Palmer pp. 169-Afterword

Go Palmer: "only in the face of...opposition has significant social change been achieved" (p. 170)!! Divided no more! Communities of congruence!! Going public!!! Alternative rewards!!!! Yes man!

Oh this leaves me yearning for the redder than red days of my post neo marxist youth. If I had a hammer! Sing on Pete, sing out Woody! Oh activist! Savio stirs the soul! Oh Debbs and Goldman, Horkheimer and Adorno, Lukacs and Benjamin, Trotsky and Gramsci show me the way! The material relations of production are deterministic but false and unstable--built on oppression! Yet fleeting is my dream recipe for systemic social change--Tantalus can stretch out only so far to the rising stream of water! Am I hopeless? a cynic? No, I hold to conversion, grace, and mystery. Though u-topia is "no place" we must have the ideal held out before our eyes. But of what shall it consist? Was Thomas More a hopeless cynic? NO! Nor Palmer. I'm not claiming realism in the face of lofty ideas. And Lord knows I shrink from cynicism masquerading as realism. Life is not so dark an affair--no matter what Altman might script. Yet forgive me if I balk at formula for programmatic cultural change, I hold for a different ideal: "where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more," (Rom 5:20) which alone can change hearts. And indulge a bit of critical engagement...

1. But wait, lo! Palmer offers the first step: individual choice to live an undivided--crescendo--life! But what--diminuendo--does that have to do with "finding a center for [my] life outside of institiutions" (p. 172)? Nary a benevolent institution on God's green earth?
Wait. "[go] beyond the institution to become self-critical" (p. 176)! Yes man, this is precisely it. WE MUST "Bethink ourselves!" in the words of Tolstoy. Theologians say "metanoia." And no change will come to pass without first delving into our heart where lives God. What (apart from conscience) will help us to know when we are acting in violation of our own integrity?

2. Give me folding chairs, a meeting hall, and folks that care and want to talk about ideas! I am delighted that Palmer acknowledges the need for exploring concepts, language, et cetera (p. 179). How about catacombs and clandestine worship--there's a community of congruence!

3. Go public indeed--write that Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Call out the white clergy. Bring into the fold but don't compromise the vision!

4. "the diverse rewards offered in this final stage...are reflections of the same elemental reward--the reward that comes from living an undivided life" (p. 188). Wholeness and integrity namely. It sounds like life in the Spirit, or the Reign of God. Consonance between God's will for the self, the world, relationships, and behaviors...not Utopia, but the Reign of God. And Jesus said it is at hand.

Palmer pp. 145-167

Focusing on the positive, I really liked reading The Once and Future King. I was told that it was the fruit of a friendly competition which produced LOTR and Chronicles of Narnia. Am I right Rick, Don? And story is such a lovely way to capture the spirit of the age and package neat little life lessons.

De todos modos, I think Palmer in this chapter makes some nice contributions. First, community itself seems to be a helpful tool for honing craft and forming teachers. The "clearness committee" is a fine idea. And we should make time (which would be one big limiting factor) to gather wisdom figures for focused conversation about what we're doing in the classroom, in the profession. Is there a critical mass of good will, hope, and sense of responsibility at your school? I would think yes.

I like where he was going in "moments" and "metaphors" pp. 150-155, but again, a bit anecdote heavy whereas, the audience (me) was ripe for some conceptual exploration. Like I said above, story is a good way to communicate, but it can't be the only way to communicate, especially when our author has also been introducing concepts-a-plenty.

I very much like the creation of a structure for getting at the interior or the "inner teacher," and I feel like PP has given us something to hang our inner landscape hat upon: a sort of peer-counseling, wisdom-seeking, anam cara gathering. Very cool. Here we have a structure to facilitate reflection on teaching. The structure values not only the teacher's experience but also the teacher's feelings--BTW which is where God often chooses to speak. I love the language of the focus person speaking (and the committee hearing) truth. And that deep listening and questioning can lead us directly to our truest self where dwells the inner light (to borrow a Quaker theology). This stuff could easily transform teaching and even lives.

Palmer pp. 117-144

Does PP lose the thread a bit here? This chapter is called "Teaching in Community: a Subject-Centered Education" but I didn't read much exposition in this regard. Fine anecdotes yes, but I am left wanting more talk of how to build "open space," how we find and determine our "microcosm," more than a story of "concept formation." Give me those famous ideas to chew on, the living great things in this chapter are left half-buried. (Love the teacher that builds community of truth by conversing with the dead!)

I think there is an obvious link between Durka's "imagination" and Palmer's "open space." In an earlier blog, I suggested that this is the platform for grace, the playground of the Spirit. Truest teaching-learning is itself an action of the Spirit. Last week, I wanted us to consider what happens when Christ becomes the center, the subject, the great thing (in Palmerese) and how RADICALLY that will transform education.

The Kingdom of God is real...

What can we now know about ourselves and our students?

Who have we and our students become?

Why and what do we hope?

Why and what do we teach?

What do we now see?

How are relationships transformed?

Palmer pp. 91-116

I feel like Palmer has entered new territory with this chapter. Or, perhaps it's just more to my taste. Be that as it may, I really like a lot of what he offers in these pages. With some noteable exceptions...

Take or leave (mostly leave) the discussion of community types, the definition of reality (p. 97), the definition of truth (p. 106), the synthesis of all things trending toward community. PP is ranging a bit beyond the borders of his expertise here. And it's a bit "60's Berkeley" to wax poetic over the "great web of being on which all things depend," in the pseudo-mystical sense only (ecologically, nothing could be more true, and I know also that nature triggers our true transcendental yearnings--but PP's language hints of pantheism which is out for me) or again, that our inner stardust helps us to have a mystical link to knowledge I doubt. No biggie.

For my money, he really gets going when signaling knowledge as relational, or community as our most powerful social form, or the primal attraction of ideas/knowledge, and the peril of a "desacralized world," and the caution against the poles of relativism and absolutism.

But the reification piece leaves me wondering...granting ontological status, subjectivity, and agency to ideas is a little creepy. It makes me think of the day when machines become self-aware. Run for your lives! Sentience is for God to grant. And PP is not arguing sentience (I think), but it is certainly not too much further down his "Merry Prankster" line of reasoning. What type of relationship can we enter into with a thing, even if it is somehow transcendent as PP claims? I mean, I love to hug trees, and sit with them, smell them, and on occasion talk to them, but I don't expect to be enjoying the Beatific Vision with my Quercus agrifolia .

Actually, upon reflection, I think he might be a heretic and an idolater ;)

More seriously, I do think that ideas can have a sacredness and a power about them which can lead us to new thoughts, new knowledge. But this power derives from and is to be found in the Maker rather than the idea or thing. Grace is of God alone; not things, no matter how great. It is perhaps that the "great things" even all things stand in relationship to God and therefore have the power to awaken in the knowledge and truth of our living souls. Yes, as Ignatius' First Principle and Foundation remind us, things have value inasmuch as they serve as vehicles of grace and then to bring us closer to God.

Palmer pp. 63-90

In truth, I don't at all think it meaningless. I just think our guru misses the mark a bit. I do like Palmer's paradoxes, though I don't think that they are really true paradoxes. Nor do I think paradox lies at our core (that we have simultaneously a need for silence/solitude and social interaction reflects complexity, not contradiction). Rather, I think that when the apparent opposites are considered in their fullness we see that they are not opposite or contradictory at all. They are appropriate to authentic human relationship, healthy interactions and stimulating of learning. Viz. Christian anthropology and the true self. They are reminders of the complex nature of teaching and its consequent challenges--that we have simultaneous responsibilities at the macro and micro levels. The term procrustean comes to mind. I don't think 1-6 (pp. 76-77) fit paradox, and that there are richer lenses, theoretical frames, etc.

Palmer pp. 35-60

Here again Palmer offers many great insights not just into the dynamics of teaching, but also into our psyche, the spirit, the constitutions of our inner selves. This section reads almost like a spiritual self-help manual. Good advice, wise counsel abound in Palmer: "self is a capacity to be enlarged," "the myth that the outer world is more powerful than the inner," "multi-layered fear discourages an encounter with the other," and finally that the spiritual path is the path that will set us free to be authentice selves in all relationship.
However! I have misgivings about spiritual work that fails to invoke grace. I take exception at the comment about "religions of fear that exploit..." I do not think that "otherness taken seriously invites transformation" in all cases. I would argue that mere existence does not qualify a thing for legitimacy. In other words, "the other" that we encounter might not always produce a positive transformation. Also, I don't think that recognition of pluralism in any way necessarily precludes one way, one truth, one life. Lastly, I strongly disagree that all religious and spiritual traditions have at their center "Be not afraid." This is Christ's assurance! And other great religions have no such conception at all.

Palmer pp. 9-34

Palmer is full of professional wisdom. I agree strongly with several of his observations. He writes, "In our culture...reality and power reside in the external world of objects and events and in the sciences that study that world, while the inner realm of the heart is a romantic fantasy..." (p. 20). How right he is. I am constantly having to plead with my students to try and see God, hear God, know God. I urge them to open their hearts, to turn to Him, to listen in silence, to believe! Nohing can be more plain than the truth of God all around us, infusing our life, our world and yet we have lost the sense that the world, as Hopkins S.J. puts it, "...is charged with the grandeur of God." He also later wonders why it is that "men now do not reck his rod?" And I agree with Palmer that we might look to our uncritical relationship to technology. And I would say our culture has created in us an aversion to silence, has fractured community relations from the family to the neighborhood to the town to the nation to the world. Look to commodification and the profit motive writ large upon the American psyche and social fabric.

