This essay, written especially for new faculty at Whitworth, explores Whitworth\u2019s \u201cnarrow ridge\u201d metaphor for integration of faith and learning. I argue below that this metaphor, by singling out Christian history and thought, sets us up to constantly challenge our own thinking about faith\u2014to give it the hardest of times, not to give it a pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Even when metaphors go dormant, so that we use them without thinking about them, they still do a lot of meaning-making and communicating for us. We\u2019ve been thinking \u201cout of the box\u201d for so many years at this point (for example) that very few people stop to picture a box anymore, or to wonder just what\u2019s wrong with the stuff in that box we\u2019re escaping. But the metaphor still works, more or less. People fail to hold candles to other people, other shoes drop, gruel is thin, buds are nipped, steamrollers roll, and the angry stew, all without speakers or listeners visualizing anything in particular or thinking about the comparison of two unlike things. We can reactivate dormant metaphors, though, with a clever variation or a little contextualizing. Poets like to do that sort of thing (and pun-makers do, too). I want to do it, here, for the \u201cNarrow Ridge,\u201d which we at Whitworth have been walking for quite some time now. We tend to use the narrow ridge to talk about operating in the tensions between this old modern world and our old-time Christian faith. It\u2019s a metaphor Bill Robinson shaped for us during his long presidency (1993-2010), and he spent years weaving it into his talk about who we are and what we might become, by and by. I arrived in 2008, as Bill was winding down his presidency, and by then his good metaphor was gathering a good bit of moss. It still worked, and works, in a lot of ways, but it\u2019s maybe lost some precision and vividness over time. Just what are we doing up here on this ridge, and where do we think we\u2019re going?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Our narrow ridge talk has always implied, somehow, that here at Whitworth we ask all the questions, boldly exploring every kind of knowledge, including knowledge of the Christian faith. There\u2019s a brave, inquiring spirit suggested. I think here of my English department colleague Leonard Oakland, who has defended reading and watching the hard stuff\u2014challenging literature of all kinds\u2014across five decades of teaching and leadership here at Whitworth. I\u2019m paraphrasing, but Leonard says things like, \u201cWe are in this world, and we are in this culture, and these are works of and from this culture that help us more fully grasp what it means to be right here and right now. How can we work effectively in this world, for good or for ill or at all, if we won\u2019t learn to look at it and ask questions about it?\u201d I also think here of Jay Kessler, who was president at Taylor University when I was a student there in the 90s. \u201cWe turn over every rock in search of truth,\u201d Jay would say, \u201cbecause we\u2019re confident nothing will jump out and eat God. If something does, we should worship that<\/em>.\u201d Bold pursuit of worldly truth, bold pursuit of spiritual truth: so far so good. But what exactly does that have to do with walking a narrow ridge? What\u2019s this metaphor doing for us? Or to us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I started asking myself that question as Whitworth began talking about revising its general education curriculum in 2017. I thought there had to be some important guidance for us in our well-worn metaphor, but I was also worried about something we\u2019d begun to do with it, sometimes, where \u201ctaking the narrow ridge\u201d sounded less like boldness and more like avoiding controversy: \u201cI\u2019ll have to take the narrow ridge on that one<\/em>, sir.\u201d This is the narrow ridge as the last safe territory for small talk. On that version of the narrow ridge we avoid stumbling awkwardly under the weight of hard questions, for fear of falling into an abyss of intellectual or spiritual discomfort. Like: Here at Whitworth on the Ridge, we won\u2019t hound you about Christian faith like they will at those uptight Christian schools, and we won\u2019t hound you out of your faith, either. It\u2019s all simpatico on the narrow ridge. And chapel attendance, my friend\u2014that\u2019s optional. Available, for sure! But optional. No problem. Walk that ridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Well, it\u2019s obvious this isn\u2019t what Bill had in mind. But metaphors are skittish, and our ridge metaphor can easily find itself tumbling in that direction, especially if we forget how it originally came to us and don\u2019t look closely at the ways it has given shape and depth to our vision of