In the poem above, Hopkins writes of the glorious permeation of God through all of creation, the destruction of the world by the selfish, instrumental coercion of humankind, and the persistent, loving presence of God in all things, despite human recklessness. This call to participate in the glorious gifts of creation is echoed by poet Mary Oliver: "Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." My role in Christian liberal arts education is to invite students to notice the glory, receive the gifts, cultivate awe and gratitude, and steward what they have received in such a way that they are active participants in reconciliation.

Paul Griffiths has greatly shaped my thinking about the role of intellectual appetite in the pursuits of learning and teaching. Griffiths argues that while much of Western academia has praised a curious orientation to knowledge, the Christian tradition offers another path: the pursuit of studious engagement with creation. While the curious love the novelty of the objectified spectacle, the studious engage in faithful, intentional engagement with the other, treating the other as an active agent capable of engaging in reciprocal interaction and formation. While the curious aim to conquer and own knowledge for their self-aggrandizement, the studious humbly receive knowledge as a gift of God. While the curious hate what is unknown, the studious love and embrace both what is unknown and what is known. While the curious treat knowledge as an instrumental means to a self-serving end, the studious desire knowledge as an intrinsically worthwhile pursuit which cultivates human virtues and offers unending enjoyment. My aim as an educator is to help cultivate studious persons who engage in lifelong learning and loving stewardship.

I am a grateful benefactor of the progress more experienced colleagues have made on the path of Christian pedagogy. I am in the debt of their courageous experimental projects and insightful modeling. I aim to provide students with more than intellectual constructs and categories through which to interpret the world. I want my students to engage in counter-formative practices that begin shaping their habits and desires. While dominant cultural practices shape people into habits of passive consumption, Christian practices shape people into habits of active creation; therefore, my practices in the classroom should enable students to practice the creation of knowledge through active participation. While dominant cultural practices shape people into habits of personal achievement, Christian practices shape people into habits of humility, compassion, and responsibility for the other; therefore, my practices in the classroom should enable students to practice caring for the interests of others. While dominant cultural practices shape people into habits of autonomous self-expression, Christian practices shape people into habits of shared identity and reconciliation; therefore, my practices in the classroom should enable students to practice understanding their knowledge within the Christian tradition and extending hospitality across cultural contexts. The choices I make about how to structure my syllabus, the physical space of my classroom, the assignments I create, the activities I plan on a daily basis, and my interactions with students do not stem primarily from the latest trends in higher-education pedagogy but rather from the ancient virtues and practices of the Christian church. [It just so happens that these Christian practices are often quite resonant with the latest teaching trends, such as movements toward Problem-Based Learning, collaborative learning, and service learning.]

It seems to me that a teacher cannot hide. The vocation of teaching is sometimes thankless, often flaw-revealing, and always vulnerable. It is the vulnerability of teaching, the way teaching impacts our very hearts and lives, which makes it so very enriching and rewarding. In The Courage to Teach, Parker Palmer asserts that, "the personal can never be divorced from the professional. 'We teach who we are' in times of darkness as well as light" (p. xix). With Palmer's encouragement, I seek to explore not only what I will teach and how I will teach but also why I will teach and who we are becoming as teachers and learners together. I believe that good teaching is not merely the performance of time-tested and empirically-validated techniques but rather emerges from the being of the teacher. This parallels a conviction about the psychotherapeutic process that I often share with my students: it is not a collection of tactics or techniques which leads to therapeutic transformation; it is the relationship between counselor and client that heals. The quality of my pedagogy will only be as strong as the current state of my soul, which means that I have a responsibility to attend to the care of my inner being. As a community of scholars, one of the best ways to fortify the quality of our teaching is to pursue practices together which support care for the personhood of our colleagues and students. Applying Palmer's ideas broadly, our questions at all levels, from individual courses to university-wide initiatives should always move beyond "What works?" (i.e., a utilitarian question) to "Who are we, and why will we pursue this?" The questions of why and who maintain our integrity as individual persons and as a unified community. As a member of the teaching faculty, I hope that my feeble attempts to model self-involving learning will encourage students to ask the whys and whos in their own lives, too. If vocation is "the unification of who we are with what we do" (p. x), then I cannot think of a more personally satisfying vocation than teaching within the context of Christian liberal arts higher education.