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It doesn’t sound nearly as poetic when I try to recount Louis Armstrong’s famous line about authentic self-expression after I return home from the week-long Creative Writing Roundtable hosted by the Wabash Center for a group of fourteen professors, preachers, and researchers. We spent the time deeply immersed in ourselves and each other—learning, chatting, eating, writing, and revising at a utopian biophilic retreat house in the Chattahoochee Hills of Georgia. Donald Quist, one of the writing mentors, had played us a recording of Louis Armstrong in a morning session on Style and Voice, sharing this line—“You Blows Who You Is”—while encouraging us to lean into narrating our visions of how the world works. The intimacy of being coached on the genre of creative nonfiction is inescapable; you are trying to hone skills in writing, “true stories well told,” and this means narrating the moments of your own life that have made the biggest impressions on you.[i]“You blows who you is” becomes “blow yourself” in my partial recall of the feeling the phrase evoked in me. I can’t remember the AAVE grammar structure of Armstrong’s words, and my translation sounds crude, sexually suggestive, maybe even like an insult. I laugh as the words come out of my mouth, tired from the plane ride back home after an intensive week. My spouse’s eyes widen with a smile as they turn their head. Their eyes say, “Oh, really!?”My foible transgresses a structure of dialect and a politics of sexual respectability; in this way, it is sort of like jazz, playing with form and exploring beyond the confines of racialized purity culture. This is not to say that my rendering conveys anything close to Armstrong’s original wisdom. But it does demonstrate a real-time example of how the same universal idea can pass through the fleshly vectors of another tongue, showing more ways of being while resonating with something much larger than a single speaker. This mistake made me reflect on some of the most powerful takeaways from a week of mentorship that helped a room full of academics recover their voices from the confines of academic writing in vulnerable, poignant, messy, and creative ways. I can only imagine how these skills may bleed into our classrooms, encouraging our students to find their own air flow and creative voice as we model more fully finding our own.Louis Armstrong’s sentence helped me clarify my own struggles trying to complete my PhD a couple years back. My own style of swirling storytelling that wanted to draw connections between anything and everything crashed against the dialect of linear, argumentative, academic writing. I frequently felt an intensifying squeeze in my throat being in conversation with Roman Catholicism, especially as someone who started identifying as queer and non-binary during my degree program. Writing against can sometimes reinforce the walls you’re trying to break down: women, be silent + same-sex attraction is a sin + the trans and non-binary people you are attracted to don’t exist + you don’t exist became an equation that loudly sent the message: be silent, sinner, you don’t exist. Adopting an academic voice to gain legitimacy was tempting, but something that I seemed unable to measure up to. I felt like I was shooting arrows in the dark, trying to hit an undefined target that others in my field seemed to perceive without the same struggles. During this week, I wrote about my partner’s gender transition, the magic of writing words that spark through the body, as well as witnessing a conflict with counter-protestors at a pride parade in San Salvador. The writing workshop helped restore my trust in my own voice, and gave me confidence to speak, even when such words might challenge the very norms of legitimacy we must navigate in the church, academy, and society.One of the great joys of this workshop was getting an intimate window into the air streams of other participants, seeing their creative writing voices emerge through vulnerable storytelling, hilarious observation, and heart wrenching reflection on themes that touched universal experience through the particular. Birth, death, grief, loss, illness, family feuds, leaving home, returning to a life that was once familiar, now different were themes that resonated deeply with me. One of the first things I wrote down from the workshop was Sophfronia Scott’s invitation to play with words through this creative writing genre. My colleagues shared their life wisdom through playful experiments of the written and spoken word, all the while encouraging each other to grow in our own unique forms of self-expression. On the final night when Lynne Westfield, Stephen Ray, and Rachel Mills joined us to hear people’s work in a final performance set up, we got to see each other blow who we are.I think of one time a few months ago when my bandmates were laughing about a scene from the movie I Heart Huckabees. One of the main characters repeats over and over, “How can I NOT be myself?” in an existential breakdown—or breakthrough. In academic writing, in the classroom, in our creative writing, it is important to remember that even if we are trying to sound different than our souls, or maneuver our air through instruments not designed for us, there’s a way that we actually have no choice but to blow ourselves, so to speak, if we are to attempt to show up and create in this world at all. This goes for our students as well: though we may give them formats, resources, or frameworks, when the deadline hits, we receive the resounding echoes of someone searching for themselves through the avenues we have made available. After a week with the Wabash Center, I am encouraged to open those avenues wide, for myself and my students, to make space to hear who we really are amidst the music of life’s swells and silences.Notes & Bibliography [i] Lee Gutkind, You Can’t Make This Stuff Up (Boston, MA: Da Capo/Lifelong Books, 2012), pp. 60.

