When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” As a teacher, I am familiar with this well-known Zen proverb. What I did not expect is that my students would turn the table on me and become my teacher.
I teach a class on critical thinking at the College of St. Benedict’s and Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. The course is entitled “Strategic Forethought: Why Thinking About Tomorrow is Today’s Most Important Skill” and its stated purpose is to instill in students the skills necessary to think better about the future.
The theme of last week’s class was “long-term thinking.” To achieve my stated objectives, I began the class by walking the students over to meet with St. John’s master potter, Richard Bresnahan. The purpose was to give the students a tangible and local example of the benefits of thinking long-term.
Bresnahan fulfilled this mission admirably by tracing his pottery tradition back 13 generations as well as by explaining how St. John’s has sourced its clay in an ecologically responsible manner such that it will be available for the next 300 years.
What I did not expect is that Bresnahan might have his own lesson in mind. He invited the students to take a seat around an old Japanese kettle and patiently heated the Sencha Tea to exactly 160° and proceeded over four separate and quite deliberate pours to disperse the tea into the students’ cups. It was a master class in the art of being present.
The lesson was lost on me, however. I apologized and said we had to leave in order to plant some trees that St. John’s forester, John Geissler, had provided.
My purpose in having the students plant oak trees was to give them another tangible example of the importance of long-term thinking.
As we were walking to the field to plant the trees, one of the students uttered four simple words: “What a beautiful night.” The phrase snapped me back to the present moment.
The young man was absolutely right, but it was not until he spoke that I noticed how the setting sun cloaked the pine trees on the western horizon in a dreamlike orangish aura. To the east, a near full moon silently ascended–its milky white presence was not so much seen as felt. Overhead, the azure blue sky had yet to release the evening’s first stars to the impending cobalt darkness. All around the air was filled with bird song and the scents of spring.
As we got to the staging area, I handed out gloves and shovels and gave an oak sapling to each student. I then provided a short tutorial on how to properly plant a sapling and let the students get to work; but not before giving them one more lesson. In a quiet tone of reverence I hoped might resonate with them in some distant future, I said, “These trees will be here 200 years after you’re gone.”
I have no idea if my lesson was received, but I then sat back and watched the students plant two dozen burr oaks which will some day become an oak savannah.
I asked them if they were OK with me taking some photos and they all agreed. It was my intention to capture our exercise as a testament to long-term thinking.
It was not until I returned to the Abbey guesthouse after my class and looked at the photos that I appreciated how present each of the students was in the moment.
And then it struck me. Of course, we must think about our long-term future but, if we are not first present in “the eternal now,” how will we ever appreciate the beauty of the natural world?
E.B. White has a wonderful quote, “I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world and an inclination to savor the world.” I have long appreciated the sentiment of White’s words and it has inspired me to work on bettering the world for future generations. What I didn’t know until recently is, that is not the full quote. The remainder reads, “This makes the day hard to plan. But if we forget to savor the world, what possible reason do we have to save it? In a way the savoring must come first.”
It was evident from the looks on the faces of my students that they were savoring the moment. What I needed to learn was that it was me who needed saving–I needed to learn how to be present.
God’s amazing creation is all around us, but if we do not first savor it, what possible reason might we have to save it for future generations?
