Fighting is Good for the Soul

In some ways, teaching is like parenting in that we are trying to shape human beings, sometimes against or in spite of their wills, and certainly against their fallen natures. If you’ve been reading TSR for any length of time, you know that it can easily frustrate me, and does many other educators from time to time.

I came across an article today called, “Midnight in the Bedroom of Good and Evil,” which is worth reading for the title alone, that dealt with how parents (and educators, by extension) not only struggle against the resistance of their children, but how that creates a sympathetic eruption of their own fallen natures—selfishness, anger, frustration, irritability, and so on.

The author tells an account I will repeat here about a monk living among the Desert Fathers.

What Did Mary Know?

In chapter 12 of John’s Gospel, Jesus is attending a party at the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus, whom he just raised in chapter 11. The party is going fine, when Mary shocks everyone. She pulls out an alabaster (likely modern day calcite) jar of fine perfuming oil called spikenard. Largely due to its likely origins in the Himilayas, it was extremely expensive. The jar contained about a pound of it, costing a year’s wages. She breaks the flask open, begins to pour it all over Jesus, head to toe, including his feet. If this weren’t scandal enough, she uncovers her hair, letting it fall free, so that she could wipe the excess up with it.

To the party’s guests, this was wrong on so many levels.

Innovation versus Selfishness

One of the blogs I follow is that of Seth Godin, a marketing ‘guru’. He’s a lot better as saying more in fewer words than I am. (Classic difference between a marketer and a teacher!) Today, his post is Jumping the line vs. opening the door, about the difference between inconveniencing others by jumping to the front of the line and jumping to create a new stream for traffic flow.

One is selfish and one is an act of service. In academia, we have no shortage of policy bottlenecks, and one’s effectiveness is often measured by how well they understand what rules to bend and how. Students in particular appreciate faculty who can cut through the red tape to accomplish logically simple tasks that procedures drag out. As committee members, we can re-evaluate where we really need policy and where we need competence in ourselves and staff.

What a ministry opportunity!

SDG