What do I mean by my authentic engagement with my God, and with 'John'? Ben Cunningham Prepared for the Second International Conference on Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices, Herstmonceux Castle, UK, August 16-20, 1998

 

I enter into an educative relationship with 'John', who is an experienced secondary teacher in a large (700-student) all-boys' secondary college in a small rural town in Ireland. This educative relationship offers me an opportunity to understand and explain, at least to some extent, my relationship with my God. My dialogic relationship with my God enables me to communicate qualities of loving affirmation and compassionate understanding which I express in my educative relationship with John. These qualities I express both in a theoretical (theological) way, but also in a personally meaningful way. It is a way, however, which becomes fraught with pain, discordance and dislocation as I seek and receive John's evaluation of what I have achieved. Despite the pain I feel I hold to my view that my engagement both with my God and with John is authentic.

My engagement with John

In providing 'evidence' to substantiate what I mean by my authentic engagement with my God and with 'John', I start with my engagement with John. I am concerned that he have maximum freedom to become an independent learner and that our relationship evolve into a more equal one over time. And I am concerned that this enable John to improve the quality of learning of his students.

My concern was how could I both challenge John and, at the same time, offer compassionate understanding? I intuited early in our educative dialogues that John possessed fears, fears which might inhibit him from liberating the imaginations of his students in his efforts to improve the quality of their learning. I believe I could challenge him to change only because I know he trusted me. I know that because he kept coming to see me, he kept writing to me, he kept telephoning me! John expressed his fears in phrases such as the following: he felt 'under pressure'; he needed to learn to 'cope'. He was challenged by my openness but 'a little frightened by it also', adding that: 'I am wary of being too open myself in case I get hurt'. Regarding registering for a higher degree, he said: 'I must say I am enthused and quite excited at the whole venture. I would like to have the confidence, the courage to pursue (it)', though it 'both disturbs and attracts me'.

One way of tackling John's fears I felt was for me constantly to iterate to him my belief about his capacity to obtain a higher degree. I fully believed he would obtain it. If he registered at a university for it I would take that as the first sign that he was beginning to master his fears. Practically all of my efforts in this direction took place in conversations on the telephone which I hadn't logged. I decided on another tack also. I noticed from John's work with his students that their curiosity about what and why they were doing what they were doing didn't seem to me to be aroused. I viewed two video tapes of John teaching his senior students: in one case, a 'problem' in mathematics and in the other, a practical chemistry experiment. I challenged John strongly: (your maths students) ‘are actually incurious...'. While his chemistry students obviously had 'information' and 'techniques', I wondered what was it that gripped their imaginations, leading to increased understanding? My challenge was partly a plea that John's students be more involved, but also a plea to John himself to shake himself loose from his fears.

'I am shocked!', he told me. During a meal the same day I said to John: 'I am now convinced beyond all doubt that whatever fears inhabited you are draining away. You're going to have little difficulty doing your degree or indeed, changing anything you want to change in your classrooms'. His reply didn't surprise me: 'You are right. That's what I now believe, too'. Commenting on our educative relationship, John said that there was 'a growing bond of trust' that was helping him 'to understand, to improve my practice' and that it was 'becoming more collaborative'. I believe that John's trust in himself had grown immeasurably to the point where he was connecting both with himself and me in a way that was creative for him. This growing confidence enabled him to register at the university for a higher degree some time later.

My explanation of my engagement with my God

For me, the starkness of the apparent aloneness of my 'I' is lessened by knowing that my personal 'I' isn't alone, that I'm not alone. For me, I am accompanied by a personal God whom I am gradually getting to know with new eyes and in new ways.

In my educative relationships with others, I am also searching for my 'self' and for my 'identity' or perhaps I am creating them on a continuous basis. I believe that my search is inseparable from my search for God. In finding other people I also find my self and my God. In finding God I also find others - and my self. I believe that as a human being I am never satisfied; that I am in a state of dissatisfaction because I have not yet become self-actualised. I do not find my self-actualisation in the natural order exclusively, I fully discover it only in the God I believe in. In my relationships with others I endeavour to enable them to improve or change something and hope that, in the process, they will discover a greater sense of their own self and identity.

I also believe that in attempting to find my self in God I have to experience the void within me. That sounds rather unpleasant but really it means to me, an unfulfilled longing which nothing in the world will satisfy. It is only searching for God and for my self in God that will fill the void within me. Even though I am very much at home with others I believe that I will only find my permanent home with God. But, am I using my belief in God as my mechanism for avoiding or evading the difficulties of life? I know I can't steer clear of this void because for me it is an unavoidable part of my journey towards knowing God. I believe, for example, that it appeared when I challenged John to the possible point of rupture of relationship. I experienced this void when I was temporarily unconnected waiting for John to decide if he could believe in and trust me! The intensity of the void was lifted when he made his decision that, yes, he could trust me!

