Gratitude

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We proclaim Him . . . teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ (Col. 1:25).

I was never going to teach.  It was not even at the bottom of a list of possible paying vocations I’d ever considered.  But when the time came that circumstances forced me into the workforce to support our family, it was the quickest way to that end – so here I am, some 35 years later, about to grade my last projects, my last finals, and I cannot imagine any work that would have been better.

There is so much to be grateful for:  my own teachers who prepared me so well for such a time; the literature itself which shaped me, grew me, even at times saved me;  my colleagues over the years who have taught, challenged, and encouraged me; my students who have so graciously allowed me to be part of their lives in and out of the classroom. 

Still, so often through the years, discouragement would strike, and many were the days I dragged myself home wondering if I’d ever done anyone any good, if the work had been worthwhile that day or ever.  And so today I want to give a special thanks to those who went to great lengths to show me, in this final semester, that my work has in fact not been in vain, that this “Jack, joke, poor potsherd, | patch, matchwood” has, in Him and Him alone, done the only work I ever hoped to do.

The Academic Office put on a reception for the two of us retiring this year (the other being the matchless, beloved drama teacher/director “Mr. B” – Bernie Belisle).  My thanks to Kevin, Rhonda, Audrey for your work in arranging the event (including AJ and the luscious cake and excellent catering service).  Your thoughtful gift to me is one I will always treasure – the beautiful leather journal and the silver pen inscribed with the Bryan motto, “Christ Above All.”  Thank you to all of you, to President Livesay and the Board and the rest of our administration, for all the years of encouragement, assistance, and loving friendship.  You have always made me feel at home in a place where Christ is indeed held above all.

My peerless colleagues in the English Department – Ray, Whit, Daniel – made the week all the more special with a personal gift of Victorian-themed embroidery tools (scissors, needle-holder, etc.).  You have come to know me well, not just as a colleague but as a friend, and so you know my various plans and loves and I appreciate your showing your love for me in this sweet way.  You are my friends and my brothers, and I thank you for all you have meant to me over the years, all the prayers and  laughter, and the shared tears and sorrows as well.  You are the best.

But they did so much more.  Ray arranged an opportunity for our students and alums to shower me with appreciation, gathering cards and printing off emails from them to fill a lovely handcrafted keepsake box.  Dozens of the precious ones I have taught over the years took the time to send such kind and humbling words; thank you, my dear colleagues, for arranging such a special gift.

To those who wrote (and those who have written at other times with similar words, whose letters and emails will also go into this box):  how can I ever thank you.  You were always the reason that even on the darkest days I could find a smile and see the beauty both in the work itself and in your eager eyes.  The specific conversations and classes and even off-hand comments you remember show me the power of our Lord to work – through literature, through writing, through a mere teacher trying to do her best by all three – to work His truth, His beauty, His goodness into all our lives.  Thank you for that gift.

And thanks, too, for a candy tree growing out of unicorn mug, for a lovely hand-crafted necklace, for an adorable crocheted pet, for a stunningly crafted blown-glass kingfisher which will catch fire in my eastern window, and for the endless hours of shared laughter, tears, failures, and victories, conversations silly and serious about literature, about writing, about life.  You are God’s blessings to me.

I deserve none of this and no credit:  all is His work and His glory.  Live for that, dear ones.  Act in God’s eye what you are:  “Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, / Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his  / To the Father through the features of men's faces.”  And know always that you live in my heart as ones who have shown Him to me.

Unreality TV

I rarely watch even milliseconds of Nikita, but I caught the first scenes of the latest episode this evening.  And I found that she talks like too many of my students write:  in vague generalities that tell the listener nothing of value.

Man whose people have multiple machine guns trained on Nikita and crew:  "You have 10 seconds to give me a reason not to kill you."

Nikita:  "We're not here to interrupt your opium smuggling.  We're here to make a deal, but we need to be here temporarily." The end.

If I am the man governing the machine guns, they are now dead.

Not here to interrupt my operations?  Words are cheap.  How do I know this is true?  Why should I believe you?  How did you even know I'm a smuggler?  Who else knows this now that you know it?  Who -- the law or other smugglers -- might have followed you to this location and right now be moving in on my territory?  What is any reason whatsoever that I should trust you on this?  Here to make a deal?  What kind of deal?  With whom?  For what purpose?  What's in it for me that you need this location and no other?  Need to be here temporarily?  Why here, specifically?  Why not any of the other airports you could have chosen?  What's so important about this location for you?  In what way does it serve your purposes -- oh, and what, again, were those purposes?  Why in the world should I believe anything you just said, as it tells me exactly NOTHING OF ANY SUBSTANCE?

