Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
Dialogue
On the Humanity of What We Do1
Jerry Camery-Hoggatt
Professor of New Testament and Narrative T eology, Vanguard University of Southern California, Costa Mesa, CA 92656
Opening hymn:
Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of all nature, O T ou of God and man the Son, T ee will I cherish, T ee will I honor, T ou, my soul’s glory, joy and crown.
Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands, Robed in the blooming garb of spring; Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
Who makes the woeful heart to sing.
When I was invited to give this devotional, I asked if I ought to follow a theme. I was told that I was free to follow my heart, so I decided to do what you might expect. I’m going to tell a story. We’ll unpack the story on the other side.
One day, the Rabbi of Vilna was studying Talmud when he heard a loud, insistent knock on the door. When he opened the door, a large man came into his study, accom- panied by a young boy.
“Rabbi,” said the man, “this is my son. He will not study. I have beat him, and I have beat him, and still he will not study. But it seems to me that if he is beaten by a famous rabbi, then he will study!” The man looked a bit triumphant at having arrived
1
Faculty Devotions, Faculty Retreat, Vanguard University, Costa Mesa, CA (August 25, 2006).
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/157007407X237962
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 299PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 299
111/7/07 11:01:19 AM1/7/07 11:01:19 AM
1
300
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
at this somewhat odd conclusion, but then he dropped his eyes and asked, “Will you beat my son?”
“Very well,” said the Rabbi of Vilna. “But it is not right that I should beat the boy in the presence of his father. Leave us, please, for an hour.” And he ushered the man out the door.
T en the rabbi turned to the boy, drew him close to his breast, and wept. When the father returned, the Rabbi of Vilna said to him, “He has been beaten all he will ever need. T ere is no need for you to beat him ever again.”
The boy grew up to become the successor to the Rabbi of Vilna.
I have decided to call these remarks, “On the Humanity of What We Do.” Let me be specific about how I mean the term humanity. Here I mean this term in its very best sense. The Rabbi of Vilna models a quality of character one could call deep humanity. It can be nurtured, and it can be damaged. It is unevenly distributed among us. It is evident in some people more than in others. I know some people who seem to be deeply human pretty much all the time, and others practically never. The rabbi and the father are two extremes, aren’t they? In some sense, they’re metaphors for two different ways of being in the world.
Our language can be somewhat imprecise when we describe this quality of deep humanity. In our family this has sometimes become a matter of discus- sion because I have a tendency to say, “He’s a real human being,” or “She’s a human being” about people I admire. One night my son Jonathan and I were in the car, driving home from some late engagement. He was ten. I forget whom we had been talking about, but I had admired whoever it was, closing with the comment that the man was a human being.
“Daddy,” he said, “that doesn’t make any sense. Everybody’s a human being. Either you’re human, or you’re not. It’s simple.”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Except sometimes.”
T en I told Jonathan two stories. The first story I drew from Richard Kegan’s book, The Evolving Self .2 I summarized it for Jonathan, but for these remarks I’ll just read it. Kegan’s prose is so much better than my summary could grasp:
Tese days my daughter is learning to read. I watch her listening intensely to her own announcement of each letter’s sound. “S ih-aeh-nih-duh ,” she says, peering over these symbols, sitting still among these sounds which do not yet cohere for her. “S aan-
2
R. Kegan, The Evolving Self: Problem and Process in Human Development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 300PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 300
111/7/07 11:01:19 AM1/7/07 11:01:19 AM
2
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
301
duh .” It is still an alien sound the way she says it, something strange and apart from her. She waits, strenuously. “S and !” she says, arriving home.
It is not her experience I want to attend to here, but mine. The truth is, I find myself terribly moved by this tiny dignity. When her forehead furls and I see her there so intent, something sympathetic flexes in my heart. She grasps a word, but somehow she grasps me as well. (15)
That’s Story One.
Story Two involves a girl named Bonnie who car-pooled with our family when Jonathan’s sister Michal Beth was taking ballet lessons in San Clemente, about a thirty- minute drive from our house. T ere are two things to note about Bonnie: First, she was a tall, awkward girl who had decided to take bal- let to acquire a small measure of grace in her movements. It was an extraordi- narily brave thing for her to do, maybe even a defiant thing for her to do, because her father wanted her to play baseball. Second, she had a very terrible stammer. Talking to her was a lesson in patience, but a lesson that well rewarded the effort. Behind the awkward movements and the tongue-tied-in-knots was a deeply sensitive and thoughtful young woman. When this story takes place, Bonnie is thirteen.
We are in the car, and Bonnie has joined our discussion of Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Remember the opening lines? “Whose woods these are I think I know./His house is in the village though;/He will not see me stopping here/To watch his woods fill up with snow.”
