The choir good-naturedly (I hope!) tolerates my inane emails disguising the more significant points of information and encouragement I try to send from week to week. Given that they, like so many others in the congregation (not to mention our extended families), are constantly on the go, I have labeled them the peripatetic choir, or the Choir of the Revolving Door. The word peripatetic puzzled a few and also prompted some good jokes in the resulting email exchange. The word literally means “to walk around…” [peri] “on the paths…” [patois]. The Greek prefix, “peri-,” also shows up in “periscope” [literally: “to look around”] or “periodontist” [the doctor who works “around the teeth” on gums and the jaw]. Linguistics aside, the Peripatetic School [founded in 335 B.C.E.] was named for Aristotle’s preferred method of teaching. Aristotle liked to wander about while teaching, thinking, conversing with, and challenging the students accompanying him. Indeed, doctors and philosophers alike assure us that walking frees the mind to consider creatively life unfolding around us while the body benefits and is refreshed by a modest workout. This became clear when meandering with my then toddler nephew outside one afternoon. The wonders he found in the yard, his delighted surprise at a bird suddenly appearing, not to mention the bugs, worms, rocks, and most everything else were for him brand new discoveries about the sweet mystery of life. The walk, meanwhile, jolted me out of adult inattention and complacency. Children seem instinctively to understand poet William Blake’s (1757-1827) comment: “To see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour…” Adults have to learn that all over again. The ancient insight about walking while discussing life’s wonders and challenges with a family member, friend, or student is also what is lurking behind the final verse of this Sunday’s Psalm 116:9: I will walk in the presence of the Lord / in the land of the living.
Appropriately, we will ask God’s on-going blessing upon teachers and students this coming Sunday [which pretty well takes in everyone]. The readings for Sunday are singularly appropriate for the occasion, reminders that time spent with each other and with God brings insight, self-understanding, and an appreciation for the wonders of God which remain far beyond our ability to fathom. Nevertheless, the hours, days, and years we spend with God’s faithful, considering God’s word, being God’s stewards and ambassadors, ready to give an encouraging word, cup of water, or an understanding ear while we walk the proverbial mile in someone else’s shoes are what first sparks then continues to nourish and tutor the faith welling up in us.
Sadly, we all too quickly associate “learning” with “classroom,” primarily seeing it as a formal, academic responsibility to be endured by the younger until they graduate or are confirmed – can YOU still recite the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the Ten Commandments, Golden Rule, and perhaps a psalm or two all from memory? A journal and on-line think-tank about education recently posted a study, “Learning Spaces” by Malcolm Brown of Darmouth College. Brown noted in his study:
“A shift in the teaching and learning paradigm is well under way, moving away from a transmission paradigm [i.e., moving information from one brain to another] to a constructivist paradigm […how we learn by experiences and interactions]. In 1900, basic literacy skills included reading, writing, and calculation. Knowing meant being able to remember and repeat, which was appropriate to an industrial age in which practices changed slowly (at least by today’s standards). Workers anticipated having a single profession for the duration of their working lives. Education was based on a factory-like, “one size fits all” model. Talent was developed by weeding out those who could not do well in a monochromatic learning environment.
The postindustrial age is characterized by rapid change. Literary skills now include critical thought, persuasive expression, and the ability to solve complex scientific and organizational problems. Knowing now means using a well-organized set of facts to find new information and to solve novel problems. In 1900, learning consisted largely of memorization; today it relies chiefly on understanding…” [https://www. educause.edu/research-and-publications/books/educating-net-generation/learning-spaces].
Study, reflection, and careful consideration of the challenges of life are God’s preferred mode for how we live, no matter what our age. It is the vibrant reality the Church presently calls “life-long learning.” Wise teachers, Sunday’s second reading tells us, are difficult to find because there is so much at stake. A good teacher hopes to awaken the desire to learn, helping students master basic understandings and skills while encouraging creative thought and application. Patience, kindness, courtesy, self-discipline, and the desire to assist students to be good disciples [those who have mastered beneficial disciplines] are hallmarks of good teachers. The hallmark of good students remains a deep and abiding desire to understand, a curiosity which opens their minds and hearts to the world around them rather than building walls or rejecting, discarding, and unfriending what and whomever they don’t readily “get”. The hallmark of a good community [i.e., Mt. Horeb parish] is our willingness to commit to supporting, providing for, and praying for teachers and students alike while acknowledging that we ALL are students, and some are also called to be teachers. Callings must be discovered. Good parents and guardians strive to open their charges’ minds and hearts to the bounty and wonder of God’s creation, not shutting them off from anything that is not immediately familiar by our own reckoning or anxieties. At times we do fail in the learning process. Others can also fail to provide the encouragement needed.
The Watergate Era was an exceedingly vexing and shocking period in American history, angering and embarrassing the American public as it dealt with its governing structures utterly compromised by deceit. The very people entrusted with the nation’s welfare had committed high crimes and misdemeanors by the dozens. One of the lesser lights of the era was the not-so-honorable Senator of my home state, Earl Landgrebe (a Lutheran, alas!). A partisan politician at all costs, he refused to read or even consider the serious charges leveled at the highest government officials including President Nixon himself. Senator Landgrebe forever secured himself a place on the news bureaus’ list of “dumbest congressmen” when asked by an NBC reporter why he refused to read the charges and supporting material brought to Congress. Landgrebe’s reply: “Don’t confuse me with the facts! My mind is closed…”
God’s desire for us is never ever that we retreat into closed minds and hearts, refusing to confront, assess or perhaps actually embrace whatever challenges us, what might be new to us, or substantially different from what we take for granted day to day. Certainly, we should never take pride in choosing NOT to learn, study, or grow “…in wisdom, and stature, and favor with God and our fellow companions in this life,” to momentarily paraphrase Luke 2:40. Cognitive dissonance is not necessarily a bad thing.
We will hear readings this Sunday which challenge us to our core. They underscore our profound need for the openness to learn and expand our understanding of what God asks of each of us. Jesus’ own words to us are sobering: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels [Mark 8:34b-38].
Our abiding hope in life must be to remain honest and humble in our struggle to learn all we can about God’s desire for us. St. Peter finally was able to make his good confession to Jesus in Sunday’s gospel. However, he started out as a disciple/student on a very steep learning curve, fearful, blustering, opinionated, and impetuous in his early years, but eventually overcoming even his ingrained prejudices about others radically different than him. He welcomed the gentile Cornelius into God’s family and learned humility in the process. Cold comfort tho’ it may be, Bette Davis’ zinger of a line in All About Eve (1950) sums up what we face: “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.” God grant us open minds and able teachers to lead and accompany us on our “…walk in the presence of the Lord in the land of the living.”