As a seminarian in Louisville, Kentucky, I was challenged to discern what kind of ministerial vocation I wanted to pursue. I felt my “calling” was to teach, but even teaching, if done with care and concern for the students, could in some ways be “ministerial.” My greater concern was with what model my teaching or “ministry” would follow. Would I be the sage on the stage (or in the pulpit), imparting words of wisdom and knowledge? Or would it be more organic, flowing from the relationships I developed with my class or my congregation? Eventually, the model I chose was one I found in the gospel of Mark when Jesus encounters the blind man Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). Jesus comes upon this blind man, one of the countless beggars asking for handouts at the gates of the city, and he asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” Are your serious, Jesus? It is obvious to everyone there what Bartimaeus needs. He’s blind, and because of his blindness he has no way of making a living and must beg to survive. He needs to be cured of his blindness! But instead of assuming Bartimaeus’s need and helping him based on that assumption, Jesus, by asking the question, gives Bartimaeus a voice in the form and direction Jesus’s ministry (or teaching?) will take. And this experience, this opportunity, so empowers Bartimaeus that Jesus proclaims, “your faith has healed you.” This model has been crucial for me ever since, never more importantly than when I was a student chaplain at University Hospital in Louisville. One evening I was on call in the emergency room, my favorite place to work, when I received word from the delivery room that a Seventh Day Adventist woman who had just delivered a stillborn child requested that a chaplain come and baptize her child. I was the only chaplain around, but at the time I was a Baptist. You may or may not know that Baptists don’t believe in infant baptism, only in believer’s baptism. (Baptists still find a way to welcome children into the community—they just call it a baby dedication.) Moreover, I had never done a baptism before. How could I in good conscience baptize this infant? When I arrived in the delivery room, I explained my dilemma to the nursing staff, who, despite listening sympathetically, dressed me in a surgical gown and provided me with a basin of water. Apparently, they had done this before, and they needed the delivery room again for another delivery. Nurses are amazing at finding ways to get you to do the right thing even when you don’t want to. Upon entering the room, I saw a tired African American teenager lying on a birthing table lovingly caressing a fully formed, beautiful but lifeless, little girl. The woman’s older brother was there mumbling something about it probably being God’s will because the child was conceived illegitimately, which was clearly causing emotional pain for the girl. What is it with self-righteous older brothers? Why do they think they can speak for God words of judgment and condemnation to their siblings who are experiencing grief and despair (Luke 15:29-30)? Whispering to the nurse, I asked her to find a way to get the brother out of the room which she did with great skill and grace. Thankful for his departure, I came to the young woman’s side anxious about what to say, unsure of what to do, angry at her brother’s rantings. Yet as I looked into this woman’s tearful and soulful eyes, all I could think of was to ask, “What do you want me to do for you?” She looked at me and asked me to baptize her child so that her spirit and her daughter’s spirit could be at peace with God. Full of uncertainty and doubt about what I was doing, I took the child in my arms, asked what her name was, dipped my thumb and forefinger into the basin of water, and anointed her head with the water saying, “I baptize you in the name of the Creator, Christ, and Comforter.” Then I placed the child back into her mother’s arms. Baptists say there is nothing sacramental about the ritual of baptism; no saving grace comes from it. Perhaps. In that ritual act in that delivery room, however, I experienced the presence of God in a way I have seldom since, an experience I can only describe as grace. As I looked at the woman, I could see that she had experienced it as well. The peace the woman requested had come to her, hopefully to her daughter, and, unexpectedly, to me. And this experience enabled me to proclaim confidently to this young woman, “your faith has made you, made us, well.” Through this and countless other experiences, I have learned that if ministry or teaching is about enabling others to find wholeness, whether intellectual, social, or spiritual, then that work will best be accomplished when we take seriously the voice of those with whom we work. When we intentionally ask the blind, the homeless, our students, “What do you want me to do for you?” and respectfully incorporate their responses into our work, we affirm their worth and dignity, and empower them to have faith in themselves, in us, and perhaps in their God. And this faithfulness will go a long way to meeting human need and enabling all of us to become whole.