Murphy

I found Msgr. Murphy's commentary to be insightful, challenging, and helpful. If you find my musings dreary at first, read on!

I think he is right in pointing out that Catholic Education--Catholicism even!--is confronted with an immediate dilemma, which must be engaged in a spirit of hope despite, indeed to spite, the very aura of gloom surrounding its present state. To point out the challenges of secularism which has gleefully brushed God aside; real postmodern relativism which unbinds the cultural glue of a shared worldview based on commonly held and transcendent values so setting us somewhat adrift on seas of pure self-reference; a Church which has gutted itself with scandal. Other challenges facing Catholic education, unmentioned by the author are dwindling numbers of Catholic students, teachers, and staff, financial hardship, a general weakening of Catholic identity. Indeed a dark night for culture and church.

But the true dark night is about purgation and then renewal!

Murphy is absolutely right that a lay spirituality of the Catholic educator is overdue. Right again in that it cannot simply be cobbled together (though it is everyday) or adopted whole cloth (pun intended) from the world of religious. We are operating from a spirituality by default, whether we are conscious of it or not, whether it is coherent and intentional or not.

Lay spirituality is distinctive (though perhaps not as distant from spirituality of religious life as the author suggests--I would argue with him over the supposed inappropriateness of the evangelical counsels [poverty, chastity, and obedience] for a Christian). Murphy is right to point signal the elements of work, family, and marriage as constitutive. I would love to see more discussion of de Sales' notion of the "secular state."

The best thing Murphy does is explain the priority of relatedness and relationship grounded in Trinity. On p. 12, he alludes to the fact that Trinity gives us our identity. God is love and love is relational--true love needs to be expressed (Creation) and then returned freely (Christ and Christianity) forming a bond in and through the Spirit.

He then suggests that ambiguity is another characteristic of life today which we should accept. I don't know what to think here. I want to agree and disagree. I want to fight ambiguity if its source is evil. I will accept it if it is God's will. To distinguish requires discernment. Murphy skips over this.

He also fails to mention Apostolicum actuositatem, a key decree on the laity from Vatican II which would round out his very good reflections.

I love the common sense reflection that one must begin in the staff room.

The five characteristics are genius! And then he frosts his cake with the sugary call to political engagement...but wait for the cherry...ahh yes, it must all be rooted in prayer. "...to do all this Catholic educators have to give themselves time to stand in the presence of God" (p. 24). Amen!

Durka pp. 60-82

As the Durka readings come to a close, I want to try and speak more exactly about what has been nagging me which also will dovetail our discussion from last week. At worst I am vainly indulging a misguided need to criticize a watered-down spirituality; at best I am pointing to a more complete, authentic, and richer vision of the spirituality of the eductator. You be the judge!

My freshman english teacher in high school offered to us unity and coherence as the twin gods of writing. As the years of my education have begun to add up and threaten to spill over, and eyesight deteriorates for having stared at so much Times New Roman, I find that the gods are about much more than literary style. Their domain is as much content and substance. So I hope will be my criticism.

In reading Durka I have lost the thread in many chapters. I have had a difficult time following the logic and the development of ideas. So often she seems to move from one idea to the other without bridging or building. As if she offers so many pieces but doesn't reveal the whole. Similarly, there are brilliant concepts and reflections in these pages: imagination, fidelity, formation of the human person; and there are some lukewarm concepts in need of development and explanation: ethic of caring (p. 50), humanization (p. 21); and some that are taken out of their proper Christian context: virtue, heart, wisdom, vocation, mystery. I am not looking for a full blown "theology of teaching" but a work that claims to present a "Spirituality For Those Who Teach" written by a professor of Religion and Religious Education at a Catholic University, using the language of Christian theology needs to acknowledge that it is indeed grounded in and informed by Christian theology. She comes tantalizingly close with a reflection like: "[Teaching] is a basic human art that depends upon the exercise of certain intellectual, moral, and spiritual virtues" (p. 75). And again, who is the "...One who calls us and sustains us..." (p. 78) but God in and through Jesus!

To circumlocute religion is to talk about religion without using the word religion. Durka signals Catholic Christianity all through these pages yet it is only in the final pages that she writes what she perhaps might have woven into her reflections from the very start. I couldn't but find myself asking why did not Durka write a book that treats explicitly of her observation that "It is only on the basis of a religious account of teaching that its true character can be fully grasped" (p. 76)? And "We...admit that our vocation as teachers depends upon faith" (. 78) It is Durka coming so close to the truest spirituality, the Christian spirituality of the teacher that for me makes my experience of this book frustrating.

