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Dr Michael Downey |
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Consultant, Author ,Workshop Presenter, Retreat Leader, & Teacher
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The time in between Christmas and the New Year is a good time to ponder. I have been pondering how happy my grandchildren are, and the gratitude this provokes in me. They are lucky to live safe and secure in the loving embrace of an extended family. They are also lucky to live in community on a very beautiful mountain top hamlet. Our beautiful environment grows beautiful things. A friend arrived to visit for a couple of days. Sharing a glass of wine before I prepared dinner, he said, “Wow, you are so alive and happy”. I already felt this, but his observation still caught me unexpectedly. There is an ancient principal, Anima Mundi, which means “soul of the world”. Ancient and traditional peoples, and Archetypal Psychologists, all understand that our own spiritual well being involves the connection to the Anima Mundi. It’s not loud and dominant, but we too easily lose this connection in our constant over-busyness. It’s what Richard Louv calls, Nature Deficit Disorder. Luckily, the remedy for this is effortless. Really! We don’t have to “do” anything. We just need to slow down and relax in the arms of Nature. Here’s to holidays. 
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 I was caught completely unawares when talking about career paths with student teachers I was supervising, a couple of years back. I was told more than once, by promising young teachers, that they had no intention of becoming a teacher after they graduated. They would use the skills expertise and for something else.
In each case I thought the young person had some promise and I told them so. As it turns out, the workload, the administration demands, the pay, the stress and the lack of appreciation teachers lived with, just didn’t make a teacher’s life attractive. Ironically, these young people also recounted how rewarding they had found their experience working in schools. While I was saddened by this, I also admired their clearheaded pragmatism. I wondered if their unfolding life journey might one day bring them back to a classroom. These young people had understood some of the things that contribute to good teachers burning-out in their work. With Covid restrictions easing, I have been talking with school leaders about Formation programmes for the coming new year. What these leaders see as significant challenges reminded me of my student teachers. The last two years have added to the stress, complexity and intensification of teachers work. Formation is about nurturing and sustaining those who use their gifts in the service of education. Ongoing Formation creates opportunities for teachers to flourish. Their work is good and noble. It’s important to keep perspective.  I often recall a time when discussing Formation with Parker Palmer at his home in Wisconsin when he illustrated the importance of reflection. He said that “just because I’ve said something, doesn’t mean that I know exactly what it is that I’ve said”.
My oldest grandson reminded me of this as I was driving into our driveway this morning. Noticing his Nana’s car in the driveway, my youngest grandson exclaimed, “Nana is home!”. My wise five year old replied, “Nana doesn’t have to go to work any more, she’s over-tired.” I stopped myself from correcting him and had a smile. Sometimes we make meaning. Other times, meaning is revealed when we notice something and reflect on it. Sometimes a phrase jumps out at me. I was reading an essay by Aldous Huxley from 1964, reflecting on the poetics of life. He said that we act out “a series of strange and improbable events”. It struck me once more, that much of my life has been a series of strange and improbable events. For example, most of those who taught me at school would have considered it most unlikely, and definitely strange and improbable, that I would have spent most of my working life as a teacher. However, being a teacher was work that called me and I could not resist its gravitational pull. As I prepare to facilitate professional formation, time for teachers to reflect on their vocational calling to teach, it occurs to me that “strange and improbable” is more the way of things than we might often expect.   There are several lovely walking tracks not far from my home. I walked one recently with my son and his sons. My youngest grandson, who is two and a half, found the walk challenging after awhile. Still, he was determined to make it to the lookout where we cross a creek as it drops over the edge of our mountain top. Before we started, my son and I both suspected that we would have to take turns in carrying him as he tired.
The lookout is about 1.5 kilometres from the carpark. I’ve stood on that bridge and looked over the creek to the horizon before. I asked my grandsons if they liked this spot. They said yes. My eldest grandson was obviously so happy to watch the creek disappear and appreciate how high we were above the land below. I told him that it was an effort to walk here but without making that effort, we would never be able to enjoy this perspective. We got to see what we wanted to see, but our journey was only half done. We now had to go all the way back again. As the walking track is a circuit, we got to choose. We could go back the way we came, or we could keep going forward. It was the same distance either way. He chose to keep going in case we might see something different. We did, and we did. Once more I was struck with the parallels to groups I lead in Formation. We have to make the journey to appreciate the perspective we can only appreciate by arriving at that place Formation leads us. Then we continue our journey. We benefit from making the effort, and we benefit from journeying together. It can be more of an effort for some than for others and sometimes we need to support each other home. Still as The Fox said to the Little Prince, “some grownups will not understand why these things are matters of great importance”.
 Sometimes a question of great importance is asked of us. When working with seniors on retreat last week, I channeled Mary Oliver and asked, “What is it that you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life?”
At turning points of significance: leaving school, graduation, deciding to get married, choosing a career, changing jobs, moments of profound loss or disillusionment, or that rare windfall of great opportunity, I have felt that life was asking an important question of me. Discerning what exactly I being asked was the challenge. Sometimes, asking the question, is what we are called to do. In the ancient Grail Myth, the hero, Parsifal’s task was to ask the question. As a young man, he failed to ask and as a result, spent the rest of his life searching. I like Krista Tippett’s assertion that “questions elicit answers in their likeness”. I am continuing to think that this COVID moment, pivot, or turning point, is both asking significant questions of us, and providing us the opportunity to ask our own question. My question may be quite different to yours. What is it? What is your question at this moment? Asking it may define what’s next.
The newsreader said that COVID restrictions had been eased. We could relax and move about, even gather in groups. But social distancing was still necessary. The various levels of isolation, were harder for some than for others, and not just because of the level of restrictions mandated.
In our highly extraverted world, where constant frenetic activity, outputs, results, achievements and definite answers have been the generally accepted norm, many assumed that this was simply the way of the world. COVID caused a pivot, or turning point. Perhaps pondering and asking questions is more useful to us at this moment? This week, I began some formation work with teachers by asking them what they learnt from COVID and 2020. Some responded that employers discovered that they could trust their workers to work from home. Some observed that they missed contact with those that they love. Some said that living with uncertainty was a new experience and demanded a different mindset from the usual. Perhaps what resonated most deeply was learning that we are vulnerable. Gently holding this insight reveals that not only are we vulnerable, it is an illusion to ever think that we are not vulnerable. Its easier not to think about it and just get on with life, work, family and “the whole catastrophe” (as Zorba the Greek would say). In this wonderful “wide, brown land down under” the heat and drought which led to 2019’s devastating and wide-spread bushfires, forced us to think about ourselves in our physical world – a relationship under significant stress. 2020 forced us to think about how we move and connect in the world. We found that we had to think about how we worked, how we keep connected and what really matters. There seems to be a pattern here. I wonder if 2019 & 2020 were preparation for what is coming next.? Not necessarily for the specifics of what is coming, we just might be being prepared for more changes in how we relate and connect to each other, and how we relate, connect and move through our world. If so, what we have learnt over the last year or two could prove to be invaluable. What did COVID and 2020 teach you? What did you learn?  After doing the afternoon Kindy pickup, I was sitting in the garden with my, four and a half year old, grandson. I asked him about his day, what he did at Kindy. “Nothing. I just played”, he replied.
Formation is very effective. It needs to be ongoing, intentional and effortful. It can be as simple as noticing what nourishes and sustains us and taking the time to be blessed by it. The silver lining of having the “normal” routines and practices disrupted is having a few moments each day just to sit and be.  |
AuthorDr Michael Downey is an Author, Teacher, Consultant, Retreat Leader & Workshop Facilitator. , Archives
December 2021
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