Yeah, dead.  Time's up and I didn't hear a single actual reason not to kill you.  Sorry.

On Teachers and Students

It is quite popular to blame teachers for their students' intellectual choices.  Of course, teachers may do a great job or a poor job.  But students, it seems we sometimes forget, have free will.


Once upon a time there was a perfect Teacher.  He taught many, but twelve were part of His inner circle for three years, not just in a classroom a few hours a week but walking and talking and absorbing his teachings every minute of every day.


Eleven of them abandoned Him in His worst moment.


But one had already betrayed Him utterly.


That one must have appeared to the rest to understand and go along with His teachings at least as well as they did; not one pointed his finger instantly at the one rebel they all knew so well when He said that one of them would betray Him.  They all asked "Is it I?"  Only the betrayer knew the answer.


If He hadn't been the perfect Teacher, the only One who could really read people's hearts despite their apparently compliant actions, He might have been deceived, too.  He might have thought this one was learning and accepting His lessons, and been utterly surprised by his defection, his hatred.


It happens to teachers every day, breaking their hearts, making them wonder where they went wrong.  Ordinary teachers surely did go wrong somewhere, but their wrongs may not have had anything to do with a student's defection from their teaching.  


This whole teaching/learning enterprise is a two-way street.  Even the perfect Teacher couldn't make His students all wholeheartedly accept His teachings.  Why then do we expect imperfect human teachers to do better than He did?  Why do we automatically blame them, especially when we don't or only barely know them, instead of considering that the student bears at least as much responsibility for his choices in response to the teaching, that he might have played along to get good grades in the classroom, or changed his ideas after graduation, or a bit of both?


When our students fail in life, we should indeed check ourselves -- did I do the best I could, as a teacher and a mentor?  But when we know we did -- our best not precluding error, but not being error the student couldn't overcome with intelligence and good will -- then we needn't take responsibility, only grieve for the lost sheep.

"Lit Instructor"

I ran across this lovely poem by William Stafford in Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach:

"Lit Instructor"

Day after day up there beating my wings

with all the softness truth requires

I feel them shrug whenever I pause:

they class my voice among tentative things,

And they credit fact, force, battering.

I dance my way toward the family of knowing,

embracing stray error as a long-lost boy

and bringing him home with my fluttering.

Every quick feather asserts a just claim;

it bites like a saw into white pine.

I communicate right; but explain to the dean--

well, Right has a long and intricate name.

And the saying of it is a lonely thing.

--from American Poems

"A love that is above 'flesh and blood'"

What with teaching half the summer and prepping for this semester the other half, I find myself tired and out of sorts, not ready for the new semester that begins on Wednesday. What I really want is to become Emily Dickinson, talking to people through the door, if at all, and dropping little notes out my window to encourage the neighbors.

Looking back over the opening chapters of Thomas Merton's The Inner Experience: Notes on Contemplation reminded me tonight of some excellent truths to carry into the new school year, in light of this mood and tiredness. In Chapter 3, "Society and the Inner Self," Merton writes about the relation between contemplation and love; contemplation is the work of love, and love needs an object -- not only God but the neighbor as well. This love is "above flesh and blood": "not something pale and without passion, but a love in which passion has been elevated and purified by selflessness, so that it no longer follows the inspiration of mere natural instinct. This love is guided by the Spirit of Christ and seeks the good of the other rather than our own momentary interest or pleasure. More, [. . .] it rests in love for love's own sake, and attains, in Christ, to the truth not insofar as it is desirable but above all insofar as it is true and good in itself. This is at the same time our own highest good and the good of the others, and in such love, 'all are One.'"

Merton continues, discussing the solitude necessary for contemplation: "Solitude is necessary for spiritual freedom. But once that freedom is acquired, it demands to be put to work in the service of a love in which there is no longer subjection or slavery. Mere withdrawal [from the world for contemplation], without the return to freedom in [. . .] action, would lead to a static and deathlike inertia of the spirit in which the inner self would not waken at all." Solitude should lead to "the freedom and spontaneity of an inner self that is entirely unpreoccupied with itself and goes forth to meet the other lightly and trustfully, without afterthought of self-concern [. . .] ." Writing a little later of the Desert Fathers, he says they went into the desert "not to study speculative truth but to wrestle with practical evil; not to perfect their analytical intelligence but to purify their hearts. They went into solitude not to get something but in order to give themselves, for 'He that would save his life must lose it, and he that will lose his life for the sake of Christ, shall save it.'"

This is a reminder I need. In my sometimes desperate need for quiet, for solitude, for space to reflect, I find myself desiring these for their own sake, not for the sake of service. I must remember both to set aside time to be quiet -- for contemplation is a necessary part of the life well-lived -- but to be mindful that such time leads to renewed desire to serve others, to put myself aside, to die in Christ so that I can live for Him.

And there is a related idea Merton reminds me of as well: the need in my work of service for "detached activity -- work done without concern for results but with the pure intention of fulfilling the will of God." It is not I who will "save" my students, in or out of the classroom, for the Lord or for effective writing. I can only give myself to Him, do as He directs, and be unconcerned about myself and about that which is beyond my control.

My prayer for all my colleagues, here and across the country: May we remember and learn to live in these truths more faithfully every day.

Learn it you will . . .

I knew K. was watching a John Wayne war movie involving fighter pilots. Not particularly interested, I went to the study to read, dozed off for a bit, and woke to this, ringing out in that familiar gruff voice:

Believe me, gentlemen, I take no pleasure in re-teaching you what you should have already learned -- but learn it you will!

Laughed so hard it was a good thing I was already sitting down.

Success

Success: when your students quote Annie Dillard from memory in class presentations and in spontaneous reflection papers. Yes!

FYI

Just in case anyone here is interested, I've created a new weblog, Reflected Light, at wordpress.com. It's mainly my course website, with the syllabi, schedules, assignments, and so on for each of the courses I'm teaching. I've also posted some of the presentations I've done for the college chapels and various forums.

“The Parthenon and the Optative”

C. S. Lewis opens his essay by the above title (which I found in his collection On Stories) with a remark from “a grim old classical scholar” as he was marking college entrance exams: “The trouble with these boys is that the masters have been talking to them about the Parthenon when they should have been talking about the Optative.”

Lewis then explains what is meant by the two terms as symbols of two types of education: “The [Optative] begins with hard, dry things like grammar, and dates, and prosody; and it has at least the chance of ending in a real appreciation which is equally hard and firm though not equally dry. The [Parthenon] begins in ‘Appreciation’ and ends in gush. When the first fails it has, at the very least, taught the boy what knowledge is like. He may decide that he doesn't care for knowledge; but he knows he doesn't care for it, and he knows he hasn't got it. But the other kind fails most disastrously when it most succeeds. It teaches a man to feel vaguely cultured while he remains in fact a dunce. It makes him think he is enjoying poems he can't construe. It qualifies him to review books he does not understand, and to be intellectual without intellect. It plays havoc with the very distinction between truth and error."

He goes on to discuss the purpose of examinations: “to find out whether the boy had read his books. It was the reading, not the being examined, which was expected to do him good.” They are not to determine if his soul has been touched, if he sufficiently appreciates literature and is moved by it. These things cannot be tested – but if the student does the reading well, then “[a]t best he may have learned [. . .] to enjoy a great poem. At second best he has done an honest work and exercised his memory and reason. At worst, we have done him no harm [. . .].”

His final paragraph addresses the laments of people who claim they would have loved poetry if they’d never had to take exams over it. “It is theoretically possible,” Lewis muses. “Perhaps they would by now have been saints if no one had ever examined them in Scripture. Perhaps they would have been strategists or heroes if they had never been put into the school OTC. It may be so: but why should we believe that it is. We have only their word for it; and how do they know?”

I think I shall have to place this essay before my students . . .

My favorite line, though, is this: “I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be to forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you.” Definitely a man who knew human nature!

No More High School!

So the YM graduated from high school today.  I shall report his final grades and order his final transcript sent to the college he will attend and a diploma.  He has done his work faithfully, made me proud, and it's hard to believe he is moving on now to a new phase of life.  

Of course, I'm not sure what it says that his immediate response to putting away the books was a slide down the hallway to the Playstation . . . :)

Blue Skies

I have had several occasions this semester to remind students that we stand before God and not before man. There was the young woman who had to finish several incompletes, the result of illness last semester, and so fell behind and did poorly on her first essay for my lit class. "Did you do the best you could with what you had?" I asked her. When she nodded through her tears, I reminded her, "Then you can stand before God without shame and be unconcerned with your grade. His judgment of your character is far more important than your performance on this essay, or my evaluation of it." And with the incompletes out of the way, she went on to do well in the class; God did not let her fail because of circumstances beyond her control.

