HOW TO LOVE A CHILD WHEN THINGS ARE FALLING APART
Janusz Korczak wrote:
In this declaration from his work “How to Love A Child,” Korczak acknowledges that at the heart of the process of teaching and learning is the capacity for students and teachers to be inspired. Inspiration can be defined as “being stimulated to creative thought or action.” To be inspired means to be motivated, energized, and animated to engage positively and creatively with something which has meaning and significance. We are inspired by that which has the capacity to connect with us deeply. We can be inspired by, for example, a work of art, a piece of music, a film, by the beauty and wonder of the natural world, by someone or something we love or by the example of great effort, achievement, and acts of compassion. Korczak is affirming that education, the art of teaching and learning, pedagogy, is ultimately about relationship, encounter and engagement with others and the world in which we live.
The experience of Janusz Korczak and his orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto of Nazi-occupied Poland was located in the context of an apocalyptic vision of a world which appeared to have gone mad. The old order had been subverted and a chilling ideology was systematically and clinically defining millions of people as undesirable, as being less than human, for whom the only fate was certain death.
In his “Ghetto Diary” Korczak declared:
Korczak is offering a prayer of thanksgiving for the beauties of Earth. His cosmic gratitude is rooted in an appreciation of the natural world which, despite the sufferings of life, presents to him a hopeful vision of beauty and joy. Korczak’s contemplation, reflection, and meditation were undertaken in the midst of the challenging life of the orphanage in the Warsaw Ghetto at a time when the lives of he and his children hung in the balance. The future was most uncertain. Despite this Korczak took the time to focus mindfully and attentively not solely on the challenges, stresses, and strains of running the orphanage but, instead, he took the time to be grateful for each positive aspect of the children’s existence. He said a glorious Yes! to life when it would have been understandable for him to have been ground down by the daily challenges he and his children faced.
Grigory Pomerants, the Russian dissident, essayist, and philosopher has affirmed what he calls “the still small voice from the great silence” and he has declared that the “Old Adam turns away from the kind of contemplation and silence in which the deeper interior whisper can be heard.” Like Korczak, Pomerants affirms the power of being attentive, mindful, and fully aware in the present moment even (perhaps especially) when all around you the world appears to be falling apart. Indeed, Pomerants has indicated that what kept him going, what gave him hope, a reason for living, during his time spent in the labour camps of the Gulag was the midnight sun in the far-North of the Soviet Union and of the beauties of nature. Despite the Gulag’s challenges, Pomerants’s life affirms that a contemplative vision can enable people to “discern the footprint of God, the essential thread in all things.”
Central to Korczak’s vision, and at the heart of his legacy is the recognition that in a world of unpredictability, uncertainty, and even chaos, it is imperative to attempt to create inspirational oases of calm, order, and structure which provide a foundation for the possibility of facilitating meaning and hope for the future. Even in the darkest situation there is the possibility of discerning meaning and hope, however imperceptible this might appear to be. In the world of the 21st century, with its significant challenges and opportunities, Korczak’s recognition of the requirement to create order out of chaos, meaning out of meaninglessness, to create a sanctuary, is to be taken seriously.
Amidst the trials and tribulations of the Ghetto experience with the possibility of death an ever-present reality, Korczak recognized and affirmed the requirement to create and maintain an atmosphere and an ethos of structure, order, discipline, calm and beauty, and he recognized that a response to, and relationship with, the natural world can act as an inspiration and as a catalyst for hope. Although Korczak could easily have become overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenges he faced he was resolutely determined to give the children in his care a meaningful experience of life rooted in a wider connection with the natural world, however limited this may understandably have been.
The “Ghetto Diary” presents Janusz Korczak’s powerful and poignant observations, meditations, and reflections upon the experience of life with his orphans in the Warsaw Ghetto. It contains wide ranging reflections upon the joy and pain, the challenges and opportunities, presented by existence. In his “Ghetto Diary” Korczak poignantly looks back upon his life and he reflects upon significant experiences, including those of his childhood, which have impacted upon his development and he is mindful of the detail of the joys and pains, the challenges and opportunities, the despair and the hopes, which the children in his care experience.
In a profound sense the “Ghetto Diary” is a book of memory in which Korczak attempts to make sense of his life in relation to his vocation as a children’s advocate. In Polish, a diary, a book of memory, is known as a pamietnik. There is a very real sense in which a pamietnik, however, is not simply a factual timeline recording of events but is also a reflection and commentary upon event, upon memory. As a literary genre, therefore, it is a creative synthesis of historical and existential reflection. The past and the present are inextricably interwoven and interrelated. In addition, through their capacity to challenge, illuminate and inspire, pamietniks are not only the reflections of a specific individual or community, they can assume a universal aspect. The memories, dreams, and reflections of one person can become the story of every woman and man. There is a profound sense, therefore, in which the experience of Janusz Korczak and his orphans can be regarded as a powerful illustration of the contradictions and paradoxes of the human condition and the capacity of human beings to embrace political, economic, and religious extremism. The fate of Korczak and his orphans reminds us, in the early years of the 21st century, of the imperative to take steps to avoid entering a new Dark Age in which prejudice and discrimination, stereotyping and scapegoating, injustice, extremism, and conflict reassert themselves.
Throughout history humankind has engaged with questions of meaning, purpose, and value, particularly with reference to the dark nights of the soul which can arise in response to the existence of evil and suffering. Indeed, in the ancient Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes the writer declares: “I have seen everything that is under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind” (1:14).
The spiritual traditions of the world can be regarded as living, dynamic, organic networks of relationships in which the past, present, and future are understood with reference to an Ultimate concern, a Transcendent framework, a Divine reality, which, in some sense, provides a reconciliation of the tensions which exist between the real and the ideal, between life as it is and life as it could be, between the life shattering experience of evil and suffering and the life-affirming experience of joy, love, beauty, truth, justice, and peace. Spiritual traditions are, therefore, in a very real sense, living
pamietniks; they engage the individual and the communities to which they belong in a process of relating their traditions to contemporary experience. Spiritual traditions have, ultimately, to be living traditions; they must engage the real lives and experiences of real people in the real world with the insights and wisdoms of the past. In this way, the past, present, and future are inextricably linked; the modern, therefore, does not exist in isolation because it is rooted in what has gone before it. Indeed, both the modern and the post-modern can only exist on the foundations of what has preceded them. Modern spiritualities, therefore, must take seriously the roots of their traditions. To be a radical means to be a person of roots, who is able to creatively engage with the challenges of contemporary society through being immersed in a tradition that has preceded them. To be a radical provides the freedom to embrace both tradition and the modern and hold them in a creative tension. The twentieth century provided us with many examples of spiritual radicals such as, for example, Martin Luther King, Jr., Thich Naht Hanh, the Dalai Lama, Daisetz Suzuki, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Buber, Thomas Merton, Henri Nouwen, Simone Weil, Dorothy Day, and Dag Hammarskjold who all illustrated that dark periods in human history elicit in us the capacity to actualize an alternative way characterized by peace, justice, and ecological responsibility.
The insights of spiritual traditions are also powerfully complemented by the creative insights into existence elucidated by, for example, poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, musicians, and filmmakers and it can be suggested that the power of great art resides, ultimately, in its capacity to empower and inspire us to begin to make sense of our place in the world and to locate us in a meaningful network of relationships and in an authentic connection with the physical space, the environment, in which we live. Spiritual traditions and the creative impulse, complemented by the powerful and majestic insights of scientific and technological discovery, can provide the resources to engage with the philosopher that existence is characterized by anxiety, despair, abandonment, and forlornness.