April 28, 2015

Michael Leunig and Spirituality

Michael Leunig recently spoke at an education conference in Brisbane
on spirituality in education. A very humble man, he made some beautiful
but very real statements that are worthy of sharing.

One was a
reference to Arthur Boyd’s description of spirituality as ‘the felt
life’, which had a ring of truth to it. He then said that he believed
that a rich and confident spiritual life is a form of genius that is
available to us all and that he saw spirituality as a conduit to the
divine world.

The recent teachers seminar at the school at the
start of term 2 was on the theme “Developing Intuition, Spontaneity and
the Ability to Improvise”. Three of the teachers spoke to the topic
from their own viewpoint so we had three very different experiences.

One
of the teachers talked about how his discipline of spending an hour
each morning sitting quietly gave him a sense of space which he could
carry through the day and which enabled him to be more able to both
recognise and meet the needs of his students. Interestingly, the
teacher said it allowed him to ‘ask for help’. He gave a cogent example
of this in describing dealing with an upset student who he had run out
of ideas for and who wanted to go home.Through letting go and being open
for guidance, he was able to say the thing which connected with the
student and enabled them to calm down and face their challenge without
the emotion. There was a strong connection with the ideas that Leunig
talked about.

In conclusion, a statement from Leunig which
captures his poetic simplicity: Spirituality is surely the breath of
love in the world.