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Copyright © Louis Schmier and Atwood Publishing.
Date: Fri, 27 Nov 1998 11:38:09 -0500 (EST)
Random Thought: Holiness in Teaching
Waddling along the streets late, late this morning, I know what a
turkey must feel like being stuffed with stuffing. And talking about
stuffing, I had a lot of stuff on my mind this morning as I struggled with
each step to come out from a caloric coma induced by an ODing on turkey
and glorious fixin's. I was thinking gratefully about how, when my son,
Robby, got off work at 2:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon, he and his wife
drove three hours, arrived late at the farm where we traditionally
celebrate the Thanksgiving with friends who are family, hugged everyone,
gobbled down leftovers, and left for their home at 8:00 last night to be
at work early this morning. It made me realize that Thanksgiving here in
the States, thankfully, still is a sacred time of the year. It s a modest
holiday. It is a poignant holiday. It is a genuine holiday. It is a
quiet holiday. It's a touching holiday. The places of gathering have an
unspoken aura of being sacred ground. And yet, it's a powerful holiday.
So many of us, like Robby and Beth, go through so much to get home in time
to honor this feast of thanks; so many of us take the trouble, like ET, to
call home when we can't go home. Our presents for this holiday are
especially our presence among family and friends..
I was also thinking about the Lilly conference on teaching from
which I just returned. Actually, as I told some newly found friends, Lilly
is more of a the retreat and experience than simply an academic gathering
of academics.
I always try to put my finger on what it is that makes Lilly what
it is. Of course, it is the people who come not as touting professors
with egos and reputations aching to burst forth in a fit of presentations,
but as a respectful gathering of dedicated teachers and sincere listeners
and committed learners. There is something more that, and after what I
fear is literally saying last "goodbyes" to a wondrous, sacred person,
Beverly Firestone, who has been battling the ravages of cancer for the
last five years and whose agonies I personally witnessed as I struggled to
help her board her plane, and for whom I wrote a poem as a parting gift
of thanks for being called her friend which I am afraid will be eulogy, I
am beginning to understand what "that" is. It has to do with a word you
don't often hear in academia: holiness.
Dare I use that word? I hope you won't sneer or jeer; I really
don't want you to be annoyed. But, if you want to throw darts like "this
is not a church," "touchy-feely," "sappy," "saccharine," "preachy,"
that's is okay. I am just talking about how in the course of the last
eight years I am coming to see myself and others, and what we do or are
supposed to be doing. For that, I make no apology. After all, studies
aside, I know me best and can best talk about me. And, more importantly I
hope you think less about what I say and I get you to think about what you
might have to say.
I have been in the classroom and around academics all but the
first five years of my life. I have had my share of teachers and
professors, and I have come to see that those unfortunately very few
teachers I remember, whose voices I still hear whispering in my ear and
whose presence I feel hovering over me and who occassionally tap reminders
on my shoulder. For so long I had ignored them; now I struggle to heed
them. They are not those teachers who were the sternest or knew the most
or talked the most eloquently or were the most renown. No, in this select
group were those who treated me as a person with a regrtettably rare
respect and sacredness. I now know that these very few teachers were not
just good teachers; they were good persons. They weren't just making a
living and getting a salary; they were making a life and giving. I
remember they put a lot of caring for me into their teaching, put a lot of
themselves in me, saw me as a single, complex "me." And, now I see how
they still are teaching me. They knew somehow that "there is a time
for....," when to practice soft love and when to practice hard love, when
to apologize, when to admit to an "I don't know," when to push, when to
back off, when to say something, when to be silent, when to be there to
talk with, when to offer to talk and when to listen, when to challenge me,
when to challenge themselves by standing aside, when to protect me from
the ugliness of the world, when to let me face life's pimples, when to
make it safe for me and when to let it be risky, when to make it risky for
them, when to stand firm and when to be flexible, when to offer a second
and third and fourth chance, when to see that I was a a child or part
adult and part child or an adult in training. They noticed; they sensed;
they knew; they gave their time; they gave of themselves.
Now they didn't always get it right; they didn't always know where
the line was drawn; occasionally, they stepped over the line or didn't
come close enough. But, they cared enough about me that they were
unwilling to play it safe; they were willing to put themselves on the line
for me. Actually, what they offered me felt and still feels like love.
It was and is. I now realize, although I am not sure they would say it
this way unless prodded, they saw in me--in each and every student--the
sacred and holy that was not to be desecrated. And it was in that belief,
faith if you will, that was rooted their instinct to pay attention to the
little things that were so important. They had that mysterious sixth
sense, a feeling for me and each of those others, and somehow leaned into
me and each of them. It was from that believe which rose their
genuineness and capacity to be real; and, they were comfortable with it
and did what came naturally.
Anyway, that's what I want to talk about: holiness. I think we
should because I think maybe we ought to see a classroom as something of a
church or synagogue or mosque, and I don't believe holiness is reserved
solely for these houses of worship restricted to the appropriate day of
formal worship. Holiness is not something you pray for inn one place on
one day; it is not something you preach about in one place on one day; it
is something that is you, it is something you live, and it is something
you do--every place, in everything, everyday.
I have come to see the classroom is a place of worship. I now see
teaching as a mission; I now refuse to pass a countefeit separation of
ways of thinking, ways of feeling, and ways of behaving; I refuse to
neatly separate rational facts from emotional facts from character facts,
thinking and doing from feeling.