Is my educative relationship with John about helping me to fulfil myself, to become self-actualised? I don't want anybody, John included, to be the means to my self-actualisation. If relationships were the path to my self-actualisation, couldn't I with equanimity walk out on them when I became convinced that they were not fulfilling me or helping my self-actualisation? Perhaps the best form of self-actualisation for me is one where I try to avoid being too self-regarding. What I need maybe is self-emptying which means my efforts to detach myself from myself when I enter dialogue with others. It is a form of self-control that I attempt to practise for the sake of others. A major way in which it happened in my relationship with John I believe was when I did not demur at his decision to concentrate on his on his teaching rather than directly on his students' learning. He had to be allowed to come to his own priorities in his own way.

I have described and explained my relationship with my God perhaps too technically and theoretically, but what does it feel like to me as I am on my own in solitude, or relationally with others. My God is like an old shoe. Yes, an old shoe. His fit with me and mine with him feels comfortable. Mind you, it isn't as if he won't occasionally do what I did to John - challenge. And challenge mightily! There have been times over the past few years when I was dying to say: 'Hump off, you're getting above your station!' Why did I feel that way? That was when he belonged to a Church! I decided over the past few years that he had a right to a life dissociated from the 'club' - from the Church! I mentally removed him from the 'club'. The minute I did it I felt he became more chummy, more relaxed, more himself. All his previous outdated duties and obligations lifted from him. We could now talk man to man with no holds barred! I felt he was more free to exercise his responsibility of an 'I-Thou' relationship towards me individually. The previous Church 'rules' bounding it had disappeared for him and for me. That was very welcome!

I had some worries though: how was I going to keep in contact with God, having dropped the traditional 'prayers' I used to say? Then I realised that I often forget people, even those I have known and liked for many years, those who are my close friends. Does that mean carelessness, neglect? I don't think so. All it means is that I am human and therefore limited. I haven't got the gift of keeping an almost infinite number of ideas and people in mind simultaneously. The most I can do is remember some of them from time to time. That's the best I can do. When I remember them I ring, write or e-mail. But what of God? Did he, and does he, get the same treatment? He does. With the exception that I don't normally write, ring or e mail him! No, I remember him mentally. And what are some of the things that help to remind me of him? There was John's desire before meeting me that he have some 'quiet' time where he either sat in chapel silent in thought and word or 'raised his mind and heart to God'. That was a reminder to me of God's availability to me, but also of mine to him.

I believe that in the concrete moment of challenge with John that I not only met a new John, a metamorphosed John, but also a metamorphosed God. I met a God who is as involved in the world as I am and who delights in it. In meeting John at a level of total respect, albeit involving strong challenge, I believe I met a God I recognised more clearly. I believe with Buber that: 'Every Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou' (Bacik, 1989:220-233). I know I never meet God directly but I can and do meet him in the 'apparently empty spaces between persons' (Ibid). I met him that day in the space between John and me, in the void of anxious waiting before John's answer. I also know that without John there wouldn't be a fully formed I. I could have kept myself at a 'professional distance' from him but instead I reached out to him in genuineness. He reciprocated.

For myself I need too to ask and answer the question: 'Do I love God?' I do. But how do I know? I know that my love of God is not merely my enjoyment of a moment of private ecstasy, such as I sometimes have when enjoying a piece of music or enjoying a 'peak' experience, such as with John. No, my love is based on 'the responsibility of an I for a Thou' (Ibid), my taking of responsibility in my relationship with God and with John. I do not mistake my feelings of warmth towards my God and towards John for the full reality. No, my love is also my personal responsibility to every 'You' I meet as well as to my 'Thou'; it needs to endure the test of time, difficulty and challenge. It involves my understanding, perhaps for the first time, of 'what it means to be a human being' (Ibid).

Postscript

I shared what I had written in this paper with John in late April, 1998, to which he replied, saying, 'Apart from my existential 'misgivings', Ben, this is some of the best writing I have read by you regarding clarity of thought, flow of language, and articulated meanings...It took a long time (seven days!) to net that compliment from this 'deep sea'; I hope it was worth waiting for!!...the representation is definitely yours Ben, even with its possibility of causing me pain in opening a wound that is healing regarding fear and in the authoring of John by somebody (no matter how caring!) other than (me)! And you are caring towards others and towards me!'

I acknowledge John's pain as he felt a wound re-opening for him on reading my chapter. I too felt fear and pain within myself as I waited for John's reply, fearing for the second time the possibility of rupture in our relationship. I was unable to write, to read with attention, or even sleep properly. 'How is what I have written going to affect John?' was my constant thought during those seven days. Despite what John said, I never felt for one moment a wish to change what I had written or that I had 'authored' him. To do so would have meant I possessed unlimited power. I never felt that way. John would never allow me to act that way. What I believe I have done is to write me. I have written my self. For the first time I believe I am able to say I am the author of my own life. I believe I have, for the first time for me, revealed to myself and to my reader, the depths of my belief in my God and how He is helping me to author my own life. I believe too that part of my relationships with others is part of the intricate interweaving of my relationship with my God. In coming to these conclusions I want to lay on the line my belief about my authenticity and my personal integrity by asking my readers: 'do you believe me?'