He may have done so, however. There was, too, the young woman pouring herself into her classes, valiently fighting freshman homesickness and discouragement, and yet -- despite her intelligence, understanding, and hard work -- somehow not making the grades she could have legitimately expected. "What might God be teaching you about trust?" I asked her when we talked about an assignment she had done poorly on. "Might He be inviting you to trust Him without seeing results, to know His love for you despite a less-than-stellar performance? Perhaps the struggle itself is His gift to you this semester?"

We can only ever do the best we can in any circumstances. We don't have any more. We have only the knowledge and the wisdom thus far gained, only the time and energy granted, only the desire to give enough, knowing that what we have may never be enough, not from man's perspective, and not in a broken world. And after that -- the results are His, and our job is to learn to accept them, not rail against them or despair over them when they aren't what we'd like . . .

On a Jorma CD, Stars in My Crown, that a dear friend sent me, my favorite song has become "Heart Temporary":

Blue skies in the morning,
Stars, they fill the night.
Fall wind rustling through the trees
Sings a song of great delight.
On such a day you think you'd say
Exactly what you mean.
But in God's perfection, things ain't always
Just the way they seem.

chorus:
When the best you have to offer
Falls short of the mark,
Self-inflicted holes are piercin'
Deep within your heart.

Blue skies in the afternoon,
Breeze, it starts to still;
Two dogs sleepin' in the sun,
They lie upon that grassy hill.
At such a time you think you'd find
A way to share your heart,
But though you're reaching for her hand,
Still you walk apart.

(chorus)

Sun upon that old barn roof
Celebrates the day.
I hold this moment in my hand,
Follow it along my way.
The future flows; this feeling grows
Outside my window sill.
By letting go, I might escape
The prison of my will.

(chorus)

When the best you have to offer
Is all you have to give,
Enjoy the moment: God has granted
One more day to live.

Blue skies out my window
Said good-bye to early morning rain.

What I Told My Students

My Advanced Composition students have given me an outstanding semester, as they often do (this is a course for those in the writing minor). The following is the letter I've enclosed in their final portfolio.

I wish I could thank each of you individually for the specific ways you have encouraged me this semester; but, since time doesn’t allow, please accept this – because what I have to say applies, as it so rarely can, to each one of you.

During a semester rife with personal difficulties that often weighed me down and made ordinary work seem almost beyond bearing, you have made this class an oasis of joy and hope. You have come prepared and eager, challenged and challenging, with humility and cheerful spirits. You trusted me, doing the assigned work with the assumption that it had a purpose whether you always understood it or not, you came with willing hearts expecting and loving to learn – and this allowed me to trust you, to know that you would learn, without my having to constantly expend energy seeking ways to make and keep you interested and involved. For that most invaluable gift, I thank you, as well as for the gifts of your prayers and encouragement, smiles in the hallway and chats in my office. Your love for your Lord has cast light on my way at many unexpected, now cherished, moments.

At the end of my first-semester freshman English class, my professor – a man not given to flattery – told me, “Keep writing; you’ve got what it takes.” Those have kept me going through many discouraging times. I do not repeat them lightly, or to just anyone, for flattery is destructive. But I can say to each of you in this class: “Keep writing.” Every one of you has the ability to do more than merely competent writing, and if you have the desire – if God has given you the desire and you have the commitment and discipline to pursue it with passion – you can serve your neighbors with this ability in profound ways. Whether your writing in the future is missionary newsletters, magazine articles, academic studies, memoirs for your family to enjoy, books read by millions, letters to the editor or letters to your grandchildren – you have the ability to touch hearts and minds through the truths you convey with the written word.

Lately I’ve been revisiting Thomas Merton’s meditations in No Man is an Island. He has much to say about this journey we’re on which helps me to remember who I am and why, and which draws me to desire the One who knows me and loves me as no one under the sun can. The past several days, I’ve kept re-reading the final chapter, “Silence.” Certain of his words seem especially apropos for those who are called to the vocation of wordsmithing:

“If our life is poured out in useless words we will never hear anything in the depths of our hearts, where Christ lives and speaks in silence. We will never be anything, and in the end, when the time comes for us to declare who and what we are, we shall be found speechless at the moment of crucial decision: for we shall have said everything and exhausted ourselves in speech before we had anything to say.”

