What Do You Know – Lilly Lewin – Math
Last week’s What Do You Know – Douglas Sarine – Cooking
Many of you may not know who Lilly Lewin is, @lillylewin on twitter but if ever I had someone in my life who was my real life Qui-Gon Jinn it would be her. I see her as a master Jedi that I can always be learning from. I met Lilly a number of years ago when I was working at a church doing work with middle schoolers and high schoolers, it was at a conference in Nashville, TN and I was assigned to work with her to help her set up experiential prayer stations at the convention. We hit it off in no time. It was one of those “I know I’ve found a friend for the rest of my life” kind of moments. Lilly is seriously one of the most creative and talented and deep thinkers I know. She exudes a joy for life that is not often found in most. She has an infectious laugh and a personality 20x her size. Her ability to sit and listen and then offer up sage advice is something I completely respect of her. She’s always flying under the radar and still shaking the foundations of thoughts and beliefs in the best of ways. If you are at all interested in prayer or more specifially experiential prayer (think of it as prayer where you do more than recite words and statements) it’s some powerful stuff, check out the book she co-wrote with Dan Kimball (another amazing person) it’s called Sacred Space: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Multisensory Worship Experiences for Youth Ministry (Soul Shaper) (affiliate link).
Read on for her post about Math which truly lets her artistic side shine. And as a bonus she created some math pictures (see bottom of the post).
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So mathematics ….one of my least favorite subjects….seriously…thanks Andrew.
I’m an English major and an artist of sorts so I avoid math like the plague. Last week, my son couldn’t believe that I didn’t have my credit card number memorized. I just don’t have the numbers gift and I really don’t memorize any numbers I don’t’ have to …that’s what a cell phone is for!
My husband and my dad both have the numbers/math gift. Rob memorizes every number he needs. Rob’s mom and his sister were both math minors and my dad is a civil engineer and helped me survive math throughout school. I was much more into history, literature and art, and I would much rather exegete a poem than solve an equation.
Despite my lack of interest in math, I have many math memories. Back in elementary school I thought about being an architect, and used to design houses for fun. But when I realized that I’d need to be precise and need lots of math, I changed my career path. Even today, I don’t tend to measure things…I just eyeball them. A ruler? Who needs it!?
I did take math all four years of high school, but in college I took Italian so I didn’t have to take any math courses. And if it wasn’t for my 10th grade geometry teacher, I would never have learned anything in algebra 2.
It’s really sad, but my brain just isn’t linear. I just never cared about a+b=c…or finding x. And I honestly, I still don’t care! And I don’t’ see why we torture students with subjects like calculus and trig…my dad the engineer says he’s only used calculus once since he graduated and he’s 82!.
My first memories of math involve singing not writing or calculation.
In kindergarten we had a performance with the entire school, which I think meant that all K-8th graders got to sing together this one song.
“INCH WORM”
written by Frank Loesser
Inch worm, inch worm
Measuring the marigolds
Could it be, you’d stop and see
How beautiful they are
(Chorus:)
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two
Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
You and your arithmetic
You’ll probably go far
(Repeat Chorus)
Inchworm, inchworm
Measuring the marigolds
Seems to me you’d stop and see
How beautiful they are
My second memory of math involves first grade and a boy. I was really mad when the boy I liked, Bob Carlton, and my friend Mary Martin worked ahead of me in their math workbooks. You know, the kind with pictures and fill in the blanks and pages that could be torn out and turned in. I was doing an art project for our teacher Mrs. Settle and thus I was getting behind! And Mary and Bob were getting to work together. (yes you remember your first grade teacher, your first grade boy friend and your first kiss that happened on a dare on the playground, same boy)
Next math memory that may have sealed my mathematical fate were time tests in second grade. The teacher would pass out Xeroxed sheets of problems, addition one day and subtraction the next, and then she would give us a timed test…how many problems can you do and get right in three minutes?
Can you say pressure? Can you say competition? I was a performer and I didn’t like getting any thing wrong, but I sure didn’t like being timed!!! And in third grade when we had to learn Roman numerals…and I was out sick and missed most of it, I gave up on math. That’s what calculators are for! And I don’t’ mean a Texas Instruments graphing calculator…they didn’t’ exist back in the dark ages when I was in high school!
I really do believe that we are either wired to like and “get” math or we are not…
And it’s really sad to me that we have to get graded and judged by how well we do in subjects that we don’t really “get” or even like….
Wouldn’t it be great if we could choose to study our passions and our strengths and only have to have a basic understanding of the other things?
There’d be a lot higher SAT scores if you only had to take the math test if you liked math!
So this spring…I’ll be stopping to see how beautiful the marigolds are…taking a photograph or writing a poem about them, but definitely not measuring any of them!
all photos by Lilly
(can’t see the pics above? click here)
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Lilly Lewin is the founder of Thinplace: a pilgrimage of discovery and creativity. Her passion is helping people engage God and His story , taking individuals and communities outside the box of worship, beyond singing, through multi-sensory prayer and experiential worship, contemplation and art. She leads workshops, retreats, and creates Sacred Space worship and prayer rooms throughout the country. She is the author of Sacred Space: A Hands-On Guide to Creating Multisensory Worship Experiences (see link in intro) with Dan Kimball.
Lilly and her husband Rob and their boys are currently on pilgrimage in St Helena, California along with Fred the wonder spaniel. lillylewin.com
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Wow, can I ever relate to your math POV! Art, English, science, literature, history, economics, those were my passions through grade school & high school. I wasn’t *bad* at math–just got bored very quickly with all those numbers. I’m most definitely a picture kind of person. My parents and siblings are math whizzes, though, so I couldn’t help feeling a bit…lacking.
Then, not long ago, I discovered that Albert Einstein–an acknowledged genius–wasn’t very good at math, either. (Ok, Einstein’s level of “not good at math” is far removed from mine, but bear with me here.) The more I read of his work & thoughts, the more I realized–he was a picture person, too! It’s his skills for visualization & storytelling that helped him communicate stellar ideas to the rest of the world, including those of us who’d *never* get the math.
Each one of us has a unique contribution to make, thank goodness. To quote another floral phrase, “Bloom where you’re planted.” And it sounds like you’re doing just that!