Just returned from the Lilly North conference on collegiate teaching. Tired.  Exhilarated. Richer. Deeper. Poorer.  I say “poorer” because Susan’s “retail therapy” for her degenerative neck discs raised the economy of Traverse City by four points.  Epidurals haven’t work on her neck to ease the pain.  Accupuncture has been ineffective.  We’ve tried sacro-cranial massages and upper cranial chiropractic.  Nothing has, not even meds.  But,trying on a pair of ear rings or an outfit, and adding them to her fashion stash, sure did!  It was worth every dollar to see her smile and laugh. I guess, no guessing, that makes me richer in the important ways, and the heck with the bills.  Anyway, here I am, the “Monday after the weekend before,” what I call the most important day of any conference.  So, here I am, with a cup of freshly brewed coffee while the thundering rain outside is keeping me from my meditative pre-dawn streets thinking about just what is it about these Lilly conferences that is so alluring.  More specifically, just what is the Lilly way?  It’s more than a conference on teaching in higher education.  It’s more than leaving your egos on the doorstep.  It’s more than an “experience.”  It’s more than a “retreat.”  It’s more than a network of empathetic, sympathetic, loving (yes, loving), supporting, encouraging, and enlightening friends.  It’s all of those things–and more, so much more.  The Lilly way reminds us, tells us, that teaching, like life in general, is a living, breathing work of art; that we paint our canvas as we go; that we ourselves are a painting as we go; that we are not what we know but what we are willing to learn; that we each are not a static “am,” but a dynamic “becoming;” that each day is a new beginning.  Our assumptions and perceptions, those roots of our feelings, thoughts, and actions, the sources of our attributions of others are our windows both on the world and our inner selves.    Lilly helps us to scrub the obscuring dirt off the panes, so we can both see in and out, and let the light come in and go out.

Louis

Ah, a cool, inviting 65 degrees this morning.  Well, the dark, pre-dawn streets are for me one of the most sustaining and invigorating spiritual places I know.  Power walking on the  asphalt outside gets me to my inside where I confront my faults, think of the ultimate goals of my life and work, remind myself of the core principles I want to live by and the values I wish to guide me, and see how I am doing so far.  I do all that not to change others, for that I know I cannot do; I do all that to change myself, for  that I  know I can do.  That place, reinforced by my randomly selected “word for the day,” places my ideals unflinchingly before me and tells me the vision I have and the goals I strive toward. The fact that Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, that is coming upon us tonight only drives me deeper.

The central prayer of Yom Kippur, what’s called the Un’taneh Tokef, reminds us of our frailty, our mortality, and the painful uncertainty of living in the coming year.  Don’t I know that.  I have had another year I feel I should not have had.  I’ve been granted a profound gift of plenty:  Susan, my sons, their wives, my grandmunchkins, my friends, my colleagues, my students.  For each day, I am humbly grateful.  Why not.  After all, these High Holidays are  more of a looking to a coming year unplanned and of a time of “who knows what is to come.”  Each day, then, is like a two-handled urn.  One handle is the anxiety of tomorrow.  The other handle is one of rejoicing today.  Now, it is difficult if you pick up the urn solely with one handle or the other.  The urn was designed to be lifted by both handles.  The urn and handles are metaphors for everything–everything–in life.  No one’s professional or personal or social life is either all anxiety or all rejoicing because no one’s life is that straight, smooth, uniform, and predictable.  It has inevitable obstructions, windings, dips, bumps, and bends, as well as ups and downs.  Life often hands us the unplanned, the unwanted, the unprepared for, the uncontrollable.  If you pick up the handle of anxiety, you will become too fearful and frustrated, maybe even resigned and cynical; everything will live up to your expectations, and you will experience overwhelming sadness and grief.  If you pick up the handle of joyousness, you’ll become euphoric, dreamy; you will have your head in the clouds; you will totally idealize; nothing will live up to your expectations, and you’ll become jaded..  But, if we pick up the urn as intended, we’ll expect and accept the uncertain twists and turns of life.  How we deal with and adjust to the detours will determine our inner strength, the depth of our appreciation and gratitude, and the richness of our lives.

