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Volume
Six, Number 1 (October 2004)
"What we have loved, others will love, and we will teach them
how."
–W.
Wordsworth, from "The Prelude"
NOTES FROM READERS
What you think
This marks the beginning of our sixth year together as a community of reflective practitioners. Thank you all for your faithful attention and support – and for all you do to make reflective practice a focus of your good work.
Adventures abound this fall in my life. Our trip to China to adopt our precious daughter, Maya, has provided a lens for seeing and reflecting on the world that is particularly evident in this issue of Notes. I trust you will find threads of relevance for your own life and work. Thanks to all of you for your notes of encouragement and support for our adoption journey!
There were many notes from readers after my last issue. Several of you were good to forward links to Jane Addams-related articles and exhibits – I have become something of a repository for such links, for which I am very grateful.
I want to share this note from long-time reader Tony Lentych (a Wabash College and Center on Philanthropy alum), now at work in Michigan, who comments on my report of my consulting with the City of Rockford’s Human Services Department:
“I found your consulting work for the City of Rockford interesting. Please make a point to revisit them in a year or so. I have a bet on whether or not the staff accomplishes what you said they are trying to do. After years of work with local governments, I am of the opinion that cities that function best, think the least. Instead they try to build an efficiency model within city functions. I’ve always found the best place to have the conversation to “ consider how to change our community’s ways of talking and thinking about a lack of financial resources,” is best led by the agencies in the field and in the elected leaders (councils, mayors) and not at the administrative/bureaucratic level. Seems a bit extreme I know but it has been learned the hard way. A community group director once told me this after seeing his city’s administration change after an election – “you know if I could have one wish that would change the city forever, I would ask for an unenlightened, but highly efficient department.”
But I am more than willing to be proven wrong . . . let me know.”
My thanks to Tony for his seasoned (and perfectly rational) perspective – and I promise to report on the success of our aspirations.
Occasionally, I (or my colleagues) refer to items from previous issues of Notes. If you have not been a subscriber previously, and wish to review our conversations, past issues of Notes are available on-line at www.jgacounsel.com. The website version of Notes also includes helpful hyperlinks to sources for purchasing or subscribing to the various publications mentioned in Notes. I thank my friends at Johnson, Grossnickle & Associates for their many years of abiding support for our reflective practice.
REFLECT ON THIS
Wisdom and citizenship
A wise mentor once suggested that as a new president, I should prepare one speech each year and then give it (with minor emendations) to any audience I am asked to address. I have found this advice very helpful and have used the occasion of an annual President’s opening convocation to give “this year’s” speech for the first time. I include excerpts from this year’s speech, “Wisdom and Citizenship.”
“Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” (Andre Gide)
“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.” (George Santayana)
I carry a card in my wallet listing cardinal virtues and deadly sins as a reminder of abiding questions and issues that help define human experience in the world. One of the wonders of being part of an academic community is to drop in on such historical conversations. Come with me to eavesdrop on one such ongoing conversation about the nature of education.
One of the critical abiding issues in the academy is the dynamic between truth and justice, knowledge and virtue. We find many debates throughout the history of humankind about whether education is primarily about seeking the truth or more about preparing citizens to lead good lives. It is a wonderful issue to explore, but one that these days (given its role in shaping American higher education) tends to polarize rather than open us to continuing conversation and dialogue.
The question I have been considering recently is whether or not the tension between truth and justice is in fact a fruitful or constructive one. More and more I am convinced that when we reach a polarization in human relations we must change the terms of the conversation if we hope to find a dialogue that will guide and inspire our lives and work going forward. To that end, I want to explore the links, not between truth and justice, but between wisdom and citizenship and therein determine whether we might find a conceptual and intellectual framework that resonates with our mission and vision as a college.
Allow me to begin, then, with some thoughts about wisdom, which I define as a constellation of knowledge, virtue, perspective and imagination that are a fitting description of the purposes of a liberal arts education. Wisdom is more than knowledge – a knowledgeable person is not necessarily wise.
How do we become wise people? Not with a cookie-cutter approach – one size fits all – but with an open and wide-ranging exploration of various wisdom traditions that are part of our history as humans. A few words about three “wisdom traditions.”
