Reflection and Growth

Several years ago I started  assembling pictures for the previous year and putting them in a series of yearly albums. Looking at yesterday’s YEAR FIVE I note that I had described our home in Anacortes as a “Sanctuary for Reflection and Growth.” That certainly was the intention of my wife Rachel and her husband Bill as they went to the top of a hill overlooking the San Juan Islands and chose this particular site for a future home. In time, as I joined the project by a marriage, that became my passion as well.

Returning to that designation of what we wanted our home to be I would like to say something about each of the three pivotal words. First, reflection. I have spent my professional life in higher education, and that at every level, from a newly minted assistant professor up through the ranks to full professor and then on into administration (if that is still “up”). During this time I have changed my mind about what I consider to be “higher” education. Earlier it was all about the data of a field, one set for medicine and other for law. You were as accomplished in your chosen field as you could remember its relevant facts. Now I tend to look at the entire field of what can be known not as something to memorize but as something to understand in terms of the interrelationships of its various parts. This calls for reflection, and reflection lies at the heart of all genuine learning. May it become central once again in higher education.

The second point is obvious, it is when we reflect on what is crucial that we experience genuine growth. Unfortunately as a nation our attention has been turned increasingly to what doesn’t really matter. A long time ago media discovered the appeal of those issues and body parts that man found more intriguing  and when that is read in dollars it is easy to understand the direction of culture.
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I believe that whenever people are willing to turn their attention to serious consideration of what is of ultimate importance they will  find themselves in a “sanctuary,” a “holy place.” I choose not to restrict the term to its ecclesiastical sense but use it also in the broader context of what is genuinely meaningful to you as you reach ahead for a deeper meaning in your experience of life. We do not treat the “holy” in our life is though it were not.