*Instead of writing new posts for June, July and August I will revisit past posts, share the essence of the original post, reflect on its relevance for today and offer new insights and perspectives. I’ve been writing IN:SIGHT since September of 2016, so I will have plenty of material to draw from. I invite you to scroll back through the older posts to see what captures your inner eye or energizes the heart of your teaching.
July 13, 2022—almost two years to the date I wrote a post suggesting that despite living deeply into the COVID pandemic and the necessary protests related to social justice and equity that we were living in “sacred time”. I wrote:
I would like to state that we are living in sacred time. I acknowledge that this claim may feel out of synch with the compelling and urgent needs of the climate crisis, coronavirus, economic decline, and calls for social justice. Any one of these challenges of modern life on earth will require significant amounts of time, talent, and treasure. Taken as a constellation of tests they can feel overwhelming and paralyzing. I know because it is easier for me, these days, to slide into darker emotions and a sense of oppression then to act. I wonder how one person can embody enough agency to change the world in these times. Yet, we are living in a sacred time. A time of unusual opportunity to release the fullness of human flourishing. Sacred time provides a way of integrating the competing impulses of paralysis and action.
All the challenges noted above are still present and many new ones are added to the plate, mostly stemming from institutions (state legislative bodies, courts, and economic interests) who continue to press in on the work of educators. Attrition rates, which were high pre-pandemic, are rising and schools are struggling to find qualified teachers. Dark times abound and seem to squeeze out the light.
Despite the thinness of politics and social structures to enliven change, I still contend that we are living in sacred time. In fact, the opportunities for teaching actions that liberate the oppressed are increasing in response to need and the intensity of loss. According to Mariam-Webster, sacred, means anything or anyone “entitled to reverence and respect.” The challenges are serious. They deserve intentionality and attentiveness, not despair, irreverence, and disrespect. And the potential for meaningful, just, and inclusive changes in healthcare, education, economics, and policy are equally potent. The possibilities for reform are too rich to pass over, no matter how hard or frightening they may be.
I continue to find hope in the words and actions of my students. Two years ago, higher education, like most of the world, was struggling with uncertainty and change. I was sharing my fears and reservations prior to class. A student noted, “all it takes is switching one letter to go from scared too sacred”. Sometimes the truth is right in front of me, but it often takes someone else to point it out. I love teaching because it is my students who often teach me ways of turning challenge into sacred action, darkness into light. Being scared is normal and expected in these times, but so too is living into sacred time, a giving of reverence to that which matters.
In my initial post I noted that the psychiatrist, Dr. Sue Varma, who studies the impact of trauma and loneliness on mental health offers a practical framework for finding the sacred in the face of fear. She argues for the implementation of four-M’s: mindfulness, mastery (not perfection) of anything creative, movement of any degree, and meaningful connection—particularly helping others. Two years ago, I was drawn to creative activities (drawing, poetry, and painting) and movement (bicycle riding). Both are still important, but meaningful connection is now of greater significance. Perhaps it is a form of denial or hesitancy to fight the good fight by leaning into the institutions of oppression, but I’m increasingly focused on the quality of my individual and small group relationships. My heartbreak over the condition of education has grown in the last two years. Almost daily I hear the stories of educators who are pulled in two competing directions between their call to serve students and the demands of institutional imperatives for accountability and prescribed curriculum.
Sure, the institution of education is in dire need of change. It should seek new ways to support human flourishing, not diminishment. And a “return to normal” (the pre-pandemic days) is not the way to go. Teachers should continue to protest for better pay and working conditions that honor their sacred call. Citizens should work to elect politicians and school boards with broader visions of humanness than test scores or revisionist curriculum designed to keep the powerful in power. I will do what I can to invite the institution I work to resist the pull back to normality and instead become a better, more just, and caring place for faculty and students.
And at the same time, I will direct my reform efforts at seeing each person I meet in the hall, classroom, or office space as a sacred being worthy of great respect and reverence. The pain of disenfranchisement and isolation, symptoms of our modern time, are systemic. The consequences land squarely on the individuals who inhabit institutional spaces. Therefore, I’m focusing more of my energy and more of my gifts on the one-on-one relationships with faculty colleagues, students, staff, and administrators. The poet David Whyte advises that: “sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet / confinement of your aloneness / to learn / anything or anyone / that does not bring you alive / is too small for you.”
These dark times invite me to ask two questions, questions that open space for change; 1) what is too small in my life and should be left behind?, and 2) what is too small but if treated with respect can emerge into its full potential and thus bring me alive? Many wisdom traditions speak about the Holy presence in self, the spark of Divinity, or the singularity of the person. The liberation of the charism, or unique gifts of each human being, is the true calling of education. And that work can only happen one person, one interaction, and one sacred act at a time. Institutional norms can help, but only human to human connection can liberate.
Transcendence is relational. My human potential is yoked to the freedom of others. Only a person free from diminishment and dehumanizing protocols is clear-eyed enough to see my sacred potential and invite me into the fullness of my singularity and charism. We are educators living in sacred time, a time that requires deep reverence and respect. What might you do today, to fight against institutional smallness and free the fullness of the people around you into a live encounter with self, others, and the world?