I was in my office yesterday preparing for an 11:00 class. We were studying The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy. I was trying to figure out how to make it interesting to the sophomores who would (some of them) be coming at 11:00. I got to chapter nine, where Ivan, terminally ill and engaged in the profoundest thinking of his lifetime, realizes that his illness has made him listen "not to an audible voice but to a voice in his soul." I scribbled some notes, thinking that this would be a possible point for class feedback and comments: "Ask them what it means for us to listen to our souls. The story implies that it is hard for a person to be brought to the point in life where he or she is able to listen to the soul. Why? Have they [the students] ever wanted this? Why or why not?" Ivan then asks himself, "What is it you want?" I made more notes: "Do we really want God or do we want comfort and superficial happiness and simple moral assurance in our daily routines?"
So off to class I go. One foot in front of the other. We identify some ideas--the currency of wealth vs. the currency of the soul (which enriches the most?). On and on and finally chapter nine is glimpsed off in the distance. So I show them the passage, set the situation, and pose the question I've been looking forward to. Right in the middle of asking why it is hard for us to listen to our souls a girl in the front-ish part of the room breaks out in an unstifled yawn of majestic proportions and duration. I wait forty seconds or so for her to close her mouth. Then I repeat the question as best I can. Of course, after that interruption everyone is a bit heavy-lidded. No replies. This girl, BTW, seems to be maybe the most conventionally religious person in the class, one who replies to the rich, complex questions raised by the literature with morally orthodox and thought-flattening remarks.
I wonder. Does standardized thinking connote a sleepy soul?
Comments (6)
It's a pity that the conventionally religious are the ones who often speak up and reply with the stock answer instead of searching their own souls. Who ever said that faith and honest soul searching have to be at odds? Why are the conventionally religous afraid to think?
What more is god than a psychological pacifier? I digress.
It's an interesting point of listening to one's soul and asking what one really wants, and apparently a point wasted on that particular group of students. I sincerely believe that one of the major sources of ennui in America is the absence of this sort of examination. Kids grow up, go off to school, follow their preset paths and then wonder, during midlife, why they're not happy when they've accomplished all the conventional items on their lifetime checklists. Good on you for at least attempting to spark something in your students, though. That's a few miles farther than most professors go.
Oh, and also, I'm using the phrase "thought-flattening" on a regular basis from here on out. Just so you know.
I sent an email of this post to a professor I've met through the Christianity and Literature discussion group (an email discussion group), and he said this: "I think it mainly connotes the end of a long semester and school year. I find these final weeks to be the most unnerving time of year for college teaching. I try hard not to take it too personally! More to the point, I find the decline of good manners among students to be approaching epic proportions. Even grad students often fail to quiet down and let me speak at the beginning of class. What ever happened to manners and respect??"
Are the conventionally religious really religious or do they just want the perks of calling themselves Christians? The approval of peers? People who go around with such an indifferent attitude throughout life should just admit that they are agnostics and forget it unless they have the wherewithal to kick themselves out of such thinking patterns!
They are scared to answer such questions, even ones that should be easy to grasp, fearing that they may expose the hollowness of their own Souls.
Two thoughts for you:
Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.
-Susan Ertz
Boredom is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension, crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of attention, and irreclaimable weakness of character.
-James Bridie
And, I wanted to tell you that I am going to do an Independent Study working on my novel (the one that I got spurred to write whilst in your Creative Writing course) over the summer and then finally finish it up (hopefully!!!) as my thesis! Already been approved:)
I think it's a shame that so many Christians seem afraid to think outside of the standard answers they've been told in Sunday School. I also think that until they can honestly search their souls and look clearly at the real ugliness that's in the world, they can never truly understand Christ's purpose for their lives.
Standardized thinking, standardized testing, anything attached with the word standardized tends to lead to a sleepy something.
I had a longer comment typed, but it ended up being pretty tangential.