Living and loving the questions

Foundations lecture snippets

Sep 21, 2024

Note: this post has been sitting in my drafts folder and got swept aside by some writing on my trip, but I’m posting today so I can link to some of the ideas tomorrow!

As you might know from my past few posts, I have been sitting with a lot of questions lately, such as: How do you want to live? What are you practicing?

The first week of September I got to be with all students on campus for my session in their foundations course at UPEACE. It is the one class that all UPEACE students take, and in this session I get to talk with the whole campus about peace education. What follows is an excerpt which I offer for self-reflection, and at the end you’ll find the guide to the re-imagining education activity we did. Enjoy!

Dear class of 2025,

Welcome! This is my chance to officially welcome you to the University for Peace. I am so happy you are here, and so happy we get to spend this precious time together today. I am so happy that I get to be with you today.

Thank you. Thank you for being here, for bringing your energy, your enthusiasm, your hopes, your dreams, and your questions. Your complexities. Thank you for showing up. The energy you bring to campus is palpable, and I have so enjoyed your presence on campus. You change this space by being in it.

You change this place by being here.
That is true of any space you enter.
So the question becomes: how do you want to change that space? How do you want to change - yourself, this space, the world?

I first became aware of how our presence can shift a space when I was around my teacher, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who demonstrated with his being and his presence how one person’s peaceful, mindful energy can truly transform the situation they are in. The way he walked into a room, the way he sat before a group, exuded peace, radiated out to fill the space and extend beyond it. I feel acutely aware of it now - how you have collectively shifted the energy of this space.

Fifteen years ago, I was sitting where you are sitting today. I remember it so clearly. I was giddy with excitement to be here, for this lecture in particular. My beloved professor Virginia Cawagas, asked us, “If you were a song, what song would you be today?” and asked us to share with a partner. I don’t remember the song I chose, but I remember how happy and excited I felt to be here.

It is a gift to be here. We are so lucky to be here.

I am Stephanie. You can call me Stephanie or Professor Stephanie or Doctor Stephanie. On any given day, I might introduce myself differently, because we are all always becoming. You had my bio in your syllabus, and I am the resident faculty for the peace ed program. If we were re-imaginging the university and roles we might play, which you will be doing in the second half of class, I might be the head of the ritual department, resident astrology nerd, community dreamworker.

What bio would you write today?

Today we’re going to ask questions together, inspired by this quote by Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, from one of my favorite books of all time, Letters to a Young Poet:

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

Let’s love and live into our questions together.

What question guided you here?
What question do you want to live into this year?

(I had the students write the questions down and bring them up to the learning altar.)

Who do we choose to be?

This is the title of a book written by my teacher and mentor, Meg Wheatly. And it is a question we can ask ourselves over and over again in these times. Who do you choose to be today, each day, as you arrive? Some related questions:

•How do you want to learn?

•What do you want to get out of and put into your experience this year (thinking reciprocally rather than transactionally)?

•How do you want to show up each day?

•How do you want to change – yourself, this space, the world?

•What role do you want to play?

•What do you want to give and receive?

•What do you want to practice?

•How do you want to stretch and grow? Towards what?

In the second half of class, students did a re-imagining education exercise, which you can find in the Guides section of Enchantable on Substack. I invite you to re-imagine with us!