spiritual and intellectual inquiry. Bill gave the ridge his own enlivening context, which I\u2019ll lay out in a moment. What I want to point out first, though, is that narrow ridges aren\u2019t where you go for an easy walk, typically. I spoke on this theme at a Faculty Development Day in 2017, and with the power of the big screen behind me, I threw up a couple short videos of maniacs riding bikes or running along narrow ridges. \u201cRisky\u201d hardly covers it. Terrifying. A chasm on either side. But also breathtaking beauty. Bill\u2019s narrow ridge metaphor, at its very best, draws on the reality of a narrow ridge in a hard-to-reach place: risk and daring, hard-to-reach heights, and the reward of astounding new views on the world and everything in it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s something Bill said in Whitworth Today<\/em> in Spring 1995:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of my education about the ridge has come from family excursions we have taken to explore this magnificent part of the country, which is so different from anyplace we have ever lived. As we have travelled high passes in both Washington and British Columbia, we’ve experienced an overwhelming sense of perspective as we were able to see the artistry of creation in every direction. Not surprisingly, our exhilaration and awe seemed to be in direct proportion to the height of our perch. (13)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s the beauty, and the special point of view on creation. Bill was drawing on the Jewish theologian Martin Buber, too, though, and here we get to the risks of the ridge. Buber describes his own point of view as a narrow ridge: \u201cI wanted by this to express that I did not rest on the broad upland of a system that includes a series of sure statements about the absolute, but on a narrow rocky ridge between the gulfs where there is no sureness of expressible knowledge but the certainty of meeting what remains undisclosed.\u201d As Maurice Friedman commented in Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue<\/em>,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Buber\u2019s \u201cnarrow ridge\u201d is no \u201chappy middle\u201d which ignores the reality of paradox and contradiction in order to escape from the suffering they produce. It is rather a paradoxical unity of what one usually understands only as alternatives \u2014 I and Thou, love and justice, dependence and freedom, the love of God and the fear of God, passion and direction, good and evil, unity and duality. (3)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Buber envisions not conflict avoidance but an uncompromising embrace of complexity\u2014something more like offending everyone\u2019s settled views than like going along to get along. Every hard question confronted raises that ridge higher. The view is more astounding, but the potential fall is farther, and new dangers and obstacles may arise at any time. Something might even jump out and eat our idea of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s how Bill brought the ridge metaphor home to Whitworth in 1995: \u201cThe ridge we travel at Whitworth College is built up on one side by our historic Christian commitment. The other side of the ridge is composed of our long-standing dedication to the free exploration and exchange of ideas. In few institutions do these two elements join to form a pass to spiritual and intellectual maturity\u201d (13). In 2000 (again in Whitworth Today<\/em>), he wrote that \u201cwe need to build our ridge high on both sides, always maintaining our balance, always remembering that we are a college that is both Christian and liberal arts.\u201d Here, too, Bill emphasized the extraordinary view available from the ridge, which supplies \u201cthe best perspective on the artistry of God\u2019s creation\u201d (33).<\/p>\n\n\n\n I love that the metaphor goes a little funny at this point. Are we discovering this ridge, or are we building it? A little of both, it turns out. A lot of both, on our best days. What are we doing up here on this ridge? We\u2019re looking for the next place to put a foot (or hand) down, as we seek higher positions from which to view more of the of overwhelming whole of God\u2019s creation. Sometimes we discover<\/em> a new handhold or foothold, waiting for us up there. But the Whitworth Ridge also turns out to be a place we build and shape, not whimsically, but systematically, using the tools of liberal inquiry, without which (in this metaphor) no work can be done. We grab knowledge and notions produced by the free exploration and exchange of ideas, and we bring those across the ridge to our faith tradition, which has itself been shaped by the free exploration and exchange of ideas. We ask how this<\/em> stuff can challenge and inform that<\/em> stuff. And we bring the complexity