Abstract
In this essay, I explore the thesis that love and attention to inner, other, and outer realms are central to teaching and learning. Many teachers who have the potential to be excellent teachers leave teaching because of the institutional obstacles that contort and distort their loves and their ability to grow them. In the first part of the essay, I focus on Thomas Keating’s contemplative approach and note the role of love as well as sketch the basic outlines of attentive love utilizing the insights of three philosophers: Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, and Sara Ruddick. In the second part of this essay, I focus on the interaction of love and attention within the Courage to Teach professional development program. I identify and elaborate several contemplative elements, grounded in attentive love, present in Courage renewal work.
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Notes
- 1.
Many teacher candidates are prepared within a progressive, rather than traditional, orientation and this preparation factors into the headaches and heartaches of beginning classroom teachers. Those prepared within the progressive child-oriented approach usually find themselves employed in fairly traditional and skill-focused schools. The relationship between schools of education and K-12 public schools has a long and complicated history. See for example Labaree (2004), Clifford und Guthrie (1988) and Zeichner (2009).
- 2.
- 3.
The Center for Courage and Renewal (formerly the Center for Courage to Teach) is the organization that developed around the efforts to address Palmer’s insights into and experiences with teachers. In the section on Courage work, I will describe this effort more completely and focus on the Courage work with teachers rather than the work with other serving professions.
- 4.
This is a point worth underscoring. Sometimes, the putative and received notion of “meditation” or “mindfulness” is one that construes contemplation as an approach that magically dissolves daily tensions and dilemmas and delivers the practitioner transcendent bliss. Keating emphasizes throughout his works that centering prayer will not deliver an unending state of bliss, but instead enables individuals to see themselves, others, and the world more clearly. This discerning function of centering prayer coincides with the attentive love I elaborate later.
- 5.
See Rachel Kessler’s Soul of Education as well as more popular press items: San Francisco parents… https://www.facebook.com/pages/SF-Parents-Against-TM-in-Public-Schools/201123776750702; and Olesen, http://educationcurrent.wordpress.com/
- 6.
This observation is based on my experience working with teachers and administrators in Colorado’s Front Range.
- 7.
During the last 10 years, greater attention has been paid to emotions in many academic fields. David Brooks’ The Social Animal (2011) is a helpful introduction to the psychological research on emotion. The Stanford online encyclopedia provides a help overview of recent developments in the philosophy of emotion. See http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/emotion/
- 8.
In our Colorado Courage organization, we have worked with teachers and educational leaders, clergy and lay religious leaders, foundations’ staff, and others in the serving professions. Here, as I noted earlier, I focus on the work with teachers and educational leaders.
- 9.
I should underscore that the presentation and analysis of Courage retreats is one I have developed and is neither necessarily shared by the Center for Courage and Renewal nor by all facilitators. I have shared this text with other facilitators and many acknowledge features of attentive love in the Courage retreat settings. Here, I am advancing my own views.
- 10.
- 11.
Susan Kaplan helped to clarify this point in her reading of the manuscript.
- 12.
- 13.
See Appendix 1 for a delineation of commonly used “Touchstones”.
- 14.
See http://www.couragerenewal.org/clearnesscommittee/ for Parker Palmer’s description of the Clearness Committee process.
- 15.
- 16.
See Appendices 1 “Touchstones” (http://www.couragerenewal.org/touchstones/) and 2 “Key Principles of Formation” (http://www.couragerenewal.org/approach/).
- 17.
I apologize to any reader who might be offended by such language. In my Irish Catholic, working class cultural heritage it is a term used, perhaps, too freely. Here, I use it to acquire my first “f” and to capture and evoke the associations and frustrations that attend our inevitable minor and more serious mistakes and misjudgments.
- 18.
See Appendix 2.
- 19.
Thanks to Estrus Tucker and Susan Kaplan for suggesting the inclusion of these formation principles.
- 20.
- 21.
Adapted from a Courage Handout entitled “Open Questions” (n.d.).
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
In many ways, this attentive love toward self can lead to an enlarged love—especially when the situation is critical and the need is great. When a teacher despairs, the attentive love toward himself/herself and, particular, others can be expanded to an enlarged love toward their life situations and their immediate and expanding contexts. Enlarged love is, in many ways, attentive love practiced with a larger, more generalized scope and addressing a significant and demanding need. See Liston (2000).
- 24.
I am deeply indebted to the Courage organization, Parker Palmer, Marcy Jackson, Rick Jackson, Cindy Johnson, Terry Chadsey, and many others for their creation of a powerfully supportive community and the elaboration of a set of principles and practices to engage in and live by. When I was introduced to the Courage community, I immediately felt, but could not articulate, a powerful sense of care, love, and attention. These folks model this stuff day in and day out. I also want to thank Susan Kaplan, Vern Rempel, Michele Seipp, Estrus Tucker, and Paul Michalec for reading earlier drafts of this essay. Their critical and supportive comments improved the text.
