I am headed to New Zealand to present at an International Peace Conference and have been thinking of resistance so needed today. Music, poetry, and art play a significant role in resisting violence, including that imposed by governments and other institutions that are supposed to protect.
One of the first albums I bought was The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. I was about 16-years old and I still have the album. It is iconic with songs like Blowin’ In the Wind (melody based on a spiritual called No More Auction Block), Masters of War, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall, Oxford Town about resistance to desegregation in the American South, and Talkin’ World War III Blues. Dylan covered Lead Belly’s version of I Shall Be Free.
Talkin’ World War III Blues is my favourite song on the album. Dylan was at his best in the spontaneity of the song and it fits with the talking blues genre. In I Shall Be Free, he sings about making love to Elizabeth Taylor. Even in the early 60’s a was a way to avoid the reality that hung over the world was to turn to popular culture as a distraction from the threats of nuclear war.
About the same time, I wrote a poem in school. I know Mr. P. writes poetry is hard to imagine for my students. The poem was about the tragedy of war and it stole lives in absolute ways whether through death or through the physical and psychic damage done to those who were forced into service in a war they did not understand. Many of those who died or were left deeply scarred with the trauma of war were from the African American population, which was about 12% of the American population at the time. Their deaths alone represented about 25% of the casualties, so statistically overrepresented. The personal narratives within their families and communities can not be quantified.
I borrow a bell hooks’ quote for my title. Educating is offering a gift of hope, reminding me of a Mary Oliver poem about sorrow: “It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.” I learned teaching did not guarantee learning. A student needs to trust a teacher and the hope offered today may take years to realize if ever. The teacher, me, missed the mark and did not go back to understand what that meant
Michelle visits my blog from time to time and what she shares complements my posts. It has been awhile since I posted, so her recent visit led me to look at her posts again. I do regardless of intent to post. The Jane Goodall quote reminds me of one by Elie Wiesel: “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.” Apathy and indifference are synonyms, so the words are somewhat interchangeable.
Hope has been a frequent part of my recent scholarship and emerges from my life. The Prayer of St. Francis was a reading at our wedding and I have a simple plaque to remind me of what it means in my life. I turn to it in moments where doubt and despair find their way into my life to recite “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace … Where there is despair, hope.”
School can be an unhappy place for many students. In some schools, 60-80% of students are labeled as unwilling and/or unable to learn. When this happens, students lose hope, they become cyphers, and are erased or treated as disposable. Consider the language we direct at others in terms of illegal immigrants, illegal aliens, collateral damage, etc. as if humans are somehow illegal or, as casualties of war, are just a byproduct of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is an indictment of those who hold power and the “pathologies of power” (Paul Farmer) that exist in this world. Farmer wrote about his experiences treating Haitians with AIDS, including many women who contracted the disease due to macho posturing of men in a hierarchical society.
The rest of the Prayer of St. Francis is appropriate to reflect upon in considering offering love instead of hate, joy instead of sadness, and being instruments of peace to overcome the indifference and apathy that appears in the language of power and its pathologies. I am an imperfect person who hardly qualifies as a great Christian or Catholic, but the words of the Peace Prayer resonate for me in today’s day to offer hope to others through educating.
In my presentations and articles, I often share Emily Dickinson‘s poem as she reminds me how fragile hope can be. To be accepted, it needs to be offered repeatedly as an authentic gift.
Theologian and civil rights activist, Howard Thurman shared the following poem in a sermon reminding me Christmas is not a one day event. It is part of the daily ceremony and ritual I should undertake. It reminds me some usurp Christmas as a neo-liberal, market agenda that changes a deeply spiritual event into profiteering.
“Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes, And the heart consumes itself, if it would live, Where little children age before their time, And life wears down the edges of mind, Where the old person sits with mind grown cold, While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death, Where fear companions each day’s life, And Perfect Love seems long delayed. CHRISTMAS IS WAITING TO BE BORN; In you, in me, in all humankind.”
