CHURCHteaching

One of the most important goals of church teaching in the 21st Century is the transformation of life. A vital element in life transformation is meaning-making. What is meaning-making? How do people create meaning? What role does meaning-making play in life transformation?

Introduction

It is said that meaning is constructed from knowledge. It “addresses the ultimate concerns about the purpose of life, … provides opportunities for significant learning and development in adulthood, … is the centre of human experiences and the most fundamental human activity.1 The human need to make, remake, and discover meaning undergirds all of who we are and what we do. All human beings seek meanings for their lives. We dwell in meanings which arise from our encounter with life. This paper is an attempt to look at the various aspects about the words ‘meaning’ and ‘meaning-making’. More specifically, it touches on such questions as, what meaning-making is, how we create meaning and what role meaning-making plays in life transformation.

What is meaning-making?

Meaning and meaning-making.

Webster’s dictionary provides an initial clue in its definition of the word meaning. Something has meaning, according to Webster, if it has significance and purpose; if it is suggestive (New Universal Unabridged Dictionary). The action integral to the task of making meaning is a cognitive one. It involves actions of discerning, thinking, comprehending, and understanding. But we experience meaning affectively as coherence, discovery, and possibility. Meaning involves the interplay of cognitive and affective activity. In other words, our knowing and doing is intensified by our feelings and, conversely, our feelings are illuminated by our knowing. Their interdependence is a necessary condition for the commitment that gives impetus to our actions. Something has significance if we “think” it is important. But its significance is enhanced if we also “feel” it is important. In a similar fashion, we may discern the purpose of something intellectually. But our relationship to that purpose has to do with its potential to motivate us – a wilful and affective process.2

Some researchers on the subject feel that the most fundamental aspect of a human social setting is that of meanings. These are the linguistic categories that make up a participant’s view of reality and with which actions are defined. Meanings are also referred to by social analysts as culture, norms, understandings, social reality, and definitions of the situation, typifications, ideology, beliefs, worldview, perspective or stereotypes. Terms such as these share a common focus with humanly constructed ideas that are consciously singled out as important aspects of reality. Meanings are trans-behavioural in the sense that they do more than describe behaviour – they define, justify, and otherwise interpret it as well.3

A person draws meanings from, or gives meanings to, events and experiences. That is, experiencing starts to make sense as the person performs his or her psychological functioning of translating it into how he or she thinks and feels. It is individuals’ subjectivity, or phenomenological world, that forms the very core for meaning origination and evolvement. People have the freedom to choose meaning,4 through their interactive experiencing with various internal and external contexts.5 As such, meaning is the underlying motivation behind thoughts, actions and even the interpretation and application of knowledge.

In this way, meaning and meaning-making have many implications for learning. One key implication emerges through the notion of perspective transformation in which “learning is defined as the social process of construing and appropriating a new or revised interpretation of the meaning of one’s experience as a guide to action”.6 What gives this significance is that learning is suggested as a mechanism for finding or, as some propose, making meaning in life.7 Learning can inform or challenge existing conceptions of meaning and, in the process, provide an opportunity for acquiring new meaning or confirming currently held views.

Meanings vary in terms of the breadth or range of situations to which they apply. There are those that are life-encompassing in scope, claiming to encompass virtually any topic that might arise. Such schemes are often called “ideologies,” “worldviews,” “Weltanschauungs,” or “philosophies”.8 Meanings can also be more discrete. That is, they can be attached to more defined aspects of a person’s life yet still rather general in their application.

The meaning-making process can be facilitated by Qualitative research method. The complexity of meaning in the lives of people has much to do with how meaning is attributed to different objects, people and life events. Erikson elaborated on the importance of meaning when he broke it down into two sub-categories: common meanings and unique meanings.9 What has a common meaning to a group of people may have a unique meaning to an individual member of the group. A group of children having a reel and a string represent a living thing on a leash may have a unique meaning to an individual child who has lost a beloved pet. The following examples further illustrate the point.

Charles Foster had a significant religious experience when he was five or six.10 He had just gone to bed. His father was listening while he recited the Lord’s Prayer. The boy got past the “hallowed” and the “trespasses,” sailed through “the daily bread” to “the dimes in the kingdom.” After pronouncing a firm “Amen”, his father looked down at him, thought for a moment, and then said “There are no dimes in the kingdom.” He then told him to say when he prayed, “For thine is the kingdom.” As Charles now think about five-year-old sensibilities, “dimes in the kingdom” probably made more sense than “thine is the kingdom.” Actually, it probably made little difference which words he used at the time. The power of a prayer to a young child lies not in the words, but in the relationship of the child to the people who pray it. In this case the words were significant because they belonged to the vocabulary of his church and family. As we grow older, however, we have different expectations of the words we use. We increasingly want them to make sense on their own terms. The quest for a “meaning-full” faith has become a distinctive challenge to contemporary church education. Unfamiliar language, antiquated worldviews, and diverse life experiences increasingly limit the intelligibility of biblical, historical, and theological meanings for the average person. The problem of meaning is complicated by our growing awareness that truth and meaning are socially constructed. They are related to the specific linguistic nuances, symbolic systems, and social, political, and economic situations of people. This means people from two or more cultures may discern quite different meanings from the same scripture text or religious experience. In similar fashion women and men, youth and adults, poor and affluent may draw different meanings from the same text.

In the following example, the event occurred on the first Sunday of the month in a small congregation in a community with an agricultural and tourist economy. It was communion Sunday. Debbie Stanley, the pastor, had studied child psychology and developmental theory in college and seminary. These studies had sensitized her to the importance of concrete learning experiences for children. Seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling, she discovered, heightened the potential for learning among children. She had discussed with seminary classmates the possibility that tactile activities of eating bread and drinking grape juice with family and friends might well be one of the most tangible worship experiences available to children. So, she urged church members to bring their children to the communion rail. But Debbie Stanley had not reckoned with four-year-old Gretchen. Words seemed to fascinate this small child. During her play she would situate herself to overhear adult conversations. She remembered what she heard. So, as it turned out, when Gretchen’s mother asked if she would like to join the family at the communion rail, Gretchen responded with a loud stage whisper, “I am not going to drink anybody’s blood. I am going to the nursery.” At which point she walked out of the sanctuary and across the hall to the nursery. Everyone in that small church heard her. The challenge for pastors and teachers seeking to make ancient meanings relevant to the experience of contemporary congregational worship becomes evident in this story.11

Meaning can be expressed as Story, Concept, or Image.12 Sometimes meaning is in the form of story, sometimes a concept, and sometimes at the edge of language, as image. Families tell stories at a death to express meanings. Stories, concepts, and images flow back and forth together as people seek meaning.

We make and discover meaning primarily through story. What is a story? Psychologist Dan McAdams observes that while almost everyone over the age of five can identify a story, controversy continues over a definition. Some define story as an event which evokes a change in a situation. For others, the focus is on a person who seeks to carry out an action and live with its consequences. Regardless of how we technically define story we seem to know intuitively how a story should feel. There is a sense of events and people influencing each other. For example, when a couple on their fiftieth anniversary tells the story of their wedding day, the details foreshadow their children and their fifty years together. Their present remakes their past. They are actors in the narrative, causing events and reaching to the consequences. Events and people interact. As we tell stories, we weave evens into meaning and communicate meanings to others.

Concepts are a more abstract way of defining meaning. They try to summarize our beliefs in a focused, defined phrase. Sometimes even when telling stories, we discover concepts. Images provide power for stories and concept. Images are pre-linguistic, coming in flashes of insight but not yet formed into a story or concept. Images are often richly sensory.

Meaning is Theological.

Central to being human is knowing that we are mortal. We live in the midst of paradox: We are finite, yet our actions influence the future. The struggle of living is knowing how to exist between finitude and hope in the future. The making and remaking of meanings, in their fullest and deepest dimensions, is therefore theological. Caught in the paradox, we ask ultimate questions about our destinies and about God. When the walls of our temples of meaning tumble down or the floors give way to the ground of being, the temple must be reconstructed. Sharon Parks, a researcher in human development, tells us that to be human is to dwell in faith, to dwell in one’s meaning, one’s conviction of the ultimate character of truth, of self, of world, of cosmos. Many of us do not speak easily of these theological meanings. Yet the grounding values upon which we live are theological, defining for each of us what is good and lasting, and how we relate holistically to the cosmos! Because our life experiences take many turns, meanings we make along the way must be revised. Theology is a continuous process of interpreting our lives in relationship to ultimate questions in relation to God. We struggle to discover truths on which we can stake our lives. 13

How do people create meaning?

People both make and
discover Meaning

Every day, we struggle to discover meaning and make sense of our experiences. The search for meaning is a natural human process. Our call to create and discover meaning is illustrated every day. A chaplain told of an older woman from a wealthy family, who one Friday was moved from her home to a care institution. She arrived during the shift change, and because of the hour, her paperwork was misplaced until Monday morning. During the weekend, she explored the facility, met people, and enjoyed the meals. On Monday, the staff members were horrified when they discovered that no one had followed up on her case. In their view, it was a case of gross negligence. However, upon entering her room, they learned that her view was quite different. She remarked ‘What a wonderful place! No one bothered me all weekend. I did what I wanted.’ Why the discrepancy between the view of the staff and that of the woman? Which is true? Meanings are always made in the context of our experiences, our histories, our commitments, and the cultures in which we live. The staff’s perspective was defined by responsibility and care. Neither had been exercised in this situation. The woman had been “lost”, the “case” mishandled. Had something serious happened to her, they would have been liable. Their lawyers were horrified. From the woman’s perspective, she had always been alone and self-reliant. Raised in an environment of absentee parents, she had learned to play by herself and take care of herself. Following her husband’s death twenty-five years before, those early patterns had been reinforced. In fact, the day she was moved to the Care Center, she most feared losing her independence. The first weekend confirmed that she could survive in her new home, because the structures she counted on were reinforced. Unfortunately, the dismay exhibited by the staff reinstituted her worry. She wanted her independence.14

We perceive Meanings
in Context

Meanings are embedded in the structures of our cultures, the world itself, and our personal experiences. These structures of meaning are exhibited by John “Fire” Lame Deer as he describes differences between his people (the Sioux) and Anglo-American culture: He said, “I am an Indian. I think about ordinary, common things, like this pot (in which I am cooking). The bubbling water comes from the rain cloud. It represents the sky. The fire comes from the sun which warms all of us – men, animals, trees. The meat stands for the four-legged creatures, our animal brothers, who gave of themselves so we should live. The steam is living breath. It was water; now it goes up to the sky, becomes a cloud again. These things are sacred.” In the Sioux way of perceiving, common things have spiritual dimensions: “We see in the world around us many symbols that teach us the meaning of life. We have a saying that the white man sees so little, he must see with only one eye.”15

Lame Deer observes that meaning is dependent upon what we see, to what we attend. Anyone who has been caught between two cultures knows the difficulty of adjudicating the expectations of each. Meanings, even our theological meanings are framed with our personal histories; and these are set within structures given by our cultures. Moreover, both personal and cultural meanings depend upon limits (boundaries) present in our worlds. But while these limits are real, even they are affected by our perspectives (our temples of meaning). As Lame Deer says to his Anglo listeners, “We see a lot that you no longer notice. You could notice if you wanted to, but you are usually too busy.”

We all live in a world of
images, concepts,
and stories

We draw on these as we attempt to understand and communicate with others. Often, as Lame Deer says, “We need no more than a hint to give us meaning. Much of the time, we live in an orderly world, drawing on past clues to replicate meanings as we walk through life. When these ordinary clues do not work, the process of meaning-making and discovery is made apparent. We are unable to take in all the aspects of our experience, so we choose which portions we will notice. This process is described as perception. We review new experiences by drawing upon our past knowledge to make interpretations that help us choose the dimensions of a new experience to which we will attend.

