On the nature of walls and theological education

Recently a colleague/friend who works with me in the Lexington Seminar, sent this essay from the magazine Orion to a group of us who think about theological education. It’s a beautiful meditation on the building of stone walls, and if at first glance it doesn’t seem to have much to do with seminaries, upon deeper reflection it is quite a profound meditation on them. Consider just this excerpt:

"The process of imagining failure leads to a better wall every time. In addition, it becomes a creative driver of the specific form of the wall. These problems require solutions, and to make a good wall is to adjust to these specifics. Of course, there are terminal failures awaiting my walls that I cannot imagine, and some of the threats I dream up will never come to pass. These efforts are not a waste. They help me to animate my little projects, and they have led to some larger-scale thinking."

Or this:

"Defensive walls, however, have an overlooked consequence. A wall designed to keep something out has to restrict whomever it is protecting within its confines. While it seems a success that nothing can breach the walls and give threat, in the end the walls will fall—and in the meantime their standing creates a deadly problem: people held within the walls are trapped with whatever internal threats the walls contain."

Or this:

"What possibilities await if we consider that we are the “other” as we are “us”? We are trained to take comfort within the walls of culture, but I am afraid those walls, like all others, are failing. Insomuch as these walls reinforce our detachment from nature, we are less for our desperate efforts to shore them up."