Category: education

• January 27, 2014

  Preparing for the unforeseen (A welcome joke)

  Darkness. Philosophy. Not knowing what is coming but coming prepared anyway. How? Laughter. Eagerly anticipating (is that so?) or slightly unsteady. Fearful, maybe a little. Meanwhile, as still as the desert sand, life is. Are we? Not knowing but here and ready. We say. I tell the story about the pupil who wants to learn…
• January 25, 2014

  Our minds aren’t in our heads

  Yesterday, I finished reading Alva Noë’s Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from the Biology of Consciousness. The book is mainly a critique of research programs in the scientific study of consciousness and perception, and in this respect it does not intend to set out a full-blooded account…
• January 24, 2014

  ‘I look at the desert and I am besotted…’

  I look at the desert and I am besotted. Only, a dove atop a Joshua tree below copper-sage boulders. Near dusk, my fingers as singular as hers.
• January 23, 2014

  Hunger and spiritual exercise

  Hunger can come over one with such force that one feels gripped by the claim that one must eat now. This is urgent, serious business, and one must do something about it forthwith. Not always or not often is hunger signaled so discernibly by a growling, turning, or twangy-sounding tummy. Mostly, it is indicated by…
• January 21, 2014

  The eager volunteer

  Think back to a time early in your schooling. Recall the moment (maybe it was in third grade or sixth) when your teacher asked for a volunteer. One boy’s hand shoots up into the air–that boy, you think–and the teacher, looking at him, quips, ‘But I haven’t even told you yet what you’re volunteering for?’…