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?