But on the other hand:

“If we fill our lives with silence, then we live in hope, and Christ lives in us and gives our virtues much substance. Then, when the time comes, we confess Him openly before men, and our confession has much meaning because it is rooted in deep silence. It awakens the silence of Christ in the heart of those who hear us, so that they themselves fall silent and begin to wonder and to listen. For they have begun to discover their true selves [in Christ].”

May your Christmas break contain silences in which you hear the voice of the One whose coming we celebrate, calling you into oneness with Him so that He can make you more fully yourself. Take great joy always in words, but bathe your words in silence before the Word Himself, and let Him tell you when to speak before men what He has shown you, what He has made you.

The Gist of Things

We are reading Annie Dillard's The Writing Life in freshman composition this semester. A student the other day challenged my insistence that one needs to understand the meanings of key words and concepts to understand a writer's work. He had gotten the gist of the assigned chapter without knowing the meanings of the words I'd brought to the class's attention, he said, and wasn't that all that mattered, after all?

Of course, we all read books and articles with words unfamiliar to us, and we don't necessarily sit with dictionaries at our elbows. We learn much by context, and "sort of" know many words we might be unable to define articulately at a moment's notice.

But the comment struck me, still, as somehow wrong; it's not about learning from context but about getting the gist of something without attention to detail. My first reaction thus was simple: "But this isn't casual reading to get the gist of things -- this is reading for the purpose of study." The job of the student is not to be casual; it is to be intense, focused, detailed, desirous of learning all one can. Casual reading lends itself to casual learning -- or, more likely, no real learning at all. That may be fine in its place, but is its place the readings assigned in a college classroom?

But the more I've considered it, the more I'm convinced that the real issue lies still deeper.

I am not in the least opposed to casual reading. (After all, I read detective novels all summer.) But how much of our reading should be merely casual; how often is the "gist of things" enough? And, in fact, if one does not know the meanings of key words, images, concepts, how is it possible to know if one has actually gotten the "gist of it" and not misunderstood altogether, reading oneself instead of the writer, as we so often tend to do?

And if the reading is for some purpose beyond relaxation, why would the mere gist of things satisfy? It isn't the gist of something that challenges and changes us -- the depth and profundity, the compelling force, of the idea lies in the careful building of detail to drive it home. Otherwise, why not just say "writing helps me discover what I think" and skip the first several paragraphs of The Writing Life altogether, condense the whole chapter into one paragraph, the book into a short monograph?

The gist of things often makes me shrug, or yawn. I very likely already knew it, or, if not, I find it mildly interesting, or a little odd, or, perhaps, "stupid" or "worthless." However, when I attend to the details of a well-crafted work, I find that the idea may be truly powerful, compelling, even life-changing -- or, perhaps, truly horrific, to be rejected and actively battled. But never "mere," never casual, never mundane . . . not when I attend. And how can I attend if I have no idea what some of the key images, words, concepts mean?

When I think of the time and energy Dillard must have poured into this book, searching for the exact metaphors, the most precise words placed in syntax painstakingly created to carry her meaning, I wish to honor her by attending to the work as she did herself. Literary critic F. R. Leavis likens the good reader to "the ideal executant musician, the one who, knowing it rests with him to re-create in obedience to what lies in black print on the white sheet in front of him, devotes all his trained intelligence, sensitiveness, intuition, and skill to re-creating, reproducing faithfully what he divines his composer essentially conceived."

I want my students not to be satisfied with the gist of things. I want them to be challenged, to challenge themselves. I want them to find ideas compelling and never casual, to become so well-read, so familiar with words and ideas, that even casual reading will no longer be truly casual, even when it seems to be, because the heart takes in depths of which the mind may not be consciously aware. (Those detective novels make me think about justice, love, betrayal . . .)

And here I find myself back in sympathy with Dillard, as I often am, when she says of her writing students after one of her passionate rants about what it takes to be committed to writing as a career: "They thought I was raving again. It's just as well."

On Confusion and Learning

"You have to be confused before you can reach a new level of understanding anything." -- Dudley Herschbach, Nobel Prize winning chemist from Harvard

If one were never confused, one would never need to learn anything.

Now, if I can just convince my students that confusion is not necessarily a bad thing -- help them learn to use it as a catalyst for learning. But it means a willingness to trust the one who brings on the confusion and an ability to spend a certain amount of time (maybe a little, but maybe a lifetime) in a state of negative capability.

And another semester begins.