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Appendices
Appendix 1: Touchstones (http://www.couragerenewal.org/touchstones/)
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Be present as fully as possible. Be here with your doubts, fears, and failings as well as your convictions, joys, and successes, your listening as well as your speaking.
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What is offered in the circle is by invitation, not demand. This is not a “share or die” event! During this retreat, do whatever your soul calls for, and know that you do it with our support. Your soul knows your needs better than we do.
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Speak your truth in ways that respect other people’s truth. Our views of reality may differ, but speaking one’s truth in a circle of trust does not mean interpreting, correcting, or debating what others say. Speak from your center to the center of the circle, using “I” statements, trusting people to do their own sifting and winnowing.
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No fixing, saving, advising, or correcting each other. This is one of the hardest guidelines for those of us in the “helping professions.” But it is vital to welcoming the soul, to making space for the inner teacher.
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Learn to respond to others with honest, open questions instead of counsel, corrections, etc. With such questions, we help “hear each other into deeper speech.”
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When the going gets rough, turn to wonder. If you feel judgmental, or defensive, ask yourself, “I wonder what brought her to this belief?” “I wonder what he’s feeling right now?” “I wonder what my reaction teaches me about myself?” Set aside judgment to listen to others—and to yourself—more deeply.
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Attend to your own inner teacher. We learn from others, of course. But as we explore poems, stories, questions, and silence in a circle of trust, we have a special opportunity to learn from within. So pay close attention to your own reactions and responses, to your most important teacher.
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Trust and learn from the silence. Silence is a gift in our noisy world, and a way of knowing in itself. Treat silence as a member of the group. After someone has spoken, take time to reflect without immediately filling the space with words.
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Observe deep confidentiality. Nothing said in a circle of trust will ever be repeated to other people.
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Know that it’s possible to leave the circle with whatever it was that you needed when you arrived, and that the seeds planted here can keep growing in the days ahead.
Appendix 2: Key Principles of Formation
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1.
Everyone has an inner teacher.
Every person has access to an inner source of truth, named in various wisdom traditions as identity, true self, heart, spirit, or soul. The inner teacher is a source of guidance and strength that helps us find our way through life’s complexities and challenges. Circles of Trust give people a chance to listen to this source, learn from it and discover its imperatives for their work and their lives.
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2.
Inner work requires solitude and community.
In Circles of Trust, we make space for the solitude that allows us to learn from within, while supporting that solitude with the resources of community. Participants take an inner journey in community where we learn how to evoke and challenge each other without being judgmental, directive, or invasive.
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3.
Inner work must be invitational.
Circles of Trust are never “share or die” events, but times and places where people have the freedom within a purposeful process to learn and grow in their own way, on their own schedule and at their own level of need. From start to finish, this approach invites participation rather than insisting upon it because the inner teacher speaks by choice, not on command.
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4.
Our lives move in cycles like the seasons.
By using metaphors drawn from the seasons to frame our exploration of the inner life, we create a hospitable space that allows people of diverse backgrounds and perspectives to engage in a respectful dialogue. These metaphors represent cycles of life—such as the alternation of darkness and light, death, and new life—shared by everyone in a secular, pluralistic society regardless of philosophical, religious, or spiritual differences.
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5.
An appreciation of paradox enriches our lives and helps us hold greater complexity.
The journey we take in a Circle of Trust teaches us to approach the many polarities that come with being human as “both–ands” rather than “either–ors,” holding them in ways that open us to new insights and possibilities. We listen to the inner teacher and to the voices in the circle, letting our own insights and the wisdom that can emerge in conversation check and balance each other. We trust both our intellects and the knowledge that comes through our bodies, intuitions, and emotions.
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6.
We live with greater integrity when we see ourselves whole.
Integrity means integrating all that we are into our sense of self, embracing our shadows and limitations as well as our light and our gifts. As we deepen the congruence between our inner and outer lives, we show up more fully in the key relationships and events of our lives, increasing our capacity to be authentic and courageous in life and work.
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7.
A “hidden wholeness” underlies our lives.
Whatever brokenness we experience in ourselves and in the world, a “hidden wholeness” can be found just beneath the surface. The capacity to stand and act with integrity in the tragic gap between what is and what could be or should be—resisting both the corrosive cynicism that comes from seeing only what is broken and the irrelevant idealism that comes from seeing only what is not—has been key to every life-giving movement and is among the fruits of the Circle of Trust approach.
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Liston, D.P. (2016). On Attentive Love in Education: The Case of Courage to Teach. In: Schonert-Reichl, K., Roeser, R. (eds) Handbook of Mindfulness in Education. Mindfulness in Behavioral Health. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-3506-2_14
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