Jesus and his family were humble refugees from humble backgrounds. Regardless of material wealth, we each come from and return to humble backgrounds. In between, I can seek deliverance, age with grace, and retain a daily Christmas spirit. Without it, hearts harden, minds ossify, fear is a constant companion, and there is a lack courage (in French, coeur is part of the etymology of courage) to act and speak out against those who treat humans as chattel dealt with as objects. With a daily Christmas spirit, I engage in I-Thou relationships, without judging, qualifying, objectifying the other. Martin Buber proposed “the key to creating society that is nourishing, empowering and healing for everyone lies in how we relate to one another.”
It takes considerable effort to overcome the divisiveness we currently live with and listen, with open hearts, to others who share views of the world different than ours. In On the Brink of Everything, Parker Palmer describes how he felt anger towards others who voted differently than he did. By the time the book was published, he described how it was important to understand that people did so because they felt left behind in various ways.
Here is Healing Time by gospel and blues singer Ruthie Foster, which seems appropriate in today’s day and age. How do we heal and make whole?
The recent killing of the CEO of United Health Insurance reflected the violence (himsa) we find ourselves embedded in. I refuse to condone violence in any form. What flies under the radar is the daily violence humans are subjected to when they are denied healthcare, when it is delayed. Hannah Arendt introduced us to the term “the banality of evil”, which underscores both forms of violence, although the former is more obvious than the latter. Schools and teachers can play a vital role in educating children, youth, and adults in ways that help them unearth the roots of violence.
For the past 2-3 years, I focused on re-imagining teacher education as an andragogy of hope and nonviolence. A third pillar is dialogue and civil discourse. One objective is to have a manageable endeavor for teachers from the moment aspiring teachers enter schools of education to the end of their careers. The second is to move away from what Paulo Freire referred to as a banking model of education where information is deposited in students to a dialogic form with teachers and students engaging as teachers and learners. When I enter K-12 classrooms, I observe how little has changed in our schools and this conditions education students the banking model. It is embraced by those who decide how schools and teaching function.
Currently, teachers experience top-down mandates reflecting a neo-liberal , market-driven, top-down process set down by politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, and autocrats. Those in ivory towers design schools where competing for marks, individual rankings, and accreditation are the focus as opposed to considering the collective good and forming of character. Fortunately, good teachers do grow to explore, navigate, and discover ways to overcome top-down and politically motivated mandates.
Schools limit the ability to think critically and discern what systemic issues exist that prevent real change from occurring. It is easier to allow unfounded, unwarranted conspiracy theories, instead of considering other potential causes that require this critical thinking and discernment. For example, global warming likely has more to do with increased illnesses and syndromes than vaccines. Global warming means we have to make committed and transform how we each live and living collectively. Conspiracy theories carry no such weight. Critical thinking gives way to accepting opinions largely based on opinions. Dialogue gives way to supposed free speech.
Anyone who undertakes a challenge of this magnitude faces inertia of immovable forces. Having said this, it reminds me that Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed [humans] can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” The change we seek calls for the volition and will to press forward, express one’s self in a human and humane way, and make those changes in the face of opposition and resistance. What we need to avoid is acts of violence as acceptable to achieve our goals. This lowers and debases those who seek humane ways forward to the level of those who excuse the systemic violence and oppression that permeates us.
The word humane is essential to this re-imagining as much of the violence is associated with inequity and oppression. Growing up in the 1960’s and 70’s, my mother, hardly a Marxist or social democrat, used to tell us “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” and we should be grateful for what we had, as many others had less. It is also essential to speak out and advocate for a world where it is unacceptable to put material wealth before human life and the life of the planet.
Poverty and oppression are forms of violence that exist as a products of the banality of evil and the system that promotes it. Gustavo Gutiérrez argued “the poor are a by-product of the system in which we live and for which we are responsible. They are marginalized by our social and cultural world. They are the oppressed, exploited proletariat, robbed of the fruit of their labor and despoiled of their humanity. Hence the poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” Part of a different social order is educating teachers and, in turn, teachers educating themselves to create a humane, equitable social order.
