and I had the whole day. Then on Thursday it rained hard again and classes were suspended again, and the government not wanting to be caught with their rain gauge down also suspended classes on Friday. It’s weekend already and the most beautiful thing about it all is that Monday is a non-working holiday!

Almost a week of sleeping late reading, typing and, forgive me for I have sinned, a whole day spent playing computer games. I have a thesis to revise and I haven’t finished it yet. I love the weather that I don’t want it ruined by this monster called thesis. Anyways, all the thesis needs is a few revisions here and there.

I read a book (it’s one of those books that is so boring but also interesting) on John Wesley titled “The Radical Wesley” written by Howard A. Snyder. There’s an interesting bit about Susannah Wesley, John’s mother:

Samuel Wesley often traveled to London on church and political business, leaving Susannah and the large family alone at Epworth. In early 1712, while Samuel was on prolonged absence, Susannah began a small meeting in the parsonage…

A few neighbors asked to attend, then others, so that the group soon grew from about thirty persons to over 200. At these gatherings Mrs. Wesley would read a sermon, pray and talk with the people who came.

This new venture caused a stir in Epworth and some friction between Susannah and her husband, Samuel liked the theory but not the practice. He objected to these meetings because they were led by a woman, might cause him some embarrassment and would be seen by some as a coventicle, a private, separatist religious gathering.

Susannah defended herself with two masterful letters to her husband on February 6 and 25, 1712.

“If you do, after all, think fit to dissolve this assembly, do not tell me that you desire me to do it, for that will not satisfy my conscience: but send me your positive command, in such full and express terms, as may absolve me from all guilt and punishment for neglecting this opportunity of doing good, when you and I shall appear before the great and awful tribunal of our LORD JESUS CHRIST.”

The meetings was stopped when Samuel Wesley returned from London…but one sees hints of the dynamic which would be released two decades later under the leadership of Susannah’s son, John and Charles Wesley.

What a mother!

Gifts?

I once heard a pastor say that he has a gift of healing but unfortunately the gift was taken away from him by God when he started to become proud. (I Thought God does not take back gifts.) Another pastor professes to have the gift of discerning evil spirits. Lots of spiritual giftedness being claimed.

I was watching an evangelical preacher on TV raising the hand of an American preacher who they said has a gift of prophecy and they made a lot noise about his prophecies on the Philippines. Aren't these people had enough of prophecies in the Bible? I mean, some of the Bible prophecies are nightmare inducing and they want to add more to it? Ha, ha, ha…super bananas spare me the gumamelas!

The gifts of the Holy Spirit is Biblical and without a doubt true and are meant for the common good—for edification. But sometimes people who claim to possess these gifts are in reality just trying to attract attention to their selves, to project an image of “super spirituality.” This is especially true of the gift of discerning spirit and the gift of tongues. I have seen how some of these people act, and even our senior pastor are weary of these “spiritually gifted Christians” because he had the experience of being “cast out or exorcised” by one of them. Their gift, unfortunately, is non-edifying rather it is self aggrandizing. There's nothing more creepy than people or pastors who are casting out demon in a theatrical manner.

These are some of my observation about them:

Sometimes casting is abused. Casting evil spirits out of people sometimes fellow Christians to prove one’s “super spirituality.” It is at best offensive and at worst super offensive; it edifies the devil.

Sometimes gifts of spiritual powers like “the ability to discern evil spirits” are nothing but mere defense mechanism for inadequacies. Or simply a ploy to attract attention, to be above the rest, to feel special.

Sometimes people or even pastors think other people have evil spirit for the simple reason that they simply don’t like them. And they have the practice of making the people they don’t like around them feel uncomfortable by continually casting out evil spirit to the point of making the name of Jesus Christ sound like a skipping CD. They even have this strange hand gestures. Unfortunately this speaks more of poor bible study and understanding of demonology. I am led to believe that they believe that it is the mention of the word Jesus Christ (Acts 19:13-16) and those weird hand gestures that casts out evil spirits.