I am convinced that if we looked at ourselves, at colleagues, at
students, at anyone with a holiness; if we discovered such a holiness in
education our eyes and minds and hearts--our wholeness--would open to
discover a sense of community, what someone whom I forget calls the
wondrous "hidden wholeness" in each person and in gatherings. In the
absence of such an awareness, as I can personally attest, there is so
often in academia a detachment, a distance, an aloofness, a coldness, a
lack of community--intended or otherwise; so often there is a fear for the
new and a fear to risk the new in academia--conscious or otherwise; the
connective tissue is missing--acknowledged or otherwise; there is a
disrespect for the dependency and hesitantcy in students and in ourselves
or colleagues, for students who stumble and when we or colleagues stumble,
for students who fail and when we or colleagues fail, for the student who
is not perfect and when we or our colleagues make a mistake--recognized or
otherwise. It is as if we are tentative, to say the least, fear or hate,
at worst, that which challenges us, break through us, forces us to open.
We say we are about uniqueness and diversity; and yet, there is a drive to
flatten everything, to fill in the valleys, and bulldoze the mountains,
rip out the lushness and dry up the streams until the landscape is so
barren and uniform the slightest ant hill would not be tolerated.
But, if you excavate below the surface seek the holy, you will
find community. You will find the community in which the good teacher
believes and has faith, seeks, evokes, invites all, and shuts the door to
no one; you will neutralize the academy's acidic culture of fear and
disrespect with a culture of respect and love; you will pacify and unify
the rampant chaos, disconnection, fragmentation, categorization, anarchy.
When I faced up to my own darkness eight years ago, as I have
often shared, I discovered to my amazement that in the dark, if you look
upward, you see the shining light of stars. I will venture to say as my
life has been transformed, academic life--the system--has even been so
slightly altered. The splash from the pebble of my changing spirit has
sent out an almost undetectable ripple, but a tsunami nevertheless. And
that, too, taught me a great lesson: we have let institutions--the
system--become to impersonal, structured, too distant, too cumbersome, too
entangling to carry out holiness. I better understand Jefferson's
suspicions.
Holiness is something we each have to carry within ourselves,
alone, with the faith to achieve community, one person at a time. For me,
that realization holds an unyeilding hope that all of academic life would
be transformed if everyone--one person at a time--practiced simple
respect, acknowledged the holiness in themselves and each of us. If
everyone came to see each other as holy, practiced that holiness
minute-by-minute, the cataracts of arrogance would be healed and we could
see anyone with other than loving and respectful eyes.
Holiness does not destroy difference; it reverently holds it up
for all to see. That is the highest form of caring and love!! It says to
that single person, be it yourself or someone else, "I see you. I care
about you. I love you. I am here for you." Holiness does not grind souls
into the ground; it celebrates souls. Holiness does not hide a person;
holiness offers smiles of hope; holiness makes the person visible.
Holiness is that shining light that allows us to wonder at each
individual. Holiness allows us to recover our power in and over
ourselves. Holiness will never exhaust, never alienate, never torture,
never fear or distrust, never regret. There is no holiness in making or
leaving someone feel as what I call an "unperson:" unwanted, unknown,
unimportant, unreachable, unteachable, unnoticed, unseen, unlearned,
unable, untalented, uncared, unappreciated, unloved. No, I have slowly
discovered that the ugly minions of hopelessness, disbelief, faithless,
ridicule cannot survive in the presence of holiness.
We are commanded to be holy. That doesn't not mean being divine;
it does not mean acquiring a haloed saintliness; and it doesn't mean being
perfect. Being holy to me means striving to become the person I are
capable of becoming and do the best I am capable of doing, and be that
person who helps another person become what he or she is capable of
becoming. It means striving to be the best teacher you can be. It means
striving to be the best person you can be. That is the essence of
education--and of life. It is that simple.
Unless we have respect for each and love for each person,
education will be banally about memorizing, distastefully about taking a
test, boringly about getting a grade, and merely about getting jobs; it
will be about exclusion. It will not be about inclusion, nurturing, hope,
excitment, adventure, faith, empowerment, liberation, transcendency,
vitality--wholeness.
Simple it may be, hard to do it is. As I recently told a
new-found friend, I have discovered that being on a mission of service may
mean sacrificing my comfort and safety in order to help students learn.
There are times, many times--and I have already forsaken the
publish/perish rat race--I have to ask myself if I am willing to pay the
price of being in community with others. That is, am I willing to obey
the command to be holy.
Am I being sappy, touchy-feely, saccharine, preachy? That is for
each of you to judge. I, for one, am nourished by such a sweet oozing. I
will continue to be touched and felt as well as feel and reach and touch.
For I have discovered that there is a mysterous gift of power--a state of
grace--for each student and for me in such passion of loving and being
loved, of needing and being needed.
Am I being unrealistic. Am what I asking for too hard to do or an
impossible dream? That, too, is for you to decide. Until eight years ago
I would have rejected the me of today with a volley of such excuses,
explanations, and rationalizations. So, I stand as testimony that the
hard and impossible can be achieved, and are accomplished every day.
I have discovered that any true legacy I can leave is not precious
baubles; it's not a data bank of information; it's not in a collection
of knowledge; it's not even accumulated wisdom; it's certainly not in a
title, an award, a publication. My true legacy, if I have one to leave,
is a legacy of spirit: words and deeds and feelings, faith and hope, that
come from the heart which enter the heart. For the heart--and the
mind--is not like a rubber band. Once they are stretched by a new feeling
and idea, they will never return to their original form and size.
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