At first, many of my students react with extreme dismay that a
professional course of study would emphasize such apparent irrelevancies.
A few wonder who they might see with their complaints, someone in charge
(a dean or chairperson perhaps?) who might be able to admonish this
professorial imposter. Gradually, however, most come around to my spiritual
goading, even if somewhat reluctantly. Like Moliere’s character who suddenly
realized one morning that he had actually been speaking prose his whole
life, most students, in their own manner, become aware that, like it or not,
they have actually been grappling with philosophical and religious issues
without really identifying them in that way. They understand, for example,
that the profession (the duty to profess a belief in something) of teaching
cries out for a way of tying together the tag-ends of their often chaotic
professional practices