Currently, I am also working through Miroslav Volf's The End of Memory and will be writing a brief paper on his ideas about the purpose of remembering wrongs suffered toward the ends of forgiveness and reconciliation. I've been invited to participate in a panel discussion during Fontbonne's upcoming conference on the topic of collective memory. The focus of the panel will be memory and religious imagination.
In addition to my reading, I also try to study German for at least one hour each day. I'm working through translation exercises. My goal is to be sufficiently competent to pass the Theological German qualifying exam by the end of the fall quarter (mid-November). I also meet each Thursday afternoon for one hour with my German tutor, Mark Schreiber, who is also a PhD student at Concordia. Mark taught German for eight years and in just our first session has already provided me with outstanding guidance.
I'm auditing one class at Concordia this term -- Prof. Schmitt's Classics of the Devotional Life. We're reading Augustine's Confessions this week, and will be doing a survey of spiritual autobiographies including John Bunyan's and even Thomas Merton's Seven Story Mountain. Quite a survey! I'm thankful that I auditing the class. It is very enriching, but it would be a heavy load if I had to write the papers for this course as well as prepare for my German exam this quarter.
So that takes up most of my day time. Now to the evenings. At this point in the semester, I'm teaching each Wednesday and Thursday evening. I meet with my students in the Honors Seminar each Wednesday evening. We're studying the topic of civil disobedience -- its history, theory and practice. We are examining the ideas that underlie the use of non-violent resistance as well as its uses especially in the 20th century.
One of the key questions I'm asking my students in this seminar to contemplate is whether non-violence can be practiced out of a purely pragmatic motivation or whether there must be some principled foundation to sustain those who would engage a resistance struggle non-violently. In the first three sessions of the seminar, I'm already hearing some very keen insights from my students. I'm looking forward to an enlightening semester together with them.
On Thursday evenings, I teach a class on the legal and ethical issues presented in the area of corporate communications. It is essentially a specialized business law and business ethics course focused upon the various lines of communications within the corporate context: management and employees; company and customers; competitors to competitors, to name a few.
The make-up of my two classes, though, is different. The Thursday class is composed of 19 adult learners all of whom have full-time jobs during the day. They are interested in the practical applications of the topics of our study. They also bring a wealth of life and job-related experiences with them. Out of these experiences flow both real-life insights and some very probing questions.
The Wednesday evening seminar is a small group of nine young, full-time college students who have qualified for the University's Honors Program. They bring a wealth of knowledge that they have gained from their prior studies. Each class presents me with a challenge -- a challenge to engage minds in thinking through the ideas that are presented by the subjects we are studying together.
I'm seeking to lead them to ask the next question, to probe deeper, to examine their own thinking and to consider carefully what their thinking may be leading them to do. So in both my studies by day, and my teaching by night, I'm seeking to follow the pattern -- from study into practice and then, to teaching.
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