Perception is unique; it depends upon our unique experiences and prior learnings. Two persons will perceive the same event differently. How many times have you left a meeting, and then talked at length with another participant, checking your perceptions of what happened? Each of us makes different choices, interpreting that slice of experience in our own way – as a result of our past, the experience itself, and the commitments we hold. Personal meanings are validated and re-interpreted in community. We remake our personal meanings communally.

The community in which we live defines, to a great extent, what we will perceive. Many slave owners avoided their sin by perceiving their African American labourers as childish and happy. The slaves’ nobility, grief, and inner strength went unnoticed. The culture limited the perception of the slave owners. Similarly, during the Cold War, many Americans perceived Russians as cold, uncaring automatons. With glasnost, we have rediscovered the Russian people as fully human. Our cultures and communities influence what we will notice and therefore how we will make meaning. This communal dimension means that all of us are socialized. The process of making and discovering meaning is learned. Our neighbourhood teaches us much about meanings. While meaning-making occurs naturally, meanings are shaped and reshaped (learned) within communities.

Further, meaning involves more than the mutual exercise of thought and feeling. It engages us kinetically – the way we move our bodies, extend our arms and legs, contort our faces. 16 One of the clues to the meaning of our teaching for students can be seen in their postures. Do their faces reveal the mental connections being made between ideas? Are they sitting up at attention? Are they squirming with excitement? These clues reveal the interactive dynamics of thinking, feeling, and physical movement in the processes of making meaning. When we analyze this interplay more closely we can begin to identify four actions involved in the processes when learners create meaning.

In the first place, as Ogden and Richards18 have observed, meaning at its most elementary level has to do with the realization that words and things are somehow linked. Consciousness of that relationship is crucial to any effort we make to communicate with one another. The common recognition that a certain configuration of legs, tail, hair body shape, and the word dog go together is necessary for any conversation that might occur about dogs when none is present. But the affective content of that correspondence is most evident when a young child recognizes for the first time that the word dog connotes a specific kind of animal. That discovery of “naming” a specific kind of animal “dog” is an animating one, and unless the child has had a negative experience with dogs, is often punctuated with sounds of glee. Now that dogs are clearly a part of the child’s world, she wants to pet every dog she sees.

The confirmation that the word dog identifies a certain kind of animal helps embed the child in a particular cultural expression of the human family. It distinguishes her from the French child who calls the same animal “chien.” It creates a particular way of seeing and relating rooted in the possibilities and limits of the English language. She begins to order her experience of the world according to the rules governing the usage of that word in English. She begins to appropriate the subtleties of grammar and the nuances of values associated with the ways in which her family and community use that language. This process intensifies her identification with that community and its corporate memory. It embeds her in its ways of seeing and responding to the world around her.

The same process is integral to the life of the church as a community of faith. Taking up again the story above of Gretchen and her reaction to her mother’s invitation to partake of the Eucharist, Gretchen in fact heard her pastor invite people to “eat the body” and “drink the blood” of Jesus Christ. 19 At the same time she had seen some of the women of the church pour grape juice into little cups and she had seen the loaf of bread people would be eating. Gretchen had no difficulty discerning the correspondence of “eating” bread and “drinking” grape juice. She liked both. Her mother often baked bread and her family grew grapes in their garden. These experiences expanded her conceptual and experiential awareness of the relationship of eating bread and drinking juice. But the correspondence between the concrete fact of the words bread and juice and the symbolic significance of body and blood escaped her comprehension. Indeed, her negative reaction creates an educational dilemma for her congregation. The negative correspondence she has made between the Eucharist and the literal meaning of eating body and drinking blood will have to be unlearned before she can move on to its symbolic meanings. Without careful attention to the negative content of that learning, she is a likely candidate for leaving church as she grows older.

