The Land of Unlikeness

“We must not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”- T.S. Eliot

I have admired the greatness of Eliot as a poet, but never expected to use a bit of his work for a meditation of education such as this. However, it seems to me that this quote from Eliot is filled with profundity and enormous implications for our practice as educators and continuing students. I must say from the outset that my reflection on this quote is not an exegesis of Eliot’s poetry (though certainly such an venture is a worthy endeavor and has been embarked upon by interpreters much more able than I), but rather a contemplation of these words as they stand on their own, detached from the context of his work in which it is originally embedded.

I will begin with a memory. A couple years ago I made the routine visit to my hometown of Jamestown, TN where I was born and raised in the same house until I went away to college at the age of eighteen. While home on this visit I distinctly remember riding in the car with a family member, perhaps my dad. The road that we were travelling upon was a route that I had taken hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times in my life. It was the road from my family’s home to the center of town. About a mile into this route is a field, off to the left, which has cattle and much green grass in its midst. It is perhaps ten acres or so. What was so distinct about the memory is that, to my amazement, I noticed something about the field that I had never noticed before. What I saw was a patch, or perhaps angle on a patch, of trees that I had never noticed before. What struck me with such awe was the fact that I had been travelling this stretch of road almost everyday for the first eighteen years of my life and many times in the ensuing years and had never noticed this patch of woods! It taught me, or perhaps reminded me in a deeper way, that no matter how much we have partaken of God’s creation there is always more to see, touch, taste, and feel.

This “always more-ness” of creation is rooted in the fact that creation derives its being through participation in the Being and Life of the infinite Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So there is always more to any creature than just themselves. If we have eyes to see,ears to hear, and skin to touch we will find that creation and its creatures are iconic gateways into the infinite depth of God from which they draw life. Because this infinite depth just that, infinite, there will always more to contemplate, to learn about a person, a tree, a sunset, etc. For us as educators this means that we must never approach a class or subject we are teaching our students in such a way that we work under the assumption that we comprehensively “understand it” and intend to lead students to this same comprehensive understanding. Rather, if we are teaching the Interior Castle by Theresa of Avila, for instance, we must lead our students into the depths of Theresa’s text as fellow sojourners who are all students of Theresa. For Theresa’s text provides an iconic gateway into the life of the Triune God. We may lead students into the depths of Theresa a hundred or more times in our lives as educators but there will always be “another patch of trees to see.” There will always be the light of new dimensions, angles from which we have not ventured a look at Theresa’s castle, a fresh harmony we have yet to hear in her music.

I think this is perhaps some of what Eliot’s turn of phrase means for our craft as educators. We are to lead our students into continual exploration of the depths of our discipline, for there will always be new vistas, or at least clearer vision of what we are beholding. When we behold this new depth of our subject matter we must pray for the grace to always and ever “arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.” No doubt that we and our students will find ourselves at times at the point of satiation, believing like the (cynical) laughing Sarah and Abraham, that we “know the deal.” Geriatric age couples do not have children and one does not encounter fresh dimensions of truth in texts that have been read for hundreds of years and which we have read over and over. And yet this small imagination of Sarah, Abraham, us, and our students shows not a lack in the depths of our subject matter, but a failure in our ability to imagine and encounter a world in which we will ever journey into fresh knowledge. This is so for this world, and the disciplines of study which lead us into exploration of this world, find their being and life in the Being and Life that is beyond all category of being and description…the infinite ocean of love and joy that is the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As teachers and learners may we be given grace by this God to “not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.”