Writing Freedom Can Be Scary

Reading my W400 students’ writing collages—as always when I’ve read literacy narratives—inspires me, frustrates me, and puzzles me. I’m inspired to do even more to give students new genres to explore and to help them reflect on what writing, reading, learning, and inquiry have meant to them and could mean going forward. I’m frustrated to read about teachers who discourage and sometimes even bully students. How can someone decide to enter a helping profession and do more harm than good? How can someone choose to work with children yet not be empathetic, loving, playful, and understanding? And finally I’m puzzled by why this collage genre is hard for some students. We talk about it and I show them examples. I share my writing experience collage and a web page that talks about the collage genre and gives examples. This semester I read a chapter from a book that is in the collage style and uploaded that chapter. Some get it. As one student wrote in her writer’s statement, “I worked to be in the collage aesthetic.” And she did. But some are stuck composing a fairly traditional personal essay with an introduction, transitions, and a conclusion. And some write so little—maybe only 2-3 experiences and at most 3 pages. I think in the future I should go over the examples in detail in class: what do you notice? What do you want to emulate? I should also give them a more ambitious page limit (write 5-6 pages, or even 7-8 pages, or give a word count), or suggest they have at least 8 sections in the collage or 8 experiences they recall. I think it was Peter Elbow who suggested the idea of a writing collage to me. It’s an assignment in his book, Being a Writer, co-written with Pat Belanoff. (Pat ought to get more attention from me instead of my fixating on my lifelong teaching mentor. I should read more by and about her!) I gave that assignment first in W131. Elbow and Belanoff present the collage as a way for beginning college writers to not worry about transitions and organization and instead (a) generate lots of writing focused on a broad theme; (b) do minimal revising and editing; and (c) reflect on their experiences with writing. Of course, what seems less demanding is more demanding for some, because years of being taught five-paragraph essays or at least very sequenced, organized pieces that have a focusing introduction with a thesis, transitions between points, paragraphs that make sub-points supporting the thesis, and a conclusion that ties it all together—those years create a mindset about school writing that is hard to let go of. It's not unlike the multi-genre paper that Tom Romano introduced me to at an ITW conference many years ago. Students do take to the multi-genre paper, sooner or later, and usually produce interesting work. But the semester when my W131 section was mostly students interested in education as a major showed me that they could struggle with this supposedly liberating, creative genre more than other W131 students. Again, the seeming lack of structure and breaking old habits was harder than I expected. Not to make an exaggerated comparison, or to minimize the penal experience, but when someone has been in prison many years, life on the outside can be difficult. Freedom is what caged people crave, but the openness can also induce agoraphobia.

