Interview - Full Response

Thomas Moore   with The Rev. Wayne Walder

(TM):

Well I think it might fit if it is embodied in the person who is teaching it. That’s what I was saying about the Minister as the model of the holy person rather than the one who has techniques or skills.

If you incorporate wisdom or spirit into yourself, and are transformed by it, people will notice. I don’t think personally – and this is based on my own experience – I don’t think it’s necessary to have vast knowledge of all these different resources.

What I have to be able to do, what you might consider, is to notice how “what you are learning”, melds with “what you already know”. Because then what we know and what we learn can come together as a new dimension of “who we are”. When I do that, I’m not trying to find one more thing to use as an example. I’ve become deeper.

What I discover also helps me give more colour and depth to what I already know and can teach. And, that is a huge difference.

Now, I am going to accuse myself of being a dilettante sometimes. Some of these people doing research in Christian Mysticism hate when I’m writing these books because they think what I’m doing is too superficial. The mistake they’re making is that you don’t have to flaunt this intellectual understanding of the whole thing to make it your own!!!

(TM):

I think the criticism I get is parallel to what Ministers get.

It could be based on a jealousy that you’re talking about. Because people who do this academically, are not very secure. I’ve seen this in the academic world; they have to demonstrate that they know so much all the time. Knowing something is not incorporating it.