The author further commented that if the members of the congregation want to intervene in a positive way to prevent such a loss, they might begin with the following questions. When and where will Gretchen hear the stories of the Israelite flight from Egypt, the origins of Passover, the practices of sacrifice in Israelite worship, the feeding of the five thousand, the Last Supper, and Easter Sunday often enough to shape her imaginative understanding of the world around her? When and where will she hear the people of that congregation share the stories of the “significance” of the Eucharist in their own lives? Who will help her discover the social and symbolic “purposes” integral to the act of eating together in the context of thanksgiving and hospitality? What will be the circumstances through which she might discover the responsibility growing out of the communal act of eating and drinking at the Lord’s Table to the feeding of all God’s children everywhere? Where will she begin to hear about the justice implications in eating at the Lord’s Table for the social, political, and economic order of all peoples in God’s creation? Similar questions should haunt our imaginations if we are to engage in an education that breaks open the symbolic meanings of this central event for Gretchen and for the children like her in our church communities.

The vitality of the life of any community depends upon the processes of nurturing ever deeper patterns of correspondence between word and fact in persons and groups. As in Gretchen’s case, this effort often involves learning new patterns to replace outmoded or inadequate or wrong patterns. This process develops the shared meanings that make conversation possible. It validates community decisions and motivates community participation. It energizes worship and prompts congregational mission. But there is a not-so-hidden danger facing congregations seeking to help their members discover the correspondence between words originating in ancient events and relationships and the facts of contemporary experience.

Sharon Welch, an ethicist, has suggested that in the diversity of perspectives in the human community, the only way we can build communities to embrace the mutuality of our quest for meaning is to engage those differences of correspondence between name and fact in acts of mutual critique. This would require an education sensitive to helping people hear inside the experience of the other, to discover sources to the meanings of others, and to identify together strengths and problems in the conclusions each party makes.

The dynamics of meaning run deeper than the correspondence of words and things. Sallie McFague has argued convincingly that in our positivist culture we too often take correspondence as equivalent to reality. 20 In other words, we do not move beyond the literal correspondence between word and thing to the symbolic content of that interaction. A common example may be seen in the difficulty some have with biblical descriptions of God as father because their own experience of fathers involves neglect, abuse, injustice. Rebecca Chopp provocatively argues that the dilemma for many women runs even deeper. Whenever we call God “Father” without a consciousness of the way that image helps to perpetuate patriarchal symbolic and social structures we reinforce the historic patterns of marginalizing women. Those structures limit the experience of God for people who have been oppressed or marginalized by them. They must look beyond the traditional assumptions that fatherhood could effectively symbolize God.

For McFague the limits of correspondence are evident when the artist tries to duplicate or copy that which he or she is painting or when people use religious language as a copy of that which it represents. This pattern is most evident in those who seek to hold onto language in literal forms, thereby limiting the activity of God to English translations of Greek and Hebrew words reflecting current usage in specific settings. The problem is compounded by the dynamic nature of language. The English of the King James, Jerusalem, and New Revised Standard Bibles reflect the quite different social, political and theological contexts of their translators.

Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch, whose writings on meaning have significantly influenced scholarly discussions on the subject, have another view. They suggest we live into the meanings we discern. We extend ourselves into what we find has coherence.21 We take our place in the meaning. We find it dependable. We do not expect it to change suddenly. It creates an environment of trust that undergirds the freedom we feel as we allow ourselves to be pulled ever deeper into its possibilities. In this process we move beyond the literal correspondence between word and thing to encounter its symbolic potential. Perhaps we have now encountered meaning as “insight”, the capacity to see from the inside of something. We know more than the information on the surface of things. We do not have to rely on the descriptions of others. We participate in its possibilities.