This was a challenging post to write with many edits. It is different than other posts, however it is consistent with my recent presenting, writing, and publishing. When I received a PhD, I did not anticipate traveling this route, but one thing led to another and here I am. It is “the path less traveled” as Robert Frost suggests.
I leave with a Wendell Berry poem: Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion – put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn’t go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
And a Bob Dylan video, a song I forgot about until this morning. He reminds me conspiracy theories, and a need to address violence and its underlying causes have been with us for a long time.
This is the time of the year to have dreams of a more just and humane world. Dreams are the land of hope and Christmas is the perfect time to be a dreamer. This brings to my mind the lines from Imagine by John Lennon:
You may say I’m a dreamer But I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one
Several years ago, I read an essay by Parker Palmer reminding me of the miracle of Christmas. As a child growing up in Northern Alberta, Christmas was a time of wonder. Christmas was not the neoliberal, market-driven affair of today. It was a time to re-member the deepest messages of the time of year.
Parker posted on Facebook about an experience in Nogales Mexico at a refuge for asylum seekers and pointed out Jesus was likely a person of colour born into the Jewish faith. In this sense, I understand Jesus’ birth as one transcending one particular faith.
Part of my academic journey this year was writing a potential chapter on nonviolent education. I read The Raft is Not the Shore, which was a conversation between Thich Nhat Hanh and Daniel Berrigan. They described how They, the Buddhist monk, engaged in communion and how the Jesuit priest reveled in learning more about Buddhism. In our polarized and divided world, this type ecumenism and communion (entering into intimate relationship with each other) with each other has fallen by the wayside.
I wrote the following poem several years ago and am drawn back to it. I hope it captures Christmas in a way that reaches out and touches what we share in common with each other: our humanness and journey seeking refuge at various times
Carpenter guiding,
Expectant mother riding,
Backs straight; heads high–
Donkey serving as regal carriage.
Seeking refuge in the night–
Giving birth in a stable,
Swathed and cradled in a manger,
Beasts welcoming the child.
Showering gifts upon us–
Returning each year,
Lighting the way–
Only asking, “Can you open your hearts?”
Source of strength and courage,
Our turn to humbly receive gifts,
Restocking spirits,
Rejuvenating souls.
For several years, Kathy and I attended concerts by Canadian singer and actor Tom Jackson. The proceeds went to support local food banks and we took something extra with us to share.
He sings a beautiful version of Huron Carole, which points to the ecumenical and communal nature of Christmas. It echoes Parker’s re-membering “the story, the music, the candlelight, the scent of pine, the silent night, the warm presence of family and friends.”
For me, Christmas is sharing time with family, friends, and expressing kindness to those who we don’t know. It is a 365 day process as opposed to a run up to a one day event.
Emily Dickinson wrote this poem and, although hope is fragile, it has the potential to always be with each of us. Even in the most difficult and inclement times, hope can keep us warm.
More than at any other time in my life, I try to find hope particularly in the small everyday things. I might call those things banal. I often use the opening lines of the poem in writing, publishing, and presenting, which is related to hopeful and nonviolent pedagogy and can be found at Academia.
When I look closely and am mindful of my words and actions, I find seeds of hope in my life that make a change for those closest to me and, in turn, hope they and I nurture those seeds. As bell hooks and Thomas Merton wrote, we enter into communion to take us beyond words and speech. It is an intimate and loving way of being together, sharing, and communicating.
Today, I read Carrie Newcomer‘s Substack essay and the lyrics to her song Sanctuary. What do we do in moments of despair. In a conversation with her friend and mine Parker Palmer, she received the following advice. There are times we march and speak out. Other times, we seek sanctuary, gathering with those we love and respect to share our stories and encourage each other. The word courage comes from the French coeur, meaning heart. What we do is heartfelt as we share the hurt we feel with each other in moments of compassion, the sharing of what we love and the suffering as we look at how it might be overturned. We are not alone. We need to lean on each other and take appropriate action and speak appropriate words even to those we disagree with. Take heart and retain hope in trying times by looking for those people and things that give us hope on a daily basis.
