Semper Discens
The motto Semper Discens , is displayed on a wooden keystone in the arch of the stage in Fuller Hall at St Johnsbury Academy, a reminder to the audience and the speaker to be "always learning".
In many of my chapel talks over the last couple of months I have shared my thoughts of trying to make sense of the world as I see it through my 51 year-old eyes. In classic introverted fashion I have made the commitment to address many of these questions with two activities: reading and writing. As an engineer neither skill was particularly valued in school and improving them has provided significant challenges and lasting rewards.
As was the case for many faculty, I passed time over the holiday break catching up on sleep, reconnecting with friends and family, and reading. I piled through the backlog of New Yorker magazines on my shelf and then read Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. It's a novel about awakening to the new reality that was for professional house staff in the post WWII era in England. A beautifully written book, not for the multiple characters revealed or ingenious plot, but for the honest insight into finding a person’s sense of place in the world that is shifting under their feet. I also have been moved by my reading on the Civil War as I study the foundations of racism in America. The book Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson has many hauntingly familiar sections in the opening chapters. We were a country utterly divided in the 1860s and those divisions once hoped to have been healed clearly had an infection waiting for the right climate to emerge.
Perhaps the bigger accomplishment was finishing Crime and Punishment. I started to read the book at the recommendation of an ex-pat Russian studies major living in Kazakhstan whom I met in November of 2016. It took me a long time to finish it and from some conversations I’ve had, I am not the first to struggle to do so. It did seem particularly appropriate that I finished it during those ridiculously cold nights over the holiday break. I probably read faster or more attentively knowing the main character Rodin was heading toward prison in Siberia or some vast frozen wasteland. I too felt I was there on those 25 degree below zero mornings with my coffee in hand on the couch under a blanket. If I’m really honest, I kept pushing to finish the book because I really wanted to be able to say I had. I asked for the advice and I felt I needed to see it through. For those unfamiliar with the writing of Fyodor Dostoevsky or of the place that was St. Petersburg Russia in the 1860s, the scene is grimy, filthy, hot and cramped. His 3rd person narrative style, with long passages of conversation and internal dialogue, are at once trying to read and perfectly important to setting the framework for how sinking in depths of humanity can reveal a path toward redemption. It is an engrossing book, but it is bleak and depressing as was the life of the poor and down trodden in Czarist Russia. After 600 pages of 3rd person dialogue and description, of confusing and hard to pronounce Russian names, of pestilence, abuse, death and disease there were two short paragraphs that literally jumped off the page, like so much light that had been shone onto the window of that desolate landscape. Dostoevsky wrote these words in the second paragraph...
”…but in these ill pale faces there now gleamed the dawn of a renewed future, a complete recovery to a new life. What had revived them was love, the heart of one containing an infinite source of life for the heart of the other.”
I know its sentiment is a bit sappy, almost embarrassing, and for me I’m still struggling to find why it has impacted me so much. Perhaps it was the gift of these words that was so surprising to me at the end of the book. Perhaps it was the feeling of a just reward for pushing through it. Perhaps it was the time of the year, the joy of family at the holidays, that made me bend to the sentiment. Most likely it is that those words speak to who I am and how I want to live. I’ve turned to reading to see if I can understand more fully the ground that racism stands upon in the United States and to find beauty and escape in others’ words.
It is the job of historians and novelists to capture our attention, to provide us facts to build our knowledge and it is our job to reflect that light on darkness in every corner where it lives. Dostoevsky's portrayal of love is not for everyone but it is all the same a common condition of our humanity
While there is always the unexpected to be found in the repeat of history or in the revealing of a new window for us to see the world. I’m fairly certain that our members of congress are not going to be moved by the power of love that Dostoevsky describes. And I am equally certain that Dostoevsky could clearly see the "axe" that is splitting our divide as a nation further apart for what it truly is. I believe that it will be through our human emotions, the core of our human nature, that we find the beginnings of the path toward true healing as a nation. For now I will continue to read to find the facts that are woven into the fabric of our society and to see the beauty and light that can be revealed to us through the power of those who choose the written word as their canvas.
This morning I’m glad I pushed through it, I’m glad I took up the advice of a stranger to delve into a piece of literature and I’m glad that those words have deeply moved me and left me seeking answers.
Semper Discens