On Choosing Our Teachers

We should be careful of succumbing to the charisma of false gurus, but equally careful not to dismiss potential teachers on account of their inability to measure up to what may ultimately be our narrow ideas of competence. I am a firm believer in "wounded healers" and mixed blessings.

Socrates himself was particularly fond of the god Silenus, described as portly, bald, and frequently intoxicated. The majority of people scorned and mocked him for these qualities, and could not see that, even in his drunkenness, or perhaps especially then, he uttered prophetic words. He was inspired with divine madness. Socrates says, "[The] greatest blessings come by way of madness... let us not be disturbed by an argument that seeks to scare us into preferring the friendship of the sane to that of the passionate... this sort of madness is a gift of the gods."

The most celebrated coach in sports, Vince Lombardi, was a passionate, volatile man. He frequently neglected his wife and family, and humiliated his players. But he also shaped the characters of dozens of young men, provoking them to call upon what was deepest and best in them, and to discover capacities in themselves which they had never suspected or had the drive to develop.

It seems there is no master so perfected as not to possess some point of weakness or depravity; some dark spot upon which we may peck and peck. It seems there is no healer who carries a panacea, or a tincture for every ill, but that we must accept from each person the medicine they bring us, and not seek in them what they lack, nor dismiss them for what they lack.

Inner work is of many types. While we labor in one area, we inevitably neglect another. Balance is not a static state we achieve, but a dynamic condition of constant, vigilant adaptation. True balance is rarely if ever achieved, though many people can provide convincing signs of spiritual power. One artist said, "To take on the world at all angles requires a strength I can't use." In all that is said, in even the most thorough of discourses, something always remains neglected and unsaid, else the universe would be redundant, and we would not be incarnated. In all the inner work that is done, something is always left undone, and remains to be recognized. Our place may be to suggest where wholeness may be sought, rather than to reject someone for being a work in progress.

We tend to speak of students and teachers as if they were separate and clearly defined entities, like black and white, but they are relative; all students have something to teach, all teachers have something to learn. My own investigations have suggested to me that inner work does not need to appear outwardly in order to be genuine. In fact, this outward appearance, and the validation it would appear to provide, may be withheld by Providence, for better reasons than we know. Perhaps we are learning to see beyond appearances, to understand that the work goes on, despite no outward sign.

Reason teaches that faith is not strengthened by graces, but is exercised most strenuously in periods of spiritual dryness. Humility, the finest of the virtues, may come only when we have been stripped of all other virtues, and confessed ourselves destitute before God. Truly, the ministrations of the Holy Spirit are hidden from our view, though, at times, they shine out unambiguously from an individual whom God has chosen to reflect the light. More often, he will seemingly squander the most incredible gifts on people entirely unworthy to receive them, or to bear them responsibly, simply in order to instruct these souls; that they might rise to the level of their gifts. We should receive those gifts, as having come to us from God, even when the person who wields them is less than worthy. "Be open to truth, whatever its source," as the Quakers teach.

Most frequently of all, I suspect, the Lord works entirely in secret, stripping souls of even the most common virtues, in order to develop in them virtues of the rarest and most ethereal sort. Often these souls do not even know they are called, and imagine themselves accursed, cast out from the presence of God. They do not see what mighty works are established in darkness. They do not feel the great love which shields their eyes in order to ignite an unquenchable faith in their hearts. They cannot guess that they are found exactly when they seem most lost. Though they stumble in every imaginable way, yet they discover something of God within them; something which will not rest, but must push forward, always, regardless of signs, or lack of signs, and capable of following the scent of a divine incense even in the midst of the cruelest storms of confusion, anxiety, desperation, and utter exhaustion. These people, with their wounds, are my teachers. I needn't blind myself to their faults, in order to appreciate their virtues. Even Saint Paul, who was carried up into the 7th heaven, was left with a "thorn in his heart", and perhaps this thorn was God's greatest gift to him, for it pricked at his pride, and forced his heart to bleed even for his enemies.