Undone Business Ā Ā Ā Ā — Ā Ā Ā Chuck Sandy Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā Ā
All this new stuff goes on top /Ā turn it over, turn it over / wait and water down / from the dark bottom / turn it inside out / let it spread through / Sift down even. / Watch it sprout. / A mind like compost.Ā ā Gary Snyder
Recently Iāve been thinking about my teachers. I havenāt been remembering. Iāve been learning what they taught me, and learning in ways I never imagined I would. Ideas I heard more than thirty years ago rise from the bottom of my mind and combine with what Iām learning now in new ways.
Perhaps itās my age. Iām 54 and so itās natural I should think back. Perhaps itās the year Iāve lived through as I battled illness, resigned from the university where Iād been a professor for almost 20 years, and helped launch iTDi. Who wouldnāt reflect? Or perhaps itās the season, the darkening winter days when news could make the darkness darker. Whatever the reason, a lotās come together this year and made sense as Iāve continued the undone business of becoming the teacher I believe myself to be and am becoming.
One of the teachers who helped me on this journey is Winston Fuller. Ā Although itās been 35 years since I sat in his poetry workshops, Iāve recently heard him saying: Ā āAll teachers teach what they most need to learnā and āit is only by letting go enough to trust ourselves and others that we finally learn who we are.ā
This is why I talk and write and give so many presentations about motivation. Thatās whatās been most challenging for me recently. Illness and university stress had gotten me so down that it became a long jump up from where I was to where I needed to be. Itās because I needed to figure this out that I began my public conversations about motivation. This need led me to read widely, reflect on my current and past practices, and not only think about Winston Fuller, but to pull out a folder of my work at 21 that included a long typed comment in which Winston wrote:
āAs I read your work, I sometimes hear the voice of a guilty man accusing others of sin. We all do that of course. More often than not I find myself teaching in the evening what I have been telling myself in the morning. You might review your work with an eye to seeing how much of what you say to others amounts to a conversation with yourself. All serious people do this. Whatās needful to know is that youāre doing itā.
Ā
All serious people do this? Winston meant me, and he meant me at 21. As I read his words again, I see him in class, pulling a chair close, looking the gathered students over with a twinkle in his eyes as he begins telling us whatās on his mind. As he talked, heād weave the poetry weād written and were learning about into what was going on in his life, the lives of the people he loved, and our lives — as if there was no gap between the classroom and our lives ā and of course there wasnāt. He asked questions. He listened. He was entirely present as he talked repeatedly about soul making — Ā by which he meant being a writer, a teacher, Ā and a person who takes life seriously even in the midst of a culture that does not.
āWe must take our lives and the lives of othersĀ seriously,ā Winston said.Ā āIf we do not do this forĀ ourselves and others, who will?ā
I realize now that Winston talked so much about soul-making because this is what he was teaching himself.Ā It is what Iāve been doing myself this year. Itās why Iām telling you about it now.
Recently I read an essay about how alienation, loneliness, and the lack of community just might be Ā the root cause of the horrifying world news weāve recently heard about. As I read that essay, I thought of that circle Winston Fuller built for us in his classes, and of the importance that community still holds for me.
Then, I thought about the iTDi community weāve been building and the work these teachers do as soul-makers — forming a circle and learning together the steps we can take towards healing each other, our students, and this world.Ā This is what gives me hope on this day as my mind turns it all over and watches it rise up, sprout, and stretch out across the seas.
A year ago I did not even know most of the people I am working with now, and yet we have formed this circle of hope that for me goes back to Winstonās class, where we learned what Iām learning now, what I will be continuing to learn, as I hear Winsonās voice read the Charles Olson poem Maxiumus To Himself that ends without conclusion with these lines:
It is undone business
I speak of, this morning,Ā Ā Ā
with the sea
stretching out
from my feet.
