“The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long;
but only by a spiritual journey, a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our own feet, and learn to be at home.”
--Wendell Berry, The Unforeseen Wilderness
It is a joy to teach courses in the Religion Department at St. Mark’s, and so much of that is because the students positively revel in them. While the overt religiosity of our incoming students and their families (as measured by their professed affiliation with worship communities) continues to plummet, their spiritual curiosity and enthusiasm is soaring. I have been teaching for over 20 years, and I have never seen the enthusiasm so high among both students and their parents.
What is it about the courses that we offer—World Religions, Philosophy, Ethics, Social Justice—that is so compelling to them? A colleague proposed that three threads hold together all of the seemingly diverse offerings that make up a school’s “Religion” department: Meaning, Purpose, and Values.
These are indeed the threads that our courses explore, intentionally and very explicitly. We are constantly showing our students how other humans (Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists, Stoics, Utilitarians, Idealists, Skeptics) have made meaning and found purpose, and how they have insisted on living out their values in a world that doesn’t make that easy.
We expect our students to take what they are seeing and put it into active dialogue with their own sense of meaning, purpose, and values. In this, the students are insatiable: they bubble over with feelings and ideas, with hope and determination.
At the end, if we have done our job well, our students find themselves “at the ground at their own feet.” Outwardly, they may look no different, but inwardly they have taken an “arduous and humbling and joyful” journey towards recognizing their own spiritual home.
--The Rev. Barbara Talcott
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