Saturday, January 18, 2014

a soft answer even on Facebook*

The wisdom that comes from God is first utterly pure, then peace-loving, gentle, approachable, full of tolerant thoughts and kindly actions, with no breath of favouritism or hint of hypocrisy. And the wise are peace-makers who go on quietly sowing for a harvest of righteousness—in other people and in themselves. James 3:17-18 

Quietly sowing. This brings to mind a flurry of like-minded verses…be gentle and kind in all that you say and do…do not weary of doing good… speak evil of no one, to avoid quarreling, to be gentle, and to show perfect courtesy toward all people… the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness…and of course…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

Just thinking, this is one of my student objectives for my next unit in Environmental Science that I am putting together this weekend as we explore “extraction.”  I am structuring a policy debate unit on a local flaming hotspot of contention: the Rosemont Copper Mines and whether it should or shouldn’t be. And sometimes speaking with perfect courtesy and correcting with gentleness is not so much something that is taught or modeled, but I am going to give it a shot, mixed up with of course, development of conceptual skills and depth and focus of knowledge acquired.


And first of all, may the Spirit have His way in me, that I may learn from Him who says, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

* Somehow this rather mild verse set off a Facebook fuss.

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