reflection
Weekly newsletter 2.2.2021
Friends,
Reflection takes many forms, but I find that it usually gets a bad rap. Instead of regarding reflection as a fundamental cognitive process or an important component of developing self-awareness, it’s often interchanged with opinion or expressing feelings. “An inherent risk in an imprecise picture of reflection is that,” writes Carol Rodgers, “in an age where measurable, observable learning takes priority, it is easily dismissed precisely because no one knows what to look for. Or worse, it is reduced to a checklist of behaviors. [American philosopher John] Dewey reminds us that reflection is a complex, rigorous, intellectual, and emotional enterprise that takes time to do well.” Out of Dewey’s thinking, Rodgers identifies four criteria for defining reflection (emphasis added):
“Reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a learner from one experience into the next with deeper understanding of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas. It is the thread that makes continuity of learning possible, and ensures the progress of the individual and, ultimately, society. It is a means to essentially moral ends.
“Reflection is a systematic, rigorous, disciplined way of thinking with its roots in scientific inquiry.
“Reflection needs to happen in community, in interaction with others.
“Reflection requires attitudes that value the personal and intellectual growth of oneself and of others…Reflection that is guided by whole-heartedness, directness, open-mindedness, and responsibility, though more difficult, stands a much better chance of broadening one’s field of knowledge and awareness.”
I’ve returned to this definition frequently in the last 10 years - it helps me to determine whether I’m really engaging in reflection or how to ensure that an experience for students or colleagues (or, more recently, symposium participants) affords a chance for it. As each of us processes our experiences of the past year, as each of us discerns the changes we want to make in ourselves and in our world, keeping Dewey’s approach close might help us to ensure that we’re facing what we need to face, that we’re looking forward and not regressing to the attitudes, structures, and practices that got us here.
UPCOMING
Guided Meditations | Mondays, 4:00pm PST, via Zoom
Religious literacy: how to talk about religion without pissing anyone off | 6-week symposium on Thursdays at 5:00pm PST begins on February 18. Sign up here!
Good Stuff II | 4-week symposium on Mondays at 5:00pm PST begins on March 1. Sign up here!
UPDATES
In early April, author Arundhati Roy reflected on the pandemic and posed an opportunity that I’ve been coming back to since. “[I]n the midst of this terrible despair,” she wrote, “it offers us a chance to rethink the doomsday machine we have built for ourselves. Nothing could be worse than a return to normality.” This experience is a portal, and we “can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world.” I didn’t know how prophetic Roy’s words would be - the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery forced a reckoning for all of us and a pressing challenge to honestly assess our own and our wider culture’s complicity in sustaining systemic racism and injustice. Yeah, we know we need to leave behind “our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas,” but how?
Schools are laboratories for culture, and I’m just optimistic and idealistic enough that to believe that a school has the potential to shape the world through the values and actions of their staff and alums. Most educators will rightly look to curriculum and the classroom experience as the crucible for change, but changes also need to happen in the symbolic life of schools, manifest in their traditions, ceremonies, and culture. Without attending to its traditions, the rest of the work to make a school’s curriculum reflect its students and to give life to its mission is moot. It’s like, you know, designating special programming for Black History Month but not actually paying attention to the lived experiences of Black people, for example, students and staff. With such a discrepancy, only so much (if at all) of a community’s institutional practices and of community members’ outlooks and ensuing actions will change.
Over the summer, social media platforms were bursting with recommendations - books and blogs to read, artists and activists to follow, documentaries and films to watch to better understand the experiences of Black people. Some of the enthusiasm for title-sharing has diminished (perhaps and hopefully because people are actually engaging those resources and making changes in real life, off of the virtual platforms), but the dialogue continues. The new voices I’ve had the privilege to hear and begin to absorb have helped me to reflect on my own personal and professional experiences, and I hope that my efforts to apply the language of ritual studies and religious diversity might offer a lens for communities to see themselves in a new light. More, I hope it offers a starting point for effecting change in settings where folx don’t know where to begin.
On Medium, I recently posted “‘If only…’: Changing traditions, changing culture,” a reflection on the kinds of traditions that need to be reconsidered and starting points for effecting change, and “Changing traditions, changing culture: Mater, Congé, Prize Day,” which explores how Sacred Heart schools (I worked in two SH schools) have maintained traditions rooted in the schools’ origins and adapted them to reflect contemporary concerns and values. If you’re interested in school culture, or if you know anyone who might be engaged in this kind of work, take a look, and if you’ve witnessed or been part of the transformation of community practices and traditions, I’d love to hear about it.
Registration for Symposia is open! The next two to launch:
“Religious literacy: how to talk about religion without pissing anyone off” is a 6-week symposium on Thursdays that begins February 18
“Good Stuff II: talking about listening, seeing, feeling, and other ings” is a 4-week symposium on Mondays that begins March 1.
Full descriptions are on my website. Symposia are limited to 10 participants and need 4 to run - if you’ve thought about participating, please sign up! If you’re eager for meaningful conversation away from the noise of current events, come join! For more details and to register, click here.
Guided meditations via Zoom continue! Mondays at 4:00pm PST. The aim is to practice being present - to ourselves, to others, and to the world. If you or someone you know could use a 20-30 minute dose of peace and quiet on Mondays,visit the meditation page on my site to sign up.
GOOD STUFF
See
A few years ago, my friend Bridgette and I attended the opening reception of “30 Americans” at the Tacoma Art Museum, a stunning exhibit that features 30 African American artists and that has been installed in 19 museums (it’ll be 20 in September) since 2008. For me, some of the artists’ names were familiar - I’d been a fan of Jean-Michel Basquiat since I saw him in Blondie’s “Rapture” video - but most of the artists were new to me. One particular piece was overwhelmingly beautiful and powerful for me - Kehinde Wiley’s “Sleep,” a 25’ long and 11’ high masterful study of the human body, meditation on beauty, and juxtaposition of artistic legacies. Not long after we visited the exhibit, President Obama revealed his official portrait, painted by Wiley, bringing a broader interest to his work. If you haven’t explored his art before, do. Both his studio and his Instagram give us a peek into his work.
Listen
In 1960, Ella Fitzgerald won a Grammy for her cover of “Mack the Knife.” The song was her only single to crack Billboard’s Top 40, but by the time it was released she’d already made Grammys history. In 1958 and 1959 (the first and second Grammy Awards ceremonies), she took trophies for Best Female Vocal Performance and Best Individual Jazz performance. Fun (and important) facts: Ella was the first African American to win a Grammy Award, and she holds the record as female artist with the most recordings in the Grammy Hall of Fame). So it was no surprise that her 1960 album Ella in Berlin, recorded live at the Deutchelandhalle in Berlin (a concert hall that had been dedicated by Hitler 25 years before) would bring a haul, too. “Mack the Knife” was remarkable not because it’s a fantastic song (it is) or because production of the album was extraordinary (it was a great concert). It was remarkable because, not far into the song, Ella forgot the lyrics. She didn’t cue the band to stop and restart. She kept singing, improvised lyrics that poked fun at herself for butchering the song, and scatted through the rest. By the end of the track, she’s laughing joyously and the audience is ecstatic.
“Mack the Knife” served Ella well. By that time, she’d already started recording her songbook albums, putting her imprint on every major composer’s contributions to pop music and basically setting the standard for what we think a song should sound like. The emergence of the Grammys gave her career a new wave of popularity and fame. Except for Ella in Berlin, her most popular recordings these days are studio records, and that’s a shame because the studio albums both deny us the rapport she shared with her audiences and demonstrate just how good she was. She returned to Berlin in 1961, but the live-recorded concert didn’t get published as an album until 1991. It’s a shame, because the album has a few gems, including my very favorite of all of Ella’s recordings: a medley of three Oscar Hammerstein (two written with Kern, one with Rogers) songs - “Why Was I Born,” “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” and “People Will Say We’re in Love” - with just Ella’s voice and Herb Ellis’ guitar. It’s spare, it’s lovely, and thinking of Ella and Herb in a tender duet keeping the sold-out audience rapt reminds me why Ella remains the greatest pop singer ever. Ever.
If you stream music on Spotify, I’ve started a playlist called “Bill’s Good Stuff,” including music I’ve loved for a long time as well as things I’ve come across more recently. Feel free to add the playlist to your favorites! Bill’s Good Stuff Spotify Playlist
Read
In this week’s guided meditation, I used the poem “Love After Love” by Caribbean poet Derek Walcott.
“Love After Love”
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
