I decided to set no alarms. I first woke up around 4, with two cats on top of me, decided it was too early, went back to sleep without feeding them, and did not finally waken and arise until after 7:30. To my surprise, the cats seemed to realize that I needed the sleep, and were not insistent upon being fed at their normal time of 5 AM. For which I am most appreciative :-)
I also have not scanned news sites or obsessively examined my email. I have not checked for births, deaths and other events of this date.
I know I will have tasks that I must accomplish today, including cleaning the house, getting my glasses adjusted, buying some champagne for the two of us, and perhaps churning out another book review. I must accomplish them, but I do not feel pressed for time.
It is the 365th and final day of this year, and before acknowledging formally with the champagne the change of the final digit of the date I want to devote my Saturday morning meditation to reflecting back on the past year, both as I see the world around me and as I think of myself and my own life.
If you are not interested, I am not offended. If you are only curious, feel free to stop reading at any point.
Perhaps my words will speak to you, perhaps not. You will only know by perusing them.
I cannot consider my life and my actions in isolation from the world in which I live. This has been in many ways a year that has saddened me. We have seen the destructive approach of those who took over the reigns of powers in many states, and control of the House of Representatives. We have seen a Senate crippled by the clear intent of the Minority Leader to ensure that the President have no successes - an intent he expressed as the President was assuming his office almost 3 years ago. While we have begun to see some pushback from ordinary people, beginning in this country with graduate assistants at the University of Wisconsin, we have also seen organized use of force, of money, and of power to protect elements and structures of our society more dedicated to the enrichment of the few than to the well-being of the people the government should be serving, at least on paper.
I have also found myself very disappointed by much of what I have seen from the administration which came to office on a campaign of "hope." There are too many words from that campaign that seemed contradicted by the actions of those holding the official reins of power. While I am not surprised by what I consider the poor policies flowing from the Department of Education - which as a teacher have a huge impact upon my daily life - that does not mean that those policies do not upset and occasionally enrage me. But there is also the choice of people for key positions - Rahm Emanuel, with his connections to Wall Street money, finally leaves, only to be replaced by Bill Daley, also with connections to Wall Street money. I can acknowledge the success of the raid that killed Bin Laden, but be unhappy that the leadership of our national security state is in the hands of Leon Panetta, who as head of the CIA was instrumental in preventing accountability for the wrong-doings of the previous administration, and of David Petraeus, whose approach to lour overseas military operations has in my opinion cost lives unnecessarily and achieved little that will be lasting.
I look at the wrongheadedness of economic policy both in the European Community and here at home and see a continued impoverishing of the many as the mechanisms of social support are being destroyed at the same time as ever more people need them, while wealth continues to accumulate into the hands of those in many cases responsible for the crisis on which they now capitalize, reaping obscene financial benefits from their own recklessness.
There have been good moments - seeing people push back, whether in Tahrir Square at the risk of their lives or in Zuccotti Park. Being part of the Save Our Schools March and National Call to Action last summer, in which teachers, parents and community activists came together to try to keep our public schools from being destroyed.
There are people all over the world still willing to take risks for what they believe to be right. That preserves some sense of hope.
That is the context in which I have been examining my own life, work, and future.
I have not been all that happy with my own teaching this year. I have at time struggled to find ways to connect my students with the material they study. In part it is because they are coming to me so unprepared for the level of work I have usually expected. Some of that is a direct product of national educational policy - the emphasis on reading and math has meant a diminution of time and space for social studies, art, etc. They are also quite different even from older siblings I taught as recently as two years ago. They experience their world in different ways, far more heavily involved in social media, and the way our schools have been structured has not adapted to those differences. I have made some changes to how I teach - I have gotten permission to allow students to use their smart phones and Ipods etc for academic purposes within my classroom, but that is barely a start.
This has led me to ask myself if what I am doing by continuing as a teacher is the best contribution I can make to the society in which I live and for the benefit of the students for whom I bear responsibility in my classroom. My increasing age is also a part of the reflection. I no longer have the levels of energy I had even two years ago. I tire more easily, I have more medical issues - my nurse practitioner told me last week that of course I am still feeling some impacts from my abdominal surgery in October, that it can take up to 6 months to fully recover from general anesthesia.
I have been exploring opportunities and possibilities beyond remaining in my current classroom, in part because I wonder if there are ways I can be more productive. Yesterday another came across my radar screen: The Spencer Fellowships in Education Journalism. Like the Doctorate of Education Leadership programat Harvard to which i have already applied, admission to this is incredibly competitive, I would not be a traditional applicant, and yet there are people who are encouraging me to consider it. The doctorate would require several years before i would begin to have a meaningful impact, the fellowship potentially could give me the possibility for more immediate impact.
In exploring both with others, what I hear time and again as that people see me more as a teacher than either a person working full-time in policy and administration, or devoting most of his work effort toward research and writing. One person whose judgment I trust has said that while he considers me primarily a teacher, he acknowledges that I can fulfill that part of my vocation while not being classroom based, perhaps by teaching adults through writing and lecturing and consulting, perhaps even through community organizing.
