LTK Update

June 2007
To: Extraordinary friends
From: Esther Meek
Re: Longing to Know

I hope you are prospering as your journey of "being on the way to knowing" (Newbigin's phrase) continues to unfold.

Esther at Geneva College
I have completed my third year of teaching at Geneva College. In that time I have developed and taught new courses in Christian Understanding of Life, Reformed Epistemology, Aquinas, Postmodernism, Twentieth Century British Philosophy, Women Philosophers, and Philosophy of Science. The learning curve has been steep but good!

This year my informal weekly coffee and discussion group, Thinking Women, has continued to meet. I've enjoyed independent study work with students doing senior theses, and others studying Cornelius Van Til. Other highlights of the year at Geneva included hosting Nicholas Wolterstorff for our annual Bitar Memorial Lectures, speaking in chapel and to a dinner of graduating seniors, attending a faculty development seminar at Calvin College with philosopher James K.A. Smith (and also meeting Del Ratzsch, Lee Hardy, and Kelly Clark—all of whose books I have used!), and an impromptu lunch last week with M.A. in Higher Ed students using my book as a text.

Summer has once again arrived, bringing quiet spaces of time in which to read and write. I was hoping by this time that my donor-created position at Geneva College would have been made tenure-track. But the College is delaying that decision for an additional year.

Commongroundsonline and other publications
This year I have continued to write posts for Glenn Lucke's book weblog, Commongroundsonline. You can find the links for these elsewhere on my website. These are always really fun to do, and a good learning experience for me. Also recently Comment Magazine published a piece of mine on learning and friendship. And last November's Polanyi Society response to Blythe Clinchy, on "connected knowing," should be forthcoming in Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Journal.

Also, my very old dissertation is finally electronic, and I hope to pick up a thread to look into the possibility of having it published. The date on it is 1983. It is Contact With Reality: An Examination of Realism in the Thought of Michael Polanyi. We’ll see what happens!

Book Sales
LTK continues to sell modestly but steadily, it seems. I'm hoping that this means that the book is proving to have enduring value. I get word of this or that person or group reading and thinking it through. This last Sunday I visited a church with my daughter; the pastor emailed me later to say that he was reading LTK and finding it excellent. From time to time letters come from people who introduce themselves, ask questions, and tell me their response to LTK. I've been posting some of these on the home page of my website as they come. It is always so encouraging to hear the story of someone for whom LTK has been doing some epistemological therapy, or confirming some already underway.

IR/CE...
...is my abbreviation for the book in progress—"Inviting the Real/Covenant Epistemology." Last summer I wrote some chapters of it, and then worked with Rodney Clapp at Baker/Brazos to submit a formal proposal in August of 2006. Brazos did not see their way clear to awarding a contract on the basis of the proposal, but invited me to send the completed manuscript for their consideration, and also to send it to other publishers. I used the chapters I'd written as text in last fall's Christian Understanding of Life class. Just this week for the first time I am returning to give last summer’s work a look and to pick up the threads and move forward.

LTK Travels
Last October I gave a series of lectures at Dallas Baptist University. While in Dallas I also spoke at Park Cities Presbyterian Church. In November the Polanyi Society meetings took me to Washington, DC. In addition to those meetings, I was able to do a talk at McLean PCA Church. Here at home I did a talk in January on Polanyi in a class at Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry.

In the months ahead, I am looking forward to a return trip to DC in September, to give a talk to the CCCU's American Studies Program. In November, in connection with the Polanyi Society meetings in San Diego, I hope to give a lecture to the Center for the Studies of the Person. I am building a relationship with people associated with ChildlightUSA, and have been inviting to speak at their conference next June in North Carolina. Then next summer, 2008, is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Polanyi’s Personal Knowledge. We are planning a special conference at Loyola University in Chicago. I hope to do a paper on veteran philosopher Marjorie Grene's work on personhood. And there is the prospect of doing a talk at a theology café, one of the many angles of the vision of Capt. John Stanley's Church Army Outreach, Uncommon Ground Café in Aliquippa, my hometown.

But perhaps most exciting to me is something yet this summer: an invitation to join my daughter, Starr, to give a joint talk at Friday Nights at the Institute, at Borders in St. Louis, in August! Starr has developed profound insight concerning personal beauty, dance, and fashion. Over the years I have been blessed and challenged by the interface of her ideas and mine.

All these future plans are tentative. But if you live and work in the vicinity of one of these spots, and would like to propose some additional events, please let me know.

What’s going on with you?
Please know that I am always interested in your life and thought. Drop me a line. And if you have a read on LTK activity where you are, I'd love to know!

posted 07.03.07