"Empathy might be characterized as 'your pain in my heart.' We understand the pain of others by listening carefully to their stories. Empathy is a process by which we think and feel ourselves into the place of another and then by vicarious introspection imagine the experience of another as if it were our own in order to arrive at an appreciation of the world of another. The possibility of empathy not only requires attentive listening; it presumes the exercise of imagination."

Anderson and Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, p. 178

Foley and Anderson

This quote reminds me a lot of something I commented on amongst the Kegan quotes on the "voices from the field of education" page. That is, Kegan's notion that "what the eye sees better, the heart feels more deeply." I wonder if it suggests the converse however, that what one feels more deeply, one can then see more clearly? Jose de Mesa, a Phillipino theologian who has spent a lot of time thinking about the ways in which western rationality privileges only certain froms of knowing and being, talks about the differences between a "worldview" and a "worldfeel." Perhaps we need to work more directly on "worldfeel"?

This quote also reminds me of Thomas Boomershine's conviction that "in our current contemporary context, people reason more by means of sympathetic identification, than by philosophical argument."

So how do we support such empathy? Foley and Anderson seem to believe that in addition to attentive listening we need to support the exercise of imagination. I agree, and think that that is one of the primary reasons to integrate popular culture into a teaching context -- to engage and support imagination. This is one reason why I was so grateful for Debra's intervention in the discussion.

"Our stories and God's stories intersect unexpectedly. Ultimately it is in the stories we tell and the rituals we enact that the great paradox is exposed: to live we have to die. In the meantime, we look for enough courage to love the questions and live the contradictions of the stories and rituals that bring them to life. To do so in a spirit of reconciliation does not demand resolution but allows transformation as we never imagined it and grace were we least expect it."

Anderson and Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, p. 183

"The spirit of reconciliation, which enables us to enter a world of contradiction, is the same disposition that allows us to embrace paradox without needing to resolve it. This is a spirituality that thrives only in paradox, between the mythic and the parabolic, around the human and the divine story, and in the tension of the individual and communal."

Anderson and Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, p. 179

"... public worship, like personal narration, must encourage and confront the full and authentic memory of the violated, sometimes with terrifying honesty. Futhermore, it must amply ritualize the injustice. Our aim is not to forget the wrongs that have been done, but to learn to remember in God's way."

Anderson and Foley, Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, p. 173

"To allow oneself to be a stranger is to allow oneself to be placed at the disposition of the God who calls. To embrace the status of a stranger is to empower other people and to dare to infuse some trust into a world where self-interest and suspicion seem to walk unimpeded. To choose to be a stranger is, it might be argued, to be a willing disciple of Jesus."

Anthony Gittins, Gifts and Strangers, p. 134.

Anthony Gittins

What is it to be a stranger? How do we invite strangers into our learning and teaching? From whom and from what are we estranged, and how does that estrangement occur in our teaching and learning? These questions areparticularly compelling every time I think about the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus.