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Teaching: A Living Tradition
Teacher Appreciation and Growing Up Year Ceremony
A Sermon Given
by The Reverend Dr. Roberta Nelson
on April 18, 1999
at Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
Bethesda, Maryland
A few weeks ago at our teacher appreciation dinner, I spoke of teaching as a living tradition. This morning we have
honored our current teachers including many who have given years of service -- believe it or not, in a couple of years
(if she continues), Mimi Grimm will have taught for 40 years as well. Cedar Lane can be proud of its commitment to
religious education and to our youth. It is indeed a living tradition. Like many other UU churches in the D.C. area
that are approaching their 50th anniversary, Cedar Lane's first professional staff person, Mildred Lester, was a religious
educator. In 1959, Cedar Lane ordained Sophia Lyon Fahs to the Unitarian ministry. At that time, this church's
religious education program was the largest in the Association.
In her ordination sermon, she wrote, "I join my voice with yours in pleading that we put the children into the very
midst of us, believing that as we lose our lives in theirs, we shall find our own."
In his recent book, The Courage To Teach, Parker Palmer puts it this way -- "Mentors and apprentices are partners in
an ancient dance -- the old empower the young with their experience and the young empower the old with new life, re-weaving the fabric of the human community as they touch and turn."
There are people in this room who taught during those early days, when classes were in public schools and class size
was always in flux. Today we have children and grandchildren of some of our earliest members. Through the years,
religious education has remained an important part of the community. Thank you for your time, commitment and
dedication. You are part of our living tradition.
I also want to say a word of appreciation to all of you who are here today. By being here, you are supporting the next
generation of Unitarian Universalists.
When contemplating religious education and teaching as the role and responsibility of the whole community, I am
reminded of the ancient map makers, who when they came to an unknown land would inscribe the legend on their maps
"Here be dragons." Their inscription meant that here was the unknown and no one knew for sure what it would hold.
Palmer reminds us, "when my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore and when the thicket opens up
before us, when our experience is illumined by the lighting -- life of the mind -- then teaching is the finest work I
know."
Teaching is a living tradition because like any truly human activity it emerges from one's inwardness. Teaching is an
invitation -- a diving in and wrestling with all that is available to us. It is an exhilarating experience and one where
more than our own creativity is operating. Teaching creates an environment where "Students and teachers are
sacraments to one another; they are co-creators," writes Maria Harris. Therefore, at the heart of teaching must be an
invitation for all persons to engage in a process of transformation. Transformation is a process of moving over, going
beyond, across or through real or imagined limits. "Return to the deep sources, nothing less will teach stiff hands a new way to serve," writes May
Sarton.
I always tell teachers, that who you are is as important as all the curriculum and materials that we provide for you, and
at times more important. Who you are, what you are about, how you relate to one another, the questions you ask, the
authenticity of your own soul is what is ultimately at the heart of teaching -- "Teaching holds a mirror to the soul,"
(Parker Palmer) "All real living is meeting," said Martin Buber and teaching is endless meeting.
The sacred task of the Rabbi is often neglected or put aside by the religious community, and yet every thing we do,
every thing we say, every thing we choose not to do is part of our role in a teaching/learning community. It is why it
was important this morning for our young people to witness our response to the people of Kosovo.
The task of teaching in a religious community is different from schooling (that is a subject that needs deeper reflection
than we have time for), and most education as we know it. Education is a life long process that involves reshaping
who we are and who we hope to become. In the safety of community we have an opportunity to reshape ourselves. To
accept life in a community is implicitly affirming life itself. People in community share some vision of the mystery of
existence and of a way of life. Teaching is rooted in Thomas Groome's idea that "education that is religious is clearly
a transcendent activity. Its ultimate goal is to liberate persons to fulfill their potentialities for authenticity and
creativity. It is guided by a vision that urges people to interpret their lives to relate to others and to engage with the
world in ways that they perceive to be ultimate."
Teaching is by its nature religious, it calls forth reverence, reverence for life, reverence for the spirit. Teaching from
the heart is revering others in their wholeness and brokenness in their joys and sorrows, in their contemplation and
action. Parker Palmer writes "The courage to teach is the courage to keep one's heart open to those very moments
when the heart is asked to hold more than it is able so that teacher and student and subject can be woven into a fabric
of community that learning and living require." Teaching is a passion for people "a deep passion and caring for the
well-being of those we presume to educate," (Groome). To revere is to recognize the sacredness of the educational
process. Teaching at its best is a rich, honest transforming relationship. It defies description.
My own call to the Ministry of Religious Education was grace, an unexpected gift, an invitation from a mentor/teacher
who simply asked "Have you ever thought of ministry?" The answer came to me in words like those of Denise
Levertov:
"A certain day became a presence to me. There it was confronting me -- sky, air, light, a being. And before it started
to descend from height of noon, it leaned over and struck my shoulder as if with a flat sword, granting me an honor
and a task."
I have spent my whole career in a ministry of education. I have no regrets in spite of some of the struggles faced by
those who associate with women, children and education. The teachers and students have been some of my best
mentor/teachers. This journey is beyond anything I could have imagined. It has required great discipline not to do the
work that others must do for themselves. It has demanded that I "be" with people and that I respect the process of
becoming, that I remain committed to teaching as an act of faith -- a gift of the heart, an honor and a task.
Let these words of Frederick May Eliot, then President of the American Unitarian Association, lead us to honor the
Living Tradition of Teaching:
Only kindled souls can really do religious education, for they must lead children, youth and adults to the threshold of
those great experiences which bring a feeling of the overpowering beauty, the majesty, the awfulness of the world in
which they are living. Only they can teach who have first beheld; and only they can teach, who having beheld, find
their souls under great compulsion to share what they have seen.
So be it.
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