In the Hebrew scriptures we find a variety of texts for understanding what it means to be a wise person. Perhaps the most compelling text is found in the Book of Proverbs, where the first nine chapters are an extended prose poem on the virtues of wisdom. We read in Proverbs 1:7, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge (or wisdom); fools despise wisdom and instruction.” Or again in Proverbs 2, “My child, if you accept my words and treasure up my commandments within you . . . if you indeed cry out for insight . . . if you seek it like silver and search for it as hidden treasures—then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”
This scriptural wisdom tradition teaches us that:
- Wisdom is a gift, out of our control, and cannot be earned
- Wisdom is linked to a need for discipline and moral righteousness
- Wisdom is a spiritual virtue, connecting us to the divine in ourselves, in others, and in creation
Certainly another critical wisdom tradition for the Western world comes from the Greek philosophers, especially from Plato and Aristotle (who are by no means of one mind on wisdom, but who do share a worldview), whose impact on our lives and understanding is profound. [In fact, there are those who would argue that the history of liberal arts education is played out in a dialogue between Plato and Aristotle (perhaps between truth and justice!)]
For our purposes, in the Nichomachean Ethics Aristotle writes, “Now it is held to be the mark of a prudent man [phrónimos] to be able to deliberate well about what is good and advantageous for himself, not in some one department, for instance what is good for his health or strength, but what is advantageous as a means to the good life in general. [Nicomachean Ethics, VI, v, 1-2]. Here Aristotle points us to a core aspect of his understanding of wisdom – the integration of knowing the good, knowing how to do the good, knowing how to behave, and knowing what sort of society to establish – in other words, the integration of philosophy and science, ethics and politics.
From this Greek wisdom tradition, we learn that:
- Wisdom is a unifying force, something more than knowledge of the individual parts
- Wisdom is holistic, about a variety of human conditions and perspectives on our lives– counter to our post-Enlightenment epistemology that fragments moral and philosophical considerations from the “facts”
- Wisdom is both personal and social – the good life in general is not just about you or me, it also is about us
I also find an important wisdom tradition in our modern and contemporary society, where a certain pragmatist bent offers us various lessons about life that have an “applied” and purposive value. For example, literature about organizational change teaches us about the challenge of evolving from data to information to wisdom – the stories and lenses through which we look at data to seek focus and value. The late Neil Postman, a cultural theorist, reminds us that “there are weavers of a social fabric in our midst” who have the stories and metaphors to help us weave a fabric for our lives, to decipher data from information from wisdom. In a similar vein, journalist and social scientist James Surowiecki writes in his recent The Wisdom of Crowds that “The decisions that democracies make may not demonstrate the wisdom of the crowd. The decision to make them democratically does.”
In this pragmatist wisdom tradition, we learn that:
- Wisdom comes through a lifetime of effort, learning, and experience
- Wisdom is in part a vocation – a calling to a way of life
- Wisdom helps us pay attention to what really matters
With this albeit brief and sketchy overview of three ways of thinking about wisdom, I wonder how wisdom and citizenship are integrated and linked. Let me point to a few of the ways in which our three wisdom traditions help us to better understand and practice citizenship.
The Hebrew tradition of wisdom as a gift leads me to ask in what ways is citizenship a gift? What is the philanthropic dimension of our lives, the dynamic of giving and receiving, the impulse to generosity? Former Connecticut College president Claire Gaudiani has written recently about the connections between democracy, capitalism and philanthropy in the American context. She offers a valuable lesson on the checks and balances of our distinctive social model by asking what it means to be gifted and thereby to have an obligation to give. In her book, The Greater Good, Gaudiani writes “ . . . generosity is one of the most widely shared values in the United States. It reflects our compassion and our entrepreneurial spirit, as well as our democratic values.”
