Learning for life

Homily preached at Eltham College on 23rd May 2007.

It’s amazing.

By the time you’re ten,
you’ve learned to walk,
talk and communicate,
and deal with a complexity
of emotions,
intellectual demands
and ways of coping
with grown ups.

Ten years
to master an astonishing array of activities
of enormous complexity and intricacy
is an utterly remarkable achievement.

Science has not caught up
with the basic things that a human being can do.

Where is the computer
that can walk
and talk
and think for itself
and engage with human beings
in a meaningful manner?

The answer is not George Bush:
I did say “able to think”.


The human capacity to learn
is a created miracle.

But where does all this learning start?

How does a human being learn?

[PAUSE]

A new-born baby learns who it is
by watching and listening.

In the first year of its life,
when it isn’t eating,
sleeping,
or producing smells that could strip
an Indian restaurant
of its flock wallpaper,
a baby is accumulating,
processing
and utilising a vast quantity of information
from what it sees in the world around,
and it doesn’t stop!

Even as we grow
from being a baby to the people we are now,
we are adapting ourselves
evolving
according to what we see
in the world around us.

Every experience
imprints itself on our minds
and we are changed
according to how we react
to that experience.

We learn to use a lathe
because we see how a skilled professional uses it.

We learn to solve a quadratic equation,
because we see how our maths teacher
solves a quadratic equation.

We learn by what we see happening around us,
and we are changed
by how we perceive them.

“We evolve into the images
that we have inside our head.

We become what we see.”

[Jerry Mander as quoted by Henri Nouwen]

Unfortunately,
most of what we see is television
or lies on the other side
of a computer monitor.

[PAUSE]

We have a brain with
100 thousand million neurons,
which is capable of producing
internal thought pathways
which number 10
to the power of 2.5 billion.

So what is the raw material for its learning?

What is it that is shaping us
as we journey through life?

Baywatch?

Grand Theft Auto?

Pop Idol?

The various and vapid spin-offs
from Big Brother?

Do we honestly expect to learn
what it means to be a human being
through what we watch on television?

It is truly depressing
the number of people
that believe that Coronation Street is real.

What do we hope to learn from soaps?

Perhaps they do provide some useful tips
for the correct way to start a fight in a pub,

or to commit perjury in the hope
of some carnal reciprocation

or deal with that awkward social situation
when your mother’s cousin announces
that he’s been having an affair
with your best friend’s aunt
but that he’s discovered he’s gay
and now wants to get friendly
with the family vet.

[PAUSE]

The only way we learn to live is
by living a real life.

The only way we can become human
is to make those images in our head
as close to the truth as is possible.


[PAUSE]
Some of us have friends on the internet.

We email,
we interact,
we “talk”,
we share information
–perhaps too much information.

But it is still only a half-world.

We miss information
in the way a person communicates
because we fail to hear
the subtle changes of pitch in the voice,
see the slightly worried look
on the face of a friend.
If we live our lives on email,
then we cannot get any more
than a coarse understanding of the people
our friends are.

There isn’t an emoticon
that can adequately express
“I’m glad to hear from you
but I’m slightly annoyed because
the cat has just coughed up a fir-ball
on the rug behind me.”

[PAUSE]

This all sounds harmless.

But...

Consider.

There are many young men
who see nothing but violence
and become both victim
and perpetrator of violent crime.

And this is in London.

They only learn from what they see.

What they see is a disregard for life.

What they see are
ways of getting what they want,
healing a wounded pride
even having fun
by violence.

Their own way is all they seeand getting it at all costs.

The result is a catalogue of names
of lives needlessly snuffed out:

Kodjo Yenga,
Kamilah Peniston,
Adam Regis,
Stephen Lawrence
… the list goes on.


The only hope that they have
is for someone to show them
a different
a better way of living.


They need to see
how respect for other people,
support from other people,
generosity from other people,
actually work.

They need to see this attitude in action
not taught to them in theory.

Who can show them?

[PAUSE]

“We evolve into the images
that we have inside our head.

We become what we see.”

Who are you evolving into?