In fourth grade, for example, I was a broody little girl, beset by younger siblings as by devils, with a heart that cried out for silence, beauty, and peace. Everything at home seemed too much — too many people, too much noise, too much stuff everywhere.
My teacher that year was Mrs. Gold. She must have been all of twenty-eight at the time, though she seemed the most sophisticated, elegant creature who’d ever lived. Somehow, she figured out that I was an incipient writer who needed to be encouraged. One day she asked me if I ever “worked on” anything outside of class — stories or poems that weren’t assignments.
I nodded.
“Would you show some of them to me?” she asked.
Thus began our weekly creative writing sessions on Thursday afternoons when the other kids had gone home. She critiqued my efforts as though I were a small adult. There was no condescension in Mrs. Gold, nothing remotely patronizing. She truly cared that I wrote. More, she taught me how difficult it is to develop a craft, and that if I were really serious about being a writer, I must give up all fantasies about adulation and fame, for these would only impede me.
Years later, at a dramatically difficult time in my life, I took an ethics class in college from a fine professor. He allowed me to tag along to his office after his lecture each day. On this walk, which took us through the twists and turns of the campus, he listened patiently while I attacked whatever philosopher he’d been discussing that afternoon. At the end of my daily diatribe (usually just about the time we reached his office door), he’d sigh, smile, shake his head, and then drop a question that stopped me cold — a question that revealed, without his having to say another word, what confusion abided in me. Eventually, this humbling experience, repeated for months in a row, inspired me to stop showing off and start listening instead. After years of preening my own feathers, I was finally able to begin growing intellectually.
Both of these quite different teachers shared the same key virtue: generosity. Each was open to the possibility that what students needed most from them might be something that could only be imparted outside the classroom walls. Each understood that true teaching was not about impressing people but about pointing the way.
In a recent book called Benedict’s Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Life of Saint Benedict, I found a passage by Joseph Goldstein that describes the kind of generous teaching that has helped save me over the years. Such teaching is not performance art, but servanthood: “We understand that our spiritual practice is done not for ourselves alone, but for the awakening and liberation of all.” Our personal striving — our efforts to be virtuous, to gain knowledge and wisdom, to move closer to God — cannot be private enterprises. Jesus says that we are meant to be “one” (John 17:22). In the Buddhist tradition, this notion of walking our own spiritual path for the sake of others is called Bodhichitta. 
Seen in this light, the teacher is simply a vehicle; he neither owns his knowledge, nor is it his business to judge who is worthy to receive it. The individual person is far too mysterious and complex to be read and dismissed so easily. Besides, Christ has assured us that He will take care of those judgments. The true teacher — and as Christians, we are all meant to take this role on occasion — simply remains open and alert so as not to miss the real questions being asked. Then, confronted with someone who at that moment desperately needs our greater wisdom and knowledge, we pray with Jesus “that the love with which You loved me may be in them.” (John 17:26).
And even more so, that it may be in ourselves.
Paula Huston’s most recent book is The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Loyola, 2003). She is also co-editor and a contributing essayist for Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the Sacraments (Dutton, 2000). A National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, she is the author of a novel, Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995) and numerous short stories. She is married, has four children, and is a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate. For more information, visit her website at www.paulahuston.com.
(This article was excerpted from The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life by Paula Huston (Loyola Press, 2003). Reprinted with permission of Loyola Press. To order copies of this book, call 1-800-621-1008 or visit www.loyolabooks.org.)