A ritualistic approach to overcoming demons seems to have inherent weakness of playing the devil’s game by the devil’s rules. It maybe true that demons are subject to complex symbolic and ritualistic laws, but the Christians authority does not spring from a manipulation of them (ritual being at best a “figure of the true)but from the very fountain of all authority (God). To depend on ritual for the exercise of power is to depend on magic. It undermines dependence in God.

Effective exorcism does not depend on permission from a church hierarchy or the authority of any senior churchman. Nor is any specific formula of service or prayer required. It is not even necessary in exorcism to have the victim’s approval. But success in exorcism does depend on the intent and faith of those who pray in the name of Jesus Christ. (White in Montgomery as cited in “The Filipino Spirit World” Rodney L. Henry.)

Sometimes people who are simply sick is accused of being demonized thus embarrassing them and putting to question the integrity of their faith.

Sometimes claims of spiritual powers “of magical proportions” are used to manipulate people.

Here’s what I think:

I sometimes think that some Christians who like casting out evil spirits from fellow Christians, and sometimes embarrassingly more mature and hardworking Christians than they are, are bothered by evil spirits themselves that their weak faith cannot get rid of—sort of overcompensating They need to learn to pray and fast and fast and pray fast.

I sometimes think that some people who claim to possess the gift of discerning evil spirits are really nothing more than people who claim to possess the gift of discerning evil spirits. They walk around like the Ghostbusters pointing to places here and there pointing to people and whispering “There’s a presence here. That guy smells like teen spirit” I mean, they discern these malignant evil spirits as if they have built in spiritual Geiger counters and giant Doppler Radars yet they cannot discern more obvious evil spirits like “spirit of laziness, spirit of temptation, spirit of lusts, spirit of lying, spirit of the glass…etc.” I mean it’s comical, really—too much cartoons and too little Bible study. They don’t discern themselves.

I sometimes think that some people who announce to the world that they have the gift of healing are nothing more than people who have super extra large egoistically egotistical ego and poor knowledge of statistics and actuary. The same with some people who profess gifts of prophecy, all they need is a Tarot card and they’ll get more credibility.

I sometimes think that some if not most people who exhibit gift of tongue does not understand what they are doing even if they did memorize their ecstatic tongue twisting. One of our pastors told me that some of these tongue practitioners practice different tongues at home—the tongue used to cast out evil spirits in the church is the same tongue used to invite and manifest evil spirits in the homes.

I think most of these people who like to boast about their gifts are nothing more than airy and eerie Christians for they lack one gift—humility.

I remember Christ’s attitude whenever he healed the sick and exorcised evil spirits: “Go and tell no one.” Of course the healed always tell. The point is that Jesus heals and cast out evil spirits but he does not walk around carrying a 50 foot bill board and a 1 billion megawatt P.A. system and a personal PR consulting firm announcing to the world that he has superpowers. Jesus was humble and secretive.

Of course, I believe that there are Christians that are authentically gifted with the gifts of the Holy Spirit and I think they are so overwhelmed by the gifts that they use them, just like Jesus, wisely, humbly, secretively and careful that the glory will be to God and not to them.

Delayed Reaction

Last week it rained so hard that our street was flooded. As usual here in the Philippines, the government suspended school classes when the students were already in school. So what happened was that the students, because they were sent home simultaneously, were stranded in the middle of heavy rain and flood. The parents were fuming mad. The Department of Education blamed the Philippine weather bureau because they didn’t warn the department of heavy rains. The weather bureau replied that they can only suspend classes when there’s a storm signal and there’s no storm signal because there’s no wind, only rains. So, the weather bureau told the DepEd that the local government units can suspend classes. Local Governments units said that they were waiting news from the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC). NDCC blamed the Department of Public Works and Highway (DPWH) because they did not de-clog the waterways drainage systems and this caused the floods. DPWH blamed the citizen because they dispose of their garbage in the rivers and waterways clogging…blah, blah, blah…

To make sure that student will not be stranded the following day; all classes were suspended by the national government. Of course by then the sun was already happily shining through clear sky.

I sometimes think they do this to make up for their non-intelligence.

Electric Bill Hike

One early morning I was on my to a store to buy sugar when I saw my neighbors congregating near our gate and discussing their electric bills. They were complaining that every month their bills are rising. This is true because later that day I saw a consumer group showing how MERALCO (the electric company) increased their charges without informing their clients. MERALCO replied that they can raise charges without informing their clients because their supplier increased their generation charge and according to whatever provisions from their blah, blah, blah they can adjust their rates. But the interesting thing was the generating company, because of the appreciating peso, already lowered their generating charge. I don’t know who’s telling the truth but definitely MERALCO has been cheating it’s customer and proof of it is that the Philippine Supreme Court had already ordered the utility company to refund overcharges amounting to hundreds of millions pesos to its clients.

One interesting theory though came from one of my neighbors. He said that MERALCO increased its rates in order to pay the talent fee of Angel Locsin, one of the highest paid actors in the Philippines. Locsin was rumored to have been pirated by ABS-CBN channel 2 from GMA channel 7. ABS-CBN and MERALCO is both owned by the Lopez clan, one of the oldest business families in the Philippines that has been rumored to be losing money because of…hmmmm…poor investments like their water utility franchise in the western part of Metro Manila or like wasting millions of pesos pirating actors from the other channel.

White Hairs

I was looking in the mirror while drying my hair when I noticed something shining in my head. I was not wearing my eyeglasses so to make sure that they were not shiny super dandruffs, I went to the computer table, picked up my glasses and wore them. And just as I suspected, they were not shiny super dandruffs, they were white hairs. My gulay, I don’t know which is worse: super shiny dandruffs or super shiny white hairs. I mean, no matter how super dandruffs can be it can be defeated. I can have my head shaved, applied hot virgin coconut oil, then scrubbed with anti-fungi cream and to make my scalp super resistant to fungi, I can drink vitamin E and then rub some of them vitamins on my scalp.

But white hairs?

My father used to have us pull out his white hairs. It’s a sort of a rite of passage. My older siblings did it before me and my younger siblings did it after me. I don’t know about my other siblings but when my father asks me to pull out his white hairs, I was most of the times compensated. My father paid me five centavos a piece. The pay is good considering that fifty centavos then can buy me a bottle of local soft drinks (Pop Cola) and a piece of bread. Today, I’m offering my daughter a peso a piece. This is quite expensive compared to the five centavos I used to get when I was a kid. But my daughter will not take it; she would not pullout my white hairs. I cajoled, pleaded and threatened but she will not be intimidated. I remember not being able to say not to my father. If my father asked me to pull out his white hairs, pull out I must compensated or not because if I didn’t obey…well…but usually it didn’t even come to that part, I always obeyed.

Now, I can’t do that because today it’s called child abuse.

Don’t like going to Church

I admit
I don’t like going to church
Of waking up on early Sunday mornings
Instead of just staying in bed
Sleeping ‘til noon
And just waiting for the moon

I admit
I don’t like to hear preaching
I’d rather hear music
Than hear someone
Telling me how bad I have been

I admit
I don’t like going to church


But I love God so much
And to worship on Sundays, I must
Though I hate to wake up
To go to church

I tell my self that my Sunday morning worship starts
By fighting the urge
To get back to bed
And stay there ‘til lunch

Bach's Bouree in E minor/duet with the dogs

I woke up in the mood today.So here's Bach's Bouree in E minor together with our dogs.

Rain

As of this writing, it was raining so hard and the wind was beating our old house that my ever sentimental myself brought me back to my childhood. Rain like this reminds of rice coffee. During those days when our municipality was not that developed and the drainage system were almost non-existent, rain causes flash floods that isolated our house from our neighbors and from stores. So when were out of coffee, what my father would do is he would roast rice and then boil them and that would be our instant coffee. I missed that coffee.

My father built a wood fired stove which we call “pugon”. What my father would do is cook maja balanca using the pugon. The warmth that the pugon radiated flowed through the house removing the damp, wet feeling. We would all be there, the whole family, in our dirty kitchen drinking coffee, eating maja blanca, talking and laughing.

I would look out of our back door and look at the flooded ricefield while my kids my age were having fun riding on a raft made out of banana trunks. I envied them. My mother would tell me, “Look at them. Their parents don’t care if they drown or got sick or…” My mother must have been reading my mind so she went on the attack first.

Earthworms. After the rain and the flood, whenever I lifted a rock or a piece of wood there were lots of squirming worms under it--must be the warmth that attracts these worms.

Sometimes birds rested in our house when it was raining very hard. I remember waking up one morning and my father was holding this beautiful multi-colored bird. My mother was feeding it. It was a beautiful bird, must be a kingfisher or something. My brother built a cage. We kept the bird but after a few days it died. Hmmm…that bird must have been attracted by the warmth of our house.

There were turtles too.

Thoughts on the Problem of Evil

I am preparing my next Sunday school lesson which is all about the activity of God in creation, providence and justice. I was reading my materials when I came across the difficulty of explaining and reconciling the presence of evil and the goodness and the power of God in this imperfect world (This is called “theodicy”).

David Hume put it succinctly when he wrote about God: “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing: whence then is evil?” (Erickson)

I was studying some articles on the attempts at solving the question of theodicy and it can be classified into three: redefine evil, redefine God’s goodness, and limit the power of God..

Even Christians, once or sometimes often, tries to question God’s goodness in this imperfect world. When problems, tragedies or trials come, one is apt to doubt God’s justice. But most of the times, especially today where most of tragedies especially environmental disasters are caused by humanity, God is a convenient escape goat.

Sin is still the major problem. Most people who questions God’s justice, questions God’s justice because deep in their heart they don’t want to believe in a God that will make them accountable for their sins. So, with malice, they deny the existence of God because they fool themselves into thinking that God cannot exist in this evil world. No God, no accountability. As one thinker said, these people need pastoral care than help in working out the intellectual difficulties of evil.

Of course we can’t deny honest intellectual question about the problem of evil. But without faith, it will be impossible to overcome its circularity.

The truth is God is sovereign over everything even over evil. It is an assurance that everything that happens in this world is within God’s power for God alone is the ultimate power. It is an assurance that evil is already conquered, that salvation is a reality for if we consider that evil is a power outside and equal with God, how can we be sure that God can overcome evil?For some the problem of evil is the major stumbling to faith. But trying to explain theodicy is one thing we can only try. The attempts at resolutions and reconciliations without compromising God’s sovereignty is definitely out of our hands and attempts of this kind should be regarded as nothing more than attempts and not to be believed. It is always safest to be lean on God’s sovereignty when it comes to difficult Bible doctrines.

And to try to answer Hume’s question using reason is impossible because it is intruding into God’s divine prerogative.

Cruelty to God’s creatures

I was on my way back home from walking my daughter to school when I saw this little kitten on top of a concrete post. I saw the ear piercing and my first instinct was to laugh. What could be funnier than a little kitten with a pierced ear? But when I looked closer, I saw that the little kitten was miserable. The bamboo stick that was used to pierce his ear was sticking out and it affected its balance so that the kitten had to walk with its head tilted to the left. I removed the bamboo stick and saw that the wound was still fresh.

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One of my neighbors told me that it was the children who did this. I was troubled because when I was a child me and my friends played hop-scotch or play house or make believe games. Cruelty to animals was very far from our mind. But looking at today’s children, I can’t help but wonder what will be the games that they will be playing when they’re older.

(I don’t know if I’m not being hypocritical because I poisoned a lot of rodents in our house. Hmmm…I don’t know…One of those ironic things about life…)

Simply Red You Make Me Feel Brand New

I love this song. I am working on my classical guitar interpretation of this Stylistics classic.

Vestiges of the Trinity?

Our Sunday lesson about the doctrine of God went well, I think. There’s not that much discussion about models, illustrations and analogies for the Trinity, which I thought will give me headache. But the guys were all behaved and Kuya Mar, one of the seekers (term I used for people who ask a lot of questions about God) in the class was quiet. (Kuya Mar and our Senior Pastor and my uncle Tito Danny has this running debates about doctrines. They liked throwing verses at each other and sometimes, though I tried very hard to keep away from these guys, I join in the battle of the verses. Know what…hmmm…The image that comes into my mind whenever I see these two kind hearted, good Christians discussing doctrines is Dumbledore battling it out with one of the Hobbits in a friendly practice spell casting fight… "John Chapter one million verse three thousand” shouted Dumbledore. “Oh yeah, take this! Mark chapter thirty three billion verse one!” The Hobbit shouted back…)

I was reading an article about the existence of a Trinitarian concept of deity in other world religion and I had an…hmmm…I had a theory.

All Pagan religions from the time of Babylon, have adopted in one form or another a trinity doctrine or a triad or trinity of gods. In Babylon it was Nimrod, Semiramas, and Tammuz; In Egypt it was Osiris, Isis, and Horus; within Israel pagan gnosticism it was Kether, Hokhmah, and Binah; In Plato's philosophy it was the Unknown Father, Nous/Logos, and the world soul.

Of course most Christian would be offended if the Christian Trinity is compared to other trinities. They would categorically deny any relation or connection of the Christian Trinity with the other world religion’s trinity. It is blasphemy. Religion besides Christianity is Satan’s religion; their trinity is the devils trinity.

Of course this thinking smack of dualism, the thinking that there are two equal opposing forces that controls the cosmos. This thinking is not Biblical (Gen. 1:1). God is unique and God is sovereign, God does not have any equal. Anyway, Christian’s attitude towards other religions will determine their behavior with people of other religion. Negative thinking and attitude begets negative behavior. So it’s wrong to think of other religions (or faiths) in satanic terms. There are truths and beauty in other religions, and though difficult to admit, Christianity does not have the monopoly on truths and ethics. Even the Bible recognized general revelation when Paul spoke of the conscience as revealing the law (Rom. 2:12)

I think the better explanation for the existence of trinities in other world religions is that these world religion caught glimpses of God’s revelation as the trinity, an imperfect revelation may I add. Augustine has this idea that there are vestiges (fingerprint) of the trinity in creation. May I ask, why not vestiges of the Trinity in other religions?

General revelation points to it, if General revelation explains religion, and if biblical and Christian revelation is the perfection of general revelation, then isn’t it only right to think that there are general truths that general revelation revealed that the Christian revelation cannot deny.

Now instead of thinking of the existence of trinities in other religions as negating and discrediting to Christian Trinity, isn’t it possible to think otherwise—the existence of trinity in other religion proves the validity of the Christian Triune God.

From de Quiros

This is an excerpt from Conrado de Quiro’s column in the Inquirer dated July 31, 2007. He was reacting on Romulo Neri, President Arroyo’s socio economic planning secretary and chief economist, appointment as the head of the Commission on Higher Education.

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry that we have put higher education in the hands of an economist who sees its purpose as producing employable graduates. I grant education is also meant to give students skills to enable them to find work. That certainly is the dream of many, if not most, parents who scrimp and save to send their children to college. But that cannot be the dream of those who oversee education, let alone higher education. The purpose of education is not to provide jobs, it is to educate. The purpose of education is to make students think. The purpose of education is to make students dream. The purpose of education is to fill students, young and old, in or out of school, with imagination and ambition and drive. They begin to think of the Chinoy who, when he meets another Chinoy some years after graduation, asks, “What business have you formed?” and not like the proverbial Pinoy who, when he meets a fellow Pinoy, years later asks, “What job have you found?”

If the purpose of education were merely to enable the kids to find jobs, then higher education should be scrapped altogether. Indeed, colleges should be closed down except for those teaching vocational courses. Not including criminology since its graduates clearly do not learn how to stop crime, they only learn how to add to it. If the point were merely to match skills and jobs, the Department of Education should become a bureau of the Department of Labor and school lessons limited to teaching kids how to speak English preferably with an American accent (or for those targeting the European market a British one) since all the jobs the graduates are likely to land are abroad or in call centers.

