Teaching, a few books, and “Lies”

Today I finally started the online TESOL course which I’d been thinking about for a while. Shortly after I graduated from high school I applied to a similar program at a local university but was rejected. I guess this is my second shot about 12 years later.

A few months after I got back I taught World Religions and Philosophy at a small local college here, and since the educational style was based on the American system I enjoyed it very much. I only lasted one semester, though: they weren’t offering enough courses to keep me there full-time so they gave me a part-time offer and I told them I’d rather not. Part-time doesn’t quite pay the bills around here, you know. That was almost four months ago.

As much as I enjoyed teaching religion and philosophy last semester and Scripture while I lived in the United States, I’ve become more and more uncomfortable with handling these things in a classroom. More and more I feel that I know about less and less, and becoming Orthodox certainly didn’t help since I’ve been thrown into a religious vertigo of sorts. For now, and perhaps for some time after this, I’d rather not be teaching “deep things”. English seems pretty harmless by comparison, doesn’t it? For one, you can’t play spiritual guru when teaching English, at least not without trying very, very hard.

From the brief stint at the local college last semester I acquired a few books for class preparation which I think might interest some of you:

• The Meaning of the Holy Qur’an by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia: Islamic Book Trust, 2007). This is of course a classic translation—or rather, “interpretation”, as the Muslims would prefer to call it. Mine is a handy pocket-sized edition.
• The Bhagavad-Gita: Krishna’s Counsel in Time of War, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Bantam, 2004). I chose this translation because it was the least technical of the ones I found and also because it simply keeps the word “Krishna” when the original text actually refers to him by his various lordly titles.
• Søren Kierkegaard, Papers and Journals: A Selection, translation with introductions and notes by Alastair Hannay (London: Penguin, 1996). I’m going to read this as soon as I finish with the collection of the letters of Flannery O’Connor (which might take a while more since it’s a sizeable book).
• Sheng Yen, Attaining the Way: A Guide to the Practice of Chan Buddhism (Boston: Shambala, 2006). Both my curiosity about and respect for the Mahayana School of Buddhism were stirred as I learned more about it. You see, what little training I had, I had as a Theravadin, which is hardly the way to learn about their “opponents”, so to speak.
• Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007). This hardly needs introduction. His narrative of the Enlightenment project for ethics is quite captivating, I think.

Unfortunately, starting a TESOL course—and hopefully finding a job later—won’t leave me with more time to read, but I hope to get to these eventually.

Since it’s Friday, I’ll leave with something I’ve been thinking about—my favorite song from one of my favorite movies, Once. I think it speaks to the effect of lies on our relationships—you know, the ones we tell God, others and ourselves. Repentance, it seems to me, has something to do with acknowledging them and leaving them behind in order to begin again. Give it a listen and let me know if you think it’s as Lenten as I think it is. Here is Glen Hansard’s “Lies”: