![]() ![]() We all struggle with negative thoughts and feelings, distractions, and critical conversations in our heads. He said, “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). We need help in keeping our minds connected to God. Paul tells us that the “concern of the Spirit is life and peace” (Romans 8:6). Our thoughts more easily flow into warm, happy feelings and kind, loving actions. However, when we think loving, kind, and creative thoughts, our true minds, our Christ minds, are at work. For example, when we think mean, hateful, and selfish thoughts or hold resentments, envies, and grudges, we are being misguided. When we mind our minds, we learn more about who we really are and what we are here to do. This means that we need to “mind our minds,” to think and act from the true mind that God created in us, our Christ mind, the part of us that reflects the very image of God. We want to do all we can to learn about God’s beautiful creation, especially the perfect creation of the human being. Paul’s instruction to be transformed and renewed in “the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians 4:23 also see Romans 12:2). Jesus came to bring us back to what we were created for-to share in the mind and heart of God. Paul speaks of our true mind, one with Jesus and our loving Creator. Saint Paul urges Christians to mind their minds with these beautiful lines: “Whatever things are true, whatever honorable, whatever just, whatever holy, whatever lovable, whatever of good repute, if there be any virtue, if anything worthy of praise, think upon these things” (Philippians 4:8) and “Let this mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5). Further mind functions are indicated when Jesus says you can cast mountains into the sea, but only when you truly believe. Through Isaiah, Jesus speaks of God creating people with eyes to see so that they may believe and understand (John 12:37-40). The Book of Sirach says that God forms people’s eyes and ears (the senses), gives them understanding hearts, and fills them with wisdom and knowledge (17:5-6). ![]() The heart contained thoughts, ideas, memories, decisions, plans, and choices. In the Hebrew Scriptures, there was no separate category for the mind the seat of intelligence was thought to be in the heart and it covered all that was inside of a person. It is also a symbol of the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The triangle, with its three points, is the strongest building structure. They are three ways God wants to be expressed in and through us. These three parts of us-knowing, loving, and serving-are three ways we are made in the image of God. Our knowledge of how children learn, develop, and retain faith learning has grown considerably since then. The nineteenth-century Baltimore Catechism asked, “Why did God make me?” the answer was, “God made me to know, love, and serve him.” There you are-the three points of the triangle: head, heart, and hand, given in faith theory if not yet in catechetical practice. On the right-hand tip of the triangle, I drew a hand, to represent the senses of the children, their need for activity, for learning how to put into action what they learn in religion class.Īlthough these practices developed largely after the Second Vatican Council, they relate back to an older tradition. This stands for feelings, imagination, and creative enthusiasm of the children we want to inspire. Of equal importance is the heart, which I drew on the left-hand tip of the triangle. At the top tip, I drew a sun to represent the mind-the intelligence of the children we want to reach. I started that class by drawing an equilateral triangle on the board. The triangle pendant was presented with laughter and teasing as we recalled our first class together. I had frequently spoken of a “triangle” approach to religious education that reached the whole child: mind, heart, and hands. When teachers I recruited and trained in an upstate New York district gave me a pendant made up of many triangles, I knew they got my message.
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