Tribal religion vs universal religion

Those who study world religions and those who study, however casually, the history of religions in human history, are sometimes led to bemoan the divisive, destructive effects religion has had. The history of religious warfare certainly doesn’t inspire awe, except the kind implied by the word “awfulness.” Bloody fighting between Christians and Muslims, between Catholics and Protestants, between different sects of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus reaffirm many atheists in their lack of belief, and push believers into an unaffiliated, non-institutional approach to religious faith. One could argue that much of this sectarian conflict has more to do with culture and nationalism than true religion. I’m not an expert in this area, but I doubt that anyone could find irrefutable evidence that all fervent warriors in these religious wars were not motivated at all by religious belief or were not “true believers.” Religion might never be the only motivation for violent inter-group conflict, but it appears to be a very powerful one. I’m probably about to reinvent observations made by many others before me—and I’ll do some research to confirm that at some point—but I want to get my thoughts down first. Consider this exploratory thinking, not an attempt at a definitive thesis. My hypothesis? Religion that provokes, or supports, warfare is tribal, not universal. It doesn’t matter which came first, the religious belief or the tribalism. Let’s consider them mutually supporting, or co-relative. My argument is that those who engage in violent conflict with people of a different religion have a tribalistic religion. Their god is precisely that—their god (or gods). They have a deity who favors their group. Their deity is superior to other deities. Their religion is the true religion. They may or may not be interested in converting other people to their religion; they might force those they defeat in battle to convert, or at least to acknowledge the superiority of their god/gods and keep quiet about their own religion. They might engage in crusades or missions to bring their faith to others. Or they might just keep their religion to themselves and dare others to interfere, or look in scorn at those with inferior gods and religious systems. All of this can be done under the cover of benevolence. I know more about Christianity than other religions, so this no doubt happens in other faiths, but Christians have been very good at benevolent superiority and conquest. Because our religion is the highest, the purest, the most developed, we want to share it with other people and other nations or tribes. It helps when we have a powerful ruler on our side, of course—an emperor, a king or queen, the President of a global superpower. Under the protection of this civil authority, our religious missionaries can take the faith to those within our empire (be it political or economic or cultural or some combination of those forces). Those missionaries individually may be kind, empathetic, compassionate, peaceful, tolerant. They may adopt many features of other cultures; they may even become deeply interested in other religions and promote inter-religious dialogue. But as long as they operate within an overarching belief system that is tribal, they haven’t crossed over or been transformed into universalists. And thus their most benevolent efforts can get caught up in conflict and war, and they themselves are often some of the first victims of such violence. Tribalism can be seen within a religion too, of course. Those on the outside see larger religious systems: Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism. Those on the inside are aware, often painfully aware, of the many tribes within a seemingly unified group. It never takes long for a religion to start splintering into rival groups. I won’t bore you with examples. If you have been involved in any kind of religion in your life, or been near one, or read about one, you can list your own examples. The tribalism goes down and down, deeper and deeper. It’s like opening one Russian nesting doll after another. Take my own former sect, the Baptists. There are so many different Baptists I have lost count. I grew up Southern Baptist, which later splintered into at least three groups. And in small towns or suburbs, you can often find rival congregations that all claim to be Southern Baptist but who have nothing good to say about each other. Divisions can of course arise from differing beliefs or practices, but also from personality differences, loyalty to different leaders, fights over church polity, and fights over buildings and land. But does it finally matter? It’s all one version of tribalism or another. What I would consider the highest, truest religion, one that approached some kind of truth and enduring value to humanity and to the Earth, would have to transcend tribalism. I will call such a religion “universal.” I’m not necessarily talking about universalism, the belief that all will ultimately be “saved” or favored by the Deity/deities or end up in heaven/paradise/nirvana. I suppose a truly universal religion could realize that people will not all have the same ultimate fate or take the same path to enlightenment. A universal religion, however, would not be identified with a particular “tribe.” There would be no in-group and out-group, no true believers and infidels. This religion would not be identified with a single nation state, a single ethnic group, a single leader, a single prophet, a single name for the divine. This religion would draw no circles, however expansive. It would have no set of doctrines, no catechism, no statement of faith that anyone needed to recite, sign, or swear allegiance to. This is getting long for a blog post, which is what I’m aiming at. So I won’t go farther at this point. I know I’m begging many questions, especially with those last few statements. Am I imagining a religion that has no content at all? No principles, no values to live by? No truths? No guiding stars to navigate by? Am I simply singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” imagining lots of negatives but no actual positive? Another objection might be that I’m imagining a humanity or a set of human beings who never have been and never will be, at least not in our lifetimes. “You say that I’m a dreamer.” I won’t deny that accusation.

(Jesus enters Jerusalem, Pandemic edition)

Jesus rode into the city on a bicycle—by himself. His disciples were at home with their families. Thank goodness; they had been wearing him out before this quarantine began. Arguing about who would become President of the Southern Baptist Convention, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the next Pope. Then there was Simon the Zealot, insisting that Jesus should run for President, that the nomination wasn’t sewn up yet. Jesus had tried to convince Simon to put his energies into AOC’s campaign for Congress. “Simon, if the Democrats win the Senate, maybe you can get me appointed to the Supreme Court. I’d love to get there before Ruth retires. But please stop being a Jesus Bro; you’re ruining my reputation.” But hey, at least Matthew’s tax collecting background was starting to look better: Jesus prophesied that taxes were going to be cool again after all this was over.

The road was quiet, and frankly, that’s the way Jesus liked it sometimes. He felt bad for all the people in their anxiety and suffering, but he couldn’t say he missed those large crowds. He supposed his ministry was an essential service, but folks would have to tune into his live stream sermons and catch him being interviewed by Seth Myers on Hulu.

As he approached the Temple of the Light and the Rock and the Glorious Media, he was astonished to see scores of cars in the parking lot and people crowding into the sanctuary. Jesus sighed, dismounted from his bicycle, and stood safely across the street. He yelled across to the people entering the Temple: “Hey, what are you folks doing? Why aren’t you at home? Isn’t that why your church spends thousands of dollars on TV equipment?” The people were startled and murmured to each other, “Who is this guy? One of those antifa people? Someone from the liberal media? Or just a kook?”

