David R. Belz
Instructor
Department of Writing
Teaching Philosophy
Fall, 2006

“Why are the wolves standing at the pot?”

The Year of the City invites us not only to discern ways to help our students engage with the larger Baltimore community, but to look back at our own roots. We are invited to help our students think and write about Baltimore, firmly grounded in Loyola’s existing tradition of service to, mercy toward, and solidarity with others, particularly those in need.

When I tell my students about the origins of the name Loyola, we talk about the quadrant in the College’s crest on the covers of their notebooks that depicts two wolves flanking a kettle and the Spanish phrase from which the family name derives: lobo y olla.

Invariably, someone asks: “Why are the wolves standing at the pot?” and the discussion turns toward the symbolism of the wolves and the kettle—symbols, some scholars conjecture, that represent the great nobility, charity, and mercy of the house of Loyola. One legend has it that the House of Loyola was so wealthy and hospitable that after the retainers and soldiers were fed, the wolves came to feed at the cooking pot. Still, the origin of the image from which Ignatius Loyola’s name derives is shrouded in antiquity and mystery. I invite them to consider St. Augustine’s observation in The City of God that we choose to be “vessels of wrath” or “vessels of mercy,” but the enigma of the wolves standing at the kettle frequently lingers after the class ends.

I agree with Socrates that education should be a transformative experience, when possible leaving the learner in a state of motivated, hungry perplexity, suspended in “thoughtful uncertainty.” Cultivating my students’ capacity for original thinking and writing, critical evaluation, lifelong learning, personal integrity is the meat. If I can convince them to become “vessels of mercy” along the way, then that’s gravy. To that extent, I perceive that my teaching should be simultaneously classical and countercultural. I remind them of the wolves at the pot: an intimation of the significance of mystery may be as valuable an outcome as the correct answer to a proof. By inviting my students to explore the values of service and giving in place of the status quo values such as self-worship and consumerism, for example, I believe I am serving them in the best spirit of the Jesuit liberal arts tradition.

As a career educator, I am in full accord with the College’s emphasis on enlightened academic rigor and serious scholarly thought, on community service and issues of social justice, and on the practice of cura personalis —nurturing of the whole person—within a faith-centered community of scholars. I embrace the College’s commitment to explore radically the relationship between faith and learning, enabling students to become fully actualized men and women for and with others in an ever more challenging contemporary world. And I agree with Augustine that we need to understand that the good make use of this world to enjoy God, whereas the evil want to make use of God to enjoy the world.

In his history of the Jesuit missions to China entitled The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, Jonathan D. Spence quotes Ricci’s diary in this vein: “It often happens that those who live at a later time are unable to grasp the point at which great undertakings or actions of this world had their origin. And I, constantly seeking the reason for this phenomenon, could find no other answer than this, namely that all things (including those that come at last to triumph mightily) are at their beginnings so small and faint in outline that one cannot easily convince oneself that from them will grow matters of great moment.”

The trick is to discern, over time and with practice, those faint outlines more and more clearly. That, for me is part of the majesty of teaching: I invite my students embark with me this year on a journey of the mind to limn the outlines of those small but potentially mighty things. The epiphanies uncovered on that journey are, for me, the core, the heart and soul, and the very best part of teaching.

Why do the wolves stand at the pot? I don’t know the certain answer. But I do know it has something important to do with the power of giving, which is what, in other contexts such as classrooms, we might call grace. For me, the wolves at the pot are the very essence of the spirit of The Year of the City.