Pictures: “The Storm on the Sea of Galilee - Rembrandt 1633”
“The Tortoise Trainer - Osman Hamdi 1906”
Passage: Jonah 1-4
Today was the messiest day so far this year with regard to behavior and focus. During the service was our monthly “mission muffin” Sunday in which kids of all ages help bake muffins to sell afterwards. All of our teens helped with muffins and were hanging about the kitchen after the service. Nick and Obi were here, along with Charlie. The boys went down ahead of us while I stayed and talked to the girls, encouraging them to come to class. Margaret came to church for the first time this year so I wanted to persuade her to stay for Sunday school. She didn’t, but Catrina did, which was good.
When I finally got down to the classroom, the boys were in a goofy mood and getting everyone to focus was a challenge. Our first image saw a lot more joking and also served to confirm what has been my hypothesis informing my image choice since the beginning. The picture was Rembrandt's painting of Christ in the storm and this was all any of the kids were able to see. Not that this was in and of itself bad, but it meant that, having “solved” the problem of what’s going on in this picture, there was little reason to keep looking to discover more. As a result, we did not get very deep into painting at all, far less than we have with some of our more ambiguous paintings.
Charlie’s first comment was fighting to be heard over the crowd of distracted voices still discussing off topic jokes, “Boat!” I quieted everyone down and tried to get a fuller answer. Nick mumbled something about a sea that was wholly unintelligible. I failed to summarize these poorly articulated thoughts while waiting for the group to quiet down. Finally, Nick said, “That guy is Jesús (pronounced Hay-soos)” still unwilling to be wholly serious but now making a clear observation which I could jump on. “Nick is, um, identifying the figure in the middle with Jesús (I used his pronunciation), what makes you say that?” “He has an aura around his head.” Charlie tried to argue that it was simply a lighter background and not a divine light, then shifting added, “he looks like a stereotypical Jesus, like an Italian, last supper, Jesus.” He gestured to the print of DaVinci’s last supper I have on display in the classroom. This in turn prompted a rush of chatter. “Nick has noticed an illumination of sorts around the figure, Charlie says that it reminds him of a stereotypical Jesus, what makes you say that?” Charlie began to describe long brown hair, a pointy beard, etc. but around this time Catrina finally arrived and this caused a bit of a distraction for the boys who had not expected anyone else. After settling everyone down to the best of my abilities I attempted to summarize Charlie’s words about stereotypical Jesus. “What else can we find?”
“The boat is a fishing boat,” said Charlie. When asked to justify this he explained, “it’s full of fishing poles.” Standing up to point out the fishing poles he paused, “No wait, that’s just a rope on the mast.” In his standing up, however, Obi noticed a harpoon in the boat. With this, we were able to support Charlie’s comment about fishing. Nick also stood up and, noting the oars, said, it’s a rowboat. “A rowboat with sails?” It’s not a motor boat. When I summarized, “Nick is pointing out that it is not a motor boat,” I got a chuckle. Nick also noted the light and dark or the waves, that it was practically black and white. He pointed out that where Jesus was looking there was blue sky but everywhere else there were clouds and storm. In this sense, Nick’s comments were the most insightful. On the other hand, he repeatedly made off topic remarks, including insulting Catrina and asking her for gum. We spent much of our time recovering from these diversions so that by the time I thanked everyone for participating it felt more like giving up than wrapping up.
Our second image immediately elicited a mirriad of comments which I attempted to silence until the time to discuss actually began. The idea of silently sitting and looking at any one image seems to remain one of the most alien concepts to this age group. They made all sorts of fun comments about the image, its content, and jokes to go with it. Catrina jabbed at Nick, "I can't focus on the picture with all your talking.” I told them to save their thoughts and that we would start once we had a moment of actual silence. Ironically, when silence was achieved, I looked over and saw Catrina looking at her phone, not the art. When we began, I was frustrated to find that all of the interesting comments seemed to have evaporated. What is it that makes kids willing to share their fun ideas with the group informally, but not as an answer to a teacher’s question? We went from “I see five turtles!” and “That guy’s got a cool turban.” to an awkward silence and Charlie speaking up “I see a Middle Eastern guy looking out a window.” I asked him what made him say that the guy was from the Middle East. “He’s got dark skin, his beard, his hat.” Here I feel I failed to summarize well as I said, “Ok, so Charlie’s made a generalization about people in the Middle East, they often have darker skin and beards like that.” This was poorly done for two reasons (both of which became easily apparent), one being that making a generalization is seen today as negative and I therefore seemed to be accusing him, the other being the way I effectively confirmed this generalization instead of merely summarizing. I would have done better if I had said, “Charlie is noticing this man’s darker skin and beard and is connecting this to people in the Middle East.” As it was, Charlie began to defend himself, viewing “generalization” as an accusation. This in turn prompted me to insist that generalizing is not inherently bad. Obi then reminded us that often is, which I also granted. Charlie’s response to this whole thing was a revaluation of his point and a new statement that more than his skin or beard, it was his clothing that seemed to be Middle Eastern. Charlie also noted what he called a flute in the man’s hand. When asked, he noted the holes along the long reed-like instrument. Noah identified the other object, hanging around his neck, as a bone. He cited the shape to justify this claim. Charlie again stood up and instead declared that it was a severed snake head. I was not clear on his justification as he seemed to be seeing details up close the rest of us were missing.
Someone then noted the turtles and Catrina finally repeated her prior observation that there were five turtles. Here I felt the limits of VTS. I wanted her to say more because I know she is capable of greater participation, “What makes you say that?” is a dumb question to ask about a quantitative observation of animals in a photorealistic painting. I wanted to ask “why do you think there are turtles?” but chose to stick with the program instead.
It was Obi who took our discussion to a level I don’t think we’ve yet reached in any of our discussions yet so far. That is, a story that is objectively nonsense but explains the viewer's interpretation of the art. He created meaning of his own, which in the area of art is exciting. “The man is wearing a Survivor Buff.” was Obi’s initial observation. I was focussing on another comment, however, and by the time I circled back to him I got “This man’s a celebrity. They stole his style when designing the Survivor Buffs.” Instead of treating this like an off-base joke, I legitimized this kind of thinking.”Obi sees a story here, this man was the original inspiration for the buffs of the show Survivor.” This then made room for a whole new series of comments from Nick and Charlie. “It looks like he’s wearing his pajamas. He’s wearing slippers.” “The guy’s a turtle charmer.”
The last focus came when Charlie highlighted the patterns on the wall along with the fact that the plaster was crumbling to reveal brickwork. He commented on the blue hexagon pattern. Somehow, at this point, we saw another diversion of jokes and unrelated discussion. As the conversation seemed to be over, I prepared to close the computer and thank everyone. Charlie, however, noticed lettuce on the ground in the image and this was the discussion’s final observation.
Today I had planned to share Jonah with the group but found it was not in the audio Bible. My solution was to read it aloud to the group myself which actually went great. I betrayed my intentions to leave them nothing but their own ideas, however, as I explained (in the spirit of the light hearted morning) that Jonah was written to be funny. After I said this strong statement I realized that they would not believe me if I didn’t give them the original context required to make the story funny. We discussed prophets and that it was a contradiction for one to run from God, Assyrians and the fact that the Hebrews would have absolutely hated them, that gentile sailors would not fear God, and that cows don’t pray and fast. This talk coloured their interpretation but it also led to a better conversation. I don’t think they found it laugh-out-loud funny, but when we discussed it, the humor made it easier to believe there was an author writing with a message for us to learn. What was it? That was where the conversation opened up a bit. Obi pointed out the fact that you can’t run from Jesus. Charlie the importance of repentance. Catrina Jonah’s unforgiveness. With each of these I expounded on context that could make each point more fully realized and again, the humor played a role in the conversation as a whole.
Also different this week, however, was my attempt to apply what we discussed to the students’ lives. I brought up analogies for what the story would be like to a Hebrew. I mentioned a snarky student trash talking their teacher and this led to a discussion about which teachers were the worst. I then asked the students to imagine they were asked to preach to the teachers - would they do it or run away? Today’s discussion was not my idealized Biblical Thinking Techniques, but it was the kind of conversation that I feel is worth having and would like to see more of. I do not intend to abandon BTT just yet, but I believe that even our VTS opening affected the potency of this discussion despite my more heavy-handed involvement.