and history and richness and thought of our faith tradition across the way to the whole of the liberal arts tradition, too. We ask again: How can this<\/em> stuff challenge and inform that<\/em> stuff. We should notice that this metaphor isn\u2019t suggesting the study of faith exists in opposition to the liberal arts or in opposition to intellect. Instead, this metaphor privileges our Christian history and thought and commitments, singling out faith inquiry from among the many inquiries that make up the liberal arts tradition. By singling out Christian history and thought, the ridge metaphor sets us up to constantly challenge our own thinking about faith\u2014to give it the hardest of times, not to give it a pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Desiring the Kingdom<\/em>, James K. A. Smith (a Calvin College prof and the editor of Image<\/em>) explores the notion of everyday liturgies\u2014daily practices that train the heart and focus the mind. He says, \u201cevery liturgy constitutes a pedagogy that teaches us, in all sorts of precognitive ways, to be a certain kind of person. Hence every liturgy is an education, and embedded in every liturgy is an implicit worldview or \u2018understanding\u2019 of the world\u201d (25). The notion of liturgy comes from church and faith contexts, obviously, and in those contexts liturgy is meant to turn hearts and minds toward God. But Smith talks urgently about the secular liturgies of malls (\u201cconsumerist cathedrals,\u201d he calls them) and the liturgical force of smartphone interfaces, which train us to connect to and desire the world in particular ways. He asks how our daily habits are making<\/em> us, and he asks his readers and listeners to think about how liturgies are being woven into their lives, whether they have chosen those liturgies or not. He asks what those liturgies are training their mindful or accidental adherents to do and to desire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith\u2019s contemplation of liturgy helps me to think about what the Whitworth Ridge\u2014this rich metaphor about walking and working in a dangerous, beautiful place\u2014offers us. What are we training our students to do and desire, when we invite them into this metaphor? What are the liturgical habits of the Ridge? If we use the metaphor carelessly\u2014if it implies going along to get along\u2014then we are not training our students to be bold, or even to be curious, but instead to practice wily caution. But if the Ridge is a vision of relentless inquiry, even at the risk of vertigo and worse, and if that inquiry is linked to a desire for an \u201doverwhelming sense of perspective,\u201d revealing \u201cthe artistry of creation in every direction\u201d (as Bill put it), then it is something extraordinary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If it is that<\/em>, then we are inviting our students into habits of daring inquiry through the free exploration and exchange of ideas, rooted in the disciplinary methods available to them across the university. We are inviting them to habitually ask what insights and challenges one discipline might bring to another, and we are privileging questions of faith and worldview, so that we do not forget that all of this, all we do, is ultimately about turning students\u2019 hearts and minds toward God and helping them to see as vividly as possible the beauties and wonders and devastating difficulties of God\u2019s creation. That\u2019s a high ridge to climb. How can we build a set of practices that habituate students to bold, unshirking inquiry, practices that train their minds to ask and answer questions and then to ask and answer questions about their answers and their questions? How can we model these habits of mind and heart in the structure of our shared curriculum? In our lectures and classroom discussions? In our assignment sheets and exams? In our advising, and through our invited speakers, and in our responses to the controversies of the day? How can we respectfully but confidently teach them to privilege questions of faith, worldview, and Christian tradition? How will we earn our next step up here, and how will we help our students learn to love this view (and to keep their footing)? Big questions. Good metaphor. Choose your footwear carefully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whitworth University From: \u201cAwe and Vertigo on the Narrow Ridge.\u201d At Our Best: Essays for New Faculty<\/em>. Ed. Brooke Kiener. Spokane, WA: Whitworth University, 2019. 41-46. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This essay, written especially for new faculty at Whitworth, explores Whitworth\u2019s \u201cnarrow ridge\u201d metaphor for integration of faith and learning. 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7\/2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n