Religion and the 5th Disc. LO8945

Julie Beedon (julie@vistabee.win-uk.net)
Wed, 07 Aug 1996 16:14:00

Replying to LO8902 --

>It is difficult for me to see religion and/or
>Christianity and the LO as complementary.

I can see that it might be 'difficult to see' and I was wondering if this
was a question of angle of vision? Not sure what I mean by that yet but
let me try to articulate what I was thinking - religion/faith is something
you can either view from the perspective of belief or unbelief (vast
oversimplification - I realise there are inbetweens)

So if I am looking from a position of belief (in any religion to any
extent) I am likely, from that angle, (or maybe through that lens) see a
number of parallels and congruences with what I believe and potentially a
number of contradictions....

If I am looking from a position of unbelief I am not sure to what extent I
might understand it enough to go through this type of thought process ...

Reading back over this it has now occured to me that there is something
about believing and the way it frames your understanding of things - that
relationship between belief and making 'meaning' out of life is quite
important..... my belief in Christianity frames my understanding of many
things such as the nature of creation - in the image of God,
interdependent, precious, etc... So given the way I am sensing this works
it might be difficult for someone who was not using this belief system, or
using an alternative one, to see the complementary things I see.... ????

>Other than perhaps the Quakers,
>Buddhists, and Unitarian-Universalists, I do not know of any religious
>orders that do double-loop learning which for me is an essential
>capability of a LO.

My initial reaction to this was to experience it as closed and to feel
angry ... which was not going to help formulate a useful reply ... then I
thought about double loop learning and wondered if perhaps we might be
defining it differently? Also I wondered about the depth of your
knowledge of religious orders? - we might formulate views on the nature of
the learning going on within something without seeing more than the
surface of what they do... takes me spinnning off nicely into loads of
thought processes about who can make judgements about learning in
organisations ....

> For example, at every mass Catholics recite the 'Credo' - I believe in .....

In the days of my confirmation preparation (1983) we used the Nicene creed
(been around for a few hundred years) to explore the nature of faith and
the Church ........... there is lot packed into those simple statements
and I still remember as precious the nature of the dialogue that the 10 of
us had and the meaning which emerged for me out of those encounters......
I have had many more dialogues over the years and and still do not think I
fully understand what is in them or what it means for my life....
reciting it is something to do with building it into the pattern and habit
of my life....

> The Catholic church is not open to reconsidering the divinity of Christ,
>nor the immaculate conception. Religious organizations are based on
>assumptions and beliefs that are rarely (should I say never) subject to
>critical inquiry or learning.

It seems to me that the nature of the discussion might be different
*between* Christians because we might start from the point of belief in
the basic principle of the divinity of Christ but that we could have a
lengthy dialogue about what this means and do that in the full spirit of
critical inquiry and learning..........

I am planning to say more about my reflections on the areas of
complementarity but I am still gathering my thoughts in the light of the
other mailings and organising them so as not to repeat what has already
been said...

Julie Beedon
VISTA Consulting - for a better future
julie@vistabee.win-uk.net

-- 

Julie Beedon <julie@vistabee.win-uk.net>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>