The Greek understanding of wisdom as a holistic and integrated lens on the good life certainly challenges us to see citizenship as requiring a similar perspective on life together. I think about my recent work with the city’s human services department and their concern that the work of meeting the needs of the poor was becoming marginalized because the work does not belong to all of us. Even our language excludes the “poor.” Where is our sense of common need and aspiration? We will find it only if we are able to see all sides, to imagine the needs of others, to find the words to describe what it means to live together. The work is common and that means we must find places for various perspectives, skills and backgrounds. This is the genius of democracy though it is a challenge for all its messiness.
And what about our pragmatist bent, our applied understanding of wisdom? Perhaps citizenship itself is a vocation, a life that requires wise people to pay attention. I think in this political season of the need for thoughtful, engaged citizens. Consider the argument for Deliberation Day, for finding common purpose in neighborhood associations, for remembering our history in all its glory and ugliness so that we may be held accountable for it. I think about the joy and wonder of being a weaver of the social fabric who helps others pay attention to the most important things. My dad, for instance, (who taught me to pay attention!), in Tanzania now, fulfilling a commitment he made that extends his world and wisdom, even as he makes life better for others. Perhaps citizenship itself is a vocation, a way of life where our deep gladness and the world’s deep need intersect (F. Buechner).
So what difference does it make to what we do here at the college, to our mission and vision of higher education at Rockford College? For me, the countless graduates of this institution stand as testimony to almost 160 years of common work exploring the links between wisdom and citizenship – not always getting it right, but never giving up in the face of questions, intellectual work, domestic work and liberal arts work - work that is our passion and responsibility. And in this work, I find these abiding principles:
First, the inextricable ties between learning and citizenship. This is the claim that the privilege of being educated demands the obligation of engagement. This is understanding that to be stewards of the gift of wisdom demands of us the work of citizenship. The wonderful challenge is to ask not how much shall I give, but how much shall I keep?
Second, we pursue balance and integration in our personal, intellectual, political and civic lives. We do not allow our values and ideas to be disconnected from what we do in the world, nor do we allow someone to claim an opinion as universal truth without demanding a conversation, and modeling for others what it means to lead a good life, to be wise and responsible people. In the language of the Rockford College strategic plan, we “think of our campus and community boundaries as fluid and reciprocal.”
And finally, I see the need to listen for a call and to discern our vocations in the world. How shall we imagine and create a better world without a firm commitment to being wise people dedicated to the work of justice, fairness and humanity? Only those who are called – a call that each of us must listen for carefully – will have the sense of purpose and direction and inspiration that will help make our imagination and aspirations a reality.
So I charge you as a new academic year commences, to live in the best traditions and aspirations of a college – pursue wisdom, practice citizenship, and keep the faith. This is the wonder of our lives together at Rockford College.
Global adventures in parenting
While Abigail and I were in China adopting Maya, I sought out cybercafes and the like to send updates home to family and friends. I think there are lessons of reflection in this edited version of these global updates, and I offer them in great joy and wonder at our adventure in parenting.
“It is 5:15 pm on Tuesday, September 14 (our "gotcha" day) in Chongqing, China and Maya Crampton Pribbenow is now a member of our family!! She is a beautiful, healthy baby – with chubby cheeks and a twinkle in her eye. She has taken quickly to both Abigail and me (which is wonderful news) and we are enjoying these initial few hours of bonding. She has a couple of teeth with more clearly on the way (given her heavy-duty thumb sucking) and is on the cusp of crawling (and boy, does she seem ready to go!)
We were delayed a few hours for our receiving ceremony because the government agency was backed up with too many families receiving babies, but all went smoothly once we arrived and we are now together. Uncle Fred took many photos so there will be plenty to share when we return.
Our trip has been mind-bending: We began with the over stimulation of commercial Hong Kong, two days was probably just about right there. We did lots of sightseeing - tram to Victoria Peak, art museum, Star Ferry rides, a fascinating temple, and a bit of shopping. We then met up with our fellow adoptive families and flew from Hong Kong to Chongqing, a place that few Westerners have visited. We are quite the sight on the streets. We flew into an airport straight out of the 1950s, drove in a sputtering bus into the city of some 30 million residents (yes, 30 million!), wound our way across the Yangtze River and up a few side streets to one of the most spectacular modern hotels you could imagine (a Hilton). The juxtaposition of past, present and future in this place are beyond belief. Maya was born in a place that is one of the most populous cities on earth - which we had never heard of - and which may be the center of economic development for the country in the decades ahead (because of the 3 Gorges dam project). We'll look forward to a visit 20 years from now with our daughter!