An Author’s Note: October 7th represents one year since the Hamas attack on Israel and resulting Israeli military response in Gaza. This year, October 7th also falls during the Days of Awe, the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, during which Jews are called to engage in cheshbon hanefesh or “Accounting of the Soul,” during which we examine our actions and thoughts during the previous year and aim to do better in the coming year. In that spirit, my mind is drawn to a holiday earlier this year, Passover, my recollections of which I present here.   Passover 2024: We are not all Jewish, as many family members, including myself, have married non-Jews. Thirteen of us squished in together as the maximum capacity for my parents’ dining room table, the window propped slightly open to let out the heat from the kitchen despite the fears of letting the street noise in. The patterned white-on-white tablecloth has been brought out for the holiday, our China pattern at each setting, white with a red rim at the edges. The festive foods smell wonderful: the Matzah Ball soup, Pot Roast, and various other dishes my mom has slaved over for days in a tiny New York City kitchen. At the center of the table, the colorful Seder plate with spots for each item: the roasted bone, the roasted egg, the celery and parsley, the Haroset made to look like brick mortar, the horseradish, and the saltwater. A cup of wine for Elijah. A cup of water for Miriam. An orange, a modern addition representing feminism for some but more accurately stemming from queer Jewish concerns. My father—the consummate seder leader, who looks forward to it every year, scanning the internet each year for supplemental readings—calls us together, noting that this year, we will do something different. He hands out some excerpts from the supplemental readings he has found and has us read them aloud, going one by one around the table, seder style. The readings note that just as on Passover we ask, “Why is this night different than other nights?”, so this year we must ask why this year is different from all other years. They remind us that it is a mitzvah to expound on the Passover story during the seder. They call us to work for a better world. They remark on the irony of celebrating freedom as our hearts break for the pain of Israel and the suffering of Palestinians. They suggest new rituals, such as while breaking the middle matzah in two, crumbling one half to recognize that the world is crumbling and leaving the other half whole to represent the hope of a world rebuilt. They offer prayers to recall that all humans are created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of the Force that impels us towards goodness. They encourage us to engage in honest dialogue, to listen deeply to one another, and to share our thoughts on the war and on the campus protests. Drawing on the words of Interfaith America’s bridgebuilding curriculum, they implore us enter conversation in the spirit of curiosity, noting that we can disagree yet still respect one another’s views, noting that due to our love for one another, what matters to any of us matters to all of us. After these preliminary readings, my father announces, “Before we begin, let’s have an honest discussion about Israel and Gaza, with each of us expressing our own thoughts, uninterrupted.” So, we went around the table again…[i] I don’t know what to hope for anymore. I am convinced that the Zionist project is doomed. What started as a good idea, and did some good things, creating a modern society, has been done on the backs of others, and the voices that do not care about that are winning out.  That is why I left Israel and why I can’t support it. But I can’t say I hate Israel. In fact, I still love Israel; I do. I grew up there, and I appreciate all it has given me. It’s complicated. It had high ideals for a modern democratic Jewish state. But it was also about power. It was also a land grab. And it is untenable. Since October 7th, it is only more so. On social media, when I express my views, I am met with vitriol by other Israelis. They say horrible hateful things to anyone with a critical view, and we are shouted down, called traitors. I can barely speak to my family members. I understand that they are traumatized by October 7th. But they are so caught up in their own trauma that they cannot see what is happening to the Palestinians. And even those who used to care no longer care. I don’t see any possible good end to this.  