Why We Teach

Richard Weaver, writing in Ideas Have Consequences in 1948:

"There is no difficulty in securing enough agreement for action on the point that education should serve the needs of the people. But all hinges on the interpretation of needs; if the primary need of man is to perfect his spiritual being and prepare for immortality, then education of the mind and passions will take precedence over all. [Weaver refers to a liberal arts education here, not particularly a religious education.] The growth of materialism, however, has made this a consideration remote and even incomprehensible to the majority. Those who maintain that education should prepare one for living successfully in this world have won a practically complete victory. Now if it were possible to arrive at a sufficiently philosophical conception of success, there would still remain room for idealistic goals, and attempts have been made to do something like it by defining in philosophical language what constitutes a free man. Yet the prevailing conception is that education must be such as will enable one to acquire enough wealth to live on the plane of the bourgeoisie. That kind of education does not develop the aristocratic virtues. It neither encourages reflection nor inspires a reverence for good.

"In other words, it is precisely because we have lost our grasp of the nature of knowledge that we have nothing to educate with for the salvation of our order. Americans certainly cannot be reproached for failing to invest adequately in the hope that education would prove a redemption. They have built numberless high schools, lavish in equipment, only to see them, under the prevailing scheme of values, turned into social centers and institutions for improving the personality, where teachers, living in fear of constituents, dare not enforce scholarship. They have built colleges on an equal scale, only to see them turned into playgrounds for grown-up children or centers of vocationalism and professionalism. Finally, they have seen pragmatists, as if in peculiar spite against the very idea of hierarchy, endeavoring to turn classes into democratic forums, where the teacher is only a moderator, and no one offends by presuming to speak with superior knowledge.

"The formula of popular education has failed democracy because democracy has rebelled at the thought of sacrifice, the sacrifice of time and material goods without which there is no training in intellectual discipline. The spoiled-child psychology [. . .] has sought a royal road to learning. In this way, when even its institutions of learning serve primarily the ends of gross animal existence, its last recourse to order is destroyed by appetite."

One could certainly pen the same words today. Of course there are schools and teachers who understand education to be for more than material gain. But the prevailing philosophy remains the same as that which Weaver described six decades ago. Even colleges which hold to a higher ideal than material gain are every day making decisions about admissions, retention, curriculum, programs, etc. based on whether these will attract students who want to get a piece of paper to get a job, losing sight of their ideals not in the big picture but in the details -- but, of course, it is in the details where the battle for liberal education will be won or lost. As long as the bottom line -- for the college or for the students who attend it -- remains the primary concern (instead of a vision and enough trust in the Lord that He can make the vision reality), we will continue to lose the most important battle we are here to fight.

Meanwhile, those of us who still believe in the vision of a liberal arts education from a specifically Christian perspective are preparing to face another set of young people, many of whom have been spoiled by their culture into thinking college should be primarily lots of fun, leading to a high-paying job without much effort on their part. May we find ways to challenge them out of that cultural morass of lies into a world of deeper satisfactions through the discipline of mind that John Henry Newman calls for in The Idea of a University.

"Feeling Unabstracted"

Some thoughts stimulated by yesterday's quote from Gardner: "True art is a conduit between body and soul, between feeling unabstracted and abstraction unfelt."

The YM and I have been reading Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences this summer. One thing Weaver stresses is the need for "abstraction" -- for what he calls a "metaphysical dream" (a worldview that takes into account something above and beyond us) -- in order to place the physical observations we make and experiences we have in a context which gives our lives meaning and purpose. He was objecting in particular, in 1948, to the philosophy of nominalism, the emphasis on the material world as all there is which leads to materialism and desire for comfort, ease, physical well-being above all else.

Nominalism, for all that I understand it is not accepted in philosophical circles these days, has made its mark well on our culture, and I would say that most of us probably, practically speaking, pretty much live as though the material world is all that is (or all that matters, anyway). (Patrick Henry Reardon has a good article on this at Touchstone.)

But even more than material goods and comfort, we seem to have moved to an idolatry of emotional well-being these days. One sees it everywhere, but I am always discouraged by my observations on this Christian campus. The large majority of our students certainly claim to have a "metaphysical dream," to embrace the Christian worldview as a foundation for their lives. Yet a significant portion of them live in a world of emotional reaction devoid of any clear connection to that supposed foundation.

So long as they are "happy," then all is well. If a chapel service makes them cry and lift their hands and laugh and feel warm and fuzzy about their faith, then all is well. Never mind that they might have stayed up half the night playing video games or blogging at myspace or texting with someone in the next room, then started on their homework at 3:00 a.m. and come to classes late, sleepy, and unprepared. What does that have to do with faith?

And if we dare to point this out, they resent our "attack" on their "walk with the Lord," which is obviously fine because it makes them feel happy (or, in some cases, it has made them feel sad, and that's also good because feeling sad is the same as repentence, right? Then they can feel happy about having felt sad and thus feel happy about themselves again).

"Feeling unabstracted." "Abstraction unfelt." This is where they live. Their feelings are self-justified, their claimed foundation moves them not at all. Or, rather, they confuse their feelings with the worldview itself.

How does one battle this? I think that Gardner is right, that it must come through art somehow. (Yes, yes, I know that it is the Holy Spirit --but how can He work if we give Him nothing to work with? "How shall they hear without a preacher?") Some, of course, will "get it" from a clear exposition of what they are doing to themselves. But most won't listen or can't hear it this way.

And we have so little time to reach them through art. One course in literature. One novel in another required course. It's not enough, and most of them don't and won't read more -- or won't read any better works than the junk that passes for literature in the Christian community today, which only affirms their wrong understanding of faith.

If art is the answer, if art is the conduit, then we must somehow find a way to reach them with true art so that it can have its effect. And I don't see how that will happen, here or anywhere else.

"[G]iving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love" (2 Peter 1:5).

In art lies the means for inculcating virtue, not just in preaching it from the parental or church pulpit. If our art is not virtuous, or if we silence our best artists by refusing to read their works, how will we understand and desire to practice virtue? And without virtue, knowledge is dangerous, and we will not add to it self-control and the rest, but we will only add to it more self-centered manipulations of the world to gain "happiness."

I really believe this. And right now it is making me despair. So few, so few that we can reach . . .

On a Criminal Minds re-run the other night, Gideon said to Hotch, who was near despair about the apparent futility of their work, "Save one life, save the world." I guess I will have to embrace that philosophy, because it's all one person can do at a time.

On Commitment

Some of us have been exploring the concept of Christian liberal arts education this summer, and in one of the books we've been reading, Arthur F. Holmes' The Idea of a Christian College, we found some comments I may start including on my syllabi:

"The pursuit of truth [. . .] carries with it certain moral prerequisites: the willingness and determination to learn, intellectual honesty, a self-discipline that makes lesser and more selfish satisfactions wait."

The student needs to understand that "education is a Christian vocation, one's prime calling for these years, that education must be an act of love, of worship, of stewardship, a wholehearted response to God. Attitude and motivation accordingly afford but a beginning: this personal contact between faith and learning should extend to disciplined scholarship and to intellectual and artistic integrity."

"How a student may feel about a teacher or administrator or about rules and requirements is secondary to his moral commitment to [the] task [of education]. I do not expect students to like everything about me or my courses or the college, but I do expect them to be committed to gaining an education. It is that which qualifies them as members of an academic community."

I would say that if a young person doesn't have these attitudes toward education, he will be better off finding a different task for the present. This will not, however, remove from him the need for commitment and self-discipline.

Because, clearly, one can change the "college education" of Holmes' remarks to any task whatsoever and the admonitions still apply. Whatever one sets out to learn, whatever one wishes to accomplish in life, these attitudes of commitment to the task are paramount, or mediocrity will be the earned reward. As Richard Weaver points out in Ideas Have Consequences, this is a hard concept to sell to a culture which has rejected transcendentals, lives for comfort, and expects the rewards of excellence without work.

Pray for the parents and teachers who are trying to counteract what everything around us teaches the young people entrusted to our care.

Slow Learner

Freshman Composition is the toughest class I teach. I don't know anyone who teaches it regularly who is ever entirely satisfied with any particular semester. The highest praise I've ever heard has been "It was okay, but . . ." I'm not sure why this is the case, except that there is so much we need to accomplish in just one or two semesters, and because teaching writing is not teaching information but teaching skills and performance, and the same techniques never work quite the same way with different students and even different mixes of students. After a few years one learns never to assume that because an activity was a stellar success this semester it will infallibly work the next. And there is always the matter of which readings will be most accessible, challenging, and helpful for each skill being taught; the book edition is likely different, with one's favorite readings no longer available, or one wonders if the students might respond better to different topics . . .

