I make use of Twitter for a number of different reasons. One of the reasons is a chance to follow some people I know---or know about---and want to see what they are thinking. One of the people I have read and know about is Barbara Brown Taylor. I have read some of her books, but I don’t know her personally. Maybe someday I will meet her. I would welcome that. Until then, I will read about her on Twitter and continue to read her books and occasionally use one in my class.
Recently, I saw a NPR interview of Taylor. Essentially it is an account of her ordination as an Episcopal priest and ministry as a parish minister. At some point, she then moved into college teaching at a small college in Georgia. In the interview she talks about how satisfying her job as a parish priest was and how different and difficult transitioning to the college classroom was for her.
Taylor has done many of the things I have done. She has taken students to experience the faith traditions of other major religions. I am sure her college is much like mine. Still the majority of students who call themselves religious or spiritual come from the Christian tradition. Most have never had much encounter with other major faith traditions. So when they visit a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple or Islamic mosque, they literally feel like the stepped off the plane into another country and culture. And in a very real way, that is true.
Her reason for doing this resonates with my reasons. Taylor comments, “I hoped it would be a way to convince [the students] that they could find things they liked about other traditions, and it would not make them disloyal to their own…And it worked most of the time.” I choose to do this because I see this as a way to work for peace. I figure if students know about another religious tradition and can respect it, there is far less likelihood for conflict and, especially, violence. I do think peace grows out of understanding.
Taylor shares with the reader what her own experience was when she would visit another faith tradition. She says, “I would walk in and immediately find something to fall in love with…The beauty of the space, the tenor of the discourse, the teacher for the evening, the hospitality we were offered. I ended up being just bowled over by the beauty and kindness that I encountered every place I went.” That has been my own experience almost every time I made a visit to some place of worship which was not my own tradition.
I continued reading the interview and confess I did not expect anything to surprise me, much less make me laugh. And then I broke out laughing. She said her goal was to teach about other religions in order to respect and appreciate them. I applaud that. She thinks that is one of the goals of education, not simply educating in a religious studies classroom. Education can and, often, does change people.
And then came the surprising part from Taylor. “So yes, I did feel as if in the field of religion, I was in the business of making misfits, better educated, more thoughtful misfits, who would never fit quite the same way in their faith communities, their families. Then I started talking to colleagues in other fields and they said, 'Yeah, that's what we do at college, is people grow and change and don't fit where they used to.' So I embraced that as part of my job.”
I never thought about creating misfits, but I think that is exactly what I do. And that is what happened to me in college. Even at the time, I knew college was changing me. It helped me think about faith and it shaped the way I thought about faith and enabled me to begin developing the spirituality I would claim even today for myself. And I am grateful. And yes, it did make me a misfit in some fashion.
Being a misfit is not a bad thing, unless the organization to which you belong---in my case the Quakers---don’t want people to think, grow and potentially change. To be a misfit meant I was not the same person who went off to college. And I am not even the same guy who graduated from college. It means I don’t fit in the way I did when I was younger, less educated and less experienced. I was certainly a different kind of Quaker when I knew nothing about other religions---even knew almost nothing about Catholicism and most Christian traditions.
Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes it is pathetic! I outgrew that phase and stage. And oddly some folks may feel like that is pathetic! In their eyes I may be a pathetic misfit. But I would have it no other way. Humans are designed to grow. That is what I hope to see for my students. Surely who they are now and how their world is will not be the same when they are fifty years old sometime about 2050!
It would be irresponsible of me and Barbara Brown Taylor to teach students not to change and always to fit into whatever mold they currently are in. And I happen to think that is not even what God wants for them. I think God wants vibrant, growing, evolving people. Physically we are born and, then, grow up. Why would it not be the same for us spiritually speaking?
I even dare say that God wants people to become spiritual misfits. And that is our job to create them.
Recently, I saw a NPR interview of Taylor. Essentially it is an account of her ordination as an Episcopal priest and ministry as a parish minister. At some point, she then moved into college teaching at a small college in Georgia. In the interview she talks about how satisfying her job as a parish priest was and how different and difficult transitioning to the college classroom was for her.
Taylor has done many of the things I have done. She has taken students to experience the faith traditions of other major religions. I am sure her college is much like mine. Still the majority of students who call themselves religious or spiritual come from the Christian tradition. Most have never had much encounter with other major faith traditions. So when they visit a Buddhist temple, a Hindu temple or Islamic mosque, they literally feel like the stepped off the plane into another country and culture. And in a very real way, that is true.
Her reason for doing this resonates with my reasons. Taylor comments, “I hoped it would be a way to convince [the students] that they could find things they liked about other traditions, and it would not make them disloyal to their own…And it worked most of the time.” I choose to do this because I see this as a way to work for peace. I figure if students know about another religious tradition and can respect it, there is far less likelihood for conflict and, especially, violence. I do think peace grows out of understanding.
Taylor shares with the reader what her own experience was when she would visit another faith tradition. She says, “I would walk in and immediately find something to fall in love with…The beauty of the space, the tenor of the discourse, the teacher for the evening, the hospitality we were offered. I ended up being just bowled over by the beauty and kindness that I encountered every place I went.” That has been my own experience almost every time I made a visit to some place of worship which was not my own tradition.
I continued reading the interview and confess I did not expect anything to surprise me, much less make me laugh. And then I broke out laughing. She said her goal was to teach about other religions in order to respect and appreciate them. I applaud that. She thinks that is one of the goals of education, not simply educating in a religious studies classroom. Education can and, often, does change people.
And then came the surprising part from Taylor. “So yes, I did feel as if in the field of religion, I was in the business of making misfits, better educated, more thoughtful misfits, who would never fit quite the same way in their faith communities, their families. Then I started talking to colleagues in other fields and they said, 'Yeah, that's what we do at college, is people grow and change and don't fit where they used to.' So I embraced that as part of my job.”
I never thought about creating misfits, but I think that is exactly what I do. And that is what happened to me in college. Even at the time, I knew college was changing me. It helped me think about faith and it shaped the way I thought about faith and enabled me to begin developing the spirituality I would claim even today for myself. And I am grateful. And yes, it did make me a misfit in some fashion.
Being a misfit is not a bad thing, unless the organization to which you belong---in my case the Quakers---don’t want people to think, grow and potentially change. To be a misfit meant I was not the same person who went off to college. And I am not even the same guy who graduated from college. It means I don’t fit in the way I did when I was younger, less educated and less experienced. I was certainly a different kind of Quaker when I knew nothing about other religions---even knew almost nothing about Catholicism and most Christian traditions.
Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes it is pathetic! I outgrew that phase and stage. And oddly some folks may feel like that is pathetic! In their eyes I may be a pathetic misfit. But I would have it no other way. Humans are designed to grow. That is what I hope to see for my students. Surely who they are now and how their world is will not be the same when they are fifty years old sometime about 2050!
It would be irresponsible of me and Barbara Brown Taylor to teach students not to change and always to fit into whatever mold they currently are in. And I happen to think that is not even what God wants for them. I think God wants vibrant, growing, evolving people. Physically we are born and, then, grow up. Why would it not be the same for us spiritually speaking?
I even dare say that God wants people to become spiritual misfits. And that is our job to create them.
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