I did things in reverse this morning. Drank coffee in the pre-dawn dark and then walked at dawn. Don’t particularly know why. I guess I just felt like doing something different and see what it would feel like after a decade of doing it the other way. I’m going back to the pre-dawn walking.

Anyway, picture this: It’s about 5:00 a.m. I was lingering, feeling lonely since my Susan is still in Charlotte, being still, observing, sitting by the fish pond in the 45 degree chill of the pre-dawn morning. Wisps of steam rose like swamp gas from my mellowing freshly brewed coffee. I was swaying to and fro on the glider thinking about the rippling impact Lacy has had beyond this campus. She certainly still is touching me. I had been taken back to that class as I was reading a book last night that spoke of the renown geneticist and Nobelist, Barbara McClintock. She was a very precise empirical observer and analytical thinker who studied DNA in corn. And yet, she said that in great science you have to somehow have to have “a feeling for the organism.” She said that she learned to be involved with and nudge up to the kernel, “lean into it,” and “think like corn.” She used her combined reason and intuition in a way that led to breakthrough scientific discoveries. As I read that passage, the image came to mind of Michaelangelo listening to the life in that cracked, supposedly useless block of marble speaking to him as he chiseled out the David. These thoughts mingled with the contents of two juxtaposing e-mails I had opened about hour earlier which were in response to my Random Thought about Lacy. One was an inviting “well, it’s been a while; I’m waiting for another word” e-mail from Kenny. The other was an uncomplimentary one from a professor who accused me of being a “pathogenic New Age Typhoid Mary.”

My thoughts turned to the dark sky. It was turning into the purple of a fading bruise. Smudges of reds, oranges, gold, blues, whites appeared. Their richness began to deepen. That wonder of color was promising herald of the coming of a greater and life-sustaining light. That light broke through, finally, as the awesome disk of the sun inched above the horizon and turned the trees into spidery silhouettes. And the power and subtlety of what I now saw came into full view. The spiritual power became evident. I felt myself slipping out of my head and mind and into my heart and spirit. It’s a feeling of overwhelming astonishment, of affectionate beauty, of childlike surprise, of great humility, and of a reverent touch by the spirit of life. And, as I got up to take my walk, I thought how so many of us get this same feeling when we’re walking through a forest, strolling along a beach, meandering in a meadow, floating on a calm sea. And yet, how is it that so few of us get this same feeling when we stroll across our campus or walk into a classroom.

You know the questions we don’t know how to answer tend to be the questions that get under our skin. I stumbled on and over such a question last week. At the end of Monday class, after we had finished presenting the “Bruce Springstein” project, a student asked me if spirituality belonged in education in response to my comment that every community “caught the spirit” of the project.

All this on the very day I had opened my report from my particular Strategic Planning Committee to the University Planning Council with something to the effect, “Let’s get spiritual.” I almost felt as if I was sounding like Alanis Morisette.  No, I felt as if I heard Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel whispering in my ear, “Be spiritually audacious.”

As I walked in the early daylight, all this converged on a word for Kenney like wagon spokes into a hub. It is a very much maligned word in the intellectual world of academia: spirituality.

Now, what did I mean when I told the Council I was going to get spiritual. I’m not sure. Spirituality is so ethereal. It’s like an accordion that can be stretched to be inclusive and compressed to be excluding. I’m not sure what the members of the Council thought. I certainly wasn’t going to turn my collar around, turn the dais into a pulpit, and give them a fist-banging, fire and brimstone sermon. And, I certainly wasn’t going to sit down, cross my legs, touch fingers, and hum a meditating chant. I wouldn’t fault them if they thought I would. So many of us intellectuals are so into our “objective” heads, we don’t like that word. We restrict our understanding of it to a withdrawn monasticism, to a non-rational or irrational mysticism, to an otherworldliness, to something called New Age, to contemplation or meditation, to the conjuring occult, or to just old-time religion. Many, such as that uncollegeal professor, feel that it just doesn’t have a proper place on our campuses, fearing it has some pathological effect on academic intellectual matters. It is as if to speak of spirituality in academia would be a violation of the First Amendment of an Academic Bill of Rights that requires a separation of head and heart.

