Julia,
Your post has a lot in it that floats my boat. And well spoken too.
This teaching thing has some dimensions I wasn’t that clear on.
You help bring some of that “extra” stuff into my awareness.
The Art of Possibility, which I just looked up at Amazon, one of these extra stuff dealies. Did you share this story with all of the cohort? If not, could be a good idea to…
Oh, and when I followed a link to Ben Zander videos I ended up at the “Employee University”, which has all kinds of interesting stuff:
http://employeeuniversity.com/
I guess since at the basic level teaching is about enabling human beings, it connects to all the elements of being alive. And somewhere in there, we start talking about the intangibles of what makes a human being the best he or she can be…
At that point in the conversation…I tend to bring out the spirtual flavored terminology.
Let me try here to say it without using those “religious” words, because we are in a “secular” context, I guess. Otherwise I’d point to a phrase like “the power of faith” as being very apropos here.
But, what if we said, that what exists is not all that CAN exist, and it’s in the nature of being to contain possibility. The universe clearly supports life, or we wouldn’t be here. From this we can simply observe that showing up, open to possibility, is one of the fundamental things to know about as a human being.
We come into the world knowing this. Apparently we can learn to forget how to do this. And fortunately, under various circumstances, we can also remember, or relearn it.
What a good thing for a “teacher” to understand, as you do. And how appropriate for the students in this region. It’s kind of reaching beyond what one might call “teaching” and into the realm of “inspired leadership” too.
And if you would humor me for a moment, I think this is really what it’s all about in our short passage on the planet as individual beings. Envisioning grace, using that creative function we all have to it’s highest purpose, for ourselves, and for others. I tend to think of it as doing the things the “I” part can do… which is mostly about showing up with a good ‘tude…and our choices do affect things….but in the end it’s faith that moves the mountains, because the real juice is in the “ONE” part.
Of course, I don’t spend all my days in clarity and grace…and have to settle for just knowing that it’s a mystery…as Slartibartfast said: the chances of every really knowing what’s going on are a tad slim. On occasion though, one has visions that come true.
Preacher John
(hey, you got me inspired… what can I say, I’m a blabber…or to use modern terminology, a blogger…)
