Is there Gonna Be a Test?
Sue Andraeas, Prioress
“Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,
a workman who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.”
2 Timothy 2:15, RSV
When you think about studying, what pops into your head? Cramming for tests in school? Getting ready for your driver’s exam or some other certification? As I write this, Alan is three hours away studying to become our next postmaster of Dennysville. (That’s right, our Prior is ‘going postal!’) There’s a test at the end, and if he fails it, he can’t have the job. If you had failed your driver’s exam, the DMV doesn’t really care how much you studied; you would not be allowed to drive. Fail your exams in school and you don’t get your diploma. Our western culture connects study to exams, and exams to rites of passage. So when we begin to talk about the monastic discipline of study, right away people get nervous. “Study what?”, they ask. “Is there a test?” “No, there’s just a study guide for you to complete.” “What kind of answers do you want?” “Honest ones!” “What if I don’t do well? Can I still be a member of St. Brendan’s?” Yes, that conversation takes place over and over again, as though you have to pass
an exam to be ‘good enough’ to live a lay monastic life. For the record, we do not read those study guides with the intent to grade them. We read them and pray over them as we discern whether God is calling you to monastic life or not, but it doesn’t mean the ones with the most eloquent answers ‘pass’ and the shortest, choppiest answers ‘fail.’ Actually, the oppo-site is often true! What we are looking for is whether what you are reading has become part of you or if you have simply ‘studied for the exam.’
I’m a teacher by training. I started teaching Sunday School as a teenager, then became a music teacher. My graduate work was in educational psychology (learning how people learn). I have taught students from ages 4 through 86, taught elementary and middle School, and tutored High School. I’ve taught Music and Critical/Creative Thinking at the University of Alaska, Humanities at a local college in North Carolina, private music students, and now I teach homesteading and farming practices at our local adult learning center. If I’ve learned anything through working with all those students of all different ages and abilities, it’s that ‘studying’ (as in reading books, listening to lectures, taking notes, and completing projects or passing exams) has absolutely nothing to do with learning, talent, or intelligence, nor does it guarantee success. I’ve also learned this: the most pro-
found educational moments in our lives have nothing to do with book smarts or reading retention.
Perhaps the purest form of study I’ve seen on this property involves animals, not people. Our first (and best) dairy goat, Brigid, would stand in the pasture, just beside her gate, and stare at the fence. She seemed, for hours, to be doing nothing at all and I thought she was a bit daft. Suddenly, one day, she began rhythmically twitching her one ear, about 4 seconds between each twitch and then—she jumped the fence. She had not been ‘doing nothing’ all that time. She had been studying the ticking sound of the solar-powered energizer for the electric fence, and once she had the timing down, she could safely jump the fence without being shocked. Smart, wasn’t she? Our donkeys spend all day staring at the meadow just beyond their pasture. I used to assume they were wishfully thinking about the greener grass on the other side of the fence. They weren’t. Just beyond that other pasture is the Dennysville cemetery, and the donkeys KNOW when something is wrong in that cemetery. Doyle gets miffed if someone even changes the flowers beside a gravestone! He stares at them, studying them, testing them.
We’re not limited to the simplistic mentality of goats and donkeys, but how closely do you study your environment in order to know God? How aware are you of things going on in your neighborhood, your workplace, your household—your own head? Do you study how your life truly is interwoven with the lives of others, or with the land where you live, or do you just sort of go with the flow? Or worse, do you assume that all that is around you is for your sake? Not that we’d ever admit that we think that way. But it is the default setting for a human being who is not paying attention to the interaction between himself and the world around him. (Don’t believe me? How would you define greed? Isn’t it, at its core, the total lack of awareness of anything beyond myself except for the way it impacts me?) Assumption, not stupidity, is the opposite of being studious.
“It keeps you tethered in the reality that
God intended for you to live in as well as
being aware of what He is doing
around you!”