As learners attempt to create meaning it must be realised that meaning is integral to the human quest for intellectual freedom. One is not truly free to think until one has both a basic grasp of the correspondence of words and facts and enough familiarity with that interaction to begin to play with its possibilities. The dynamics of being at home with a word, symbol, concept, metaphor, image or method of knowing involves the freedom to explore its hidden potential and the demands those discoveries may make on our lives. This activity is doing theology. So, for example, in this effort, the Cross becomes more than a tree or two logs fashioned into an instrument for corporal punishment; it becomes a metaphor for the character of God. If we find ourselves claiming with the apostle Paul that through Christ we have been reconciled to God, then we begin to discover what it means to be ambassadors of Christ to others (2 Cor. 5:20). In that role we see the Cross whenever and wherever we encounter suffering for the sake of another. Indeed, we take upon ourselves the possibilities of suffering for others. If we eat the bread and drink from the cup conscious of the demands of this act on our lives, we become agents of hospitality in a world full of strangers. We explore the limits of our responsiveness. We are reminded of the commonness and pervasiveness of God’s activity in our midst. We are humbled by our finitude as we struggle to understand the religious meanings that motivate us.

Meaning is central to
commitment

Margaret Farley has observed that commitment involves “a willingness to do something.” Robert Bellah and his colleagues make a similar assumption in their opening question to the preface of Habits of the Heart, “How ought we to live?” In both instances, commitment is the prelude to action.22 The impetus to commitment in meaning points to the necessary relationship between who we are as a people and how we live. It translates our values and ideals into actions that shape the character of interpersonal relationships, institutions, and political processes. It moves us beyond the obligations inherent in relationships based on loyalty or obedience. It binds people together in a common venture for the sake of the community’s vision of the future of humanity. Commitment is located in the capacity to make choices. The value of those choices, if they are free, depends on the extent to which we identify with their content and possibilities. The power of those choices depends upon the extent to which the associations of “word” and “fact” integral to the choice enliven our imagination, the extent to which we sense ourselves at home with their demands, and the intensity of our identification with their possibilities. These actions are all integral to the process of making meaning as we attempt to create meanings. In this regard meaning provides impetus to commitment and commitment intensifies the significance of meaning.

What role does meaning-making
play in life
transformation?

A person’s life can be transformed when he or she is willing to allow new meanings to affect his/her thought and behaviour resulting in transformation in perception of things the person sees. Meaning-making plays its role through what is called ‘transformative learning’. The theory of transformative learning that has been developed by Jack Mezirow during the past two decades has evolved “into a comprehensive and complex description of how people construe, validate, and reformulate the meaning of their experience”. 23 Centrality of experience, critical reflection, and rational discourse are three common themes in Mezirow’s theory,24 which is based on psychoanalytic theory25 and critical social theory.26 For learners to change their meaning schemes (specific beliefs, attitudes, and emotional reactions), they must engage in critical reflection on their experiences, which in turn leads to a perspective transformation.

Perspective transformation

Perspective transformation is the process of becoming critically aware of how and why our assumptions have come to constrain the way we perceive, understand, and feel about our world; changing these structures of habitual expectation to make possible a more inclusive, discriminating, and integrating perspective; and, finally, making choices or otherwise acting upon these new understandings.27

Perspective transformation explains how the meaning structures that adults have acquired over a lifetime become transformed. These meaning structures are frames of reference that are based on the totality of individuals’ cultural and contextual experiences and that influence how they behave and interpret events. An individual’s meaning structure will influence how she chooses to vote or how she reacts to women who suffer physical abuse, for example. The meaning schemes that make up meaning structures may change as an individual adds to or integrates ideas within an existing scheme and, in fact, this transformation of meaning schemes occurs routinely through learning. Perspective transformation leading to transformative learning, however, occurs much less frequently. Mezirow believes that it usually results from a “disorienting dilemma,” which is triggered by a life crisis or major life transition, although it may also result from an accumulation of transformations in meaning schemes over a period of time. 28