Kathy and I celebrate our anniversary today and this was a reading at our wedding. When I heard the organ, I stood, literally shaking I was so nervous. I turned, looked at Kathy and her Dad, and stopped shaking. What was meant to be was meant to be.
Regardless of one’s relationship with others, intimate or distant, these words guide how we accept the Other, as Emmanuel Levinas said. This way lifts the Other to a human subject in an I-Thou relationship, rather than as an object and it. I hope they continue to guide me as we move forward.
Lord make me an instrument of your peace, Where there is hatred let me sow love. Where there is injury, pardon. Where there is doubt, faith. Where there is despair, hope. Where there is darkness, light. And where there is sadness, joy.
O divine master grant that I may Not so much seek to be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love For it is in giving that we receive- And it’s in pardoning that we are pardoned. And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
When I completed my PhD, I was uncertain where I would go next. I thought I would write and present about what becoming a teacher meant, after all that was the subject of my dissertation. As good luck would have it, I meandered in a different direction, teaching a philosophy of education course and supervising student-teachers. As well, I began to write and present, initially with colleagues and more on my own, about what we call an andragogy of hope. This morphed re-imagining education, including how we educate aspiring teachers and how they continue to educate themselves once in the profession. Now, I am combining hope, peace, and holistic education under one umbrella. They are interrelated and, in my mind, essential to the future of a world for our children, grandchildren, and future generations.
When I enter K-12 classrooms, and for that matter post-secondary ones, it strikes me how little has changed and what has changed is more a regression than a moving forward. Yes, we have different tools in our classroom, but students often sit in rows, teachers deliver from the front, and there is little true deep dives into curricular topics, exploring the contours of their topography. Teachers tells me they cannot touch certain topics as a small slice of their community will shout others down. Parker Palmer says classrooms should be spaces where tensions, holding our differences hospitably. In other words, they would be safe spaces where dialogue, deep listening, and civil discourse emerge.
Imagine, if teachers educated themselves to open up hospitable spaces, where listening to beloved others was essential. John Lennon wrote and sang “You may say I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one/I hope someday you’ll join us/And the world will be as one.” Peace begins as a dream, which suggests it is situational and contextually bound, without giving up its universal elements. Systems theory proposes each person, each classroom can be a node, reaching out to others in a the network. Furthermore, this is trans-disciplinary, which suggests soloed classrooms and teaching one subject at a time is passe.
I understand inertia of the status quo and wishes of ideologues, politicians, bureaucrats, technocrats, etc. in ivory towers act as barriers to transforming education at all levels. It is actually dangerous work, which means teachers at all levels need to be expert in ways they may not have imagined. Dangerous work means being creative:
“Perhaps there is no peace for an [teacher] other than the peace found in the heat of combat. But now the [teacher] is in the amphitheatre. Of necessity, [their] voice is not quite the same; it is not nearly so firm. To create today means to create dangerously” — Albert Camus
This song is from a collaboration between Maria Muldaur and Women’s Voices For Peace Choir.
It was a busy and eventful year. Retirement is thought of as a time to step back and slow down. I remain busy and choose to do so, as health permits. I had pieces published and presented at two conferences. If anyone wishes to read or browse the book chapter, two articles, and a draft, I uploaded them to Academia. A by-product of one presentation, Re imagining Teacher Education An Andragogy of Hope, was an interview with the Fig Tree Online Magazine, published in October.
The emerging themes are pedagogies and andragogies of hope and peace. Teachers are vital to opening spaces of hope and peace. For various reasons e.g. time, education, assignments, top-down authoritarian dictates, etc., teachers struggle to infuse pedagogies of hope and peace into their teaching. In a role as a field instructor for student-teachers, I observe teachers and student-teachers who lack the education, confidence, and support in these areas. Furthermore, there is interference from outside the classroom as to what can be taught and there is a risk someone complains if a teacher teaches something someone is unhappy with. In Alberta, the government changed rules about complaints going to school and district administration to a committee of largely non-educators and complaints increased noticeably .