Durka pp. 39-48

First, I want to agree with the author about much of what is said in these pages. Second, I want to be critical of some points that she makes and others made partially.

1. At the end of p. 41 and on to p. 42, Durka writes, "If we can convey to our students some sense of the wonder of existence, we can evoke in them their own longing to give thanks for the gift of life." And she goes on to show that there are numerous "unconscious processes" at work in the human mind. I would add human heart and soul. This ties in to her prior description of the imaginative faculty of the person as crucial to teaching/learning. And she speaks of the need to create spiritual space. In making these observations, she is circumlocuting "religion."

The same mystical faculty which produces the universal human longing for religare is at work in the healthy classroom. The "style" (p. 40) which is hospitable, humble, open yet appropriately bounded--in order to encourage student flourishing--is simutaneously an attitude which "cooperates with grace," allowing for people to experience God.

2. The discussion of "style" is underdeveloped and a bit nebulous. The word connotes mere preference, something temporary, ephemeral, and hence the relative. And on p. 42 I was left hoping for much more in terms of "The mind is not the brain" and "Unconscious knowing." And again, on page 41 there is talk of "enhancement of life" which is all well and good, but in Catholic education we have the great freedom to engage a much much richer concept like "human flourishing in Christ." What we really need to be about is human flourishing in a sacramental sense. "For freedom Christ has set us free" writes Saint Paul in his letter to the church at Rome. Let us not be mired in the partial truths of secular humanism or Enlightenment.

The discussion on page 43 must and can only happen in terms of our knowledge of God. It does not. Durka writes about helping students "make sense of their lives" which requires us to "reinterpret and make sense of our own lives." But she does not say that our lives and our world only make sense at all once we have contemplated and experienced God! Let's not have some wily nily "oughts and shoulds" based on some false understanding of our selves and our destinies. No thank you to some vague notion of what is right and good. Truth, goodness, and beauty reach their completion in and through Christ.

I could not disagree more strongly with the quote from Ortega y Gasset and maybe would pick a semantic bone with D.H. Lawrence.

In the first case the quotation (p. 41) seems to advocate for a post-modern relativist understanding of truth: "reality [is] ...an infinite number of perspectives, all equally veracious and authentic." This is an untrue statement. And then, "The sole false perspective is that which claims to be the only one there is." Again this is assertion is dangerously close to attempting to invalidate the notion of universal truth.

In the second case, perhaps I am being a bit literalistic, but we most certainly can (and do) know that he claims cannot be known. Grace, Sacrament, prayer, vision, miracle, mystical union, these are all real ways of knowing God.

Durka, pp. 26-38

I agree strongly with Durka's suggestion as to the power of Imagination and its centrality to our vocation, whether it be at the center of our dispositions, our daily demeanor, our planning; or the engine of the students' learning experience.

I would want to point out further that Imagination presumes humility and openness which also are, not coincidentally, necessary to receive God's grace. It strikes me that what Durka refers to as Imagination might also be a prime faculty through which we experience grace. "...imagination can bring severed parts together and create wholes." (Durka p. 31). "The role of the imagination...is to awaken" (Durka p. 33). These quotes point to the function of Imagination in transforming our unederstanding and experience of the world which in turn allows for God to break through. We must humble and open ourselves, our hearts, in order that we might be broken open and the heart might be lifted up, elevated to a mystical experience of the divine.

St. Gregory of Nyssa might have said, "...only wonder understands God!"

Durka, pp. 14-25

My initial feeling with Durka is that a somewhat unclear writing style presents a barrier to her audience. I often am left wondering exactly what point she is trying to make, having read a seemingly jumbled collection of ideas left underdeveloped and unexplored.

Nevertheless, she introduces three concepts which have great merit for enriching our understanding of our calling. Even more, these concepts seem themselves to be drawn from the body of our inherited Catholic wisdom. "Passion for the Possible," "Teaching by Design," and "Designing a Holy Work" could as easily be called "Hope (being one of the three theological virtures, and a favorite of St. Paul) in Teaching," and the last two as "Formation: A Christian Anthropology of Education." What I mean to point out is that Durka is making good points about an authentic approach to teaching, but that if we retrieve the explicitly Christian language we will have gone to a font much deeper, crisper and more refreshing than Whitman, Lao Tzu, or Yeats. The valuable concepts will have become sacred truths.

Spirituality

Spirit recalls for me the breath of God. We have been touched by it and bear the deep marks of having been so touched: soul, animus. Our animating principle, our life principle is the shock of gray having been touched by the divine. When we know and live from this we are spiritual.