Nevertheless, during the past decade I have come to the conclusion that spirituality is a good word to associate with education no less than rationality. For me spirituality is what I’ll call a “heart-knowledge.” It is kind of gentleness and humility and compassion and respect. For me, spirituality is my juice in the battery without which I would be sitting in the parking lot going nowhere. It is my sense of wonderment and beauty. It’s the energizing and guiding “why” to my “how” and “what.” It is my sense of meaning and purpose. It does seem senseless to commit yourself to doing something without some view of why you’re doing it and what it’s value may be. After all, what I do each day has to be the embodiment of what I value most deeply. It has to be renewed each day; it has to be in front of me each day; it has to be behind me prodding each day; it has to offer an awareness of purpose. It’s the expression of my deepest held values; it is that sense of higher purpose that guides my daily life; it is that which guides my thoughts, directs my actions and creates my world. It is that which poses questions: Who am I? Where am I going? How will I get there? What is the picture of the future I wish to create? How do I want to act? What do I believe in? What kind of person do I want to be? What kind of person do I want to graduate? What is the meaning and purpose of it all? What makes all the work worthwhile?

The answers won’t come in a Damascus moment bathed in light with some voice unfolding in a divine vision. The answers are not events. They are a journey, an experience, an on-going and never-ending process that you have to work at each day if you want it to work out. I have to spend a lot of time alone asking myself some tough questions. It’s hard. It’s about being honest. It’s about what really matters. It’s about why I am looking and asking in the first place. It’s about whether I am prepared to see and listen. For some, it will be looking heavenward; for others it will be like looking into the bowels of hell; for still others it will be a feeling of serenity; for even others it will be a painful and uncomfortable headache. All this is all very important because we become what we think about, how we think about, and how we see things and others. It is that Talmudic adage that we do not see things as they are but we see things as we are. It is important because without meaning, what we do–information gathering, discovery, information transmission–is shallow and unimportant.

I remember when I first was confronted with the reality that I was swimming amid the dangerous rocks in the shallows. When I first heard my inner voice on that October morning in 1991, the first painful realization was that, my Ph.D. and being a tenured professor not withstanding, I was in a disguised rut placed there by fear, weakened self-confidence, low self-esteem, and a strong sense of failure. Then, slowly it hit me what I should be doing. And, I have since struggled to do, not by leaps and bounds, but in small steps–small continuing steps. In spite of how I felt at that moment, I discovered that I was more tenacious than I thought. I discovered my abilities, concentrated on repairing the worst things in me, and focused also on building the best qualities in me. It was like molting and shedding the old skin of “what’s wrong with me” to wearing a new skin of a “what’s right about me.” I slowly stopped wrongly focusing my wrongs and slowly rightly began to build my rights. I redeployed by abilities that I always knew I had: creativity and imagination. I began to develop abilities and attitudes which I didn’t realize I had: compassion, passion, love, kindness, sympathy, empathy, authenticity, honesty, respect, patience.  This was the first step on a long journey to transforming from a distant pontificating, scholarly, published professor into an engaged loving classroom teacher.

I began to see that educating people is more than filling a void. It’s more than merely offering a stack of information. It’s more than merely developing analytical skills. Education is about nurturing potential. It is about strengthening strengths and helping students overcome their weaknesses. It about focusing on human strength and virtue as well as on academic rigor. It’s about unconditionally seeing each student as a dynamic “human ‘becoming'” rather than a static human being.  We need to help students learn how to live as well as how to make a living. It doesn’t take much to see, if you’re looking, that there are human strengths that act in both realms, that act as breakwaters against the storms of life: courage, optimism, interpersonal skill, faith, work ethic, confidence, self-esteem, belief, hope, honesty, perseverance, commitment, respect, kindness, to name a few. A student who has people skills and communication skills, who has faith in and hope for him- or- herself is less at risk for failure and is more resilient in the face of failure.

And, whatever that spirituality is, it cannot, it must not, be lost or rationalized away in the expediency of the accountable and assessing and quantifying moment. It is, after all, the blueprint of what is most important to us. If you believe in compassion, kindness, selflessness, sensitivity, aliveness, enthusiasm, patience, respect, exuberance, finding purpose, meaningfulness, risk-taking, uniqueness, awareness, amazement, respect, hope, honesty, love, faith, and serving, you have to practice them daily. Wherever you go and whatever you do and whenever you do, they should be there. Spirituality is a wakefullness, an inspiration, a breathing of life, a sharpening, a deepening, a broadening and an exercising of these deeply-held beliefs. It is what I call an “abundant mentality.” It may be what Martin Seligman would call “positive psychology.” It may be what Norman Vincent Peale called “the power of positive thinking.” It is what Rabbi Joshua Abraham Heschel would call “spiritual audacity” and “radical amaement.”  That’s why I have subtitled the two published collections of RANDOM THOUGHTS “The Humanity of Teaching” and “Teaching From The Heart,” and have subtitled the two forthcoming volumes: “Teaching With Love” and “Teaching With Passion. Spirituality by any other name….