Meaning schemes are based upon experiences that can be deconstructed and acted upon in a rational way. Mezirow suggests this happens through a series of phases that begin with the disorienting dilemma. Other phases include self-examination, critical assessment of assumptions, recognition that others have shared similar transformations, exploration of new roles or actions, development of a plan for action, acquisition of knowledge and skills for implementing the plan, try-out of the plan, development of competence and self-confidence in new roles, and reintegration into life on the basis of new perspectives. As described by Mezirow,29 transformative learning occurs when individuals change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring about new ways of defining their worlds. His theory describes a learning process that is primarily “rational, analytical, and cognitive” with an “inherent logic”.30

In the process of filtering experiences through accepted patterns, and remembering, reconstructing, or transforming, there is a possibility of distortion. As a result of fear and the threat of chaos, we can resist change by holding onto older patterns. An example may be those who failed to listen to the new word that Jesus brought. The Gospel of Mark records that people resisted transformation. The Gospel writer focused on Jesus’ increasing frustration with the blindness of the religious leaders. Their expectations about the kingdom of God distorted their view of Jesus and blinded them to the gift of God’s reign and realm emerging in actions of healing, forgiveness, and justice all around them. Jesus wept over Jerusalem because of the unwillingness of people to be transformed. He also challenged the faithlessness of his disciples. Blinded by their own search for glory, they jockeyed for position in his kingdom. Their meaning-perspectives limited their understanding of Jesus’ message and identity. Our perceptions of reality can be distorted and therefore our judgments may be flawed. Sometimes we examine life with a mote in our eye.

At one time or another, we may all have experiences which shatter our meaning-perspectives. Relocation, loss of a job, divorce, injustice, illness – any of these can stimulate life transformation. Profound changes occur. The very patterns which preserved stability and order are themselves shattered. The risk of chaos and meaninglessness are real possibilities unless we can re-establish a perspective out of which meaning is made. A significant illness is a powerful example. For the person who is ill, accepted patterns of behaviour may no longer be trusted, no longer function effectively. Jim, a sportswriter, had a heart attack. For twenty years, he had lived a hard-driving life of long hours and road trips. His illness meant that he had to reassess his schedule and its stresses. As he sought to reintegrate himself, he also discovered the patterns by which he had related to his family, confessing that he had missed his oldest child’s years at home. Jim’s religious faith became a profound resource as his temple of meaning was transformed. “Grace” found him. His illness was a call to know what it means to be a child of God and live with an identity not totally dependent upon achievements.

Transformation took place in the way he looked at himself, his job, and his family. He is still learning to live with new challenges, but he is clearly aware of processing experience anew. He commented, “Change is still in process. I haven’t yet learned to stop smoking. But my schedule is very different. I even see my kids in sports, rather than other people’s kids. I’m learning a little of what God wants of me.”31

Conclusion

The role meaning plays is of paramount importance in human life. Human beings have a natural inclination to understand and make meaning out of their lives and experiences. It is one of those attributes that makes us distinctively human. As Dewey 32 wrote, “Only when things about us have meaning for us, only when they signify consequences that can be reached by using them in certain ways, is any such thing as intentional, deliberate control of them possible.” Meanings are the cognitive categories that make up one’s view of reality and with which actions are defined.33 Life experience generates and enriches meanings, while meanings provide explanation and guidance for the experience. 34

Meaning is a result of the structures of the world in which we find ourselves; meaning emerges from the communities that nurture and socialize us; meaning is affected by our capacities for learning and meaning is shaped by how we handle past experiences. Much of the time, we live automatically, using past meanings to filter and shape new experiences. Yet, when experiences do not fit, we reconstruct meanings, or our meaning-perspectives are transformed.35 Consequently our life may also be transformed.

