The Teacher

Paul Hooker

For David F. White, on the occasion of his retirement:

A quiet soul, forged in hardship’s fires

yet full of stillness even if in pain,

he dwells in Beauty, and as thought requires

would have us see, would to the world make plain

how Beauty streams beneath this earthly crust,

how passing time cannot its flow constrain.

An aquifer of glory ’neath the dust

of mortal life, a vision few may see,

he would to our benighted eyes entrust

metaphors of Beauty (as must be)—

the crack of bat, the smell of new-oiled glove,

a golden dog off-leash and running free:

these are the passioned, pulsing heart of Love,

Beauty’s other name, in which we share

as birthright, gift incarnate from above.

His quiet words, mere ripples in the air,

are more than words alone; they are the Way

by which the Dark cedes place to Light made fair

and night yields up its power to dawning Day.

David White is the consummate teacher. Part of what makes him so is that he teaches even when he is not conscious of teaching. I know this because I have been his pupil for ten years.

I first met David shortly after coming to Austin Seminary in 2012. In our first conversation which, as I recall, started about his plans for a course in the upcoming DMin term, we discovered a mutual love of jazz guitar. It wasn’t long before we were playing together over lunch hours, he soloing over chord progressions and me doing my best to keep up. David probably thought he was teaching me about the relationship between improvised melodies and basic chord structure. He probably wasn’t aware that he was also teaching me about the theology of jazz.

After playing guitar, we would go out to lunch. We discovered a mutual love of Korean food, and our conversations to, over, and from Korean lunches quickly became another classroom. David was working on drafts of his book, Tending the Fire at the Center of the World, and as we talked about what he was learning from PseudoDionysius and Maximus, from Aquinas and David Bentley Hart, from Milbank and Pickstock, and most of all, from Hans Urs von Balthasar, I was introduced to the world of theological aesthetics and Christian spirituality. He probably thought that he was just rehearsing what he was reading. He probably didn’t know I was furiously taking lecture notes.

As we have both approached retirement, our conversations have explored new questions. How does it feel to end a career? What happens when you cease doing something the doing of which has identified you for a lifetime? He would probably say we’ve been teaching each other about this, but I suspect it’s truer that once again he is finding depth and beauty where I see only change.

There is still more learning for me to do: about jazz, beauty, what it means to become someone new, and who knows what else. I cannot imagine learning those lessons without my teacher. Fortunately, I don’t have to.

Thanks, David.

Paul Hooker is an Old Testament scholar, musician, Presbyterian Polity expert, and poet who served with Professor White on the Austin Seminary faculty and administration for a decade. His most recent book of poetry is called The Hole in the Heart of God: Stories of Creation and Redemption (Resource Publications, 2021).