Good morning. Can't walk this morning. Still got a kink in my
hip. So, I've nothing else to do but sip some freshly brewed coffee and
"write to learn." I'm still thinking pensively about three unexpected,
long, tearful, heart-rendering conversations I had with students last
Wednesday night. They really got to me and got me going. They bookended
me: one before class, two after class: unexpected pregnancy, exile by
angry and unforgiving parents, reluctantly taking drugs for fear of losing
"friends," ravages of physical abuse on the spirit. Wow! I was
emotionally drained when I hit the house. That glass of wine and Susan's
arms were a salvation.
I guess I was also thinking about how I got nailed on that last
Random Thought more than usual. I told my good friend, Dale Fitzgibbons,
yesterday that after a week of barbs I must look like a pop art sculpture
of a porcupine. I guess talking about spirituality really hit some nerves
more than usual and made a lot of people uneasy. I also thought about
bits and pieces of an exchange I had on one list over this past week that
I'd like to put together and share. I wasn't going to offer a general
response, and I have talked with a lot of people indidividually, but my
nails are eroding and my fingers are growing numb from pounding out so
many messages. So, I hope you will understand if I respond all at once.
It is, for me, no less personal.
A lot of the responses reminded me that there is an imbalance in
academic life, maybe in most lives. That imbalance certainly existed in my
life until I was forced to start correcting it eight years ago. My
academic life, like most academics, was filled with discovery, excitement,
learning wrapped around something a colleague called dedication to the
discipline. My pride was tied to the scholarly things: I had a long
resume of publications, presentations, grants, and so on; I had
professional renown; I had something of a national reputation. My
emotional or spiritual life, however, was flat, disappointing. My older
son, Michael, always called me a rational-romantic--I think that was a
compliment--and there were elements of the spiritual that occasionally
showed themselves--when it was safe-- that I now know wanted to reveal
itself. But, the truth was that, with what I want to believe are two
exceptions, I was more in my head than in my heart, more in myself than in
others, more in my importance in the importance of things. I really
didn't make spirituality a daily part of my professional life, nor did I
think that my inward journey would pass me through the place where I am
presently at.
I now have discovered that spirituality enriches what I do
professionally; it does not replace my academics or my intellect. It's not
a matter of rationality or spirituality; it's a matter of both; each is
essential and adds values and strengthens character to the other by
bringing to the surface that hidden wonderful wholeness so many of us deny
or ignore but need if we are to live and work "wholely." That's why I
walk before the sun rises. Each step is a step back from my day-to-day
mundane concerns and a step into reflection upon the gift that is my life.
I found time and space--I make the time and space--to reflect fully on my
relationship to myself, to other people, to my surroundings, to my place
in life, to life. It is time I allow myself to shake my finger at myself
to see emotion, spirituality, as an integral and valued part of all
aspects of my personal and professional life.
We each are of two parts. We want to know and we want to feel; we
want to understand and we want to be loved. But, they are not separated
and we do not live separate lives at separate times in separate places.
Each world informs the other and interpenetrates each other whether we
like it or not and acknowledge it or not. If these two parts do not talk
to each other, do not cooperate with each other, do not walk hand in hand,
if they are not in community with each other, there is a turf war within
ourselves or among each other from which no one benefits.
I have my wonderful colleagues. Few, however, are traveling down
the road I now find myself on. Beyond staying abreast of their discipline
and adding to their bank of information, most think that they are
complete, have arrived, have got it. They talk as if they have
constructed their building perfectly and there is no need for remodeling,
renovation, reconstruction. I know. I was once among them. But, I have
found that here is no stage in life when anyone of us is not journeying,
is exempt from the needs of growing in one's philosophy or spirituality,
in one's humanity. I find that new life can be found not just in youth,
but in middle age as well. I don't know yet about old age; I'm not there
yet, but I know it is true for that period in life. My hunch and
experience is that a lot of people would like to walk this road, but are
stopped by a variety of reasons, explanations, fears, rationalizations.
We academics may be versed in the jargon of our discipline and
focusing on the rational, but so many, far too many, are spiritually
illiterate, and our spiritual illiteracy is a stumbling block. So many
are unedged by spirituality as I once was. We claim it is simply a matter
of having a busy lifestyle, the "I don't have the time" explanation, that
doesn't allow for reflection and self-examination. Is it? Maybe. Or is
it a humiliation, a fear, when confronted by our ignorance, empty lives;
or, is it an atmosphere that is emotionally sterile and fraught with
oppressive and silencing fear?
Maybe others are blocked by a series of fears that I once knew.