There’s a lasting lesson in Yom Kippur for us academics.  As academics we hold ourselves up as “masters of the answers;” we don’t like ambiguity; we think we can control.  But, I say that the proclamations of “I am certain” or “I know how,” the assertions of “I’ve got it” or “I’m there.” close minds, shut eyes, and clog ears.  Such arrogant exclamation marks can be a deadly cholesterol that obstructs the heart; the finality of such periods can lock doors that both shut people in and shut people out.  The need to know, the drive to be sure, the desire to have the question answered, creates an unyielding, and often self-devouring pressurized quest for order that doesn’t allow us to live patiently in the unanswered, unordered, and sometimes “you just don’t ask” now.  We can’t stand the “non-answer.”  Maybe that is the crux of academia’s problem:  all knowledge is prepared, that which we help students find has already been found; all experiences are prepared, for all experiences have been experienced; all problem solving is known, for all problems have been solved.  And yet, there is so much “yet to be” out there.  We prepare the students’ orderly minds loaded with book learning; do we prepare their whole selves for the unknown, for the slings and arrows, for the ups and downs of disheveled living that will render their book learning obsolete?

So, while I admit there may be a sense of uncomfortable and humbling powerlessness in uncertainty, there is also reassuring power.  Uncertainty can also mean living with grace and hope in the face “possibility,” and exercising choices to convert possibility into actuality.  That is the courage to teach!  That is “spiritual heroism!”  Do you know what I mean?  It’s not imposing control. It’s not asserting authority.  It’s not knowing.  It’s not the answer.  It’s not a guarantee.  It’s not safety.  It’s when you walk into that classroom, or anywhere for that matter, living gracefully and hopefully each new day in the face of unexperienced and uncontrolled “newness.”   We mistakenly believe that good teaching equals riskless certainty. It does not and cannot. We think good teaching means errorless performance.  It does not and cannot.  We think good teaching equals that sure-fire method or that magical technology.  It does not and cannot.  We assert that good teaching is teaching by the assessment numbers.  It is not and cannot.  Good teaching equals faith, and it’s the exercise of faith that makes us “spiritual heroes.”  It’s faith!  It’s a faith that gives us the courage to teach with uncertainty and possibility, being at ease welcoming the constant stream of “strangers” we call students into our midst, being in the same room with constantly “living questions” we call students.  It’s the constant question, “who are you,” not the answer, that leads us to be curious questers, to ask, to search, to experiment, to venture, to strive, to reach out.  It’s the question, not the answer, that offers us the choice to open ourselves up and teach with deep awareness, otherness, and service.  It is the question, not the answer, that allows us to take our hands out from our pockets to reach out with empathy, compassion, and connection.  Reading student journals, engaging with students, I have learned that when we establish a connection in the classroom, that connection becomes sacred.  It is then that we are doing what truly matters, then that we return to our highest selves and bring our values into both our and their lives; and then that we cut pathways to gratitude, deep satisfaction, inspired action, increasing joy, significance, meaning, integrity, and just living well.   And, when we caringly do all that with each student, we acknowledge her or his dignity, her or his uniqueness and worth, and that we truly care.

When Yom Kippur ends tomorrow at sundown, my good friend, Sidney Morris, will blow the shofar.  It is a long, coiled ram’s horn.  Sidney will have control over his lips and breath.  He has no control over the inner structure and outer curves of the shofar.  If he adapts the shape of his his lips and the pace of his breath to the twists and turns of the shofar, the ordinary air he blows into the small hole at one end will emerge as rich, piercing, trumpeting, “soul music” at the other end.  It is soulful because you feel its vibrations deeper than just in your ears. We hear the shofar in our hearts, in our souls, under our skin, with our eyes, in our brains, in our guts.  It is a metaphor of whether we handle or can’t handle the natural and inevitable unforeseen twists and turns of life.  Teaching, like life, is no different.

