Sacred Teachings
November 25th 2003
Dear Friends
I picked up a book called ‘The Courage to Teach’ last week. Possibly the most insightful discourse I have read on the nature of Education. I have
had reason to reflect on my own efforts and those of teachers who influenced me during the last month as a consequence of various events.
Whilst in year eleven I was paid to clean my form room. I swept the room, tidied the desks, polished the teacher’s desk and cleaned the blackboard 200 times during that year. I sat 3 feet from the teacher in class registration on 400 occasions and attended 160 lessons. I learned a bit about maps, confluence towns and German industry. Yet, no matter how much I interrupted, baited and teased this guy I learned nothing about him as a person. It took his funeral 35 years later to discover his humanness! By contrast there was another teacher. I knew his wife, his kids, his dog. I knew what he ate for lunch, his outside interests, what he did in WW II and his game filled response to the most bizarre questions I could conjure. I knew him as a person. No obituary necessary! ‘Good teachers possess a capacity for connectedness.’ People are interested in the personhood of people.
Education, Life Development – restoring the image of God in man, the work of salvation, call it what you like, remains the cause to which I am committed.
‘To teach is to create a space in which the community of truth can be practiced.’ It is about lives (identities) being opened with integrity to other lives around the subject of ‘great teachings’. Sacred teachings are about love and joy and peace, about togetherness, grace and forgiveness, about diversity, ambiguity, creative conflict, humility, honesty and freedom. ‘Reality is a web of communal relationships, and we can know reality only by being in community with it.’ ‘All real living is meeting’ said Martin Buber.
‘The health of education depends on our ability to hold sacred and secular together so that they can correct and enrich one another.’ This was reflected in the hymn last Sabbath: ‘all things praise thee Lord most high, heaven and earth, sea and sky..’. Reconciling science, education, business, art, music and religion has always been fascinating. My faith is based on a wealthy platform of truth and experience in Christ. Don’t ask me to pick one event.
May God give you the grace to live and develop your life to the full, to be continually amazed and excited by new discoveries, and to have the courage to open your un-divided spirit filled life to your communal circle.
Thank you for sharing the ‘wow’ of being a Christian.
With best regard
Victor Pilmoor
Treasurer