So much of Judaism to me is about social justice, the prophetic call to help the oppressed, Tikkun Olam. I want to join in shaping that better world. But I don’t know how. Everything I do angers someone. If I stand in support of Israel in this time of trauma as a Zionist, I am viewed as a racist and colonialist. If I stand against it in protest, I am viewed as a self-hating Jew and antisemite. If I go to sign a petition for a ceasefire, it calls the situation a genocide, which I do not believe it is. And even liking a Ceasefire Now meme on social media gets friends angry with me who believe Israel must continue until the hostages are home. But liking a post about bringing the hostages home has other friends accusing me of spreading Zionist propaganda. I just want peace. I want everyone to live with human rights, opportunity, and a sense of security. In this situation, I don’t know where to begin. All I can do is hope for a ceasefire. This killing has gone on for too long. Over 30,000 innocent Palestinian lives have been lost. This is not the way. This has to stop.  But I don’t trust either the Israeli government or Hamas to secure a ceasefire. Neither has anything to gain. Netanyahu’s interests are served by prolonging the war, and as for Hamas, a ceasefire will make them irrelevant. Let’s say it plainly. This is all Hamas’s fault. They are evil. We need the hostages returned. We need the media to acknowledge the atrocities Hamas committed. The rapes, the murder of babies. I am sad that Palestinian civilians are being killed, but that is also Hamas’s fault. They are the ones using Palestinian citizens as human shields. Every time the media covers this as if Israel has no reason for what they are doing, are not being forced into these attacks by Hamas, I want to scream. Every time they gloss over the atrocities on October 7th to jump to the Israeli military attacks on Gaza with no context, without explanation, I want to pull my hair out. I am afraid of how I will feel reading the Passover story this year. This will be the first time that I will identify more with the Egyptian taskmasters than the Israelite slaves.  I am not sure I am prepared for that. I know many of you do not agree with me, but Israel is perpetrating a genocide on the Palestinian people. I can point you to scholars of genocide who have written on this and have come to that conclusion. Israel matters to me. I can’t abide being told that Zionism is racism. I listened to a podcast where the person being interviewed made that statement, and defined Zionism as wanting all of the Biblical land and wanting to remove all Palestinians from the land, and the statement went unchecked by the interviewer. Zionism is not colonialism. It is a belief in a Jewish homeland. It is our ancient place. It was a place of refuge for those fleeing Europe during and after the Holocaust. And we know what that means: my parents survived the Holocaust, but some of our other relatives didn’t. And some of our relatives survived by getting to Palestine. Israel continues to be a place we can go, no questions asked, if and when genocidal antisemitism rears its ugly head again, and antisemitism is on the rise.  What happened on October 7th was the largest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. What is the government supposed to do? Hamas has to be stopped. I hear people saying it shouldn’t be done this way, but is there another way to eliminate Hamas? If so, why isn’t anyone naming another way? I don’t know that I have it in me anymore to care about the Palestinians. They elected Hamas. They support Hamas, and that makes them a community of terrorists. I am done trying to help people who just want to kill us. They rejected every deal along the way.  The Israeli military is doing everything they can to avoid unnecessary deaths, to evacuate people. I support the IDF and donate to the groups treating soldiers. I have half a mind to go over there and volunteer with the Israeli army myself.  I can love all of you and disagree. I have expressed my opinions to many of you already in other conversations. We agree on many things and disagree on others. I too care about Israel. I think it is in Israel’s best interest not to use these military tactics. Beyond the obvious humanitarian issues, it alienates Israel from the rest of the world and makes it harder for anyone to support Israel. Do I have a plan for what they should have done instead? No. I am not a political or military strategist. But even on October 8th, when the Israeli military hadn’t struck yet, everyone knew what was coming, when that could have been a time for grieving. Maybe martyrdom would have done more for Israel than revenge, retaliation, self-defense, or whatever we are calling this. Maybe it could have brought the world to its side to generate a coordinated response against Hamas. This did not begin on October 7th. This was not an unprovoked attack. This began long ago, not only with the occupation of the Palestinian territories in 1967, but with the forcible taking of Palestinian land in 1948 after a vote in the UN that no Arab member nation agreed with. Of course what happened on October 7th was atrocious, and a source of trauma that we all need to grieve. But people want to avoid the context, want to act as if there was no