To my Jewish friends,  may you be inscribed & sealed in the Book of Life for the coming year.

Louis

Taking another break from my China Diary, and yeah, I know, I just shared a scattered page from the diary.  In my defense, it’s the reflective, sharing time of the Jewish High Holidays, and I am in a reflective and sharing mood.  So, please bear with me.  As I was in synagogue last week for Rosh Hashonah, what’s called “the Jewish New Year,” I engage it and let it challenge me to revisit my life.  I felt myself getting into me, drifting inexplicably from my head to my heart and down into my soul.  I am not a ritualist; I am not a ceremonialist. Yet, in my way these times are stirring, living, and breathing, for I am more the spiritualist who struggles to live the words of Micah 6:8.  Now, some say these holidays are a somber time, a time of high anxiety, a time of shivering and quaking. Not for me. Sure, we’re perhaps more serious, more aware of ourselves at this time of the year than at any other.  Why not.  It’s a time that calls for deeper reflection; it’s a time that asks for taking a values inventory; and, it’s a time when we’re challenged to come up with questions that we would use to survey and measure the value of our life.  For me, this time takes me back to my cerebral hemorrhage when I was and still am confronted with my mortality, that death is a part of the life cycle, the LIFE cycle.  And, I acknowledge that I might keel over at any minute as I almost did that yesterday a few years ago.  These “Days of Awe” remind me of the awesome power I have to affirm life and decide how I wish to live.  It’s a time of a greater opportunity to see whether the choices I’ve made and will make, whether the courses of actions I’ve taken and will take infuse life into my life or drain life from my life, that is, whether I have filled and will fill my days with meaning, purpose, significance, and service.

That makes the High Holidays for me a metaphor for how I should live as a teacher.  By that I mean we hear a lot about how the Divine “sits in judgement.”  Some tremble in fear of that image.  I’m don’t.  Whether you’re a believer or not, is not the idea.  It’s the idea of it all.  For me, it says that the Divine, with all that’s going on in the great universe, notices and cares about each and every one of us, cares enough to notice, cares about who we each are, cares about how we live, cares about whether we are striving for and actualizing our individual potential.  Think about it.  The creator of the universe actually cares about “little ole me.”   Now is that awesome or not!  It transforms me from an insignificant speck into an “important ole me!”  It is really a remarkably empowering and life-giving idea.  If nothing else, it should goad us to say, “what does the Divine see in me that I don’t but should?”  Should we, as teachers, do no less?  Shouldn’t we say to each student, as Abraham and God said to each other, “Here I am for you?”  Shouldn’t we be focused on each student rather than fretting about lost research time or the texts and e-mails we have to read and answer?  Shouldn’t we include the student when we say, “I’m so busy” or “I have no time?”  I am not a devotee of that modern day scam called “multi-tasking.”  It’s an excuse, a rationale, for not respecting, concentrating, paying attention, listening, seeing, and noticing.  It is we, not the technology, that allows all that business and busyness to cause us to miss the only thing we truly have:  “now.”  And, when we miss the gift of presence, we miss the call.  Having lain in neuro-ICU for a week, and miraculously having survived unscathed, don’t I know that!

We are told that these High Holy Days are a blessing.  In Hebrew “holy” and “blessing” have the same word root.  They both mean “to set apart.” And yet, they’re both about making connections.  They mean to detach us from the ordinary distractions of day-to-day life that keep us from being connected, deeply connected, to what matters most.  Susan is what really matters in my life.  When I am alone with my Susan, when I am sipping that wine with her, when I am being impishly childish with her, when I am playing board games with her, when I am pecking at her cheek, when I am staring deep into her eyes, deeper into her soul, a wave of intense awareness and otherness sweeps over me that shuts out the noise and shuts down the “overwhelming-ness” around us. I feel a deep connection, a feeling of wholeness, and an enveloping serenity.  I am totally present; and, our togetherness becomes holy and blessed.  That’s about as holy as it gets.