By the time we got home, Bonnie had memorized the entire poem, remark- ably, without a stammer.
We let her off at the street. She rushed into the family’s den, where she found her father watching a football game. “D-d-d-d-a-d-d-d-y-y,” she said, “l-l-l-i-i-i-s-s-t-e-n-n t-t-t-o w-w-w-h-a-a-t I-I-I c-c-c-a-n-n s-s-s-a-y. L-l-l-l-i- i-i-s-s-t-e-n-n t-t-t-o w-w-w-h-a-a-t I-I-I c-c-c-a-n-n s-s-s-a-y . . . . ,” and then she recited for him the entire poem, word for word, line for line, without a stammer.
This was a triumphant feat, but when she told me later what happened, she averted her eyes.
Bonnie’s father looked up from his football game and said, “Now, why would anybody waste any time on a stupid thing like that?”
So we have polarities here. The Rabbi of Vilna — the father of the boy. Rob- ert Kegan, who can say, “I find myself terribly moved by this tiny dignity,” and Bonnie’s father, who responds to what amounts to a breathtaking accomplish- ment with “Why would anybody waste any time on a stupid thing like that?”
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 301PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 301
11/7/07 11:01:19 AM11/7/07 11:01:19 AM
3
302
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
And we have my son Jonathan, ten years old. When Jonathan heard these two stories together, he lost his temper. I have never seen him so angry. His ears opened up and steam came out. The top of his head came off, and lava flowed down his cheeks. “Daddy,” he said through very hot tears, “if humanity is a swimming pool with a deep end and a shallow end, that man’s humanity isn’t even a splash on the deck beside the pool.”
(My response to Jonathan was that I do not think very highly of Bonnie’s father, and I would not have sent him or his sisters with that man on a weekend outing, but to be fair, we do not know his story. I wonder what body slams, what psychological lacerations, he has suffered, and at whose hands, and why they have left him the deeply damaged human being he is. Perhaps he is still hemor- rhaging from some childhood wound we will never know about. Perhaps the damage is so deep that he himself does not know that it is there. What we can do is pray for grace for him, and healing for his angry, violent inner life.)
The contrasts between these characters tell us something important: In some sense, deep humanity is a way of seeing and then responding authenti- cally and sensitively to the human dilemmas and dramas of the people around us. T ere is something in Robert Kegan that enables him to see his daughter in this way. T at same something is missing in Bonnie’s father. But even as a ten-year-old, my son Jonathan has that insight. T at’s because he’s a human being. T ere is something in the Rabbi of Vilna that enables him to see into the heart of the boy in the story, and when he looks into the boy’s heart he sees something that the father cannot see.
Notice that the boy says nothing. He’s a silent character. The rabbi’s response to him is not based on any entry-level examination or formal assessment. What happens in this story is more of a deep intuitive connection. The rabbi sees the humanity of the boy through the lens of his own humanity. We could explore this in terms of the ancient epistemological precept, Like is Known by Like, or maybe in terms of the medieval concept of the heart as an “organ of knowing,” but I’ll spare you that for now. Suffice it to say that it is the human- ity in the teacher that enables him to see the humanity of the child.
For a few moments, I’d like for us to think more carefully about the father in the story. I do not think that he was hostile to the boy. In fact, the story gives us two clues that he had good intentions toward his son.
• First, he wants for his son something he himself does not have. • Second, he recognizes that the beatings aren’t working, so he tries a different strategy.
PPNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 302NEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 302
11/7/07 11:01:19 AM11/7/07 11:01:19 AM
4
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
303
These two clues suggest that he isn’t raging at the boy so much as he is draw- ing upon the only resources he has. He cannot model learning, but he knows there is something better than what he himself can provide, and desperately, stupidly, he resorts to violence. He means well, but he is blind. He acts out of his deficit.
The rabbi notices this. Note that he doesn’t upbraid the father, but he responds in a way that allows the father to walk away with his dignity intact. He has taken a minimalist approach to this problem. What matters is fixing the problem, rather than fixing the blame, so that when the father walks away he can hold his head high.
The boy in the story is like so many of our students who come to the class- room confused and sometimes damaged by caregivers who perhaps meant well, but who were acting out of their deficits. Not all of our students are ACNFs — Adult Children of Normal Families. Some will come to us with backgrounds more like this boy.
• Some will come afraid of what we have to say. Once, as I was lecturing in New Testament Survey, nobody took notes.
“Is this common knowledge?” I asked.
“No,” said one of the students.
“Do you think it’s unimportant?”
Different student: “No, it seems very important.”