Finally their exalted chief pastor and CEO, Rev. Theodolphus Fuller, came outside. He yelled across to Jesus: “Who are you? Who gives you the authority to tell us we can’t exercise our First Amendment rights?”

Jesus said, “It is written, ‘my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have turned it into a den of infection. I would come over there and knock over all the pews, but I’m not going near you people. Just because I’m the Son of Man and in my thirties doesn’t mean I’m going to risk Covid19. Tell everyone to go home and quietly read their Bibles, hang out with their loved ones, and listen to some good music, maybe some Bob Dylan or Bach.”

Indignantly, Rev. Fuller snorted. “I’m not going to put Anthony Fauci ahead of God. You must be the Antichrist. We won’t listen to you! Come on, my flock. Let’s go inside and show that we obey a higher law than the CDC. Oh, hey, good to see some of you have your guns! We might as well exercise all our rights.”

Jesus wept.

Reading an unpublished manuscript by a friend of mine reminded me how important generosity of spirit is in our world. This friend uses Rene Girard's ideas to show connections between Christianity and Buddhism. Generous actions and thoughts toward all other people (and all other living beings)reduces hatred and envy, replacing division with connection. What might this look like in today's world, especially in our divisive culture filled with anger, suspicion, mistrust, and incivility?

I'm not claiming to be a spiritual guru; it's easier to speak these truths than to live them. Perhaps, though, identifying some truths might help me live them out more fully.

As we enter a fierce election season in the United States, can we work together to solve problems in ways that benefit all people? Yes, candidates run to win, and we have to make decisions as voters that will result in victories and defeats. Ultimately, though, our goal should not be the triumph of party, faction, or group. Instead, what will lead to a more equitable society for all people? What will save the planet? What will promote life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I will end up voting for Democratic Party candidates in 2020, without fail. That's not because I am a team player. I've never considered myself a Democratic Party "member." I'm not rooting for them to win so we can all gloat at the victory party on election night. I will vote Democratic because I look for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people on earth. Voting Democratic is only a means to an end. I will have to hold any Democrats who win accountable for their actions. I will critique policies that fall short of the ideals that matter to us as free citizens. I will be happy if some Republicans work hard to reform their party so that it too seeks those ideals. I will be happy if third parties and independent candidates are willing to work toward those ideals.

That's why I dislike the competitive nature of politics, even while being somewhat of a political junkie. I cringe when presidential debates turn into name-calling. I don't want Klobuchar to zing Buttigieg, or Warren to blast Biden, or everyone to ignore Yang. I want a meaningful discussion of issues that matter. I want honestly vetted ideas that will improve everyone's lives. As much as I believe our current President has disgraced the office, I don't want Democratic candidates to stoop to his level. I don't want anyone challenging him to a back alley brawl or engaging in Twitter warfare on his terms.

Moving away from electoral politics, I see applications of these spiritual practices in higher education, my professional setting. Faculty are encouraged to advance professionally, and that can be valuable, but it can also become competitive. I don't need to be promoted at someone else's expense. Faculty and staff should work together to advance the mission of their university or college, which should not be to attain glory in the USA Today ratings or on the athletic field, but to serve students and the larger community, and advance knowledge for the good of the planet. Narrowly construed promotion criteria work against such ideals. Competitive annual reviews and inequitable salary systems also degrade collaborative work. And don't get me started on the negative effects of grades and the competition created among students for limited spots in coveted programs.

Our neo-capitalist socio-economic system also promotes competition, often fierce competition, too often unethical competition. "Free enterprise" might be a good ideal to work toward, but not when it becomes a winner-take-all battle that leads to monopolistic corporations dominating industries and even professions. Freedom is usually illusory. Freedom wrongly conceived promotes the victory of the powerful and the clever, not the good of all. I have not seen a socio-economic system that works well all the time; I've seen evidence of many that work very badly. But in the US, we tend not to know enough about other systems to rightly judge them. We are so immersed in our system that we treat it as natural, as the best. It isn't. We too often blame "socialism" for evils that arise from corrupt politics, power-hungry politicians, military leaders, and business executives, and a global system that promotes inequality.