We spend a couple more days here (to finish official paperwork) and then on to Guangzhou, China, to get Maya's US visa. We'll be there – in a famous adoptive parent hotel called the White Swan - over the weekend and then back to Hong Kong for the flight home next Wednesday.
A second update on our adventure in Chongqing (it is 8:15 pm on Thursday, 9/16).
It has been a couple of full days here after Maya joined our family. Maya is absolutely wonderful – inquisitive, chubby, good-natured and she loves her Papa (which makes me very happy!)
Wednesday morning we set off to visit the Chongqing Welfare Institute (of which the orphanage where Maya lived until Tuesday is a part). It is a wonderful place (as orphanages go), full of light and pleasant breezes – it is above the hazy clouds of the city (surely one of the most polluted cities in the world) up in the nearby mountains.
We visited Maya's "classroom" - she was in the Class of Angels (perhaps better than the Frogs or Penguins!), which was two rooms, each with 16-20 cribs lining the walls - we saw Maya's empty crib. There are common playrooms and wide hallways. We met two of her caregivers (of the five who were part of the team) and they clearly loved Maya (Jiang Sai, they called her with that lovely Chinese lilt in their voices). She clearly was well-cared for in the orphanage - it is a huge place but divided into manageable groups. The orphanage has benefited from the work of the Half-the-Sky Foundation, an American group that helps train orphanage caregivers in child development practices. We received fairly thorough reports of Maya's developmental progress, courtesy of the orphanage staff.
That same afternoon we went to a large department store, where we bought some shoes for Maya and then visited the supermarket in the same building. We met a lovely Australian woman in the market and talked with her about her experience as a rare Westerner in this city.
This morning we were up and out early to a city park with supposedly fine views of Chongqing, where two major rivers converge. Unfortunately the smog keeps you from seeing as far as you might hope. The pagoda and street vendors in the park were entertaining nevertheless.
We then went to the Chongqing Zoo, where we saw pandas (they are native to this part of China) – good fun.
Late in the afternoon, one of our social workers took Abigail, Fred, Maya and me to visit the place where Maya was abandoned - a market in the Ba Nan District. Ba Nan was once an independent city before becoming part of the Chongqing Municipality. If we thought Chongqing itself was seldom visited by Westerners, this sprawling market was even more remote. But it was an incredibly moving experience for all of us to see where Maya was found – in the midst of fruit and meat stands – and to know that this was a part of her history in the world. We spoke with some local folks (through our translator!) and took lots of pictures. We will never forget.
Tonight we pack and then we're off to Guangzhou tomorrow for US consulate business. We also hope to see Andrew Tang, a friend of Abigail's folks who happens to be in China teaching English - a fine coincidence.
We miss you all – especially our Thomas! We are well – gratefully – and captivated by this remarkable country, experience, and the gift of a daughter.
A final update from China, where it is Sunday afternoon about 3 pm. We are in Guangzhou, where these wonderful family pictures were taken yesterday by family friend, Andrew Tang, who lives near San Francisco but is in China teaching English to science and technology graduate students at a Guangzhou university. He was good enough to snap these shots and then forward them to me digitally so that you could see our sweetheart, Maya!
We arrived here from Chongqing on Friday afternoon. Guangzhou (formerly Canton) is a bustling and prosperous commercial center - full of chaotic street life. We are staying in the famous White Swan Hotel (famous among US adoptive parents, at least). It is located on Shamian Island, the former European enclave on the south side of Guangzhou, surrounded on one side by the Pearl River (a polluted waterway if ever I've seen one) and by a lovely canal on the other. It is full of (once lovely, now decaying) colonial buildings – beautiful, human scale architecture. We cross a bridge and are in the teeming street markets of Guangzhou – what a juxtaposition. Everything here on the island seems geared to adoptive US parents – shops full of children's shoes and clothing, souvenirs, etc. The hotel is full of Americans with Chinese babies – a bit surreal at times.