reason for Hamas to be as frustrated as they are with the open-air prison that is Gaza. They have no other recourse, and they had lost the attention of the world. Look at the situation in the West Bank. Palestinians are being terrorized there by angry settlers, and the government, police, and military are doing nothing about it. While everyone is focused on Gaza, there is yet another land grab going on in the West Bank. Right now my concern for the hostages takes priority. But the best way to see them returned is unclear. Is it through military actions, from which we have seen some of them rescued? Is it through temporary or longer ceasefires, which have also led to the return of hostages? We don’t know how many are alive or how they will ever be able to resume a normal life, but we can’t lose our sight of them. I am moved by symbolism of the hostages. The posters with their faces. The empty chairs at the table. When those on the far left deem those symbols as “Zionist propaganda”, I have to wonder whether they have completely lost the ability to empathize. I think the message we get from the Torah, and the message we get from events today, is that we can be simultaneously both the oppressed and the oppressors. We can be oppressed as slaves in Egypt and then oppress the Canaanites when conquering the promised land. We can oppress the Palestinians even as we are oppressed by Hamas attacks and by Antisemitism worldwide. Every group can be both oppressed and oppressors, even in the same moment. What bothers me about the protestors is that they have no understanding of the situation. They couldn’t even find Israel on a map. They don’t know the history, the context. They just want to be activists. And they are only targeting Israel, which is clearly antisemitic. You don’t see them protesting about human rights abuses in Sudan or Myanmar, only Israel. Why is Israel always held to a special standard? But those congressmen who called in the University Presidents out of so-called concern for antisemitism on campuses do not make me feel better. They have their own Christian Zionist agenda, and while they back Israel, they do not really care about Jews. These were the same people saying there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville as those protestors chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Nowhere feels safe right now as a Jew, not the right, nor the left. I do have hope. Maybe this will finally be what will bring the parties back to the table to figure out a peaceful way forward. Other Arab states are beginning to recognize Israel and its right to exist. This is part of why Hamas did what they did, knowing that as the world comes to recognize Israel, they will lose power. I hate the idea that the events of October 7th can finally lead to the two-state or one-state solution that we need for peace to take place. But after Israel militarized and securitized for so long, thinking they could push the Palestinian issue out of sight, they now realize they are still vulnerable. We need a political solution. This may finally restore those prospects.    My father thanks everyone for participating. We are all grateful to have been able to express ourselves and listen to others without having shouted one another down or coming to blows.  We begin our Seder.       Notes: [i] Here are the perspectives from the table. The dialogue may not be exact, but the sentiments are represented to the best of my ability. Some are recombined or incorporate views based on other conversations with friends and family around that time.

Welcome to the Common Questions, an exciting initiative brought to you by the Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion. In this series, we bring together some of the most esteemed scholars and educators in the field to engage with a central, thought-provoking question. The goal is to challenge and inspire. By exploring these questions, we hope to create a dynamic platform for scholarly dialogue, illuminate complexities in education, and enhance our understanding of the transformative power of teaching and learning in these vital disciplines. Featuring a diverse range of perspectives, this effort is a means of expanding the borders of academic rigor with profound spiritual and philosophical inquiry.This time, we asked…“If school were in heaven, preparing souls for Earth, what would you teach, how and why?”Gathered here are responses from:Nicholas A. Elder, University of DubuqueEmily Kahm, College of Saint Mary, OmahaAHyun Lee, Garrett Evangelical Theological SeminaryOluwatomisin Olayinka Oredein, Brite Divinity SchoolYau Man Siew, Tyndale Seminary of Tyndale UniversityRichelle White, Kuyper CollegeMarvin Wickware, Lutheran School of TheologyIf you are interested in sharing you response to this prompt or future Common Questions, please reach out to our blogs editor, Donald E. Quist at quistd@wabash.edu.

