Module 23: A deeper look at Holistic Education – starting with Parker Palmer and Abraham Joshua Heschel and Karen Armstrong
“Certitude divides and diversity unifies…..We have to elevate religion above politics…..”
H.R.H. Prince El-Hassan Bin Talal BBC Newsnight 9th Feb 2006
Module description:
In relation to a working definition of the process of holistic development this module looks at the nature of, and use of, the idea of ‘deep holism starting with some of the outstanding figures in holistic education’ by the teacher, or other practitioner, so as to encourage learning, professional development and/or personal growth.
We assume that every person has access to an inner source of truth, named in various wisdom traditions as soul, spirit, or heart—a source of strength and guidance that is the place of truth-telling within us where we know the difference between reality and illusion. Our work recognizes this source of truth, honors the identity and integrity of the individual and affirms the vital relationship between the inner life and one’s work in the world.
Attending to the creation of a quiet, focused, and disciplined space for this work is essential—a space in which the noise within us and around us can subside, and we can begin to hear our own inner voice. The practices of reflection and journaling, silence and solitude are part of the fabric of our approach. Being together in community—in small groups and large group—contributes to a fuller realization of what our inner voice is trying to tell us, helping both validate and at times question the truth that lives within us. SEE http://www.couragerenewal.org/?q=about/principles
Rothschild on A J Heschel says that to the sheer sublimity of experience we respond with radical amazement, to the mystery of reality with awe.
SEE Rothschild Fritz A (1959) Between God and Man; an interpretation of Judaism, NY:The Free Press (Macmillan)
Introductory reading/s to get started:
There are many sites for these three major figures
Armstrong:
Profile of Karen Armstrong
Mary Rourke meets the author of “Islam, a short history”
Los Angeles Times, October 9, 2000
For years she was tagged the “runaway nun,” the rebellious ex-Catholic with outspoken opinions about religion. Now, with her 12th book, “Islam, a Short History” (Modern Library), Karen Armstrong has changed her image. She can still be sharp-tongued, inclined to draw conclusions that get a rise out of critics. But something closer to reconciliation, rather than anger, is propelling her.
Her life in a British convent is 30 years behind her. She spent seven years in the Society of the Holy Child Jesus during the 1960s and later wrote a tell-all book, “Through the Narrow Gate” (St. Martin’s Press, 1982) that bemoaned the restrictive life. (The frightened nuns did not know the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 had ended for several weeks; they were not allowed to inquire about the outside world.) Armstrong is still hearing about the book: “Catholics in England hate me. They’ve sent me excrement in the mail.”
Readers who have followed her lately are learning her more optimistic ideas about what Islam, Judaism and Christianity have in common. Three of these books–”A History of God” (Ballantine, 1993), “Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths” (Knopf, 1996) and “The Battle for God” (Knopf, 2000)–show what unites the faiths. Each, Armstrong writes, has developed the image of one Supreme Being who was first revealed to the prophet Abraham. All have historic links to Jerusalem. And more recently, each has built up a rigid conservative strain as a reaction against the modern world.
Last year, the Islamic Center of Southern California honored Armstrong as a bridge builder who promotes understanding among the three faiths. On a book tour last week that included Los Angeles, the Londoner met again with members of the center in a Santa Monica home.
A small woman in her mid-50s with short blond hair and an eager expression Armstrong signed copies of her books while the 100 or so guests grazed a buffet table.
“Across the country,” she began her brief talk, “night after night in bookstores, I saw in people’s faces that they are interested in Islam. You might feel in despair as you are now a minority, living in the West, but people are very interested in learning more about you.”
Earlier, she explained in an interview: “It is challenging for Muslims in the U.S. who for the first time are not living in a Muslim-governed state. A basic message of the Koran is to create a united community and share the wealth.” When Western capitalism was introduced in the East in the last few decades, Iran and other Muslim countries rebelled. “The challenge for Muslims in the U.S. is to come to terms with the success of the secular West.”
Part of the problem in integrating, she suggested, is that Muslims don’t want to alienate anyone. “Muslims need to reach out to other faiths. They aren’t as practiced as the Jews at it, who’ve lived in sometimes hostile countries for 2,000 years.”
Other religious cultures have met similar challenges as immigrants in the U.S. “The Catholics did, late in the last century. They came from Ireland, Poland and Europe in huge numbers, and they were hated. Their arrival encouraged the rise of Protestant fundamentalism in the U.S. Now it is the Muslims who want to be good Americans.”
Reviews of her new book, and of earlier works, tend to challenge Armstrong’s sophistication. In the case of her new work, one reviewer argued she gave too little attention to the development of Islamic law, a central feature of a faith that blends religion and politics while Western democracies struggle to keep the two apart. Another reviewer said she overlooked Islam’s contribution to science, art and economics.