The crisis of Philippine education is not that graduates are not getting jobs; it is that students are not getting educated. Education us not just imparting skills, it is imparting values. Education is not just imparting knowledge, it is imparting civilization. Education is not just producing employable kids, or worse exportable ones, it is producing decent human beings, or better honest Filipinos.

(I missed my other favorite columnists, Max Soliven and Teddy"the Man" Benigno. They are already gone.)

Maxims

Any teaching that bores the student is likely to fail
—John Dewey

Any teaching that bores the teacher is sure to fail.
--Wayne Booth

Applied to the church:

Any preaching that bores the congregation is sure to fail.
Any preaching that bores the preacher is sure to fail.

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A good maxim for would be preachers or...nevermind.

Thesis

It’s almost three o’clock in the morning and I have just finished revising my thesis for its final defense. All I’m asking for is for that paper to be finished, over and done with, tadah, ciao, aloha, sayonala, arivaderci aroma, babalos amigos, tsupeee, out so that I can go on with my normal life free from the hassles of my conscience telling to get my thesis done and over with.

A few hours from now, I will be at the classroom fighting the urge to lie on the teachers table and sleep off the lectures.

my thesis

From dust to earth
From carbon dioxide to oxygen
And all that nitrates
And the dungs that penetrates
The roots to nourish the trees
So that I can have papers
For my thesis

I thank thee, Oh, mighty tree
For thy giving is as free
As the river returns to the sea
Thou give so unselfishly
For students like me

But it’s a shame
I’m ashamed
That for the tree so mighty
Felled for its pulp
Fed to the machine that crops
Shred and melted to mush
So that there’ll be paper
To write on works of trash
Like a thesis that nobody likes
That even its author despises

Ooh, you darn thesis
Give something back
I hope the people in the university
Turn all of you into compost
To nourish the soil for the tree


At least the thesis served a good purpose

Bach's Bouree in B Minor including mistakes

This is an attempt at a relatively more difficult piece by Bach. I need more practice! By next year I hope I'll be able to play more complicated pieces.

Death Shall Have no Dominion

It was raining and me and my daughter had nothing to do. I saw this dead mouse lying under my computer table, a victim of rodenticide, and something popped in myhead...I saw "Solaris" a sci-fi movie starring George Clooney and Clooney was reciting this poem by Dylan Thomas and I thought, why not.

A good bongding activity with my daughter, I should say.

On Seminars

I was invited by our church's school to conduct a seminar on reading. Yesterday I presented the power point presentation and the seminar, I think, went well. Reading is very imporatant in learning. Even in this age where we have the power to gather information at the touh of a keyboard, it is still reading we do to acquire information. In our educational system reading is still one of the most neglected aspect of learning.

Unfortunately there is no formula on how to make pupils like reading. All the teacher can do is to model, encourage, arouse and provide guidance. Reading is still an acquired taste. Teachers can't work on the pupils by feeding them , all they can do is learn the principles and the factors that contributes to the pupil to like reading. John Holt's theories and observation on reading is helpful in understanding how reading should be made into a fun activity in the school rather than make it into a read, evaluate, humiliate activity that most traditional schools do. In his article "How Tachers Make Children Hate Reading" Holty proposed to make reading a wholly free activity of the pupils--no evaluation, just guidance.

Anyway, reading is all about discovery. I was looking at my daughter and I was hoping that because she always see me holding a book, she will imitate me but she doesn't. I can't force her to read becuase she will hate reading more. The only thing I can hope for is, that because of the books lying around our house, she'll pick one by accident, read a few lines, and then...get hooked on reading. Like what happened to me. I was on my third grade when I first read "Mythology" by Edith Hamilton, my first real book, and then the rest of the story is a sweet love affair with books.

This was the second seminar I conducted for the school, the first was on the Art of questioning--a skill often neglected by teachers.

It's a strange feeling for an undergraduate old student to conduct seminars to veteran elementary school teachers.

(The church school has eight teachers and fifty students.)