MagpieSpeak: The Giant Pool of Wisdom

While I was in the processes of Leaving Church, I often found myself doubting my heretical ways. But in time, as I continued to move through life without falling into the very pit of hell, I began to trust my internal wisdom. “Dammit,” I’d say, “I know shit!” (It’s a post-religious goal of mine to use as many previous forbidden words as possible. Kind of like Jessica on True Blood.  But I digress…) My point is, I know stuff. Lots of it. Furthermore the wise souls and creative people around me know a lot of stuff too. It ’s just that it’s not all collected up between the covers of a holy text. So what do we call all that amazing collective wisdom? And furthermore, how do we get to it?

In September of 2008 the team at This American Life produced an excellent radio piece about the national mortgage crisis, calling it the Giant Pool of Money. That title got stuck in my mouth. I loved the way it felt on my tongue.

Up to this point I’d also been enamoured with the concept of “teaching-learning” that Dr. Thena Ayres introduced me to in graduate school.  In this model instructors don’t just disseminate information from the top-down. Rather they create an environment in which the teachers and the students inform each other; thus creating a bigger pool of knowledge and experience than what the instructor alone could bring. The practice of teaching-learning and the phrase “Giant Pool of Money” came together for me when I began writing the learn-along Soultribe series at Magpie Girl. In my imagination every post and ever comment were like a hundred drops of water gathering together to form first a puddle, and then a pool. Thus was born the phrase: “The Giant Pool of Wisdom…forming now!”

Now I use this as a metaphor to describe the teaching-learning process that happens at Magpie Girl. So there you have it—the story of how a piece of MagpieSpeak was born!

What other Rachelle-specific phrases do I use that make you wonder? What do I need to define? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks for being here!

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Tags: MagpieSpeak |