Should there be any less holiness and blessing in the classroom?  Should our heart pound less?  When we are in the classroom, shouldn’t we be obligated to be there?  Shouldn’t we feel its sweetness, exhilaration, satisfaction, fulfillment, and even fun?  If we are life-affirming, shouldn’t we be firmly and fully present for each life in that classroom?  Shouldn’t we firmly and unconditionally affirm the value of each life in that classroom?  Shouldn’t we live that affirmation in our feelings, thoughts, and actions?  Shouldn’t notice each life?  Shouldn’t we get to know and care about each and every one of the students in that classroom?  Shouldn’t we make decisions based on their needs instead of sacrificing them to ours?  When we do, students realize that we care about each of them as a sacred, invaluable individual; when we are sincerely caring, I assure you, it is a remarkably empowering and energizing feeling for each of them.  Shouldn’t the students have a claim on our time and busyness, ask something of us?  We should never feel any of that is too much to ask, never be disconnected, never be uninvolved, and we should never say “I’m too busy to see you.”

After all, life as a whole and its parts are not divided into disconnected segments.  We teach for the same reason there are the High Holidays.  We want to say and do something that will inspire those around us to become something more than better informed students.  We want them to become better people; we want to help them help themselves to come closer to the person each is capable of becoming, to change the way they think and act and what they value, and bring them closer to the source of the meaning of life; we want to create sustaining classroom experiences that will become sacred memories.  In a world of supposed uncertainty, of this I am certain, when we embrace both the present and each student, we will see sights we have never before seen, hear sounds we have never before heard, have feelings we have never before felt, connect as we have never connected have before.  And so, the more we bless today, the more we bless each student, the more our lives and those around us will be a blessing.  That’s about as holy as it gets.

Susan and I would like to wish our Jewish friends a guten yontif and may your days in the coming new year be as sweet as honey.  And, to our Moslem friends, who have just finished celebrating Ramadan, we wish you a belated but no less sincere Eid Mubarak.

Louis

Dear diary, it’s May 25th, my “word for the day” all this day was “enthused.”  Interesting, because up popped those questions again that says more about the questioners than about me: “Why don’t you retire?” “When are you going to retire?” “You’ve been there how long?” “How old are you?” To the first two questions, diary, I always reply with “When it stops being fun and I start feeling old.”  True, in less than six months I’ll hit the grand ole age of 70 (I’m still convinced they made a mistake on my birth certificate) and am in my 44th year at VSU.  I suppose I could utter a denying “no way” or a depressing “yuk” or an upset “aaargh” or a sighing “where have the years gone” to those numbers, but, you know, diary, age is really a state of mind.  It must be because nobody believes me when I answer their last question, especially students.  I guess they think people my age should look and act like a frail, cantakerous, shriveled prune surviving on prune juice, bent over, and unsteadily hobbling with a cane or walker.

Well, diary,  I’m no prune.   I’m a healthy, razor sharp plum of a guy.   Getting older doesn’t mean your spirit is getting weaker!   No being put on the shelf or out to pasture for me.   No rocking chair on the porch in my future.  I’m still vertical and dancing.  The only walker I have are my two, 3-4 mile power walking legs. I’m enveloped in an aura of contentment and a zest for life.   Sure, my body isn’t what it used to be, but neither is my spirit.  My body is getting older and older, but my spirit, where it really counts is getting younger and younger, and my bliss is growing by leaps and bounds.  My synapses are wildly snapping.  When someone says I’m not acting my age, I answer with the adamant playground retort, “Am so!” See, I always say that while I may be getting older I’ll be damn if I’m going to let myself grow old.  I will not allow time to dictate my life. How can I?  I make my life is a dynamic state of “being” and “becoming.”  I work on the principle that every day is new during which I learn something new and become someone new.  Nothing is a “ho-hum,” “just another” drag.  Nothing is old hat for me, no merely passing time.

