Paraphrasing the title of a famous book, I am trying to sketch out a part, probably an insufficient one, of the impressions, traces and signs left behind by the visit of Professor and explorer Sandu Stermin to Avenor College. Responding with the seriousness characteristic of Transylvania to our invitation, extended back in the spring, Sandu Stermin spent a beautiful, clear autumn day with us, alongside his fellow teachers, our middle school students and the parents of the Avenor community.
The purpose of our invitation was to reopen, with a conference given by Sandu Stermin, the ninth edition of What’s Worth Learning?, an event that has already become part of the school’s tradition. But our guest’s stay had implications far deeper than those of a simple 40-minute conference. With that power of understanding and curiosity which the condition of being an explorer has probably strengthened in him, Sandu allowed himself to be “immersed” in the atmosphere of our school, showing genuine interest and liveliness.
Around lunchtime, he led an activity with our Grade 4 and Grade 5 students, drawing on two of his books. The event naturally turned into a workshop of discovery, bringing together stories and learning. My experience as a teacher tells me that it is remarkably difficult to maintain a coherent rhythm and a discipline of active listening while talking to 120 children. Yet that is precisely what happened. Professor Stermin has preserved that innocence which allows him to enter into direct and authentic communication with the world of children just as naturally as he understands nature and its purity.
With his lecture, What’s Worth Learning? Exercises in Understanding the World, from the Heart of It, offered to teachers, parents and older students, Sandu Stermin entered a register of wide-ranging philosophical communication, grounded in his academic experience and intertwined with his knowledge of lands and peoples that may sound exotic to us, but which provide our guest with a cognitive foundation and with other ways of approaching our own existence. His nuanced understanding of the dimension of time, of the coexistence of the material and spiritual worlds, of our place suspended between the boundaries of life and death, gains solidity through the evocative power of his speaking, through the connections he makes so naturally, through his charm, spontaneity and subtle humour.
All of this was complemented by an exceptional discursive structure, a crystalline articulation of his arguments, and a symmetry and aptness in the way examples from life and nature were brought into conversation with the life of fundamental concepts.
Sandu Stermin is someone who truly lives and experiences life with a rare grace. For one day, but probably for much longer than that, he helped us move beyond the limits of the merely contingent and made us want more from ourselves and from our fellow human beings, more from our purpose on this planet and in this life.
