Peripheral Visions

protection of the sacred as far apart as New Guinea and the laws of the Old Testament. Jacob awoke from his vision and said, “‘Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.’ And he was afraid and said, ‘How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven’” (Genesis 28:16–17). Even at its inception, awe is half horror and only half delight.
    It may be that in gradually freeing ourselves from one of the traditional markers of the sacred, the recurrent tendency to wall it off and protect it at any cost, we risk losing access to such experiences, exposing them to mockery or reductionism or denial. But if we believe that such experiences come naturally and are basic to human beings, we may also be opening doors to the recognition of the sacred in ordinary life and in the world around us and taking back a native right. As the sacred becomes veiled in secrecy and priestcraft, sacred institutions develop that protect authority, often enforced by ignorance, and fear of the supernatural replaces the wonder of the natural. The segregation of the sacred is probably more ancient than other cultural segregations of experience, for it occurs in societies with only the simplest division of labor, long before the invention of schools. Either might be a good place to start in reintegration. Esoteric knowledge—knowledge that is not shared—is one of the sources of power over others.
    The quality of recognition in any experience suggests a meeting of something already present within with something in the environment. We often think of the innate as a standardized minimum, but the inborn and unfolding readiness to learn opens the doors to diversity of every kind: the capacity to grow in love for this particular man or woman, to frame experience in this language, to care for this unique and unpredictable infant. The same quality of necessity and recognition attends the poet seeking the right phrase, the painter seeking the perfect form or conjunction of colors. Artists recognize and fall in love with their own work at the point where it must be left alone. We have even made the sense of necessity a form of proof, although experience shows that what is self-evident to one mind may not be to others.
    The safest and richest journeys through adolescence are those of children who discover some area of skill that becomes their very own, focusing energies and demanding for at least part of the day a honed and delicious alertness. Building model planes, ballet dancing, riding, computer hacking, basketball playing, working on a novel in secret, any of these, whether or not it promises a way of making a living later in life, can become a standard for feeling fully alive. A tool—a chisel, a guitar, or in my day a slide rule—taken up and recognized as a part of the self, can become the organizer of attention and commitment. Such discoveries, taking place outside of school, may be labeled antisocial, and children who wither in school may blossom in the acquisition of street wisdom and be punished for it. Commitment can be costly, setting children at odds with educational systems.
    Because schools insist on a set range of subject matters, even those children who have fallen in love with chemistry are required to study literature and vice versa. In a society going through rapid change, a diversity of subject matter is all to the good, but it is one of the reasons why schools are at odds with the paths of learning as coming home. Colleges sometimes become so preoccupied with “well-roundedness” that they discriminate against the happy few who have, in Hopkins’s words, “found the dominant of [their] range and state.” We are not skilled at offering students pathways through their preoccupations to a broader perspective, as care for one child can grow into concern for all children.
    The minor tragedies of lost delight in learning echo the tales of star-crossed lovers or religious martyrs. Edna Millay wrote, “Euclid alone has looked on Beauty bare,” but we can only hope Euclid would have been captured by the beauty of geometry if he had encountered it in school. Most children are not; most school systems do not expect them to be. Every child who learns to walk is enraptured by the new skill, but few schools promote the same experience.
    It is not that we do not value learning that comes as recognition, but that we have despaired of making it the paradigm of all learning.