(An audio version of this blog may be found here.) My editor is one of my most ardent supporters and a beloved friend. We are working, together, on my next book. He has not, in many months, received any pages from me. At a recent gathering, he asked me if I had been writing.My editor’s question was not intended as chastisement nor judgement. His tone of voice was casual, even pleasant. Immediately upon hearing his question, I felt a pang of shame or guilt or embarrassment—one of those kinds of stomach feelings that confirms that you are doing something irresponsible or questionable or inappropriate. Thankfully, my stomach relaxed as quickly as it had tightened. I told him I had not been writing. My editor waited for the explanation or the details. I told him that in the last few months, the time I had previously devoted to writing is now being used for coloring. I expected him to be surprised, but instead he was quizzical.He asked me what I liked about coloring. I really didn’t have an answer—I had not reflected on “why” I liked it. Again, my stomach flinched as if I was childish/shy—pointlessly confessional. I realized that while I am greatly enjoying my new-found hobby, I question my time being spent in this way—especially if it means that I am not writing. Then he said (knowing me and my ways)—it’s probably meditative. I accepted his speculation, then I told him I wanted him to look through my coloring books, select the best pieces. I wanted to display my best pieces in my house. He agreed.Coloring has become my new jam! But I am cautious, hesitant…The impulse to color was strong during the quarantine, but I resisted it. At that time, the activity seemed frivolous and lacking in enough “productive merit” to warrant pursuit. Then in January of this year, a roundtable participant gifted me with a coloring book and colored pencils. During that meeting I began to color.  Since that meeting, coloring has become a major past-time. My hesitancy is that I still question my use of time for this enjoyable activity.When I color, I lose myself. It is a way to relax, enjoy the moment. I focus without concern or worry. When I color there is no cynicism or irony. There is no pursuit. I am not prey. The worries, sorrows, and nameless fears dissipate. While I know these merits and I need these moments, I still question my time being used in this way.In recent months, I have explored varieties of implements: pencils, pens, gels, glitters and markers. I now have opinions about fine lines, thick lines and double-sided utensils. Last week, while grocery shopping, I swung past the back-to-school display to see if there were any markers or colored pencils I was unacquainted with or any refills I might make use of. I made a purchase.My fascination with this newfound hobby is multi-faceted. I am captured by learning to work with color (itself). I am intrigued by the many tints, tones, hues, and shades of any one color, while also being annoyed that for our limited eyesight there are only a few colors in our spectrum. Yes, white and black provide a bit more variability, but not much. I have a very wide lexicon for the color green. I am getting more acquainted with red.I have learned that the more acquainted I am with a particular subject or object, the more detailed is my coloring of it. This is why I know green. I am a long-time gardener. I have deep knowledge of trees, flowers, vegetables, bees, birds, soils, rocks and weather. I noticed that when I color a forest scene or landscape a kind of intimate knowing comes into play. I have clarity for the colors I select and the mood I create. When realistic precision is not the aim, I enjoy coloring geometric shapes and patterns.  In these pages there are no preconceived ideas of how things “should” look. The freedom of coloring without rules or prescriptions is refreshing.So many of my administrative duties are managing, planning, supporting, and caring. We set goals, know our aims, and reflect upon our experiences. The hours I spend coloring are hours devoted to creating beauty without the incumbrance of metrics or the obligation of accomplishment. Surely, this is, indeed, time well spent?Several years ago, I was a participant in a mid-career workshop which provided us the opportunity to develop an art or a craft. During conversation about which art or craft each participant might pursue the discussions grew tense. As colleagues considered their project options, they became stressed and felt pressed upon.  There were tears. After too much discussion, consternation, and push-back, our wise leader said,“Everything you put your mind to does not have to be at the highest echelon. You can do something on an amateur level. You can engage in something for the simple pleasure of enjoying it. You can learn something or relearn learn something without pressuring yourself to be the best at it. You can play at something without becoming an expert at it. Pick an artistic expression that will bring you joy.”This lesson stays with me. This is why I color.I have not stopped writing. I have started coloring. Right now, expressing ideas in colors feels better than expressing myself in words. I suspect the words will soon return. I hope the colors never depart.