The word study originally had more to do with activity than it did with mental ascent. It comes from a Middle English word fused to an old French word that meant, ‘to be busy with, to devote oneself to, to concentrate on.’ After all, in medieval times, most people were illiterate; study for them could not simply involve reading. My concern for our society at present is that most people spend so MUCH time reading—texts, e-books, and other electronic verbal and nonverbal communication—that they do not study what’s right around them. In fact, we are quickly losing contact with reality and moving into a virtual (false, temporarily simulated) reality of computers, smart phones, and media of all sorts that are as far removed from the study of reality as it could possibly be. So we, as a culture, have moved from being rather aware of our surroundings to becoming self-engrossed, to living more and more in a simulation of reality. Are you beginning to see the true importance of true study? It keeps you tethered in the reality that God intended for you to live in as well as being aware of what He is doing around you! I’ve made it a daily practice to study this property to see what God is up to: what’s growing, what isn’t, what the air smells like, the ‘migration patterns’ of the free-range chick-ens and wild birds, of the goats in their pasture, the health of all the livestock, what needs attention, what needs replacing or reordering, what practices are failing, and how one chore is interconnected to the rest, who stops by for eggs or milk, or for worship, or just to visit. And all of that with no books! (Don’t get me wrong. I READ books—plenty of them—in order to know how to raise all these critters and plants. But the books only provide general information, not intimate knowledge of what is happening right here right now. That only comes from studying what’s in front of me on a daily basis.)
Now, go up to the top of this article and reread the verse from 2 Timothy. Do you see the word ‘study’? Let’s look at it more
closely, and from a different translation. The King James Version reads, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God…” The Greek word has been translated as ‘study’ but also as ‘do your best.’ It has nothing to do with reading, cramming, or preparing for an exam. It has everything to do, however, with honest effort, mental application, diligence, and even, in its more archaic form, speed. So it would seem to mean that God is more interested in our being pre-sent in the present, being observant and engaged, than He does with how many books we’ve read or how much information is in our noggins. This kind of study not only makes us approved but able to handle the word of truth. That’s what St. Paul was telling his young student Timothy, after all, how to handle truth; The Truth.
Reading books so often puts information into our heads that does little or nothing to transform our lives. If Christ is to be
seen—first by us and then in us—we have to seek Him person-ally and not just seek information about Him. We might learn about an historical figure by reading about him, but the best way to truly know someone in our midst is to observe him, study him, and become accustomed to his actions. Do we believe Jesus is in our midst? If so, look around. Really look! And listen. Study what’s right around you. What is Christ doing in your neighborhood? In your house? In you? This is the intent of our study guides, and the reason why study has traditionally been one of the monastic disciplines. The books we sug-gest are merely to help you know what to look for. There’s no test, no grade. There never has been! But there is a Savior who is very anxious to be known by you. He’s not in some virtual reality or between the pages of some book. He is known through his Creation and through those around us. We just have to study.
Sue Andraeas
a workman who has no need to be ashamed,
rightly handling the word of truth.”
2 Timothy 2:15, RSV
When you think about studying, what pops into your head? Cramming for tests in school? Getting ready for your driver’s exam or some other certification? As I write this, Alan is three hours away studying to become our next postmaster of Dennysville. (That’s right, our Prior is ‘going postal!’) There’s a test at the end, and if he fails it, he can’t have the job. If you had failed your driver’s exam, the DMV doesn’t really care how much you studied; you would not be allowed to drive. Fail your exams in school and you don’t get your diploma. Our western culture connects study to exams, and exams to rites of passage. So when we begin to talk about the monastic discipline of study, right away people get nervous. “Study what?”, they ask. “Is there a test?” “No, there’s just a study guide for you to complete.” “What kind of answers do you want?” “Honest ones!” “What if I don’t do well? Can I still be a member of St. Brendan’s?” Yes, that conversation takes place over and over again, as though you have to pass
an exam to be ‘good enough’ to live a lay monastic life. For the record, we do not read those study guides with the intent to grade them. We read them and pray over them as we discern whether God is calling you to monastic life or not, but it doesn’t mean the ones with the most eloquent answers ‘pass’ and the shortest, choppiest answers ‘fail.’ Actually, the oppo-site is often true! What we are looking for is whether what you are reading has become part of you or if you have simply ‘studied for the exam.’
I’m a teacher by training. I started teaching Sunday School as a teenager, then became a music teacher. My graduate work was in educational psychology (learning how people learn). I have taught students from ages 4 through 86, taught elementary and middle School, and tutored High School. I’ve taught Music and Critical/Creative Thinking at the University of Alaska, Humanities at a local college in North Carolina, private music students, and now I teach homesteading and farming practices at our local adult learning center. If I’ve learned anything through working with all those students of all different ages and abilities, it’s that ‘studying’ (as in reading books, listening to lectures, taking notes, and completing projects or passing exams) has absolutely nothing to do with learning, talent, or intelligence, nor does it guarantee success. I’ve also learned this: the most pro-
found educational moments in our lives have nothing to do with book smarts or reading retention.