In any event, spirituality is the deepest of pedagogies. There’s no mystery to it. I realized that, as I wrote in the introduction to the forthcoming fourth volume of published Random Thoughts, “It is not a lecture that makes the difference. It is not another assignment of a research paper that makes the difference. It is not another book read that makes the difference. I am convinced that real teaching and sticky learning develops from a much broader place than a subject. What makes the difference is engaging hearts for a meaningful future. Students will change when they are emotionally engaged and committed.” As the adage goes: students may not remember what you say; they may not remember what you did; they will vividly remember how you made them feel.

Among the stuff hanging from one of the ledges of my computer desk is this a quote. “The best thing for being sad is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails….That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting,” Merlin tells young Arthur in Theodore White’s THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING. And yet, so often on our campuses, what passes for learning frightens, diminishes, disrespects. Grading, standardizing, the herding of students from room to room, sorting out, labeling, the extraordinary influence of business leaders in what goes on in our classrooms doesn’t infuse a vibrancy on our campuses. It is an imposition of a mechanistic, social discipline, social efficiency that fosters a mindless competition rather than a sense of connection and community.

Some more hard questions: Why has the life in such words as “education,” “teaching,” “learning” been sucked out? Why are those words and the things they point to as spiritless as “grades,” “GPA,” and “SAT?” Why have students had their child-like curiosity and love of learning stripped from them by the very process that is supposed to enhance those gifts? Why is education so often death-dealing rather than life-giving? Why is education more synonymous with suffocation than with resuscitation? Why is education, contrary to its meaning, thought more as a stuffing in than a calling forth? Why do students graduate with an escaping sense of “whew, it’s finally over” than with an expectant sense of commencement? Look around. Too many students have their natural gifts of curiosity, daring, adventure, love of learning taken away from them by the very process that is supposed to accentuate and stimulate them.

If we are going to talk of spirituality, I think we have to take into account six realities. First, each student is a very complicated and complex individual person with more interlacing and interacting lives than the one-dimensional label “student” allows. Second, each student’s thinking and feeling and way of relating to the things and others in the world is unique and changes over time. Third, no one learns the same thing on the same day at the same rate. Fourth, the aim of education is to cultivate a multicity of meaningful relationships and a sense of community, to learn how to live and play out the many roles we each have and not just how to earn a living. Fifth, you can’t reduce education to a single technique or to standardization. And finally, each student is a sacred human being, a “work” of beauty and wonder, a piece of the future, worthy of our respect, and commanding a “radical amazement” of her or him.

I think a teacher who intertwines a spirituality with hard academics is one who is not just knowledgeable. He or she abides by these five principles, is at peace with him- or herself, whose life goals are not built around material success, who has deep personal integrity, who has an inner calm, and who often seems completely at home on the beach, in the woods and fields, as well in the classroom. People who have a sense of spiritual peace tend to smile, feel compassion, notice others, and enjoy the moment. They lose interest in conflict, and they don’t worry. They are not self-centered. They have a sense of service. And, they are resonating.  They are incessantly “radical amazed.”  They constantly swim in the ocean of  “spiriutal audacity.”

And the students? It’s not different. Don’t forget, as Daniel Goleman would remind us in his PRIMAL LEADERSHIP, when people–and that includes us–feel good, they work at their best. Good spirits, good work. Being noticed has a better chance of yielding notable work. Upbeat spirits lubricate mental and physical activity and performance. The more the Lacys are optimistic about themselves, the more creative, the more imaginative, the more helpful, the more accomplishing they have a chancing of being. It’s common sense.

Spirituality is like a contagious yawn. I have found from my own experience that the depth of one’s spirituality–a reflective life, attention to balance, an authentic self, a deep sense of service to others, a feeling of something greater than oneself, optimism and hopefulness, not only affirm the value of these experience–it rubs off and is a significant factor in students’ and teachers’ growth and well-being.

Ah, were we to be educators like the once often maligned Barbara McClintock–before she was awarded the Nobel Prize–as she was once described: to know there are mysteries, to know where the mysteries are, to be a mystic who does not mystify.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

What a walk this morning. Finally, I was given long distance permission by my angel to hit the streets. Beat the thunder, lightning, wind, and torrenial downpour. If I hadn’t, I surely would have landed in Oz. It was only a tad dense. I didn’t really notice either the coolness or the dampness or the soupiness this dark, foggy morning. It just felt good walking the streets. I felt like I was moving through the opaque darkness seamlessly engaged in a spirit dance. I was concentrating on a rhythm I’ve hearing over and over and over again, “cogito ergo sum,” “cogito ergo sum,” “cogito ergo sum.” It was like experiencing mobile drumming. I’ve had that three beat cadence inside me for almost two weeks. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. Why would I? It is a beat that has been giving me a sense of rapture and joy, of awe and wonder, of amazement, and of such serenity.

“Cogito Ergo Sum.” It translates from the Latin as: “I think, therefore, I am.” That’s what Rene Decartes, the 17th century mathematician/philosopher postulated as he struggled to reconcile faith and reason, traditional religion and the new kid on the block called science. For almost two weeks, I had been giving this seminal proposition my own pretzel-like twist and thinking about the blanks Decartes left in that statement. That is, just what is it that I think? First I have a thought, then I act on that thought; first I have a belief, then there is a consequence of that belief; first a thought, then a result to that thought. That is, I think _________, therefore I am __________: “I think I am happy, therefore I am happy.” “I think I am frustrated, therefore I am frustrated.” “I think I am creative, therefore I am creative.” “I think I am too busy, therefore I am too busy.” “I think I have time to relax by my pond, therefore I have time to relax before my pond.” “I am angry, therefore I am angry.” “I am peaceful, therefore I am peaceful.” “I think I am small and insignificant, therefore I am small and insignificant.” Whatever I choose to think, therefore I am.

I’m getting ahead of my story. We have to go back eleven days.

It was a Tuesday, the day of the “Picasso Project.” This project was a new “let’s see what will happen with this one” idea I had. The entire class was to paint a twenty foot long abstract Guernica-like mural depicting the themes, issues, and events of the chapter on Reconstruction. The students rushed into the room and pushed the desks to the four walls. Their piles of coats, back packs and “stuff” resembled a Salvation Army drop-off center. I rolled out the butcher paper the full length of the classroom and bedlam broke out. The noise! The movement! The students pounced on the paper like ravenous predators. Along the full length of the paper, on both sides, they swarmed like ants along a honey trail. They huddled in their communities, bent over on their haunches, went to their hands and knees, enjoyed laughed, talked, discussed, jumped about, ran around, translated words and concepts into images, questioned, answered, argued, learned from each other, cooperated, coordinated, paged through the books, pointed their fingers at sentneces, lauded each other, organized, taught each other, twisted their faces in problem-solving contortions, concentrated, figured-out, drew, colored in, applauded, hurled markers at each other. Every time someone yelled out a “Can we….” someone else quickly shouted it down with a “Remember the chair!” It was a creative cacaphony. And the mural took shape.

It was happening fast and furious, faster and more furious than I thought it would. It didn’t look like the project was going to take the two days I had schedule during the previous class’ “housekeeping” session. I was in a bind. I didn’t want to waste a day. And yet, I didn’t want to cut anyone off at their creative legs. Then, one of those miraculous moments that you pray for and dare not hope will ever happen happened.

As I was standing at one end of the mural, diminutive and very quiet Lacey “secretly” slid up to my side in a way that she hoped no one would notice her. In a low nervous whisper, she said, “Dr. Schmier, this project isn’t going to take two days. We’ll just procrastinate on Thursday to put off Tidbits. Why don’t you tell them that they have to finish the project is today and we’ll do Tidbits on Thursday.”

“Yeah, you’re right. You won’t need another day. Why don’t you tell them,” I quietly answered with a soft smile.

Horrified at my unexpected answer, she almost stuttered in a self-defeating agonized voice, “Oh, they wouldn’t listen to me.”

I pantomimed by response by pointing to the “Words of the Day” on the board. She turned her heard to read them once again: “Do ordinary things in an extraordinary way and the result will be extraordinary.” I had selected these words as the theme for the mural. I hadn’t thought it would the theme for Lacey.

With a pained and frightened “oh, my god” expression flooding her face, she went taut, “Oh, I couldn’t do that!”

“Why?”

“I’m so ordinary, no one would listen to me. No one ever has,” showing how “small” Lacey had disempowered herself with small thoughts about herself.

Without thinking, and I still don’t know why I said it, I replied to her quietly, “Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. If you think you are ordinary, you will be ordinary. Do you want to remain ordinary?”

“I’m shy,” she answered with a non-answer

“So you say. What if you’re being held back only by what’s in your spirit. Do you like being shy?”

“No”

“Cogito ego sum. I think whatever, therefore I am whatever. You fill in the blank ‘whatever. It’s your choice to think whether you’re shy or not. Whatever you think most about is exactly what you’ll get and what you’ll start to be! If you start thinking you’re not shy….. Cogito ergo sum.”

“I’m just a little nothing girl. No one has ever noticed me.”

“Cogito ergo sum. Do you want to be a ‘nothing little girl?'”

“No.”

“Then, here’s your chance to stop being one. Cogito ergo sum. I think I am just a ‘nothing little girl, I am a ‘nothing little girl. I think I am a something tall woman, I am a tall something woman.”

“It’s not that simple. I’ve always been that way.”

“Maybe. Maybe ‘always been’ is not the same as ‘forever.'”

“It’s hard. You do it for me. You tell them what I said.”

“You want the easy way out. You want to hide behind me and let me use my authority for you. You want me to voice my agreement with you so they will listen to you when actually they’ll be listening to me. Won’t do it. Either you say something or we’ll waste a day. Cogito ergo sum.”

“I’m scared.”

“It’s okay to have scare. Don’t let the scare have you. Remember when I told the class about my epiphany? If you think it’s hopeless, it seems hopeless, and it will be hopeless. I found I could turn hopeless into hopeful. It was only my belief, my thought, that said it is hopeless. I struggled to change my belief. It wasn’t easy, but that is what it took. Cogito ergo sum.”

“They may not like me after I say something.” Another defensive weapon pulled from her arsenal.

I parried. “It’s risky. There may be a tomato or two. Then again, there may not be. Trust them and trust yourself. Cogito ergo sum.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Don’t you think it’s impossible?”

“Do you. Remember what I once said, ‘Impossible things are done every day.'”

Oh, she wanted to take that leap. She looked around for some kind of help. Then, it started to happen. Another student, Kim, leaning over the mural had been listening. Without lifting her head and talking to the paper, she interrupted, “Lacey, you’re right.” Lacy looked at her stunned. Then, another student on the other side of the paper looked up, “I agree. Go ahead tell everyone. We’ll here behind you. We’ll support whatever you say.”

Lacey looked at me with a “what will I do” look. She was on the edge of the cliff. I answered with an encouraging go for it, soar high “Cogito ergo sum.”

Slowly, I thought I notice her starting to transform and “mount up with wings like eagles.” Slowly, I thought I saw her daring to believe she would be heard more than she had ever been heard before, to think it was possible to soar higher than she ever soared before and to dream bigger dreams. and fulfill a calling that we never thought possible. Breath by breath, I dared not to think I saw her strengthen herself to have the ability to do far more than she ever thought possible before.

“Okay,” she gasped. So did I.

Kim screamed out, “Hey, quiet down. Lacey has something to say.”

Kim nodded encouragement. Then, I saw Lacey jump off the ledge, fly into the wind, lift herself above her turbulence, and soar like an eagle farther and higher and better than she ever thought possible before.

“Hey, we’re just about finished. Let’s be honest. We don’t really need another day. We can still do Tidbits Thursday like they were originally scheduled. Why don’t we spend about ten minute of Thursday to put the finishing touches to the mural. We ought to hang it somewhere on campus. So, let’s decide that on Thursday and hang it. Then, we’ll come back and do Tidbits.”

To her amazement, not one tomato came hurling at her. She didn’t become a target for one dart of objection. She didn’t see one sneer or gnarl. All she heard was a chorus of smiling and agreeing “you’re right,” “good idea,” “okay,” “I was thinking the same thing,” “let’s do that.”

When class broke, I saw students come up to Lacey. “That took guts.” “I could never have done it.” “Good job.” A couple of them gave her a tight congratulatory hug.

