With much sadness, I have just now changed this website’s description of one of We May Be Wrong’s founding members – from the present tense, to the past.
In 1960, a 24 year old Dr. Paul Clement Czaja (January 9, 1936 – May 8, 2018) had just earned his Ph.D. in philosophy when he persuaded Nancy Rambush (then headmaster of the Whitby School and founder of the American Montessori Association) to let him teach existential philosophy to children. She was impressed with his enthusiasm and his willingness to work for practically nothing, but since she thought parents might not understand the importance of teaching philosophy to children, she asked if he wouldn’t mind teaching other things as well. So Paul “officially” taught creative writing, Latin and various other subjects not often taught to ten year olds. But philosophy was his first love, and it found its way into everything.
Only fourteen years older than me, Paul was more an older brother than a teacher. He showed me how to love the world around me; introduced me to the joy of learning everything I could about it. The way a magnifying glass could make fire; the way Latin could turn language on its head yet still come out as modern English; the thrill of catching butterflies in nets; the way the Greek Alphabet could be painted with Japanese brushes and jet-black ink; the vital inner parts of dissected foetal pigs; the wonders of the Trachtenberg system of mathematical calculation; the wiggling of microscopic paramecia in pond water; the thrill of catching people and their stories with a 35 millimeter still camera, that of making our own stories with a 16 millimeter movie camera, and then, the even weirder thrill of telling stories with frame-by-frame, stop-motion photography; the writings of Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, and James Baldwin; the power of telling stories of our own with just pen and ink. We spliced and edited rolls of movie film we’d made and, somehow, we even enjoyed diagramming sentences, rummaging through grammar the way we searched for the Indo-European roots of words. Though I was not yet a teenager, Paul introduced me to Ingmar Bergman movies, to Van Gogh’s Starry Night, to Rodin’s The Thinker, and to Edward Steichen’s photographic exhibition, The Family of Man.
To say the least, it was not your typical middle-school education.
They say that when a butterfly flaps its wings, it can have profound effects on the other side of the world – a concept I first heard from Paul, I’m sure. If I hadn’t met him, he wouldn’t have written the recommendation that got me into Phillips Exeter, and I wouldn’t have… well, if a single butterfly flapping its wings can have a profound impact, having Paul as a teacher every day (winter and summer) for four impressionable years was like being borne to Mexico by millions of Monarchs. We stayed in touch during my later school years, and then persisted in friendship as the difference in our ages seemed to vanish with the passage of time. And so, I was pleased that he joined We May Be Wrong in 2016 as one of our founding members.
But now, it’s time for a confession. As we tried to get our new website off the ground, Paul proposed that WMBW publish a poem he had written. Being a man of great faith, Paul wrote a lot about God – prayers, poems, meditations. When he proposed that WMBW publish his poem, I disagreed on the ground that I didn’t want the brand new website to come across as “pro” or “anti” anything controversial. I didn’t want to risk alienating potential followers, be they liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, believers or non-believers, by implying some sort of hidden agenda. (The ONLY agenda was to be the benefit of listening to others with an open mind.) Holding the keys to the publishing platform, I declined to publish his poem lest it be misunderstood to evangelize about God, rather than fallibility. But even then, I told him, once the website has been up for a while, we might be able to publish that sort of thing.
Well, the time has come. I wish I’d published it before he left the earth he loved for the better one he yearned for. For Paul, I can only say a prayer of thanks for all he did for me, and for so many other children, and now, share his wonderful poem. (It seems only right that he should have the last word.)
Fire in the Soup: A Creation Story
It happened
when
this earth
had just cooled down
from
being molten magna
to being
simmering
and steaming
rock,
and
when
the vaporous skies
had emptied
eons of towering cumulus
clouds of rain
making oceans
which
were so great
that
the whole sphere
became
much more a watery world,
and
the rocky land
was
but one large
continental island
there
in the middle
of a now
beautiful blue planet.
And then
when the heavens
were no longer
veiled
by that thick
envelope
of sulphurous cloud cover,
and
the earth’s atmosphere
became
pure and clear
and
allowed
the stars of the universe
to shine
so brightly
that
the night sky
seemed to be
white
with black peppery dots,
it
happened
that a flame
came streaking
through the sky
down
to earth
sizzling
the warm soup
of the sea
somewhere
changing
and
charging
that chemical mineral ooze
into
the very first
protozoa
that ever was
on this
so singular planet.
Later
when that protozoa
eventually became
thinking,
questioning,
wondering
man,
the idea
arose
that perhaps
that life causing
flame
which
once upon a time
sizzled
the oceanic soup
could be
the pure energy
that is
love,
and
if
that were
so,
then
all life
that
ever evolved
from
that first protozoa
would be
somehow
spiritual
and
of the eternal God —
for
philosophers
and
theologians
say
that
God is love.
Such a thought
seems to be
a happy,
hope filled,
heuristic
kind of
thinking.
–Paul Clement Czaja
Joe — Thanks for the words about Paul Czaja. Like many other former students of Paul, I consider him by far my favorite teacher. I have only a few specific recollections, not nearly as many as you have, but I powerfully remember his energy, love of life, and enthusiasm for expression. Phil McIntyre
I’m feeling very heuristic here in a polyastronomical sort of way that leaves no such love separated. Thank you, Dr. Paul!