Education – A Time of Slowing

            Being that it is reading week, I finally have some time to breathe. September seems to have dissolved without my knowledge and as the weather begins to turn, I am keenly aware that it is no longer the beginning of the semester.

            I am back at school, and boy am I glad to be back. I am starting a Masters of Christian Studies at Regent College, which means I get to see much more of Duncan and Amy as well as spending countless hours with my face in books.

            I am glad to hear from Danielle and Kelsey in their latest posts that education occurs in the work place and on the farm. I value these kinds of learning, and might even posit that these types of experiential learning have a longer lasting impact on us as persons, but that is not where I am at this moment in time. I have chosen to return to the academy. Why have I done so?

            Well because I love it and I am challenged by it. I think that wrestling with the mind is a worthwhile endeavour. The challenge to think in new ways, to consider information from previously untried angles, and the opportunity to test and reconsider beliefs and values is never a frivolous pursuit. 

            I also love the academy because at its best it makes a mockery of the capitalist system we live in. What I mean by this is that the academy, in its true form, makes a mockery of our prevailing worldview that time = money. In essence, I can waste vast amounts of time on a paper, which in reality will be read by one professor at one moment, probably not making a huge impact on that person, to receive a grade that does not matter all too much. This, to my knowledge, is not generally accepted in the working world. In some ways, academic pursuit acts as an extended period of the spiritual discipline of slowing. The discipline of slowing is to stop time, pause, think, reflect, realign oneself in order to act and live better in the subsequent moments.

            My goal in this extended period of slowing is to increase my ability to be self-critical. I think education at its best teaches and trains a contemplative mind, not only skills and content. It trains us to perceive the underlying questions, to show us how “facts” can be read and interpreted in various ways, and to open ourselves to other perspectives. In doing so we can approach the rest of life more humbly, acknowledging the complexities, the diversity, and the wonder of the human experience. So although education, specifically education in the academy, often does not feel like slowing, I think it largely emulates the discipline of slowing.

            This reading week has also given me time to finalize a paper I wrote at the UN this past summer, which was presented August 24th in New York at a conference in honour of Shi’a Muslim scholar Dr. Mahmoud Ayoub. I spent Sunday finalizing the citations and writing an introduction and brief critique on Christian just war theory, which now introduces the main argument of the paper. It is entitled “A Mennonite Vision for Tolerance and Global Peace” and it should be published by the end of this year. After sending off the final copy, I received an e-mail from Doug the MCC UN director. Here is an excerpt, “You should also know that Ed Martin [Ed Martin was Mennonite Central Committee area director for Central and Southern Asia from August 1989 through September 2007] borrowed freely from this (with my permission) for a short presentation he was asked to give in a meeting with Iranian President Ahmadinejad here in New York on September 25th.”

            This in no small way made my day! As I told my mom about it over the phone this evening, we reflected on the importance of sharing alternative perspectives. Specifically because without sharing them we remain limited to our own conceptions of reality. We wondered together if maybe, in some small way, my paper might have been an alternate perspective Ahmadinejad needed to hear. I am not sure, and there is probably no way of ever knowing. Nevertheless, as I wrote on education this example seemed to fit. For I think at the heart of education is hearing and perspective sharing, and then learning to think about what we hear.