As Lacey walked towards me I could have sworn she grew a bunch of inches. She was beaming. All I said, “Cogito ergo sum. Started growing in that something tall women today?”

She nodded and replied, “I’m going to journal about this.”

In her journal, which she gave me permission to share, she wrote:

I learned that no matter how small or afraid you are, to do
something just do it. If you don’t take the risk, you will
never live or know what you missed. On the way home, I was
listening to a Garth Brooks cd and he has a line in a song
that goes–life is not tried it’s merely survived if you’re
standing outside the fire. In a way, it applies. I like
to ‘stand outside the fire’ and look at other people make
a stand. This time I jumped in the fire and stood up for
what I believe in. I was a leader!

As I have been thinking about this profound “wow” moment. I started wondering. If education is in trouble, it is not for lack of information; it is not for a lack technology; it is not for a lack of public concern; it certainly is not for a lack of testing. Maybe education’s woes rest on the fact that too many of us both inside and outside the ivory tower have swum out from of what I’ll call the “deep education” have beached ourselves in the shallows; maybe education’s woes rest on a lack of affirmation of the absolute uniqueness and dignity of every human being, and maybe it’s lost its sense of awe and marvel at each and every student and a sense of continuously renewed surprise at the wonder of each human life.

Sometime ago, I came across this prayer by Joshua Abraham Heschel. It’s hanging on the wall near my computer. I read it every morning before I head for the campus. I’m reading it now:

Dear Lord, grant me the grace of wonder.
Surprise me, amaze me, awe me in
every crevice of your universe. Each day
enrapture me with your marvelous things
without number……. I do not ask to see
the reason for it all: I ask only to share
the wonder of it all.”

A little less than two weeks ago that prayer was answered with Lacey.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–

I didn’t go walking this morning. Haven’t been on the pre-dawn streets for a few days. Grounded. Just because of some silly sniffles. And, though my angelic boss is away in Charlotte because of a family emergency, she left strict orders that I dare not disobey. She has hers spies. With all the viral crud that is ravaging the University like the Black Plague, I’m indoors when I’m not on campus. When I tried to protest that the sniffles were nothing, I got a glass of orange juice loaded with echinecea and a silent laser stare. And, I responded with a submissive and meek and obedient, “Yes, ma’am.”.

So, here I am. Alone, confined to the house, with a less than consoling cup of freshly brewed coffee as company. I have to admit that in itself wasn’t enough to ground my spirit. I have been soaring high for over a week. About ten days ago, during what we call the “Picasso Project”–a new one I am experimenting with–there occurred in class what I would describe as one of those mysteriously miraculous “What was that?” “Wow, “I want more of that!” “Let’s celebrate!!” moments.

The spirit was about to grab me and I was feeling that dance step in my fingers when I made the mistake of opening my mail box and I began to read what seemed to be the opening chapters of a long lost Dickens novel, “A Valentine’s Carol.” This “bah, humbug” mesage that hit me the wrong way. On this morning after Valentine’s day, I opened my mailbox to receive a very “unvalentine card” addressed to me. As I read it, I thought maybe Cupid had put the wrong stuff on the tip of his arrow. The message was from a professor who started her message with an abrupt “You always think the best of students and that they each have such potential. Well, let me show you….” She went on with a list of “they can’t write” student mistakes on an essay test she had just graded. You know, it was one after another of those “….according to students” bloopers that we all love to find in student’s words or actions and can’t wait to share. Maybe it was the juxaposition between what had happened to a self-described “nothing little girl” who started growing into an “important tall woman” in class and the not so subtle ridiculing, sarcastic and self-righteous “Look who they’re letting in these days” and a groaning “why me” tone of this professor’s heart-missing message.

Anyway, the “soaring miracle” will have to wait since this unloving message sent me “sore-ing.”

This professor’s message sent me back to synagogue last night. The central prayer of the Sabbath service is called the Amidah, the silent devotional. It ends with a not-so-gentle reminder and admonition that begins with these words: “Oh, Lord, Guard my tongue from evil, and my lips from speaking guile.” I’ve heard those words and have spoken them in open refrain for many a decade. This morning I suddenly saw their meaning.

There is a folk tale about a man who bloopered someone. Feeling guilty, he came to the rabbi to ask how he could be repentant and take back his words and the harm they’ve done.

“That’s a tough one,” said his rabbi.

“There must be something I can do?

“Let me think.”

A donation?

“Let me think!”

“What if I go to the person and beg forgiveness, and tell him what I’ve been saying about him behind his back?”

The rabbi thought for few minutes. “Tell you what, go home and bring me a feather pillow.”

“Whatever you tell me to do,” replied the bewildered man.

When he returned, the rabbi told him to take it outside, climb the nearby hill, and tear it open in the wind. “Once you’ve done that, come back.”

The even more bewildered man did as he was told and returned thinking that in some way the feathers acted as some strange ritual act of contrition.

“What happened when you ripped the pillow open?” asked the rabbi.

“What do you think?” the man exclaimed. “The feathers flew all over the place and scattered in every direction.”

“They sure did, didn’t they.” said the rabbi. “Now, I want you to go outside, collect all the feathers–every last one of them–put them back into the pillow, and then bring it to me as if you have never torn it open.”

“But that’s impossible,” said the man. “Now there’s no telling where all those feathers are.”

“Then, I’m sorry. I cannot help you.”

There’s go getting around it. Understand, that bloopering is speaking evil, and that it falls under the category of gossip and slander. Yeah, we’ve all done it, me included. And, we all excused it. Nevertheless, conscious or otherwise, it is a deliberate act of speaking guile. Insults, ridicule, jest, or anything that might cause another person harm, embarrassment or displeasure all are. As a caveat to her description of her students, maybe knowing there something amiss about what she was writing, this professor, trying to get out of it as we all do, said as an introduction, “Now, I believe in students, but…”

There is that neutralizing, mind-closing, discouraging, inflexible, unexciting “but.” It says, “erase what I just said.” Let’s be honest. By saying things like “I was only joking,” or “I didn’t mean anything by it,” or “It’s innocent and harmless humor,” or “It’s was nothing,” or “I did the same thing myself,” or “I wouldn’t mind if someone said that about me,” or “I’m not laughing at” are only forms of self deceit. It is something; it is not a random act of lovingkindness. It wasn’t joking around; you did mean something by it. It isn’t innocent or harmless; it’s sinful and harmful. Sure, you’re laughing at someone, and don’t tell me you would love to be the butt of laughter. It is all the evil tongue. None of it is said in delight. None of it is said as paens of praise. It’s all said with a moan at someone’s expense.

I know. Some are you are going to tell me to relax, stop being so uptight, get a life, and stop being so serious. Well, I am talking about life, someone’s life. And, I don’t apologize for being serious about something serious. Beware, what this professor and most of us have done is so dangerous. It insidiously dangerous because these very intentional destructive verbal predators are so easily disguised as innocent lambs. It is dangerous because it is roadkill, diseased carrion, that you ingest as if it were aged filet mignon. It is dangerous because the more you do it, the less you are. And, before you go off bloopering a students, remember something the sages said. There are three things for which a person is punished in this world and forfeits his position in the world to come. They are idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder; but an evil tongue is equal to all three put together! The sages also say that, the evil tongue destroys three people: the one who says the evil, the one who listens to it, and the one spoken about; and the one who listens to the evil tongue will be hurt more than the one who speaks with the evil tongue

No, we can’t use the frailities, or foibles of a student–or even of colleague, administrator, staff person–for our entertainment, idle enjoyment, or self-inflation. Words make reality. It doesn’t make sense. We wouldn’t put garbage in our mouths. So why do we put garbage in our ears and let it poison our hearts and minds? Such denigration only douses the sacred spark in ourselves and in each of those around us. It only shuts our eyes to wonder. It deadens our taste and prevents us from savoring. It’s as nourishing as fast-food. It forces us to plod lead-footed. We restrict our own boundaries. It makes us smaller. And with each wagging of an evil tongue, we ritualize all this purposelessness and meaninglessness.

I mean if you see something broken, fix it. If you see someone lost, help them find their way. If you see something that need to be done, do it–unless you really don’t want to be bothered doing any of that.

I dare us all, me especially, to see if we can make through a day without talking in such a hurtfulabout a student–and a colleague, and a staff person, and an administrator. See if we can make through a day without playing with someone else’s name or image. Just remember, every word we utter, continues to float on the wind like a feather long after we have shredded the pillow and walked down the hill.

Make it a good day.

–Louis–