As you can see, I'm not hip on the Pep Rally, the Tips ‘n' Trix Seminar, nor the Whack-a-Moral Game. I think they are used far more often than their limited capacities can bear. But I wonder: am I asking too much? I mean, are church classes really meant to rocket us into mystery? If I were founding the Church of Carter, the sign on the door would read: Your soul seared in one hour or your tithing back. But is it fair for me to ask that our class time be devoted to the deep and paradoxical when so often what some of my brothers and sisters really need is just a little boost to help them face the coming week?
Mamet was writing about drama, but he articulates this kind of dilemma well.
Stanislavsky says there are two kinds of plays. There are the plays that you leave, and you say to yourself, "By God, I just, I never, gosh, I want to, now I understand! What a masterpiece! Let's go get a cup of coffee." And by the time you get home, you can't remember the name of the play, you can't remember what the play was about.
And there are plays -- and books and songs and poems and dances -- that you leave unsure, but which you think about perhaps the next day and perhaps for a week, and perhaps for the rest of your life.
Because they aren't clean, they aren't neat, but there's something in them that comes from the heart, and, so, goes to the heart (21).
As an experiment, I twice tried to create a non-clean, non-neat teaching atmosphere, to construct an environment where something like what Mamet describes could happen. And believe me, it was difficult. The first time I tried it was in an early morning high school seminary class; the second was in an elders quorum meeting.
When I took over the seminary class, the outgoing teacher tearfully bore her testimony to the class members that I was the one the Lord wanted to teach the class now. I knew that she really loved that class. It was a big part of her life. And now she was turning it over to me. Her daughter was in the class and would surely report on my attempts at teaching, which made me kind of nervous.
Looking back, I realize that experimenting on the early morning seminary class was probably ill advised. Brains that have just been roused from sleep are not in the mood to explore ambiguities, much less open their souls to the core. Essentially what I tried to do was take each of the lessons and find a place where things got muddy, where a person actually had to do a little thinking, and where there was actually no answer.
One of my methods was to have my students write letters to a non-member friend of mine, telling him about the gospel. I wanted his influence because he could ask questions that I could not. The students couldn't assume he had any previous knowledge about the Church or the gospel. They had to start at the beginning, which required examining their beliefs and assumptions. My friend agreed to answer the letters if I would provide Sunday dinner each week. With some prompting from me, he drafted questions about the concepts they had written about in their letters: I bet you think I'm going to hell, huh? Does reason have anything to do with your faith? What if God tells me to kill someone, like he told that Nephi guy?
I brought the questions back and used them as discussion starters. I thought this would be a good idea. I mean, my class members were in communication with a real person whose soul, ostensibly, hadn't been saved. Real mission field stuff. I had other tactics, too, all designed to make the gospel real. Well, "real" as I define it, meaning that it makes a difference in the way you live your life and brings up questions that can turn your head inside out.
It turned out that I garnered more complaints in a month than most teachers get in the normal four-year term. I should have guessed this was going to happen when the previous teacher's daughter (who was also one of the brightest people in the class) said, "I come here to get answers. All you give me is questions." I was about to congratulate myself when I realized that she didn't seem very grateful.
The first official who came through to check me out (they have to perform a personal visit for every complaint) was understanding. He could see what I was trying to do and expressed his support as long as I didn't teach false doctrine. But the next guy who came was firmly of the Pep Rally, Tips ‘n' Trix, Whack-a-Moral school, and he was very, very good at his job. The problem was, everyone knew why he was there; they also knew that my teaching methods rely heavily on discussion, and so they boycotted me. Half an hour into class, I had to turn everything over to the official. The students gratefully followed his formulated lesson plan, and I knew then that I wasn't cut out to teach this class.
Strangely, there was one girl who had attended seminary only sporadically before I became the teacher, but she attended almost every class during the month I taught. She sat next to me (I formed my class in a circle), mysterious and silent. I wondered why she came at all. The last day of class before Christmas break, she gave me a letter that I still treasure. It turned out that my neuroses were her neuroses, too, and she was grateful to have company for a month. She said she was leaving to go on a work-study program and wouldn't be back to seminary. Thanks to this letter, I figured that maybe the previous teacher had actually known what she was talking about. God really had called me there. But it was for this one person, and she was leaving now. For that reason, and some other good ones having to do with my wife's health, I gave the job up to a husband-wife team. They give the kids what they expect and do it very well.
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