Annie Dillard in Teaching a Stone to Talk concludes:
It is difficult to undo our own damage and to recall to our presence that which we have asked to leave. It is hard to desecrate a grove and change your mind. We doused the burning bush and cannot rekindle it. We are lighting matches in vain under every green tree. Did the wind used to cry and the hills shout forth praise? Now speech has perished from among the lifeless things of the earth, and living things say very little to very few... And yet it could be that wherever there is motion there is noise, as when a whale breaches and smacks the water, and wherever there is stillness there is the small, still voice, God's speaking from the whirlwind, nature's old song and dance, the show we drove from town... What have we been doing all these centuries but trying to call God back to the mountain, or, failing that, raise a peep out of anything that isn't us? What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they not both saying: Hello?
I often think of observation as a sighted matter--one conditioned by vision, by seeing. Perhaps it's because I am an artist I want to think, but even as I am offering up such rhetoric, I know it to be untrue. Much art, like learning, requires listening.
Some days, I forget what it means to listen and even how to still myself long enough so I can listen, can discern the various layers of sound. My job often requires me to act. Some days I wonder if any action would suffice, regardless.
Once in Tuscany I learned to walk taking very small steps: heel to toe for an hour. I walked about a monastery where I was staying in such a manner, making no attempt to talk and made no images, my camera and sketch pad left behind.
Each step was a breath.
Each breath was an act of faith.
Nothing was required, beyond heel to toe. Breathe.
So what might we make of Dillard and her words, especially those of us who reside at schools? Is science our futile human attempt to call God, like a phoenix rising, from all that we have abandoned? Do we substitute someone's given definition of "improvement" for learning how to be still enough so we might listen for some local truths being uttered by children? By teachers? By staff members? By parents? Are we so busy saying hello, that we cannot hear?
Tomorrow when I get to work I'm going to take small steps.
Heel to toe.
Heel to toe.
Breathe.
Once in Tuscany I learned to walk taking very small steps: heel to toe for an hour. I walked about a monastery where I was staying in such a manner, making no attempt to talk and made no images, my camera and sketch pad left behind.
Each step was a breath.
Each breath was an act of faith.
Nothing was required, beyond heel to toe. Breathe.
So what might we make of Dillard and her words, especially those of us who reside at schools? Is science our futile human attempt to call God, like a phoenix rising, from all that we have abandoned? Do we substitute someone's given definition of "improvement" for learning how to be still enough so we might listen for some local truths being uttered by children? By teachers? By staff members? By parents? Are we so busy saying hello, that we cannot hear?
Tomorrow when I get to work I'm going to take small steps.
Heel to toe.
Heel to toe.
Breathe.
