A Beautiful Death

Abstract

This article is about the death of a graduate school for spiritual formation and theological education. I ask what the death of this school can teach us about teaching theology and religion for the sake of student transformation and more loving pedagogies. I also ask how, when an institution dies, it can die beautifully. The underlying thesis of this article is that there is, alive in our classrooms (and ourselves, perhaps), a spiritual wound that can be named an experiential death of divine love—and that this wound is manifesting as unshepherded fear, rage, and discontent. I suggest that this spiritual wound be tended through skillful pedagogical tenderness, flexibility, and liberative co-creation with students to cultivate a presence of love and feed the spiritual hungers of our time. I also suggest that a school (and a teacher) dies beautifully when its death is allowed and free to become a scene of beautiful instruction.