SERMONS 

Teachers as Spiritual Guides

“Come to the edge.”
It’s too high.
“Come to the edge.”
We might fall.
COME TO THE EDGE.
     And they came,
     And she pushed them.
          And they flew.

Those are the words of poet Christopher Logue. I want to stop here at the very beginning and give you a moment to sit and think. Close your eyes and spend a minute or so thinking back on your childhood and, specifically, experiences you had with teachers, either in school, church, or elsewhere. Now I want you to pick one or two that you still remember as your favorite teacher - someone who left a lasting impression on you in some positive way. Someone who drew you to the edge, only to push you off so that you could fly. Reflect for a few seconds on that person.

O.K. Now open your eyes. I am going to ask you to keep that person in mind during this morning’s sermon, and try to get your mind around what it was about that person and his or her teaching that made you think of him or her just now. Why did he or she stick with you?

One reason you might have thought of that person is because you found him or her to be academically brilliant. Certainly, one characteristic of good teaching flows from the teacher’s knowledge or intelligence. We might remember a certain teacher because he or she was able to help us fill in some gap in our knowledge base - facts we did not know or ideas we had never thought of before. We often look to people in teaching roles to know something we do not yet know, and we hope they will find a way to transmit their knowledge to us.

Or maybe your favorite teacher was not particularly intelligent at all, but he was a heck of a lot of fun. He always made you and the other kids laugh by using silly voices or dressing up in weird outfits to celebrate special events. Or you loved her because she always picked fun and goofy games for you to play or she always let you stay out on the playground just a little longer than the kids in other classes did. Many of us were blessed to be students of this kind of teacher. Somebody who really knew how to have a good time with children, and who made us look forward to going to school or church.

This morning I want to suggest to you that, although intelligence and a good sense of humor are certainly ingredients of good teaching, I think there was something else that set apart your favorite teacher. Something about that person made him or her a lantern in your life in a unique way so that all these years later, in 2003, you thought of him or her again and the way you were somehow changed by your experience with that teacher.

When you think about what you liked about that person, I suspect that the first thing that comes to mind is not the algebra or biology that the teacher taught, but instead, I suspect you were changed by something about that person. Maybe it was the time he stayed with you after class to help you work through those last few long division problems (something I can relate to). Or maybe it was her thoughtful answer to a difficult question you finally mustered the courage to ask. Perhaps it is nothing more than a warm smile that makes you remember a certain teacher fondly. My point is that your favorite teacher was able to connect to you as a human being. Chances are that our lives were not changed in any enduring way just because one of our teachers used some new educational theory to help us prove geometric theorems. [Can you tell I struggled with math in school?] Or to use a religious example, I suspect that your favorite Church School teacher was not someone who had the academic knowledge and ability to allow her to read the Book of Malachi to you in the original Hebrew. And although you might have enjoyed the teacher who was so much fun, I doubt your favorite teacher was someone who never had an agenda or lesson plan for the class and simply let you spend each class period doing nothing in particular.

So what is this magic ingredient that makes classrooms come alive and children’s eye light up? What is that makes your favorite teacher stand out? I suggest to you this morning that your favorite teacher was your favorite among the many teachers who have paraded through your life because that person was a spiritual guide to you. And maybe – although I’m not sure about this - not all teachers, either in religious education or otherwise have the capacity to be spiritual guides. But I hope we can have a sort of revival among our religious education teachers, parents, and indeed the whole congregation. I want us to revision and re-evaluate what this church community could be like if we all set as our goal to be spiritual guides.

So what would such a revival look like? What does it mean to be a spiritual guide? I have some answers to suggest, and you probably have others to add as well. In general, I think spiritual guides place a true premium on human relationships – the sacred connections between us. Spiritual guides consider what they have to offer the community without asking what they can expect in return. They are the beacons who help us to find and celebrate the good in our lives during those times when we cannot seem to find it for ourselves. They are the men and women who teach us to savor each and every minute we are alive because, they remind us, in the end our entire lives are built from nothing more than a series of consecutive minutes. Spiritual leaders have learned to love other people deeply and take seriously the task of building a better world, one battered soul at a time. And finally, spiritual leaders understand the importance of nurturing their own souls, and so they spend time in prayer, meditation, quiet reflection, or some other intentional spiritual practice in order to link themselves to the transcendent Spirit of Life that connects us to each other and to the history of the world.

Religious educators from numerous faith traditions, including Unitarian Universalism, consistently emphasize the importance of spiritual leadership as an integral part of effective religious education teaching. For example, Parker Palmer is a Quaker who writes and talks extensively about the relationships between education, community, and spirituality. I was lucky enough to attend a conference in February where Palmer was the keynote speaker. My understanding of the central thesis that permeates much of what Parker Palmer says about effective teaching is that good teaching can never be reduced to method or technique alone. Instead, Palmer believes that the teacher’s selfhood – his or her identity and integrity – is the important ingredient in good teaching. Another way to think about this idea is that good teaching necessarily originates from the teacher’s soul or true self, not from an education textbook or curriculum. Universalist minister and religious educator Angus MacLean put it a little less delicately. He said, “I’ve never seen a curriculum so good that a teacher couldn’t ruin it. I’ve never seen a curriculum so bad that a teacher couldn’t redeem it.” I think I understand what Palmer and MacLean are talking about.