I wish I count the times someone has said to me, “Get serious.”  Well, hell, diary, I won’t.  And, I will.  “Serious fun” is the core of my teaching, of my life, is living joyfully to be songful, all the way through it.  Everything is beautiful, magical, mysterious, miraculous, adventurous, airy.   I’ve been able to keep my teaching fresh because I take it  and all that I do all in just in that way:  I keep my sense of humor; I keep my joy of living; I won’t let others hang  their hang-ups on me.  I will not slap labels on my lapels.  I’m still a sprite kid, an experienced one to be sure, but just a kid knowing the joys of play, fun, laughter, wonder, curiosity, imagination, and creativity in everything I do more than I have ever before.  Each is a new day, and I live it that way. I make use of each day to bring new experience into my life. I’m a gusher!  I keep my life fresh and invigorating, and am always open to new possibilities.  I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things. I still live by my “To Be A Teacher.”  I blow bubbles.  I play with rolly-pollies.  I make puns.  I am immersed in today’s uniqueness.  It’s all about having serious fun.  You see, as I have said over and over again, the opposite of fun is not work; it’s boredom.

I’m  thinking of this because some people just don’t get it.  That’s why they’re more stressed out than “stress hardy.”  They don’t understand that “newness,”  offers the most wondrous trips.  Playfulness, maybe even with a touch of silliness, of being carefree, is a healing balm.  It’s down right refreshing and energizing.  It’s the Fountain of Youth that Ponce de Leon was looking for.  Where your spirit dances, your mind and body will follow.  Maybe that’s why I chuckle when people tell me how good I look.  Of course, diary, it’s a hell of a lot better than having people saying “poor, wrinkled guy, he looks like he’s about to topple over.”  Maybe they enjoy how I look and act because if I am managing to stay young at heart, being and feeling energetic, they’ll be able to find a way, too.  Maybe its comforting to them to know that 70 isn’t the end. No, diary, age or longevity is not a reason to quit.  Domesticating routine, imprisoning boredom, stuck-in-a-rut disinterest, and atrophying unhappiness are.

No, diary, each and every day, I care and feed the child within me and keep young of heart.  And, because of the lessons of my near-fatal cerebral hemorrhage, if do nothing I cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.  For fear of sounding trite and cliche-ish, I feel like an aged wine:  more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated, and more intoxicating.  I know the ultimate sin is not to open the present that the present has presented me, for if I do nothing I cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.  It is sad to think how many so invest in their tomorrows that they miss their todays.  So, I am consciously grateful for each day I have and live that gratitude, if for no other reason than having my Susan lying next to me when I go to sleep and when I wake up. I make sure I happily receive the gift of each day with joyous, open hands.  I don’t care how smoggy it may be outside, when I rise up, I see the sun with my heart’s eye, greet it with joy and lightness in my head knowing that every moment is my moment to shine. I let so much life in that there’s no room for resignation or disappointment or any other negative.  No, diary, I’m closed to ugly darkness and I let in the beautiful light, I let in the joy, and I let in the richness of life. I just refuse to miss out on the value of any moment. I live it for all that it can be.  And, boy, does that keep me young, a lot of times younger than my young students and younger colleagues!

Louis

I interrupt my China diary this morning to talk about fluttering butterflies.  My good friend, Ed Nuhfer is about to chuckle.

It was this past Saturday afternoon.  Susan, I, and Yiming, the Fullbright Scholar from China, were leaving a local Labor Day arts and crafts fair.  An elderly gentleman was standing at the exit checking to see if we needed our hands stamped in case we wanted to re-enter the fair grounds.

“Are you Dr. Schmier?” he blurted out with a smile quickly forming on his face.

“Yes,” I answered with both a bit of surprise and curiosity in my voice.  “How do you know who I am?”

“I was one of your students,”  he excitedly exclaimed.

“Don’t tell me when,” I laughed as if I didn’t want to be reminded of the years gone by.  “I don’t want to know.”

While he giggled, I didn’t deter him.  Martin  joyfully introduced himself and proceeded to tell me that he had been a freshman in one class with me way back in 1969!!  He then gave me a synopsis of his thirty year career as an educator: teacher, principal, superintendent, retired for a decade.  Then, he hit me with it.  Susan’s jaw dropped.  He ended his thumb nail sketch of his professional life by saying, “And you were always a very important part of all that.”

“Always a very important part of all that?”  One class.  One of his first quarters on campus.  Forty-one years ago.  Another lifetime when I was another person with nothing like the intense awareness, otherness, vision, and sense of service that I have now.  Who knows what I did or said.  I don’t remember, but  after all these decades he still does.  You never know.  I guess I was, as Ed Nuhfer would say, one of chaos theory’s unwitting fluttering butterflies.

What made this chance meeting especially significant was a question that had been hurled at me by another freshman a few days earlier.  She is an education major.  We’ve been in class together only a few weeks.  She had e-mailed me with a challenge to help her with an assignment for another class.  She was supposed to ask one of her professors to come up with one word–one word–that an education could be reduced to.  So, the lot fell to me.  She asked me what I thought was the ultimate essence of an education.  One word!!  We already had discussed in class after class as we did our “community building” and “getting to know ya” stuff for the first couple of weeks about love, support, encouragement, community, belief, creativity.   But, she wanted a one word spring well, a genesis, a source of why I felt, thought, and did all that I expressed in word, feeling, and deed.  One word!  I had been wrestling with with myself for an answer.  I could give her paragraphs and pages and a hoard of Random Thoughts to refer to.  But, one word!  Every time I thought of a word, I thought of a deeper one.  Now I’ve got it.  It was given to me by Martin.  My word is “Martin!”

I was so excited that I called her yesterday.  I couldn’t wait until tomorrow.

“Dr. Schmier?  Is that really you?”  To say she was surprised to hear from me on a holiday would be an understatement.

After a chit chat, I exclaimed.  “You had me going.  Now, I’ve got it.”

“Got what?” she asked, not thinking of anything much over this Labor Day weekend other than picnicking and partying.

“You wanted to know what the essence of teaching is?  Your assignment?  Now I’ve got it.  Get yourself a piece of paper and something to write with.  I’ve always had it because I always say what it is.  It’s ‘Martin.'”

“What’s a Martin?” she asked.  “Sounds like you’re enjoying the weekend too much.” she added with a laugh.

Of course, she didn’t have the foggiest idea what I was talking about. I knew she wouldn’t.  I had used that as a hook so what I had to say would be branded onto her soul.   I  told her of my chance meeting with Martin. I explained excitedly, “Take this down.  The word you’re looking for is ‘People!!’ That’s what I meant by ‘Martin.’  People! Not job, not information, not grades, not diploma.  People!  Martin was ‘a people.’  You are ‘a people!’  Every student is ‘a people.’  Teachers are ‘a people.’  Education is a ‘people business’ in the service industry.  Don’t ever think people are things!  Don’t ever allow yourself to be treated or treat anyone as just a name or number.  No one should be treated as an object!  Not one warm, living body should be chilled them into a lifeless, cold statistic.  You’re going to have to fight to keep your eye on that prize and not be distracted by test scores, methodology, technology, or any other -ology.  That why education is no more cut and dry or simple than are people.  It is mysterious, magic, inexplicable, complicated.  Teaching is about human beings relating to human beings, nothing else!  You will see.  That’s what all the love, faith, hope, support, encouragement, purpose, meaning, commitment, dedication, perseverance, fulfillment, satisfaction, everything rest on.  That’s why we do what we do the way we do it in class.  Never forget that the greatest and most lasting moments in and around the classroom, in fact, in every part of your and my life, are not when anyone gives that great lecture or does that fabulous project, or writes that paper or passes that test or when we get things like grades, diplomas, awards, and jobs.  It is when two lives cross, touch, and influence each other.  ‘People!'”

We talked a bit more, wished each other to have a fun Labor Day.  And, as I hung up I thought maybe, just maybe, I am being another fluttering butterfly, consciously this time.

Louis