The Courage of Coming Out

Colleague From Hell

but love me!
love me!

I don’t have
the courage
to teach.

Dr Kalinowski said what
I would have if I had the
courage: we need to be
educating for the 21^st
century.

Would that be a matter
of Content? Information?
Frame-of-Mindset? Attitude?
Reformatting? Reformation?
Reconfiguration of the
contexts of "educating"?

Forest Ecology for crying
out loud.

Our age is post-literate, neo-oral.
Need we argue? We can. Right
here 24/7/365--as like never
before. How much does it
cost? A family that brays
together stays together.

I cried in Dead Poets Society.
Back in the 80’s and then again
yesterday in Fellowship Hall. I
don’t have the courage, damnit.

Fear in a handful of must.

The Promise of Paradox
To Know as We are Known
Let Your Life Speak: other
titles by Parker Palmer. His
motif: education is a spiritual
journey. Listen for your voice
of vocation.

Socrates called IT his Idios Daemon,
private genius, tutelary spirit,
paraclete. Do you believe
in "angels"?
Angles?

No?
Pity.

Opposite of a profound truth
is another profound truth.
Opposing a trivial truth:
a contradiction.

There are two kinds of truth,
small truth and great truth.
I can recognize a small truth
because its opposite is a false
hood. The opposite of a
great truth is another truth.

The opposite of a correct
statement is an incorrect
statement; the opposite
of a fact = falsehood

There are trivial truths and
the great truths. The opposite
of a trivial truth is plainly false.
The opposite of a great truth is
also true.

(variations on Neils Bohr,
or else urbane legend)

Contradiction on the one hand
Paradox on the other. Can I put
them in play? May I? Speak out
of 2 or— better: 3 sides of my
mouth at the same more or less time?
Squeezing contradiction & paradox
into a ball & rolling it toward some
over whelming universe?

My Luciferous Lucid Dreams

“WE,
retentive,
reflected on
retention:
getting them
all on the same
pages from the
start and may
be no child
left behind.”

(from “Daze of Whine
& Brown Gnosis”)

Richard Nixon
repeatedly insisted:
“Let me make one
thing perfectly clear,”
over & over.

And so: if I make it
all perfectly clear to
my students, eliminating
ambiguity, uncertainty,
indeterminacy, room for
confusion, margins for
error & play, that’ll
do it.

Retain them.

My dead lines:
perfectly clear:
how I tame the
call of the wild.
Domesticate.
Clarity uber alles
Nothing but good
intentions need
apply.

“Clarity is not a virtue. If
everything you say is detailed
and explicit, you won’t give
your collaborators room to
run.

Put ideas out there that are
half-baked, ideas where
you’re not even sure
what it means yet. Put yourself
in an environment that rewards failure.
Creativity is risky; successful creative
people are also the ones who fail the
most often. Creativity is inefficient.

(Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius:
The Creative Power of Collaboration.)

If I only had one million dollars for
the Advancement of Liberal Art…

I like Paula Garrett’s good spirit!

Every conception is immaculately
conceived. Where do new ideas
come from? Flap in like storks?
A precious bundle down the
chimney?

Robert Bly told an Asheville audience
when someone asked “where do you
get your ideas?”

It’s like a bunch of birds fly around,
fly around, passing over every one
with no room in the inn. I got some;
they know that: so they come roost.

xxxooo, Presbyter