There is the self-depreciating "I don't have it" fear, the fear that is
projected by hesitation and paralysis, but can be overcome by learning to
slug your way through difficult times, taking the chance to see inside if
you do, and finding the courage to fail; there is the combative and
disconnecting "this is a dog eat dog" fear which promotes a paranoia that
everyone is out to get you and which can be overcome by being reminded
that there is an awful lot of caring and loving out there; there is the
isolating "I can't count on anyone else" fear which blinds you to the
reaching out of other people and can be handled by risking to share and
seek the support all around us; there is the frantic "I am losing control"
fear which squashes creativity and imagination and can only be dealt with
by regeneration and the courage to let go and see what happens; there is
the conforming "I can't handle being different" fear that promotes a
blandness which can be addressed by seeing all the uniqueness in each of
us; there is the paralyzing "changing means I am weak" fear that keeps
things in life lifelessly on life support and can only be neutralized by
recognizing that the only thing in life that does not change is constant
change and to change is a sign of strength and courage, not weakness;
there is the enslaving "what will others think and say" fear that
paralyzes and can only be put aside by the realization that you can't
control the responses of others and can only be true to yourself; there is
the atrophying "this is me" fear which can be addressed that "me" that and
can be neutralized with the realization that "me" has always been a state
of becoming. Life is in constant motions; it's not a frozen statue; and
finally there is the overwhelming "it's bigger than me" fear, the system
fear, which imposes surrender, resignation and submission which can be
dealt a blow by accepting small steps as great strides.
These fears turn solid ground into quicksand, grind movement to a
halt, turn transformity into conformity. They are the fears of the
stilled fearful; they produce an academic culture of silence wherein we
mouth pronouncements of others rather than saying our own words and naming
our own worlds; they make academic life poorer and emptier and less
authentic; they make education, which is not a neutral process, into an
instrument of slothful, flattening sameness.
It is easy to talk of that which is easy and materially
successful; it is hard to talk of that which is hard and unsuccessful. It
is hard, as someone recently told me, to look within; it is easy to allow
our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! How well I know that!!
Those habits had wrought suffering and discomfort and imbalance on me. I
had accepted them with almost fatalistic resignation because I was so
accustomed to giving in to them. I tried to hide from them, but I
couldn't hide them. I may have idealized my freedom, but when it cames to
my habits, I was completely enslaved. I may have venerated individuality,
but when it came to my habits, I was so submissive. I knew what I was
doing was not right. I knew I could not serve two masters: scholarship
and teaching. I knew what I was doing was not in the best interest of
students. I knew what I was doing was not in the best interest of myself.
Still, in the name of these fears I did them even at someone's expense.
I see now that I had made for myself a simplified and intelligible
image of my world in the fashion that had suited me best. I substituted
this emotionally satisfying world for the worlds around me and within me.
My self-created cosmos was the pivot of my life. In it I convinced myself
that I had found peace, security, comfort, and assurance. I hadn't. But,
I wouldn't acknowledge the whirlpool within me. I couldn't acknowledge my
inner dishonesty and disharmony.
I know reflection can slowly, though not without discomfort, bring
us honesty and wisdom. We can come to see that we are falling again and
again into fixed repetitive patterns, and begin to long to get out of
them. We may, of course, fall back into them, again and again, but slowly
we can emerge from them and change.
It's something like when I was walking one morning and tripped
over a raised crack in the dark street and fell. It was my fault and I
hadn't noticed it. The next morning I was on alert. Where I thought the
crack was I changed my pace. I was wrong and tripped over it again.
Didn't fall this time. I couldn't believe I had done it again. The third
morning, I was ready. I was on the lookout for it. I focused on that
blasted crack and forgot the reason for my walks. When I came upon it, I
said to myself, "There's that sucker," and I changed the course of my walk
and went around it. But, I had been off balance the whole walk, focusing
on that crack, waiting for it to appear, then spending the rest of the
walk thinking of how I had not let it trip me. But, I still lost sight of
the reason for my walk and wouldn't acknowledge that the crack still was
getting the best of me. The fourth morning I just walked on the other
side of the street walking at my normal pace, doing my meditative thing,
without wasting time and energy thinking about the crack.
My biggest problem is one of community. Where is community? It
is not in a mere gathering of individuals or collection of disciplines or
doing something. There are several large departments on this campus that
are divided into cliques of one! There are departments and colleges
engaged in open and hidden turf warfare over curriculum, budget,
facilities, and silly perks. There are "us and them" rifts between people
called administrators, labelled as faculty, categorized as staff,
cubbyholed as students. No, I think real community is within each of us;
it's invisible; it goes beyond each of us and beyond the face-to-face
daily physical relationships and beyond narrowing and isolating roles.
It's about connections. As I just told a colleague, community is in the
ecological system of the discoveries about life of biology and physics and
chemistry, the expanding gazes of astronomy, the questions of philosophy
and religion, the cultural habits and practices of anthropology, the
expressions of language, the shapes and colors of art, the sounds of
music, the forms of sculpture, the structures of architecture, the logic
of mathematics, the artifacts and patterns of palentology, sociology and
history, AND ourselves. Community is knowing and feeling those great
issues, forces, questions and answers, actions, dreams, achievements,
other stuff, and ourselves; great teaching is drawing ourselves and others
into that community, and helping ourselves and them find it within
ourselves and themselves; community is to strip away the barriers of the
stranger and have the courage to go public and become the supporting and
encouraging friend; community is to offer a feast for the mind and heart,
a feast of lives the attending of which are nourished by the nutrients of
the food.
