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.
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I love it! Your mind works in a way I most admire and you raise some very significant concerns that I also found in these readings. You were courageous in addressing them. Though I certainly find myself interested in knowing what many believers and nonbelievers think and experience, my lens is Catholicism and I find Durka sometimes coming terribly close to spinning off into some sense of universal spirituality that negates the universal truths I hold as most central to my life and belief. I wonder if those ideas are not the least comon denominator effect or is the intention of the author to challenge some important Christian theology. I don't want to sound like the defender of the faith, so I'm going to presume that perhaps the author is well intentioned but somewhat under informed!
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