By Rev. Dr. Philip Ang Keng Yong
Retired Pastor, SCAC

Footnote:
1 M. Lee, The Role Of Cultural Values In The Interpretation Of Significant Life Experiences, Conference Proceedings, Adult Education Research Conferences (AERC), 1999.
2 C. R. Foster, The Future of Christian Education – Educating Congregations, Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994, p. 89
3 Article by S. E. Krauss, Research Paradigms and Meaning Making: A Primer, Universiti Putra, Selangor , D.E., Malaysia, December 2005.
4 H. McArthur, The necessity of choice, Journal of Individual Psychology, 14, (1958), pp. 153-157
5 C. P. Chen, On Exploring Meanings: Combining Humanistic And Career Psychology Theories In Counselling, Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 14 (4), pp. 317-331
6 J. Mezirow, Understanding Transformation Theory, Adult Education Quarterly, 44(4), pp. 222-232
7 S.B. Merriam, & B. Heuer, Meaning-Making, Adult Learning And Development: A Model With Implications For Practice, International Journal Of Lifelong Education, 15(4), pp. 243-255
8 J. Lofland, & L. Lofland, Analyzing Social Settings (3rd Ed.), Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1996
9 E. H. Erikson, Childhood And Society, (1963), New York, Norton
10 C. R. Foster, The Future of Christian Education – Educating Congregations, pp. 80-81
11 C. R. Foster, Educating Congregations, pp. 81-82
12 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians: The Intersection Of Meaning, Learning, And Vocation, Nashville. Tn: Abington, 1993, pp. 26-29
13 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, pp. 28-29.
14 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, pp. 40-41.
15 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, pp. 42.
16 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, pp. 43-44
17 C. R. Foster, Educating Congregations, pp. 89-90
18 G. K. Ogden And I. A. Richards, The Meaning Of Meaning: A Study Of The Influence Of Language Upon Thought And Of The Science Of Symbolism (New York: Harcourt, Brace And World, 1946), P. 47
19 C. R. Foster, Educating Congregations, pp. 81-82 referred to above (see foot note 11).
20 S. McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God In Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), pp.4-5
21 M. Polany and H. Prosch, Meaning (Chicago: the university of Chicago press, 1975), p. 66
22 A. F. Margaret, Personal Commitments: Beginning, Keeping, Changing (San Francisco: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986), P. 14: Bellah, Et Al., Habits Of The Heart, p. Vii
23 P. Cranton, Understanding And Promoting Transformative Learning: A Guide For Educators Of Adults, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1994, p.22
24 E. Taylor, The Theory And Practice Of Transformative Learning: A Critical Review, Information Series No. 374, Columbus: Eric Clearinghouse On Adult Career, And Vocational Education, Center On Education And Training For Employment, College Of Education, The Ohio State University, 1988
25 R. D. Boyd, And J. G. Myers, “Transformative Education” – International Journal Of Lifelong Education 7, No. 4 (October-December 1988), 261-284
26 S. M. Scott, “The Grieving Soul in the Transformation Process”, In Transformative Learning in Action: Insights From Practice – New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education No. 74, Ed., P. Cranton, pp. 41-50. San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass, Summer 1997.
27 J. Mezirow, Transformative Dimensions Of Adult Learning, San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-bass, 1991.
28 J. Mezirow, “Transformation Theory Of Adult Learning”, In In Defense Of The Lifeworld, Ed. M. R. Welton, pp. 39-70, New York: Suny Press, 1995, p.50
29 J. Mezirow , “Transformative Learning: Theory To Practice”, In Transformative Learning In Action: Insights From Practice, New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education No. 74, Ed., P. Cranton, Pp. 5-12, San Francisco, Ca: Jossey-Bass, Summer, 1997.
30 V, Grabov, “The Many Faces Of Transformative Learning Theory And Practice”, In Transformative Learning In Action: Insights From Practice, New Directions For Adult And Continuing Education No. 74, Ed. P. Cranton, pp 89-96, San Francisco, Ca: Jessey-Bass, Summer 1997, pp.90-91
31 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, pp. 51-52
32 J. Dewey, How We Think, New York: Health Books, 1933, p.19.
33 V. Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning, Boston: Beacon Press, 1963
34 C. P. Chen, Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 14 (4), p.317
35 J. Seymour, Et Al. Educating Christians, p.53

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