Whatever solution we come up with in healthcare, for example, should promote the health of all people, not the profit of a few. The same goes for infrastructure, our food supply, our environment, our schools, our housing, and so on. Beware of people who argue for "limited government" or "freedom from excessive regulation" when they usually mean "limit the government from interfering with my profits" and "don't regulate my unfair practices."

Can we work toward a spiritual public sphere, a spiritual politics, a spiritual society? Why not try? We have certainly ended up with an often unspiritual one, even a devilish one. Don't leave spirituality to the religious zealots or the naive spiritual snake oil salespeople.

Is There a Culture War?

I was prompted to raise this question when reading this NPR piece about right-wing conservative white people feeling they were losing despite Republican domination of US government.

It's shocking to see people fearing a civil war, advocating the separation of the US into two nations, or envisioning an apocalypse. Who are these frightened people? What culture war do they think they have lost?

Oh, you mean that "war" in which the Supreme Court reminded everyone that this is a secular republic, not a religious state controlled by one church or sect? And some people chose to interpret "no state-sponsored prayer" as "no prayer allowed"? Or that "war" that saw a certain brand of Christianity criticized--often by other Christians?

First of all, shouldn't we remember that intra-religious and inter-religious wars have raged in human societies for centuries? So it's not usually secularists or atheists who are fighting against religious people; it's religious people fighting each other. Sometimes physically fighting, sometimes arguing. Of course, people's arguments and battles over religious dogma are often as not really about something else, something cultural or socio-economic.

Second, the real cultural wars in this country have been marked by violence against marginalized groups by those with power and privilege. Wasn't slavery a war against Africans and their descendants forcibly brought to this country? What about segregation, Jim Crow laws, and the horrors of lynching? What about the injustices perpetrated against black people in courts and prisons? What about police brutality?

What about the war against women, relegating them to second-class status, denying them the right to vote or own property or have a say over their own bodies and sexuality? What about domestic violence, usually against women, that was ignored, covered up, even sanctioned?

What about the war against people who weren't heterosexual--against LGBT people, who were shunned, shamed, mocked, beaten, killed? Who were denied the right to express their love for other people, to get married, to have children?

What about the wars against immigrants? That's a catalogue too lengthy for this short blog post. It's a war that flares up every time a new group of immigrants becomes visible to the rest of the country, who conveniently forget their own immigrant past.

It seems to me that the losers in our 400-year-old culture wars are finally demanding and receiving some protections. They aren't "winning" a war against white conservatives. They are seeing the government and other institutions acting like UN peacekeepers to protect them from violence. They are winning because of decades of non-violent resistance and courageous action on the streets, in the courthouse, and in elections. They are not "winning" in the sense of becoming victors who now lord it over the vanquished. They are claiming their rightful place in this democracy.

Right-wing or "conservative" or nostalgic people, whether they are white or Christian or even people of color and of other religions, should stop seeing themselves as losers in a culture war. They should stop looking to some imagined apocalypse on the horizon, and look back on the terrors inflicted on too many citizens and residents of this nation. They should join with their fellow Americans in a rainbow coalition that celebrates the utopian vision of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution (especially its amendments), and the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And they might find that same vision in the Sermon on the Mount (and the prophets in the Jewish tradition, and the Quran, and many other sacred texts).

Look around oh beleagured "conservatives" and "Christians." If you stop fighting, you'll realize that the war is over. You have been the ones keeping it going.

OK, time to restart this blog, after spending 13 days with fellow teachers of writing in the Hoosier Writing Project Summer Institute. But today is July 4th, and instead of writing something new, I'm going to post this piece I wrote a few years ago. It seems apt to me still.

Theologians and those who argue about doctrine are like the infamous medieval thinkers who speculated about how many angels could fit on the head of a pin. Endless arguments and explications about pointless issues! And let’s face it: human beings know NOTHING about God or gods or any divinely-inspired truth. Human beings only know what they can see and touch in some way (science, observation), or what they feel (emotional truth), or what they think. We learn about how to live from parents and other family members, from various mentors, teachers, and friends, and from our own experience. Wise people through the ages have spoken and written various truths, as they saw them, and we can learn from them. But we should not follow blindly the teachings of any human being, past or present. Nor should we worship any so-called holy book, be it the Torah, the Christian Bible, the Quran, the Vedas, or any other scripture.

Only a small number of verses in the Bible, for example, shed light on our predicament as human beings. The Sermon on the Mount, some of the Psalms, some Proverbs, some strong passages in prophetic books—all are sources of human wisdom and reflection on experience. Many of the passages about rituals, religious organization or the nature of God are insignificant, except for historical and cultural study. But oh, how people love to argue over such passages! Election, predestination, salvation by grace, on and on they go. Should women be priests or pastors? Should music be played in church? What kind? Should there be images in churches? When will Jesus or the Messiah return? Will believers by taken up to heaven before or after he returns? Will the millennium occur as a literal 1000 years? Will Christ rule on earth? Will the Jews be saved? Is there a baptism of the Holy Spirit? Does it involve speaking in tongues? Should infants be baptized? Should baptism be by immersion or sprinkling? Should there be bishops?

Does anyone really care? Does anyone really know what “God” or even Jesus would do or want us to do?

Let’s stop looking at scriptural passages with a microscope. Let’s ask ourselves, “What do we think is right? Is helpful? Creates community? Makes us feel that we are better people as a result?” We must answer our own questions, find our own way. If “God” or Spirit or Truth speaks to us, it will be in a still, small voice, not in the dead letters of a book, and not in the strident shouting of self-appointed authorities.

A Classy Movie About Education: No, Not That Superman Film

The Class is one of the best movies I have ever seen about school. No heroic teacher fighting against a stupid principal or evil colleague; no dramatic turning points or tragic deaths or standing ovations. Instead, we see one young but experienced teacher doing his best, day in and day out, with a group of adolescents, urban kids who are all “French” but whose families come from all over the world (including Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean). We see normal assignments and class activities: conjugating verbs, listing vocabulary words from the text, reading The Diary of Anne Frank aloud in class, writing self-portraits. A few of the students are quiet, hard-working teacher- and parent-pleasers; a few are surly and rebellious; others spar with the teacher and their classmates but know when to pull back and avoid the most severe penalties. In the teachers’ lounge, we see quiet conversations about troubled students; we witness a teacher melt down from frustration while everyone quietly listens and watches, empathizing and knowing that could be them (and the teacher recovers and keeps on teaching); we see teachers exchange ideas. We see faculty meetings and disciplinary board meetings and calm but serious conversations with the principal. And this principal, by the way, is neither a bold idealist nor a power-hungry authoritarian. He quietly goes about his job, mediating among his staff and between teachers and students. The film has a documentary feel, yet is artistically made.

Because of all these virtues, the film has many telling moments that could fuel important discussions among teachers, students, and both supporters and critics of modern schools. Those aware of the tremendous language and cultural diversity in our modern schools would find many emblematic scenes: the Chinese boy who does well in school and earns all the teachers’ respect, but whose French is still weak; the students who argue with their teacher about what to them seem overly formal, archaic speech forms—and it is difficult not to sympathize with them even while understanding the teacher’s rather vague explanation about different registers and knowing intuitively when to use which language form. The students argue with the teacher and among themselves about their cultural identity: are they French? Are their loyalties primarily to their home countries? And why do their teachers seem so culturally and linguistically different from them? Will that change in the near future, or will there always be a cultural gap between educators and their students, especially in tough urban (and rural) schools?

We empathize with the teacher, Mr. Marin; we respect his firm authority in the classroom but also his willingness to engage in dialogue with his students, not as an equal but as a fairly open-minded elder. Yet we also see his weaknesses, which may result from his strengths. In his back-and-forth with the students he sometimes slips and crosses the line into unprofessional teasing, sarcasm, even insult. He occasionally hurts, perhaps even humiliates a student, but among other faculty tries to stand up for students with even the most challenging behavior problems.
The final classroom scene will amuse, provoke, and sadden anyone who has ever taught, and anyone who ponders the dilemma of schooling. (SPOILER ALERT) Mr. Marin asks the students what they have learned in school that year. One student says, “Nothing,” and speaks scornfully of the school curriculum. When Mr. Marin challenges her, saying that surely she learned something from her personal reading, she admits she has, and he asks for an example of something she read on her own. “The Republic,” she answers. It was a book her older sister had from college, and she read it. When all the other students have left, however, one quiet young woman approaches Marin’s desk. “I didn’t learn anything,” she says mournfully. “I don’t want to have to go to vocational school.” Nothing Marin says to reassure her convinces her—or him, or us—that she can avoid that fate, or that we can feel good about her sense of abandonment and failure.

Go see this film, and then talk about it with others. And find out what you can do to change things for young people where you live.