I worry that too often in our Unitarian Universalist churches; we lose site of the importance of spiritual leadership in our religious education teachers. We get distracted by other things and fail to take seriously the awesome task we place at the feet of our children’s religious education teachers. Roberta Nelson is a Unitarian Universalist minister and religious educator who lives in the Washington DC area. She suggests that we as religious liberals miss the point when – and these are her words - “people see teaching as a duty rather than an adventure. It comes from religious education committees struggling to fill the list of teaching vacancies; it comes from those who think/believe that ‘anyone can teach.’ It comes from those who think that one hour a week does not make a difference. It comes from those who are unwilling to fund programs of value and substance. It comes from those who do not value or understand our rich heritage.” Powerful words that ring all too true.

But there is certainly also good news. First, we are blessed in this congregation to have many teachers who are certainly spiritual guides to our children and their families. I think of Jodi McDaniel bringing an elaborate table setting from home for her students to use when they celebrated Passover recently. I think of Sarah Erwin who consistently went above and beyond to bring the lessons alive in an age-appropriate way for her 4-year old students. Or Leslie Powers who invited her whole class to her home to watch the movie, Ghandi, to enhance a lesson they had recently learned about non-violent social protest. And I could list many, many other examples of volunteers who took seriously the sacred charge this congregation gave them when they were asked to teach religious education class. In fact, each and every teacher who worked with our children and youth this year had at least one moment of connection, and all of our teachers were a faithful presence merely by their willingness to take the time to prepare a lesson and to be with the kids on Sunday morning.

I want to mention one more thing that I think made these teachers and others effective spiritual guides in the RE classroom. They made sure that the religious education experience was subject-centered. I take very seriously the fact that the one-hour that these students spend in our RE classes may well be the only religious education that some of our kids receive, which is why many of you have heard me on my soapbox numerous times talking about how I believe very strongly that we must not fail to teach content to our children and youth in religious education class.

I think Parker Palmer would agree with me on this point. Despite his passionate pleas for spiritual leadership – for deep and meaningful human connection - in teaching, Parker Palmer warns that without subject matter as the centerpiece of the religious education experience, the process degenerates into nothing more than narcissism – a sort of inner recycling of issues that ultimately does not lead to spiritual growth or formation.

To make a holy connection with the students, our religious education classes need a core – a seed that the teachers can tend and nurture. Our curricula provide one ready-made source for those seeds, and the RE Committee and I work to choose curriculum books that meet this important goal. The lesson plans allow the teachers to help the children explore religious history, theology, and the ideas of world religions that offer tools to assist our kids in their own spiritual formation. Spiritual formation at its best is when we create safe communal spaces where the soul can show up and make its claim on the living of our lives so that, as Jesus might say, the kingdom of God can be in and among the people.

You see, spiritual leadership comes into play in the way the students and teachers interact with the subject matter contained in the lessons. Rather than merely reciting dry facts about obscure religions or ancient Biblical texts until the kids are bored to tears or – at the other extreme - giving up and having the class dissolve into nothing more than a play group, religious education teachers have the unique opportunity and responsibility to help our children and youth find creative ways to connect to the world and to themselves – to be lanterns. They find interesting and helpful ways to instill the liberal religious values that hold us together as Unitarian Universalists, even in the midst of such tremendous diversity. They find ways to make both very old and modern religious ideas relevant to the students in their classes because they know from their own lives that there will be bumps, even mountains, that will lay in the paths of their students. And they care about them enough to help them search out the tools they will need to climb over or tunnel through the mountains.

And so, in the end, of course it is not only our children who need spiritual guides. Each one of us, whether we know it or not, needs these inspired spiritual leaders in our lives and – here is the difficult part - we also need to strive to be that kind of presence in the lives of those with whom we share our days. The reality is that all of us struggle with the pain, hope, betrayal, and love that make up our complicated lives. There are blind curves and roadblocks and we need each other’s help to navigate the roads. As babies and very young children, we hope to learn that the world is a safe place with plenty to eat and plenty of clean diapers. As adolescents we crave independence but at the same time are aware of our still fragile sense of ourselves as we walk the tightrope between childhood and whatever is beyond. As adults, we look to find meaningful work, either at home or away, to give us a sense of place in the world. As parents we pray for the strength and wisdom to lead the souls of our children into an abiding love of themselves and the world around them. As elders, we work to come to terms with our mortality even as we reflect on the hours that accumulated into a life lived well or not so well.

Through each of these seasons of our lives, we look around us – and especially to our religious community – for sages. Wise women and men who might have something to offer us on our journey that might make the sailing a little smoother. Who take the time to show us that small something that helps us makes it through one more struggle.

I want to close with a prayer written by children’s advocate and educator Marian Wright Edelman:

O God, I thank you for the lanterns of my life,
who illumined dark and uncertain paths,
calmed and stilled debilitating doubts and fears
with encouraging words, wise lessons, gentle
touches, firm nudges and faithful actions along
my journey of life and back to You.

May her prayer become ours, and may this be church be a place where lanterns of life shine bright. Our children are worth it, and all of the rest of us are worth it as well. Amen.