Knowing as we are fully known.

One of the advantages to being a teacher is that sometimes your job gets canceled for inclement weather. That's what happened to me yesterday, so I decided to go ahead and spend some time reading.
One of the books I've been meaning to read is called, To Know as we are Known: Education as a Spiritual Journey by Parker Palmer. I didn't really know what to expect out of the book except that it was going to give a spiritual vision for teaching. Like many of you, I've been seeking a more biblical and real sense of life and calling lately. In fact, last weekend I found myself praying very hard that God would do something with my life. I want to live life on the more radical side, but I often don't really know what that means, looks like etc...
Anyways, I recommend this book to everyone who wants not just a Christian vision for teaching, but also one for learning. The main thing I'm getting out of it so far is that our philosophy of teaching and learning should become more communal. Just as God the Trinity, who is the ultimate reality, is a community, so we also need to have a communal vision of different aspects to our lives, including how we know things, learning, and teaching.
A second aspect that was most excellent is that often our quest to learn is motivated our of a desire to gain power and pride. He suggests that another motive we can have in the journey of learning is love: love for Christ and others.
Since I'm only on chapter 2, I may post a few more comments about this book later. Here are a few quotes from the book to think about:

"We must resist the popular tendency to think of transcendence as an upward and outward escape from the realities of self and world. Instead, transcendence is a breaking-in, a breathing of the Spirit of love into the heart of our existence, a literal in-spiration that allows us to regard ourselves and our world with more trust and hope than ever before" (13).

But Paul goes beyond criticism to give us an image of the knowledge we must seek: "then we shall be seeing face to face." This is the personal knowledge toward which Christian spirituality calls us, a knowledge that does not distance us from the world but brings us into community, face to face. A knowledge that heals and makes whole will come as we look creation in the eyes and allow it to look back, not only searching nature but allowing it to search us as well" (16).

"Transformed by love, we do not arrogantly impose our powers on the world around us or allow the world to overcome us. Transformed by love we use our minds to recall and recreate the community in which we were created, to know the world in the same spirit in which we are known" (16).


As the psalmist says - Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable to you O LORD my strength and my redeemer.
Take care all.