Parker Palmer wrote The Courage to Teach, a book I cherished.
Lately I find myself asking: What does courage mean? And, how can we cultivate a courageous spirit joined with steady, valiant action?
Some days, courage feels like releasing a minty breath bubble into a musty room and watching what unfolds. Other days, it edges closer to recklessness—speaking an honest word, slowing down while others are racing ahead, or stepping beyond the familiar. Such moments feel reckless only because we can’t know what will follow, and safety has become an existential commodity.
At times, courage feels like drifting through the zeitgeist, brushing against a sharp chemical odor—like mineral spirits—leaving a faint trace of my mind as I slip past.
There are many ways to glimpse courage, but true courage must be traced back to its root: cor, the Latin word for heart.
Courage, at its essence, is an act of love. There is no courage in causing pain or suffering.
Only love. And that is what I teach.
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And amidst all the recklessness and barely detectible mists, sometimes it seems there’s just grit.
Sitting on the large gymnasium floor, waiting for the first college class I ever taught, setting up the kindergarten-y instruments for my first music for dancers/rhtyhm training class, I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that this would be an utter, humiliating, complete, incomparable, embarrassing to the further stars, disaster.
And I knew I wouldn’t leave.
And I knew I would probably be laughed out of there within minutes of starting.
And with grit and almost unconscious determination, I stayed.
And it went well,
And I loved it.
And I loved them and was grateful.
And yes, that a love carried me through.