Perhaps the purest form of study I’ve seen on this property involves animals, not people. Our first (and best) dairy goat, Brigid, would stand in the pasture, just beside her gate, and stare at the fence. She seemed, for hours, to be doing nothing at all and I thought she was a bit daft. Suddenly, one day, she began rhythmically twitching her one ear, about 4 seconds between each twitch and then—she jumped the fence. She had not been ‘doing nothing’ all that time. She had been studying the ticking sound of the solar-powered energizer for the electric fence, and once she had the timing down, she could safely jump the fence without being shocked. Smart, wasn’t she? Our donkeys spend all day staring at the meadow just beyond their pasture. I used to assume they were wishfully thinking about the greener grass on the other side of the fence. They weren’t. Just beyond that other pasture is the Dennysville cemetery, and the donkeys KNOW when something is wrong in that cemetery. Doyle gets miffed if someone even changes the flowers beside a gravestone! He stares at them, studying them, testing them.
We’re not limited to the simplistic mentality of goats and donkeys, but how closely do you study your environment in order to know God? How aware are you of things going on in your neighborhood, your workplace, your household—your own head? Do you study how your life truly is interwoven with the lives of others, or with the land where you live, or do you just sort of go with the flow? Or worse, do you assume that all that is around you is for your sake? Not that we’d ever admit that we think that way. But it is the default setting for a human being who is not paying attention to the interaction between himself and the world around him. (Don’t believe me? How would you define greed? Isn’t it, at its core, the total lack of awareness of anything beyond myself except for the way it impacts me?) Assumption, not stupidity, is the opposite of being studious.
“It keeps you tethered in the reality that
God intended for you to live in as well as
being aware of what He is doing
around you!”
The word study originally had more to do with activity than it did with mental ascent. It comes from a Middle English word fused to an old French word that meant, ‘to be busy with, to devote oneself to, to concentrate on.’ After all, in medieval times, most people were illiterate; study for them could not simply involve reading. My concern for our society at present is that most people spend so MUCH time reading—texts, e-books, and other electronic verbal and nonverbal communication—that they do not study what’s right around them. In fact, we are quickly losing contact with reality and moving into a virtual (false, temporarily simulated) reality of computers, smart phones, and media of all sorts that are as far removed from the study of reality as it could possibly be. So we, as a culture, have moved from being rather aware of our surroundings to becoming self-engrossed, to living more and more in a simulation of reality. Are you beginning to see the true importance of true study? It keeps you tethered in the reality that God intended for you to live in as well as being aware of what He is doing around you! I’ve made it a daily practice to study this property to see what God is up to: what’s growing, what isn’t, what the air smells like, the ‘migration patterns’ of the free-range chick-ens and wild birds, of the goats in their pasture, the health of all the livestock, what needs attention, what needs replacing or reordering, what practices are failing, and how one chore is interconnected to the rest, who stops by for eggs or milk, or for worship, or just to visit. And all of that with no books! (Don’t get me wrong. I READ books—plenty of them—in order to know how to raise all these critters and plants. But the books only provide general information, not intimate knowledge of what is happening right here right now. That only comes from studying what’s in front of me on a daily basis.)
Now, go up to the top of this article and reread the verse from 2 Timothy. Do you see the word ‘study’? Let’s look at it more
closely, and from a different translation. The King James Version reads, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God…” The Greek word has been translated as ‘study’ but also as ‘do your best.’ It has nothing to do with reading, cramming, or preparing for an exam. It has everything to do, however, with honest effort, mental application, diligence, and even, in its more archaic form, speed. So it would seem to mean that God is more interested in our being pre-sent in the present, being observant and engaged, than He does with how many books we’ve read or how much information is in our noggins. This kind of study not only makes us approved but able to handle the word of truth. That’s what St. Paul was telling his young student Timothy, after all, how to handle truth; The Truth.
Reading books so often puts information into our heads that does little or nothing to transform our lives. If Christ is to be
seen—first by us and then in us—we have to seek Him person-ally and not just seek information about Him. We might learn about an historical figure by reading about him, but the best way to truly know someone in our midst is to observe him, study him, and become accustomed to his actions. Do we believe Jesus is in our midst? If so, look around. Really look! And listen. Study what’s right around you. What is Christ doing in your neighborhood? In your house? In you? This is the intent of our study guides, and the reason why study has traditionally been one of the monastic disciplines. The books we sug-gest are merely to help you know what to look for. There’s no test, no grade. There never has been! But there is a Savior who is very anxious to be known by you. He’s not in some virtual reality or between the pages of some book. He is known through his Creation and through those around us. We just have to study.
Sue Andraeas