Work Done With Great Respect

A conversation with veteran teacher and Courage & Renewal Facilitator, Marianne Houston.

Tell us how you first came to know Parker Palmer.

I was one of the teachers in the very first Courage to Teach retreat that Parker offered here in southwest Michigan in 1994. We knew that that single retreat would be gone by Tuesday, and so we requested more retreats. The teachers knew that if this sort of work, this inner work, were to be something that could become habitual for us we needed more than a single retreat to do it. And that’s when Parker and Dave Sluyter and Mickey Olivanti from the Fetzer Institute, came together and fashioned the series of retreats.

I was one of the original facilitators who worked with Parker to design the program, to fashion it, to pull it together. We talked endlessly about all the things that eventually came to pass in ways that were like our vision and some that weren’t, and I’ve been facilitating ever since.

Let’s back up a few years. How did you come to be a teacher?

The very first time I thought of myself as a teacher was in second grade. We had a very large class, seventy students, and Sister Charlotte Anne called me out in the hall, seven year old me, to say, “Marianne, there are some boys in this class that can’t read. I want you to read with them every day and you can help me teach them how to read." That was my first experience as teacher. Because they read every day, I saw change and I thought “I’m teaching them to read. This is really fun.”

When I graduated from high school I became a nun. With the Sisters, I fell naturally into teaching and loved it from the very beginning. I was thirteen years as a Sister-teacher, and then continued teaching for forty years. I started teaching in 1958 and I retired from classroom teaching in 1998. A long time, but I loved so much this unique and important work.

I really consider what I am doing now, facilitating Courage & Renewal retreats, is, in a way, prime teaching. Although we don’t think of it as teaching, it’s setting the stage. It’s the same thing I did in the classroom, setting the stage for people to learn and stepping back and allowing them to be the ones that did the work.

Have you mostly facilitated series of retreats as opposed to one-time events?

It’s extremely important that we give people repeated experiences of being in the circle, in a community that’s stable, so that they experience what it is to do inner work in solitary time but also in community. That’s what our work is about.

Most of the work I have done, by some grace, has been either five retreat or eight retreat series. I keep holding to that. I think it’s important. Many people who come to retreats do not do inner work consistently. They get a taste of it in one retreat, and it’s wonderful, it’s like they open their eyes and say, “What is this? This feels right.” Without that follow up, without repeated retreats, many of them hardly know where to go to continue the work. It’s a true learning curve. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had the experience with people who will say in the fifth or sixth or seventh retreat, I’m beginning to understand what we are doing here. So I continue to think that original design is really, in a sense, “right.” That's not to denigrate other Courage-like work which can also be so nourishing for hungry folks.

What kinds of personal transformation has this work provided you?

I don’t think you can do deep inner work of this nature and not be changed, if you are doing it with good faith and good heart. Courage to Teach or Courage to Lead calls for us to take part in the work with our participants. We simply don’t set the table and invite them to do things that we don’t do ourselves.

The boundary markers [also called “Touchstones”] themselves are, I think, amazing helps in our relationship with others and also within our selves. They represent the way we love to be treated, AND SO this is the way in which I want to treat others, this is the way I want to be in the world. They’ve had an enormous impact in my life. More than anything, the “when in doubt, turn to wonder,” which asks us to, instead of jumping to judgment and criticism and wanting to tell our own story, to turn instead to wonder and asking questions. It’s been very helpful in my life.

So there was some overlap there, when you were creating this program and working on it and you were still teaching in the classroom. Did it change the way you taught?

I think I learned in my youth to teach in ways that are similar to what we do with Courage & Renewal work. I don’t think you can teach young adults and young teenagers and actually hope that they learn without approaching them with respect and love. I always said ,“If you love kids they will learn anything from you. If you don’t love them, don’t go near them.” I don’t mean to minimize the hard work it is. When you love them, just like when you love your own children, it’s not always easy stuff, but love is absolutely essential to the teaching-learning equation.

As a 40-year teacher and one of the founding Courage to Teach facilitators, what is it like holding a circle for people outside of education?

I love this work and it makes no difference whether you are working with teachers or people of other professions. I think that the authenticity of this work, done with great respect, IS a universal. There’s a universal attraction to it.

There’s an authenticity to inviting people to stop and look and listen – by the way, this was a lesson my first grade teacher taught me in 1941, on the first day of class! -- and that’s what they are hungry for. It doesn’t really matter what their profession is. That doesn’t mean they don’t talk about different things but at the very fundamental level, the deepest level, the work remains the work.

In addition to being a longtime Courage & Renewal Facilitator and mentor to new facilitators, Marianne Houston is also a poet. We asked for a poem to share with our readers, and this piece quite accurately depicts the heart of the work of the Center. Enjoy! – Ed.


THE PEOPLE I LOVE

The people I love
are those unguarded ones
those unassuming wide-eyed
bush babies of the city I inhabit–
the circle of earnest searchers
whose make-up and couture
are truth and mirth and heartache
whose company nourishes
as deeply as hand-and-eye-holding can
in a world where the I’s have it
and the You’s are other I’s
recognized anew in the shared wisdom
that echoes everywhere
This city – not May’s walled one
where one dreams of safety –
but a circle-city of life
a trusted dwelling
where one’s feet are
on solid ground
and one’s head is
unselfconsciously
midst the stars.

These people I love

– Marianne Novak Houston