What Listening is NotIt will be obvious to some and painfully invisible to others, but it will lurk in quiet corners of the classroom. And it will grow and stretch and plant roots in many imaginations as being OK. Only some in the classroom will feel the discomfort and stagnation of its growing presence. Only some will notice this phenomenon hardening and forming a new wall that the privileged will be able to hide behind, marking it as their limit, as the end point of their journeys.Though teachers want growth in the classroom, I am not sure we want this type of growth; for this growth mislabels itself. It calls itself progress and progressiveness. It calls itself a sign of maturation and evolving, while what is actually unfolding is quite damaging.Listening as a practice of anti-racism or subverting one’s privilege, especially by white students (though this applies to all students with privilege), breeds a pernicious dynamic in the classroom – one of silence and thus of nonaccountability. It unfortunately encourages concealment. Students can take up a posture of “listening” to avoid the risk of addressing problems as they happen in the classroom.But listening is not silence.Silence is foe. It is not allyship. Silence dressed in the discourse of listening is clever avoidance. True listening is not stagnant; she is always active. She is not perpetually quiet. She emerges and course-corrects and grows into the right stance and posture. Listening is not a means of tapping out of the difficulty of a moment in the guise of passivity; it is to commit to addressing the awkward moments in the classroom in real time. It is a covenant to deal with difficulty.In its true form listening is quite loud.Silence has paraded around as listening too many times in progressive classrooms – and in the process it has harmed more moments and students than it has helped. There are No Silent ExemplarsIf change requires shift and movement, it is safe to assume that correction must be voiced. The right thing to do then, requires making a sound.Because of listening’s misinterpretation, the classroom can be a case study in how opportunities for change are missed. And these missed opportunities become cyclical.It is all too commonplace that a Black student’s white colleague consistently says the right thing about justice, oppression, racism, sexism, queerphobia, and so forth, when the intellectual moment presents itself in class. For the minoritized/marginalized student there is hope! The possibility that this classmate “gets it” first announces itself.But then something devastating happens. Another colleague or – if we are completely honest – sometimes the teacher, does not respond or react if something offensive, disturbing, biased, incorrect, assumptive, ignorant, or somewhat “off” is said or happens. People who are in the impacted group feel it. They feel compelled to correct the error. But they are also tired of defending themselves. They become apathetic, for they know this moment all too well. The silence is awkward; it is not productive but feels deeply regressive.But most importantly, it hurts. And the hurt grows. And grows.With each second that the articulate colleague or teacher allows to pass where the offense is not met with a pedagogical corrective, the wound burrows deeper, cementing itself in memory of the wounded: they will remember this the next time they have hope for those who boast the appearance of understanding in the guise of intellect. Listening as Weaponized IncompetenceWeaponized incompetence is not only a domestic dynamic. The push for majority students to “listen” to their minoritized peers in educational spaces has cleverly become the newest iteration of weaponized incompetence.Listening as a passive, benevolent act can do tremendous work for the moral appearance of change, transformation, and/or righteousness. The majority benefits from it while continuing to inflict harm on the minoritized persons in the learning space.Hearing transgressions and violations against another’s humanity, history, culture, aesthetic, tongue, way of life, or knowing, and settling into silence and inaction is not true listening.Listening must be redefined as practice oriented. It requires immediate and factual correction in and of moments where the incorrect narrative, perception, or action has been directed towards another. Listening demands activity; it means amending the error in real time no matter how challenging the moment.But the elephant in the room of this dilemma must be addressed: it is not only white students and students with privileged identities who employ silence disguised as listening over and against minoritized students. If we are completely honest, it is mainly teachers who do it.If teachers are serious about doing our jobs well with constructive results, we need to create and establish systems of correction and accountability within the classroom that take the pressure and responsibility off of our minoritized and marginalized students.Are we up for the challenge?What modes of accountability might teachers put in place at the beginning of each semester or term that ensures pedagogical challenge and expansion not only for our students, but for us?Might we model listening as active practice instead of a weaponized excuse?I hope we do. The future and efficacy of education depends on it.

