Knowing in Community

Good Morning, Students…Once again in your blogs, you’ve written probing reflections and have grappled with concepts that beg for extensive dialogue from Palmer’s Chapter IV, "Knowing in Community, Joined by the Grace of Great Things." The following represent some major themes of this chapter, which were themes that also emerged in your blogs. I look forward to further stimulating discussion with you this afternoon. Gini

• Community is an outward and visible sign of an inward and invisible grace, the flowing of personal identity and integrity into the world of relationships. Only as we are in community with ourselves can we find community with others.

• The hallmark of the “community of truth” is in its claim that reality is a web of communal relationships—and that we know reality only by being in community with it.

• In the “community of truth,” there are no pure objects of knowledge and no ultimate authorities. A subject, not an object, is the centerpoint of this community, and authority is vested in the process of the community itself.

• As the community of truth gathers around a “great thing,” it is “the grace of great things” that evokes the virtues we cherish in education: celebrating diversity, embracing ambiguity, welcoming creative conflict, practicing honesty, and experiencing humility.

• Teaching and learning are ultimately grounded in a sense of “the sacred.”


(From Palmer's The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal, 2007, pp. 51-58)