“I never read reviews,” Armstrong replied, defending herself in a cadence that an observer once timed at 130 words per minute. “Islam” presented the added challenge of telling it all in 222 pocket-book-size pages. “This impossibly brief history of Islam,” was the publisher’s idea, she said. “People too daunted by thick books will get a sense of things in this one.”
Armstrong teaches Christianity at London’s Leo Baeck College for the Study of Judaism. It was her first trip to Jerusalem in 1983 that piqued her interest in commonality among faiths. “I got back a sense of what faith is all about.”
At the time she was an atheist who was “wearied” by religion and “worn out by years of struggle.” Born a Roman Catholic in the countryside near Birmingham, England, in 1945, she gave up on religion after her time in the convent. “I was suicidal,” she said of life in her late 20s. “I didn’t know how to live apart from that regimented way of life.”
With an undergraduate degree in literature from Oxford University, she began teaching 19th and 20th century literature at the University of London and worked on a PhD. Three years later, her dissertation was rejected. Without it, she did not qualify to teach at the university level and took a job as head of the English department at a girls’ school in London. Not long afterward, she was diagnosed with epilepsy. “After six years at the school I was asked to leave, but nicely,” she said. “My early life is a complete catastrophe. It all worked out for the best.”
She left the school in 1982 and began working on television documentaries. The story that took her to Jerusalem set her on a new career path and changed her earlier impressions about God. She went from atheist to “freelance monotheist” but has never returned to the Catholic Church or joined any other.
Since her writing career took off, Armstrong’s communion with God occurs in the library, where she spends up to three years researching her books, which are as densely packed with detail as her conversations. “I get my spirituality in study,” she said. “The Jews say it happens, sometimes, studying the Torah.”
It seems no one sacred scripture could satisfy her now. “It’s inevitable that people turn to more than one religious tradition for inspiration,” she said. “It’s part of globalization.” She recently read from the Buddhist canon of teachings for her next book. “Religion is like a raft,” she said, explaining the Buddha’s view of it. “Once you get across the river, moor the raft and go on. Don’t lug it with you if you don’t need it anymore.” She knows that mode of travel: Leave one raft behind to pick up the next just ahead.
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MYTHOS and LOGOS
In her review of Creationism by Michael Ruse, written for the New Scientist (2005) Karen Armstrong provides a summary of her view of mythos and logos
In the pre-modern world, it was generally understood that there were two ways of arriving at truth. Plato called them mythos and logos. Neither was superior to the other. Logos (reason; science) was exact, practical and essential to human life. To be effective, it had to correspond to external reality. Myth expressed the more elusive, puzzling aspects of human experience. It has often been called a primitive form of psychology, which helped people negotiate their inner world…
Myth could not help you create efficient technology or run your society. But logos had its limits too. If you became a refugee or witnessed a terrible natural catastrophe, you did not simply want a logical explanation; you also wanted myth to show you how to manage your grief. With the advent of our scientific modernity, however, logos achieved such spectacular results that myth was discredited, and now, in popular parlance a myth is something that did not happen, that is untrue. But some religious people also began to read religious myths as though they were logos.
The conflict between science and faith has thus been based on a misunderstanding of the nature of scriptural discourse. Many people, including those who are religious, find it difficult to think mythically, because our education and society is fuelled entirely by logos. This has made religion impossible for many people in the west, and it could be argued that much of the stridency of Christian fundamentalism is based on a buried fear of creeping unbelief.
In the pre-modern world, it was considered dangerous to mix mythos and logos, because each had a different sphere of competence. Much of the heat could be taken out of the evolution versus creation struggle if it were admitted that to read the first chapter of Genesis as though it were an exact account of the origins of life is not only bad science; it is also bad religion.
Palmer:
http://www.miracosta.cc.ca.us/home/gfloren/palmer.htm
Heschel:
![[see caption]](http://learn.jtsa.edu/topics/reading/bookexc/gillman_conservativej/chap5/page84.jpg)
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HESCHEL INSISTED that his turn to political activism was prompted by his experience of living in Europe in the decades before World War II. He had been a personal witness to political oppression and was painfully aware that many otherwise good people stood on the sidelines and did not intervene. He was not going to repeat that pattern in America. He became the major Jewish spokesman on the liberal side of a wide range of social and political issues. He plunged into America’s racial conflict and marched from Selma to Montgomery alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. The last decade of his life was consumed by his passionate opposition to the Vietnam War.
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A sense of the field can be obtained from Roger Stack’s ‘Map’ of Holistic Education see also his blog