Each of us, therefore, has to be brought together with our
strengths and weaknesses, with our dreams and nightmare, with our courage
and fears, with our visions and blindnesses, with our accomplishments and
failures to help ourselves and others face our and their restrictive fears
and find ways to overcome them, to help ourselves and others see their
capacity and strive to fulfill them, to see what each can learn of
themselves and others from this meeting, to increase the fullness of our
lives and those of others, and thereby share community. But, we would do
this only if we hold ourselves and each other sacred, for as I have said,
the sacred, the respect for each other, is the connective tissue to
reconnect the disconnected.
As an avid practioner of classroom community and an equally
enthused promoter of campus learning community I would suggest that a
spirit of community must exist within each of us if a community is to
persist, that it is the spirit which inspires those in a learning
community to aspire and prevents such a community from expiring. I would
suggest that the conditions for connective learning are far more
atmospheric than structural and administrative, among which are: story,
inquiry, listening, reflection, presence, examination, uniqueness, fun,
humility, integrity, silence, joy, passion, welcome, patience,
individuality, understanding, questioning, appreciation, respect,
curiosity. That these conditions create an encompassing web binding each
of us together in a way that role and turf boundaries are blurred so we
each learn from and teach each other, follow and lead each other in the
classroom, outside the classroom, on campus, off campus, in work, in life.
As I just told someone on a list, spirituality, as well as a sense
of community, is not a personal, isolated experience. They are really a
team sport. They can't grow unless it's practiced in the community in
community. There are many times people tell me that they feel closer and
feel a kindredness to students or to virtual colleagues on the internet or
to friends they meet once or twice a year at teaching conferences than
they do to the people in the office next door. How well I know those
feelings. So, it hasn't been easy, avoiding the cracks and walking on the
other side of the street. Almost all of my colleagues ignore me nowadays.
It's at times lonely, to walk the campus surrounded by so many strangers
whom I have known, worked with, fought with, some for nearly thirty years.
I'm out of the loop. I don't shake my fingers at them or walk with a lamp
held high although they feel I do just by my mere presence and actions and
shared words. They are at times uneasy with my words, at times
antagonistic towards my methods, at times feel threatened by student
attitudes towards me, at times cynical, at times patronizing and
condescending, at times defensive, at times embarrassed with words like
spirituality and love, at times dubious, at times petty. Some professors
have told students that I am high schoolish, unprofessional, foolish,
kindergartenish. They wonder why I want to challenge, question, uproot,
risk, complicate the status quo of doing things and thinking a certain way
that has become a routine, easy and comfortable for them. They see my
changes as signs of weakness. They think I'm stupid for continuing to put
so much time and effort into students instead of taking advantage of my
opportunity to retire. They've told me to my face that they don't
understand how I can still be enjoying myself, why I'm not bored to tears
after all these years, how I can still be having fun. What they see as
the resting and waning years of my career, I see as the most exciting,
restive, and waxing years of my life.
As my friend Ann Boyce told me recently, it is lonely and VERY
scary out here on the high wire with no net -- but once you've done it,
you can never go back to the safe, bland world where you hide in a shell
behind a professional mask and withhold the only true gift we have as
teachers to give: ourselves.
Nevertheless, as a teacher, I think it's especially tough. Some
of the best teachers have to learn how to deal with what my son, Michael,
calls this "sweet and sour" problem -- to convey to and to teach people
how to find freedom, but also to accept them as they are at the same time.
Good teachers know lots about community, spirituality, heart, reality,
mindfulness, even if they have not recognized and talked about such
qualities. Yet, they can not just explain all of this, to students or
colleagues. Instead, they have to somehow awaken the process in them,
while being mindful that each person has to walk his or her own road. They
just can't and shouldn't tell someone, "live"; they have to live
themselves, and testify to life. And, if, as another friend told me, in
their effort of those teachers to honestly give themselves, they must deal
with the disapproval of others, so be it. There is way more to be gained
than there is to be lost.
It will take time to build community. It cannot be mandated or
legislated as things so often are on campuses. That may foster temporary
compliance, but it will not generate lasting commitment. To build
community, to create a share vision, will take effort and time, one person
at a time. Faith and belief are caught, not taught. They are passed on
only by coming into contact with people who have faith and belief, share
that faith and belief, and live that faith and that belief.
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [log in to unmask]
Department of History http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
/\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
Make it a good day.
--Louis--
Louis Schmier [log in to unmask]
Department of History http://www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, GA 31698 /~\ /\ /\
912-333-5947 /^\ / \ / /~\ \ /~\__/\
/ \__/ \/ / /\ /~\/ \
/\/\-/ /^\_____\____________/__/_______/^\
-_~ / "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
_ _ / don't practice on mole hills" - \____
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|
