What are you learning from life’s curriculum right now?
Last week, I joined professors Duane Stoltzfus, Amy Budd and Sara Method, and the senior seminar class of communication, theater and art students. Duane had asked me to reflect on a speech that I gave 10 years ago at Cornell University, about life as the real curriculum. I told the students that I was asking myself, in this moment of alarming and rapid change, “what is it that I need to be learning?”
I shared that I am learning about what to devote my attention to, as I feel overwhelmed by the news cycles and I cannot afford to squander my focus. I am learning about the 20th century, especially the landscape of World War II, and how it might be instructive to us. And I am learning about solidarity. While the pandemic years taught us about self-care, I strongly believe that the present moment calls us to learn about solidarity – how to embody love in action on behalf of one another.
It is hard to be human right now – I mean, to be really human – because so many people are angry, sad or suffering. Parul Seghal recently wrote in the New York Times Magazine that solidarity is “the art and practice of sharing in another’s struggle, of making common cause.” She also cautioned about nostalgic notions of solidarity. We need to probe the inner workings of it – “the meetings, the awkward conversations, the earnestness, the errors.”
And this too is what makes this moment hard for we who are really human: the awkwardness, earnestness and errors. We are in some sort of epic social/economic/political transition, but we are not sure where it is heading or how to grapple with it.
Change management gurus call this the transition, the period between an ending and a new beginning. In childbirth, transition is the term for active labor. It is when the mother loses her inhibitions and gives up on any attempt to make this a “nice experience.” According to Mayo Clinic’s summary of the stages of labor, during transition “your initial excitement may fade as labor goes on and you get more uncomfortable.” Indeed!
And yet, this is how new life breaks into being. Nearly 50 years ago, the German Reformed theologian Jürgen Moltmann wrote:
The social and cultural upheavals of the present draw its attention to that great upheaval which it itself describes as ‘new creation,’ as the ‘new people of God,’ when it testifies to the world concerning the future of ‘the new heaven and the new earth.’ What is required today is not adroit adaptation to changed social conditions, but the inner renewal of the church by the spirit of Christ, the power of the coming kingdom.
In the midst of all this transition, Goshen College staged the musical RENT. A year ago, third-year students Fatima Zahara and Phillip Witmer-Rich appealed to the faculty to do this show, writing:
Goshen teaches a first-year class titled “Identity, Culture, and Community.” RENT gives voice to all of these topics. If the characters were left alone or without their found family, life would genuinely be meaningless. Without community, there is no identity, and without identity, there is no culture.
Goshen’s production of RENT drew large crowds through five shows, selling out the house on the second weekend. Numerous people came repeatedly. For our students, and apparently for many community members, it was the right moment to tell a story about vulnerable, flawed and beautiful people creating dignity and solidarity in hard times. Producer and professor Amy Budd, explained:
The musical RENT examines the ways we stay in relationship with one another. The story demands that its characters love one another as Jesus intended: with their flaws, through their flaws and not in spite of those flaws. When characters on stage forgive one another, atone for their actions and grow, it sets an example for all of us to do the same.
Last week, I asked our senior students what they need to be learning from life right now. They spoke about learning how to stay open-hearted, how to avoid brain rot, questioning their choice of major when that choice seems scary now and learning how to fake it when they lack courage. We talked about journaling, thick description, deep reading of sacred texts, nature, that it’s okay to be afraid and our need for solidarity.
What do you need to learn from life’s curriculum right now?
A voice for our time is that of Valerie Kaur, who writes and speaks about revolutionary love – love that labors for oneself and for others beyond our inner sphere and evolutionary duties. I’ll leave you with her:
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Rebecca Stoltzfus