However, there are of course basic concepts one always addresses; it's the how, not the what, that causes our angst. I developed a basic structure years ago which I find the most helpful in building those concepts over the semester. (There is, of course, no textbook which follows this structure and/or defines its parts the way I do.) So every summer as I plan for the fall, I jot down this structure and then begin inserting specific assignments, activities, etc. into the daily schedule. Usually I'll forget part of the structure at first and have to start the planning over; then during the semester I'll forget that I had a handout or activity that would probably have helped this particular class with some specific skill until we're well past that point. In other words, I'm thoroughly organized but don't always remember that I am.

(I understand this is a quality of intuitive types. It's not bad, really, just inconvenient, kind of like having no concept of time, another intuitive trait I muddle along with.)

But God has a sense of humor. Last week a young lady asked if I could give her some tips on teaching her high-school aged brother composition this summer. Sure, I said, thinking of my well-defined structure; come on by. And then I realized that if I typed out that structure with brief explanations and a list of the handouts and activities that I use under each section, it would be really helpful to her and easy to explain . . . So, yes, after all these years, I am finally actually putting all this in writing so that it's readily available -- to me -- at any time . . . and, yes, I do feel a fool.

It won't make the class any easier to teach. But maybe the planning will take a few minutes less, and I won't forget as many possibilities as I have already available. Now, if I could make myself do the same for the second semester . . . but that might be asking rather too much for one lesson learned, to apply it elsewhere.

Aeolian Carpings

Some quotes from an underground newsletter of the English graduate students at a university which will remain nameless in order to protect the guilty:

Random Aphorism: You can lead a horse to water, give him lots of handouts on thirst and dehydration, present examples of quaffing in class, e-mail him reminders to imbibe, post notes and drinking assignments on Blackboard, call him in for one-on-one conferences on the shoreline, and send him to the Drinking Center for every assignment, but you can't make him drink.

Found: one medium-sized brain, gray, filled with facts about Victorian literature. Please claim in the faculty lounge refrigerator.

TA an Expert in Margin Manipulation Detection: "It's a gift,"he says.

Frustrated Instructor Resorts to Using Taser in Class: Says "Students are responding well to technology."

Emergency "Staple Requisition Route" Maps to be Posted in Every Classroom: TA says, "It's about time!"

Title of the annual interdisciplinary conference: "([Dis]Mi/ys)teyr (Post [Dis]Course(s) (?): (Un[Dis{P(Re)}])Establishing (!) ([Anti[De])flection(s) on [sic] His/Her(story/i)cal (Post[colon{:}]ial) (Hyper)Text(ual) Margin([al]s) :-)"


The long articles are even better, but I'd best be careful not to tempt the copyright fates, as someone I know is responsible for the publication . . . :) I just wish I could write this kind of thing myself; it makes me so jealous when I read it!

Nancy L. Walker, RIP

(written Saturday, 2 December 2006)

Nancy died day before yesterday. I sat numbed in front of the computer screen for a quarter of an hour, thinking again and again, "I never made the cross-stitch I'd planned for her."

How arrogant and foolish to put off kindnesses, thinking there will be time. We have no idea how much time there will be, and I never told her how much a part of me she is.

Nancy Walker was my colleague, director of the writing program and writing teacher, at Southwest Missouri State University (now Missouri State). It was my first full-time position out of graduate school, half-time teaching and half-time directing the new writing center. She was kind to this nervous 30-something who'd never intended to work outside the home; she made me feel not only welcome but competent, belonging in this alien place.

A short, petite woman, she dressed "professionally feminine" -- well-tailored dresses and heels that raised her above the lectern (if she ever used one). I sat in on one of her graduate-level writing classes; a dynamo with cropped greying hair and reading glasses perched on her nose, her heels tapping constantly about the room, she challenged, delighted, and encouraged, drawing from us our best. She didn't have to look at my work, as I wasn't a student, but she did -- many written comments and then the concentrated attention to help me make a piece publishable, my first.

It was during those four years at SMSU that I finally accepted the identity of "writer" that had been a reality since I learned to scratch my name on kindergarten lined paper. And it was Nancy who helped me see that the reflective essay is my genre. That in itself might have been a career-killer, we both knew, but she never discouraged me from following the gift given.

I left SMS for many reasons, one among them being my absolute inability to justify sacrificing my time, energy, and identity for academic writing. One of the greatest gains from those years was the courage to embrace a gift -- and in that courage Nancy will remain with me, leaving the world not quite as empty as it felt when I first read the message of her death.

May it please God that she rest in peace.