Thoughts during a meeting

 Another  teacher made a comment during a departmental meeting, saying "God is not a teacher." Then we had time to free write, so I wrote. No goal, no aim, no end. Just this.

God is not a teacher but is that because he isn’t supposed to be or because what he wants from us cannot be taught. Or maybe we don’t understand what it is to be a teacher. Maybe he is a teacher in a new mold – not working from the position of frontal instruction, but acting as observer, with the occasional gentle nudge, guiding us by seeming to let us follow our own bliss while he sees a bigger picture and knows us better than we know ourselves.

Maybe we aren’t students so we don’t need a teacher. It could be that we are active partners in a constant creation and while we crane our necks to find a leader we never look back at ourselves and see that we are responsible for our own progress and we can’t absolve ourselves of that responsibility by foisting the role off on anyone or anything else, preferring to see ourselves as sheep and not acting as our own shepherds.

And it could be that we are looking to hang a label on God in a way that will make us feel more comfortable relating to Him. If we can name, if we can consign to a single role or position, then we can know where we stand But if we become stuck in that mode of God’s supposed relationship to us, then when He acts in a way which defies the expectations and projections we have established then we find fault with him. So it isn’t whether God is or is not a teacher, but whether it is right to see that feature as definitive and limiting and to the exclusion of any other hats he might metaphorically wear.

Wondering about God as teacher also presumes another level of awareness – the question as to whether God IS in the first place. Maybe this is an advanced stage or theological pontificating; we can safely hang on to our central belief by arguing straws and not substance. We can make our jibes and act the goof because all of that is predicated on a firm bedrock of silent acknowledgement. That could be a good thing because then we never (have to) confront the central issue of faith.

Is the poem a teacher? Is the goal for us to respond, to branch off, or to absorb and reflect? Should a poem make us think of new stories, be inspired to dream, or should we be puling the poem apart, dissecting it so see how its heart beats. Which will prepare us to read another poem, and is that the ultimate goal? Does that poem exist to drive us forward and away or inward? Does God want us to understand God and our world and make new ones, or does God want to guide us to finding ourselves and seeing how we work? Am I to be a new poet or creator or a master over what already is?