As I write this I am sitting in a Starbucks on Harrison Street in Arlington VA. Although it was nearly empty when I arrived an hour ago, it is rapidly filling up, and the line to e served now stretches to the door. Few of the faces I see today are Saturday morning regulars. There are those home from college, or families come together for the holidays. As I look around, there was one couple that I knew as I arrived, but they have left. I know no one. I am in public, but alone. That has often been how I have spend large chunks of time: in public places, thinking, reading, writing, reflecting, but not directly interacting with others. I come here because if I try to read or to write at home I often have cats crawling over me, making it hard to work. They may have respected my need to sleep this morning, but writing or correcting student papers surely cannot be of the value of having one of them curl up on my lap or my keyboard, or attempt to engage me in play - Cielito, our newest rescued kitty, will bring pieces of paper that he will drop on or next to me, in the hope I will toss them and he can again play fetch.
Sometimes when I am here, working on my computer, I will have earphones in, so that I am in but not really of the ambiance. I will be listening to music as I wrestle with my thoughts, or the words I read from others.
Not today. The sounds of others, of the coffee machines, surround me like the sounds of a beach.
I step back from the specifics of whether to apply for a Spencer, or if i should accept an offer of admission from Harvard in the unlikely event it is forthcoming, to things more basic.
What really matters to me? What really sustains me? How should I take this into account as I make choices, not merely for the "big" ideas of how I spend time after this school year, but for the seemingly insignificant decision about a single hour.
I could always attempt to be doing something "productive" but how would I know if it were productive if I did not step back and reflect?
I could also be obsessed with the passage of time - as a teacher I often find myself too concerned with how much time might be left in the period and not concerned enough with the matter of the individual students before me. Why, I wonder, do they have to be in conflict? What is wrong about how we do school that so often they are?
Some of the influences upon my thinking about the future are of course financial. It is impossible to avoid that, because I do have responsibilities I have assumed - mortgage, for example. Some financial "needs" are, however, upon closer examination, more matters of convenience or even laziness. I could adjust to doing things in a different way - checking books out of a library instead of purchasing them is one that immediately comes to mind.
I pull back further from these kind of thoughts. I ask myself what questions I would most like to address at the end of each day? How do those questions relate to this kind of end of year reflection?
Where was I kind? Where was I loving? Where did I make myself vulnerable? Where did I think of others and their well-being?
Have I answered that of God in the others I have encountered, or have I been so willful that I perceive them primarily as how I benefit from their presence? After all, can I fulfill my calling to be a teacher without students? Do I have to know who those students are, as I do when they are assigned to my classroom?
I took three trips to the monastic republic of Mount Athos, Holy Mountain, in Northern Greece, when i was an Orthodox Christian. Many people would travel from monastery to monastery riding in buses or on trucks along the logging roads that now cross the peninsula. I found that i preferred to travel the ancient footpaths through the forests, and along the sometimes very rocky coast. In the process i began to understand something about pilgrimage - its real value is not in reaching a predetermined destination, it is rather the journey itself.
I increasingly think of life as a pilgrimage. For me, it is less its final destination, which may be physical death. Rather it is how I live and think and speak and act as I continue along the journey.
In Buddhist thought the key goal of life is enlightenment. Rephrased in Western terminology, it could be considered to be fully aware. Buddhism recognizes those who having achieved that state nevertheless remain in the world to assist others along their paths. These enlightened beings are Boddhisattvas.
In Russian Orthodox tradition, there are those who may fully understand but live in ways in seeming contradiction to the society in which we find them. Perhaps that do not understand for themselves but know that they have a purpose for others which can only be achieved by the etreme way in which they appear different. These iurodivy, or Holy Fools, have an honorable place in the Russian tradition. Tolstoi provides an example with Prince Mishkin. The famous church on Red Square in Moscow is often called by the name of one such fool, Basil, the one man who could speak truth to Ivan IV "the terrible" with impunity. One can find a similar tradition in the biblical literature about the original sense of "prophet" - rather than one who foretold the future, a seer, one who called others to moral account.
I wonder if our society is too rational and has attempted to squeeze out the holy fools and prophets.
I not infrequently wonder if I am not of greater value when I let going of trying to make rational arguments and live moral ones.
How then does one express or experience without the words of rationality?
Poetry is certainly one example.
For me it has most been music, something that allows me to transcend the limits of my vocabulary and being to grasp something far more essential.
How then is this relevant to an end year reflection? How can it not be? Words are insufficient, I have always known that. Words that are sung serve as a bridge to another dimension where words are no longer either sufficient or necessary.
Which brings me to a question that returns me to the ponderings about my future. In words it is phrased as a question
Where is the music in what I propose to do?
Above I wrote about my realization that pilgrimage is less the question of destination than it is of journey.
Eternal questions challenge us not to resolve them with an answer, but to continue to ponder the challenge itself.
My senior thesis as a music major at Haverford College in my late twenties was on the songs of a unique American composer, Charles Ives, whose work can be challenging to play or to listen to, unless one is willing to let go of one's preconceptions and be drawn in.
This reflection is about questions. It has become also about music. So I will leave it unresolved, with a music question, by Charles Ives, composed in 1906.
The title is "The Unanswered Question."
Do not attempt to "understand" or to "answer." For a few moments, close your eyes and just listen.
MY question for myself, which will also remain unanswered, as a constant challenge to step back at the same time as I go further and deeper is as I have already noted: where is the music in what I propose to do?
Peace.
And here is the Ives: