Resources

It happened again this semester. I had planned a new class for this term called “Religion, Imagination, and Facing the Future.” While the class technically fulfills a first-year seminar curricular function of teaching graduate level reading, research, and writing, I can pick the theme. I chose it in light of the chaos in the United States right now and the fascinating conversations arising amongst scholars and organizers I admire about how to imagine a different future than the late-stage capitalist, wealth inequality laden, earth-destroying, violent social world we currently live in. I collected readings hoping to explore imagination as a key quality for religious leaders facing scary and death-dealing situations in their communities. We started with Ruha Benjamin’s Imagination: A Manifesto and moved into Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower, with later readings from so many friends and colleagues I respect… Willie James Jennings, Sarah Farmer, Yara González-Justiniano. I created assignments and built a rhythm for the course with great care and excitement for the students I would encounter. I read and re-read the texts I had chosen, creating discussion prompts for the students to engage. The course was built out in Canvas, the students had been populated into it by the registrar, and it was time to hit the button to “publish” the course. I hesitated. I re-read the course description and its now seemingly impossible claims about what we would be exploring during the term. And then I sat there with the deep feelings of inadequacy that flooded my body. Who was I to be teaching such a course? I was achingly aware of the privilege of my social position, of my work as a professor rather than an organizer, of my lack of experience working in institutions that didn’t allow space for my vocation to emerge and be expressed. In those days I was watching former students and professional colleagues involved in organizing resistance to the ICE occupation in Minneapolis, living into the mutual aid, love for neighbor, solidarity, and bold witness that I have taught about for years. Deep in my bones and my gut, my intuition told me that I was inadequate to the task of teaching this course that I had put together. What did I do? I pushed the button and published the course anyway.Why? Because in my deeper wisdom, I know these are the questions and the struggles that my students need to wrestle with, whether or not I feel up to the task. They need to learn more than I can teach in this moment. That moment of profound humility before the work of teaching is absolutely the place to begin, at least for me. It marks a moment of letting go of the control of the learning environment and leaning in to trust that the students will show up. Together we might begin a journey that won’t be fruitless. They will learn things that I intend to teach them, and they will learn things that I never imagined or don’t yet understand myself. They will teach me what they know from the work they engage where they are, from the mentors who have guided them, from the challenges they have already survived, from the faith they have when I am lacking. Together, we are good enough to engage these questions that they are already responsible to in their lives well beyond my classroom. If I only taught the things I feel expertise and skill in teaching, I would fail to provide the education they need in this moment. It takes courage and vulnerability to recognize my limits and to still take necessary risks for significant learning anyway.