My last blog was about the power of immersive classes to foster attention and presence in students. Here I want to focus on another aspect of learning that immersive classes are uniquely suited to produce: a community of learners.Let me set the scene: A group of hungry undergraduates and I have arrived at our campsite for the night and set up camp after ten miles of trekking with full packs. Because they’re perpetually hungry and I believe in luxurious trail meals (ask me sometime about our Mediterranean quinoa and Thai curry dinners), our food bags are full: enough for ten people for five days. And because we are in bear country, we have to hang the bags from a tree limb before we sleep. Not even the most macho of the students can pull the bags up on his own. (He tried. His name was Joel.) We need every person pulling on the rope. Or, on different trip, in an Arizona slot canyon, hanging our food away from bears was not an issue, but sleeping warm on a twenty-degree night was. We all snaked into our sleeping bags and then piled together like puppies snuggling against one another for warmth, never mind that most of us were strangers to each other that first night.Wilderness trips are by nature and necessity participatory ventures. Everyone is essential for a successful trip, at the level of making sure everyone eats and keeps safe as well as at the level of maximum enjoyment and meaning. It’s not unlike the most effective classrooms, where everyone’s voice is essential for everyone’s learning. The reality is just more obvious on the trail where you might genuinely need someone else’s warmth beside you on a cold night.Because of the visceral need for one another in daily chores or while crossing a river, students rely on each other much more quickly than in a classroom, and their physical need quickly becomes a need for one another’s ideas at class discussion around the campfire. Students see each other as human beings, as comrades, as companions, as fellow community members, because of the way of life on the trail. They have had to be vulnerable with one another and recognize their limits, ask for help, and so when they talk with one another, they already have a foundation of some trust. Plus, when we hike with someone side by side or one in front of the other, we can say more meaningful things because we don’t have to look each other in the eye. So students listen to and learn from one another, unthreatened by one another.I saw this on an immersive Jan-term that didn’t involve backpacking too. I took students to a monastery for three weeks for a class on the history, theology, and spirituality of monasticism. There they also had to rely on each other and on the sisters. The need was less immediate, but it was there in the shared work of washing dishes and shoveling snow. Then when a stomach bug ravaged us one by one we needed each other for basic things again. The bug hit me first, and I had to rely on the students too, just as I do on the trail. That example of dependence—of asking for help getting food or reaching out for a hand up a steep embankment—is something my students mark as invaluable. If their leader and professor is willing to throw in her lot with them, they can drop their guards and do the same with one another.Often this reliance on one another not only persists as we return from the trail and finish the immersive course (the rest of the Jan-term) at a monastery or retreat center, but even when students are back on campus the following semester. I see them around campus and hear how they are still talking together about course ideas. This spring my Jan-term group were competing together to see if they could collectively keep their screen time below a three-hour/week average. Building a community of learners on an immersive trip builds a community of learners beyond that trip. Certainly, students in the group are that for each other, but hopefully they are also able to see their next set of classmates as a community and be willing to risk needing them, transforming that classroom and their learning experience into something more than a grade or a checkbox.What kind of risks can you introduce in your classes that require students to need each other and so build a community of learners? Can you create a classroom that is by nature and necessity participatory? Better yet, can you begin class with an immersive experience that does this and binds students to one another in ways that will change their experience of your classroom for the rest of the semester? May you find experiences that do this, and may they transform your students’ learning.