Cloudhaven bears Our local Cloudcroft High School's athletic teams are known as the Bears (go Bears!) But these bears are some of the Cloudhaven variety. The large bear is Jim's mother's childhood "Teddy." When Naomi was a little girl, Teddy had a big adventure. He was left on a train in rural upstate New York. A while later after much searching and contacting the rail line, Teddy showed up in the mail with a first-person (first-bear?) letter describing his adventures, including all the places he'd been and the people he'd met. I wonder how many of us would take the time in our busy schedules to do something like that for a little girl who'd lost her Teddy? |
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Christmas at Cloudhaven This year's Christmas at Cloudhaven candlelight worship service of Lessons and Carols will be held at Cloudhaven Saturday, December 3, 2011 at 6:30 PM. Friends and family are most welcome. There will be a fellowship time with festive foods immediately following the service. If you wish to stay at Cloudhaven that weekend, please get your reservations in early. Learning by word A recent article (Becoming Readers by Janie B. Cheaney, World Magazine, July 2, 2011, p. 24,) raised the question of how current technologies (like iPad, Kindle, etc.) affect our interaction with and our ability to be informed and moved by texts of all types. I might go even farther. It seems increasingly common for students to complain, "I learn visually, not through reading books or listening to someone talk." This notion clearly has been blessed by some current educators. (Check out, for instance, Visual Learning on Wikipedia.) But I wonder if in de-emphasizing the universal importance of the written and spoken word we aren't compromizing something of our essential humanity. The Bible (a text) is God's chosen method of communication with human kind. Furthermore, it is through "the foolishness of preaching" that the gospel is communicated to fallen hearts. [1Cor. 1:18, 21] It's true that all the senses are appealed to and incorporated in worship, but Christ is not primarily picture or movie, taste or smell, but the incarnate Word. [John 1] He is the eternal speaker of the word of God's power which results in the working out of his will in space and time. [e.g., Heb. 1:1-3 with Gen. 1] It seems to me that our very nature as made in God's image places a unique emphasis on the spoken and written word as the primary means of learning for his human creatures. To minimize the word written and spoken in favor of other media in education would be to overlook something inherent in all learners. Recent Newsletters If your browser doesn't display portable document format files, you may need to download and install Adobe's Acrobat Reader. |