If efficient accumulation is the hallmark of the instrumental, waiting and paying attention are the hallmarks of the contemplative
I don’t pretend that these are subtly phrased and judiciously qualified; I have developed them as I look for bold ways of breaking my students out of some imprisoning assumptions. But the claims are nevertheless serious, and I offer them seriously to you now, in the hope that they might have legs enough to carry them beyond the peculiarities of the Exeter situation.
And one of the services that the University can provide in such a setting is precisely a resistance to this instrumentalizing: a refusal to allow that the subject matter under consideration lines up so neatly with the needs and plans of the churches
By ‘instrumental’, I mean to refer to processes of learning that simply fill in the gaps within a structure we already possess–perhaps providing information to fill in the detail in a picture we have already drawn, perhaps providing skills to enable us to carry out a task we have already formulated. ‘Contemplative’ education, on the other hand, does not leave us in control in this way, but places us before some subject matter that we do not control, and for which our current categories are inadequate. Read More