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.