Lady in Waiting, Active

One day, feeling particularly dark and uninspired, I stopped into a bookstore and picked up the book, Ovid in Exile. The store clerk laughed caustically as he rang me up. I left with it, unopened. I knew that it wasn’t a book of poetry, but prose, and I knew that Ovid was exiled on the Black Sea and that he had written several books of poetry while there, but that was the extent that I knew about the book I had just bought. Surely if anyone could provide some true insight and suggestions as to how to harness one’s inner poetic genius, it would be one of the progenitors of poetry altogether, one of the most influential poetic minds of the western world. I expected sheer brilliance: rivers of text flowing with nothing but the most inspired prose, only the most perceptive and thoughtful effusions on poetry, life, and art.

But no—the book read along the lines of this—“I really miss my third wife . . . the people aren’t cultured here; the guys are all barbarians . . . there’s no one to talk to . . . the food is really bad; I miss home cooking . . . having trouble writing today, but moving forward.” It was all normal stuff! Of course, interspersed between his laments about his environment and state of being were lots and lots of lines of what I wouldn’t describe as formal poetic thought, but random beginnings of thought, reflections—open, uninhibited, meditative, writing.

I learned from that book a valuable lesson. It’s ridiculous to expect sheer brilliance. Even one of the greatest writers of all time was a normal person (in part) with the same fears and frustrations about writing as the rest of us. Clearly, by continuing to write, even just small ideas, he had honed a process of working—he didn’t vacillate back and forth, shutting and opening his creative door, as a divine inspiration made itself known. Ovid was what Boice describes as an active waiter.

To be honest, I was very surprised by Boice’s advice on how to be a better teacher. I liked how he described the importance of being calm and establishing a peaceful relationship with students. It made a lot of sense to me that they would feel more comfortable and open in the classroom. I was shocked to read that teachers shouldn’t aim to complete their classroom plans in painstaking detail. Rather, Boice revealed that teachers should plan their classroom time to primarily include didactic, reflective, and highly interactive discussion (as opposed to detailed lecturing).

As I was reading Boice’s advice on active waiting, I began to think about teaching as craftwork. We should aim perhaps, as teachers, to be artisans, not great artists. By working toward the craft of teaching, continually, without long periods of “doing nothing,” artisans learn to be calm and competent experts in their fields. They learn, not by rushing, but by patient and meditative active waiting, to expect a final product through everyday, unrushed practice.

Active waiting will certainly be an obstacle for me. I like to work for four hours straight and then take an extended break before getting started again. But I am very grateful for having read Boice’s explanations for why a different path is a better one and I really believe now that active waiting will make me a better teacher, student, and writer.