In a world where civil discourse is at a premium and we often equate rhetoric to its colloquial meaning of bombast, we need faculties of education to educate and teachers to continue their education in ways that support pedagogies of hope and peace. Dialogue and the proper use of rhetoric, as eloquent speech and deep listening, are essential to make headway to deal with issues that polarize people into competing ideological camps.
Currently, I am preparing for a conference about teacher education as an andragogy of hope, peace, and non-violence. As well, I submitted a proposal to present at a holistic education conference where I hope to show how hope, peace, and non-violence tap into the spiritual domain often overlooked in teaching and learning. What is essential is to focus on what we can change and how we can each make a difference in our small corners of the world. Prudence can make small differences adding up to larger differences.
Several years ago, we were in Arizona and hiked in a regional park on an every other day basis. During our hikes, I took pictures of cacti that were blooming. Nature demonstrates hope even in challenging ecological settings. The contrast of the pink with a dull green and brown background serves as a beautiful reminder of hope in challenging times.
I share the Prayer of St. Francis as it has deep meaning in our family and it often referred to as the Peace Prayer. The word peace appears once and is the overarching message. Hope is an integral part of achieving peace.
I mentioned the tourtière we eat at Christmas. Kathy makes it with store-bought pie crusts, which works well.Tourtière uses various ground meats. Over the years, we had ground beef, pork, turkey, and people who hunt would use ground wild meat. Depending on the year, Kathy will add gravy to the ground meat to bake in the pie. It depends on what we have in the fridge and you could use broth. If a person uses lean meat, it moistens it. This year we will add gravy from our Thanksgiving turkey over the pie after it is made. The other unique feature to tourtière is it is often made with mashed potatoes mixed in with the meat, usually with various vegetables that have been simmered in a broth. We eat a lot of sweet potatoes so that is another alternative to mix in.
The original tourtière was made with ground veal, which is quite expensive. When my mémère (grandmother) and pépère (grandfather) moved to Alberta to homestead 100+ years ago, they modified the recipe to use what was available and least expensive. The latter included shipping meat that got a higher price. They would have used wild meat when they could.
½ lb ground lean beef
½ lb ground pork
1 lb meat total per pie
1/3 c chopped onion
¼ c water
1 tsp salt or to taste
¼ tsp pepper or to taste
1/3 c chopped celery
2 pie crusts – make your own or purchase ready-made
Brown meat and vegetables, add salt, pepper, additional spices if desired.
Cool mixture as you don’t want to melt the fats in the pie crust.
Pour meat mixture into pie crust, cover with 2nd pie crust, seal edges, make slits for steam to escape.
Bake in hot oven (425F) 20-25 minutes until browned.
Baked tourtière can be frozen and reheated before serving.
Alternate ingredients: other cooked vegetables such as chopped carrots, green peas, potatoes, sweet potatoes. Some like to add gravy so pie is more moist.
I want to leave you with the following message from Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s Advent Sermon “The Coming of Jesus into our Midst.” It reminds me of the Christmas message.
…we are faced with the shocking reality: Jesus stands at the door and knocks, in complete reality. He asks you for help in the form of a beggar, in the form of a ruined human being in torn clothing. He confronts you in every person that you meet. Christ walks on the earth as your neighbour as long as there are people. He walks on the earth as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you and makes his demands. That is the greatest seriousness and the greatest blessedness of the Advent message. Christ stands at the door. Will you keep the door locked or open it to him?
For those who have followed my blog for a while, you might be aware I am big John Prine fan. We saw him in concert and I have many of his songs on my I-Pod. Yes, I still use an I-Pod. This is his song Christmas in Prison.
Teacher as Transformer 