Daily (Shinto-inspired style) Digital Life Prayer for Protection, Direction and Stewardship

Caveat emptier: This post was drafted with help from an AI assistant (Perplexity)— but ideated and edited extensively by the human, Bill Acton.

One of about a dozen that will be appearing on the blog, including Evangelical, Anglican, Unitarian, Orthodox, Aboriginal, Hip hop, Gregorian, Dawkins meets Ojibwe wisdom, Hindu, and Klingon! These were all created to be experienced as read aloud, not to be simply read silently. The twin purposes for the project are to (a) provide at least a framework for a daily time of preparation, in the form of prayer or a meditation, and (b) more interestingly, to observe how AI navigates the the intersection of faith, prayer and AI!

Clker.com

(A prayer for purity, harmony, and mindful stewardship in the digital realm)

Morning Purification—Before Entering the Digital World

I stand before the kami of this new day with gratitude and reverence.

Just as I purify my hands and mouth with water (misogi), so I ask for purification of my mind and intentions before I touch my devices.

The digital realm is vast— a web of voices, images, commerce, and information.

Help me to move through it today with:

• Makoto (sincerity and truthfulness),
• Rei (courtesy and respect),
• Wa (harmony with others),
• And awareness of my actions and their ripples.

Honoring the Kami of Place and Connection

I honor the kami of my home, my workspace, and the unseen networks that connect me to the world.

May my devices serve good purposes today:

• To learn and grow,
• To connect with care,
• To fulfill my duties,
• To protect my household.

Let me not pollute (kegare) this space with:

• Careless words that harm,
• Wasted time that scatters my spirit,
• Greed, envy, or anger expressed online,
• Or gazing at what disturbs the purity of my heart.

Guarding Identity and Household Harmony

The kami have entrusted me with:

• My name and reputation,
• My family's well-being and security,
• My resources and responsibilities.

In this age, I must also guard my digital identity— my accounts, passwords, and personal information—from those who would steal or deceive. I am grateful for practical tools like IDShield, which help watch over my digital footprint and alert me to threats.I use these protections not out of fear, but as part of my duty to maintain harmony and security for my household.

Seeking Right Order and Counsel

When disputes arise or guidance is needed, I am grateful for access to legal counsel—services like LegalShield— that help families navigate contracts, justice, and daily concerns with integrity. May I seek help when needed, act with fairness in all my dealings, and contribute to the right order (tsumi o harae) of my community.

Evening Gratitude and Reflection

As the day closes, I pause to reflect:

• Where did I move through the digital world with sincerity and respect today?
• Where did I contribute to harmony?
• Where did I stumble or act carelessly?

I offer gratitude for what went well, and I release (harae) any impurity or misstep from today,

resolving to walk with greater awareness tomorrow. Tonight I entrust my household, my identity, my accounts, and my peace to the kami who watch over all things—the seen and the unseen, the near and the far, the waking hours and the hours of rest.

May balance and purity be restored.

May harmony continue.

Kannagara, tamachi haemase.

(By the will of the kami, may all be well.)

wracton@gmail.com

The two "shout outs" in the litany are intended as general essentials, not specific endorsements of Legalshield and IDShield systems, which I am associated with.

williamacton.legalshieldassociate.com

Out-of-touch kinaesthetic (gesture-based) teaching: Mora* or less!

Very interesting (and revealing) piece of research from Hirata and colleagues at Colgate University, entitled, "Effects of Hand Gestures on Auditory Learning of Second-Language Vowel Length Contrasts". The short-term, 2014 experimental study, in effect, tested the hypothesis that using a wave-like gesture (by both instructor and learner) would at least temporarily enhance learning of vowel length in Japanese. (See full citation, below.)

Results based on pre-and post- auditory tests (to see if subjects could hear the long-short distinction) turned out to be a mixed bag: "The overall effect of hand gesture on learning of segmental phonology is limited."

In some contexts it seemed to work: " . . .observing the syllabic-rhythm hand gesture (of the instructor) yielded the most balanced improvement between word-initial and word- final vowels and between slow and fast speaking rates." What did not seem to work as well (or at all) was when subjects just " . . . produced the moraic*-rhythm gesture (along) with the instructor." 

Credit: Clker.com
Library of Congress

An earlier blog post looked at a number reasons why kinaesthetic-only techniques (those that are not haptic) may not work--that is using a gesture, like the "waving hand" in this study. Probably the most important factor is the potentially unsystematic use of the gesture, especially for highly visual and emotionally "conservative" learners.

That was an important early discovery in our haptic work, which involves anchoring all gestures with touch in various ways on the stressed syllable of a word. Any number of students told us unequivocally that unless (a) the gesture moved through something close to the precise, same track in the visual field and (b) "felt the same" in their bodies each time that it was used by the instructor or themselves, they found the procedure at best irrelevant, at worst very disconcerting.

The Hirata et al (2014) study not only used "unanchored" gesture, it used the same long or short gesture(s) for signalling length, regardless of the vowel. That is not unlike having students stretch a rubber band on long vowels (Gilbert, 2012), a technique that gets across the concept of vowel length very well but probably does little to transfer that idea into ongoing production in speech.

With apologies to G.K. Chesterton: (Unanchored) kinaesthetic teaching of pronunciation has not been tried and found wanting here; it has, not surprisingly, been found inconsistent and unsystematic. But a touch of "haptic" might have made a very significant impact. Keep in touch. 

*For more on the concept of mora and how it affects syllable length, see the succinct wikipedia note.  

Citation:

Hirata, Y., Kelly, S., Huang, J., Manansalaa, M. (2014). Effects of Hand Gestures on Auditory Learning of Second-Language Vowel Length Contrasts, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 57: 2090–2101, December 2014.

Haptic-integrated pronunciation instruction: Techniques

Here is the abstract and URL for a paper by Brian Teaman and myself just published in the JALT Conference Proceedings: JALT 2012:

In this paper we describe a series of new techniques for the teaching of pronunciation using movement and touch. The “haptic approach” described here assumes that speaking is essentially a physical act that engages the entire body and not just the speech organs. This paper reviews the theoretical foundations of a haptic system, describes 9 haptic-based techniques, and explores the specific application of these techniques with Japanese learners of English.

この論文は、現在開発中の身体の動きと接触を利用した発音指導のための新しいテクニックについて書かれたものである。「触覚アプローチ」とは動作と接触を用いるという意味で、話すこととは、本質的に身体全体を使った身体的行動であり、単なる「発話器官」ではないという考え方に基づいている。この論文では、触覚アプローチのシステムの論理的根拠を考察し、その触覚に基づく９つの教授テクニックを紹介し、なぜ日本人の学習者にそれらのテクニックが効果的かを述べる。