“T en why aren’t you taking notes?”
The first student again: “We’re afraid of you.”
“Why would you be afraid of me?”
I’ll never forget his answer: “You know enough to destroy our faith.”
“Who told you that?” I asked.
“My pastor told me,” he said.
• Some of our students will be in developmental transition.
• Some will come with addictions, or will be victims of their own foolish- ness, or even their own sinfulness.
• Some will come to us, as I said, scarred by people who meant well, but who were acting out of their personal deficits.
It is natural to see such things as distractions, or even as obstacles to be over- come, but I would argue, on the contrary, that these are often precisely the points of engagement in which the teacher can make meaningful, redemptive contact with the student.
PPNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 303NEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 303
11/7/07 11:01:20 AM11/7/07 11:01:20 AM
5
304
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
The boy in the story is like our students in another way: He’s smart. He has good native intelligence, and maybe the ability to love learning. We know this because he grows up to become the successor to the Rabbi of Vilna!
Let’s ponder this for a moment. Because the boy is intelligent, we also know that he had within himself everything he needed to resolve his difficulty with his father. All he had to do was capitulate. Obey his father. Hit the books. You’d think a smart boy would figure that out. I wonder why he didn’t. I won- der why a smart boy wouldn’t simply do what his father demanded that he do. It would have been the easier course.
Let me frame this differently: If we can understand the boy’s resistances, we might better understand why he sets the resistances down in the presence of the rabbi. Why will he learn for the teacher, but not for his father?
I do not think he is lazy; I think he is defiant. I suspect that his resistance to learning may be a strategy of personal survival. Here let me illustrate with two short clips from a Christmas story I wrote this summer for one of my publish- ers. (When they asked, I said “yes” before I realized just how hard it is to write a Christmas story. Believe me, this subject has been worked.) T is story is about a seventeen-year-old girl named Ellee, whose mother insists on calling her Eleanor. My working title has been “The Clash of the Titans.” The first clip hinges on a short poem by the Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez: “If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.”
The first day of December every year, my mother posts four folded sheets of lined notebook paper on the refrigerator door, with our names written on top. Mom. Dad. Susan. Eleanor. We’re supposed to list the things we really really want for Christmas so the gift giving will be correct and efficient. I always found that odd. In my view, the point of choosing presents is to get to know the other person so well you don’t have to be told what she really really wants for Christmas — you just know it. If somebody gives you something you don’t like, like a puce sweater or a Nehru jacket with gold trim — well, that just tells you something, doesn’t it?
But with this, like everything else, my mother insisted. I learned the hard way. If I didn’t write anything on the list, she gave me “things intended for Eleanor.” Fine bone china. Silver hand mirrors. Puce-colored cashmere sweaters with little gems glued onto the bodice in a floral pattern.
So I learned to put down what I wanted as a way of protecting myself. If I didn’t, the rest of my life she would want to know why I never wore my puce sweater. But I wrote my stupid Christmas wish list contrariwise, across the grain, turning the page so the words ran up from the bottom. Once I wrote, “a gypsy dress,” but that never came, I think because my mother couldn’t picture “her Eleanor” in a gypsy dress. People see what they want to see.
When I was eleven, maybe twelve, she said I had to rewrite the entire list “properly, with the lines, as a good girl should,” before she would let me open a single present.
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 304PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 304
11/7/07 11:01:20 AM11/7/07 11:01:20 AM
6
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
305
“Susie never does stupid stuff like that,” she said. The presents waited until my birthday in March.
Ellee is another incarnation of the boy in our story of the Rabbi of Vilna.
The second clip about Ellee comes just a page later. Remember that the problem between Ellee and her mother surfaces as an issue over her name. Her mother insists on calling her Eleanor, but clearly there is more at stake than that.
For as long as I can remember, my mother’s own Christmas Wish List has had a prac- tical bent to it. In a beautiful, fluid hand, she wrote things like, “new washing machine,” or, “curlers.” Curlers were big in those days, in both meanings of the term, “big.” T ey were great big monstrous things she attached to her head so she could receive daily radio updates from the mother ship. Everybody did. T ey wrapped them in toilet paper to improve reception. One year my mother asked for clear plastic seat covers for the De Soto, and a Trinitron television set so we could watch Ed Sullivan in living color. She wanted the plastic seat covers because they would protect the seats from sweat stains and keep them nice for resale. My father said that plastic seat covers were what made you sweat in the first place, and what’s wrong with the seats being nice for us, right now, for Pete’s sake? The world is divided into these two camps.