After arriving on Friday we all took baby photos for the US visas. Saturday morning we went to an international medical clinic for required baby check-ups – a bit of an assembly line with a station for weight/height, another for ENT, and another for a general physical. All checked out fine for Maya and the rest of our party. Yesterday afternoon we spent with Andrew, who took us to the street markets to explore. Lots of live animals, Chinese herbs and medicines, booths full of meats and vegetables – we were quite the sight with Maya in her Baby Bjorn baby carrier and the rest of us gawking at an entirely new and wonderful world.
This morning our entire group visited a Buddhist temple, where the babies were blessed by a monk – a very meaningful moment for all of us. Then to top off our morning we visited a toy market – wow! The rest of today is free. Tomorrow we have our visa interviews and ceremony with the Consul General at the US Consulate. Tuesday morning we'll all have visas and be on our way back to Hong Kong for the flight back on Wednesday. We are ready to come home with our precious baby– we miss Thomas sooooo…much and can't wait to be a complete family!
I think one of the most striking things about the trip for me and Abigail has been the wide range of responses we've received from the Chinese people about our adopting one of their daughters. From the woman at the adoption registry in Chongqing who shook my hand with vigor, looked me in the eye, and said that she knew we would provide only the best opportunity for our baby. To the city bus riders who pass our tour bus staring with some confusion about this group of Westerners with Chinese children. To the woman on the street who accosted us rather angrily to tell us how to care for a "Chinese" baby (something about the way I was carrying Maya!) To the lovely Chinese grandmother in the hotel elevator this morning who began to cry when she saw us with Maya – not, we guessed, because we had adopted the baby but because there were so many Chinese daughters who had been left behind. There are plenty of stares and tears and alleluias to go around as we join this worldwide company of those who have come to China to find a daughter.
Alleluia and amen.”
A postscript to these updates is in order. The day after I wrote the final update, we were in the US Consulate in Guangzhou to receive our visas and Maya had a seizure. Within 24 hours she had four additional seizures and we were in a Hong Kong hospital public pediatric ward for the next four days and nights, trying to figure out what was going on with her. Suffice it to say that after lots of tests and going on an anti-convulsion drug regimen, we finally arrived home five days later than expected (I missed Board of Trustees meetings and Homecoming here at the college!) It was a remarkable postscript to our China adventure – stressful, of course, a time when Abigail and I had to admit to ourselves that we did not know our daughter, she did not know us, and yet we were there together, as parents and child, trying to make sense of things, to get well, to come home.
And now we’re here at home. Maya is a wonderful little girl, a gift of life and wonder in our midst. She is undergoing various tests for her seizures and continues on the meds. The best case possibility right now is that she had a virus that caused the seizures; the worst case is that her epilepsy will have to be treated long-term with medicines. In either case, we are entwined as a family with big brother Thomas, making our lives together. We give thanks.
PAY ATTENTION TO THIS
Resources for your reflective practice
A couple of books worth your consideration. Parker Palmer has a new book, Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life (Jossey-Bass, 2004) – vintage Palmer. And in case you haven’t seen it, I recently read Richard Florida’s fascinating book, The Rise of the Creative Class (and how it’s transforming work, leisure, community and everyday life) (Basic Books, 2002). Very much in the line of urban theorists like Jane Jacobs, there are important lessons about life together in the book – no matter where you live.
In keeping with my mention above of my repository of Addams-related material, you might enjoy www.pragmatism.org, which offers lots of resources related to what many of us believe is the most American of all philosophies!
Adoption and thanksgiving
In the spirit of this season of thanksgiving, I repeat these powerful words from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet,” which have become a creed for Abigail and me as we imagine being parents of our children. The poem reminds us that the work of stewardship is not about possession, it is about love.
“Love is Separateness”
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you they belong not to you.
You may give them your love, but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you
cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backwards nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bow from which your children as living
arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrow may
go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also
the bow that is stable.
Topics for the next issue (December 2004)
- A commonplace on generosity
- Tempered radicals and other spurs to organizations with a conscience
(c) Paul Pribbenow,
2004
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