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.