She had to wait for the washing machine, too, because my father ignored the list and gave her what she really really wanted, which was a cashmere sweater with glued- on floral-pattern gems, and a pink silk Nehru jacket because it was all the rage. When my mother wore it, she turned into Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and ruled our house the way the Iron Lady ruled China.
I knew, too, that there were other things she really really wanted and never wrote down on her Christmas Wish List, things that were far closer to her heart than cash- mere sweaters and Nehru jackets. She wished that my father would speak up for him- self and demand a promotion at work. She wished that he would let her replace the olive-drab recliner in the front room where he read the paper. (“It’s ugly,” he insisted, “but it’s a question of territory.” He was right about that. Sometimes when I was little I would climb up there and fall asleep on his lap. It was an island of my father sur- rounded by a sea of my mother.)
My mother had wishes for me, too. She wished that I would run for office at the high school, like Susie did. “It’ll help you meet a nice young man don’t you think it’s about time?” she said. She wished that I would take up with a better crowd, like Susie’s friends. She wished that I would work harder in school, like Susie.
She wished that I was Eleanor.
This is the dilemma faced by the boy in our story. He is willing to be beaten rather than compromise the stubborn independence of his own soul. His defiance is a strategy of survival. This may explain why he responds
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 305PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 305
11/7/07 11:01:20 AM11/7/07 11:01:20 AM
7
306
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
to the embrace, but not to the whip. The embrace tells him that in the presence of the teacher, he is safe. So do the tears.
T ere’s a subtlety in the story we must not overlook. When the teacher holds the boy to his chest, the boy can hear the teacher’s beating heart. When the teacher weeps, the boy knows that the tears that are falling are shed on his behalf. This tells the boy that he has fallen into the care of a deep and authen- tic human being, and that in that place he is safe.
At this point, we turn a corner because I know you’re all wondering some- thing: This is supposed to be faculty devotions. Is there a theological point to all of this? The point is this: T ere is a sense in which all of the issues of the spir- itual life are present in the exchanges between these three men — the father, the son, and the rabbi.
I was helped to this conclusion by a very poignant story told by Harvard pro- fessor Sharon Parks. The key actor in this story is an unnamed six-year-old-girl:
This little girl was being tucked into bed in another in a much too long line of foster homes by yet one more temporary “mother.” The new foster mother was surprised when the little girl asked her to take off her wedding ring so she could see it. But want- ing to respond warmly to the little girl, she did as requested, and then was startled when the little girl clutched the ring tightly and putting her little fist firmly under her pillow she said, “T ere. Now you won’t leave me while I’m sleeping.”
3
Let’s let Sharon Parks’ reflection on this moment serve as a commentary on the whole range of conversations and interactions we have with our students. Let it serve also as the theological key to the story of the Rabbi of Vilna:
I invite us as educators concerned with the formation of faith to recognize that all the central issues of faith were at stake for that little girl — belief and doubt, promise and betrayal, power and powerlessness, belonging and exclusion, suffering and hope. T at little girl represents the dialectic of faith, and not just because she is a child. She knew the ring to be precious to the adult, primarily because of its power to touch the adult experience of belief and doubt, promise and betrayal, power and powerlessness, belonging and exclusion, suffering and hope. (Breuggemann, Parks, Groome, 30)
This is, of course, an essential part of the work of Christ — to bind up the wounds of the hurting, to comfort the discouraged, to empower the
3
W. Brueuggemann, S. Parks, and T. Groome, “Love Tenderly . . .,” in To Act Justly, Love Ten- derly, Walk Humbly: An Agenda for Ministers (New York: Paulist Press, 1986), 29.
PPNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 306NEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 306
11/7/07 11:01:20 AM11/7/07 11:01:20 AM
8
J. Camery-Hoggatt / Pneuma 29 (2007) 299-307
307
powerless, to redeem the fallen. Whenever we look our students in the eyes and see them as human beings, we move forward the work of Christ in the world. Whenever we embrace them and allow them to hear our beating heats, we move forward the work of Christ. When we look into their hearts and see them clothed and whole and in their right minds, whenever we engage in the holy work of redemption, we move forward the work of Christ.
I mean this quite literally. We cannot do this on our own because every one of us — you, me, our colleagues, our students — every one of us is a mix of the best and the worst of the human condition. When we engage in the holy work of redemption, it is, literally, Fairest Lord Jesus working within us who “makes the woeful heart to sing.”
PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 307PNEU 29,2_f8_299-307.indd 307
11/7/07 11:01:20 AM11/7/07 11:01:20 AM
9
PPNEU 29,2_f9_308-309.indd 308NEU 29,2_f9_308-309.indd 308
111/7/07 11:01:50 AM1/7/07 11:01:50 AM
10
Leave a Reply