Joel Marcus of Duke University recently wrote a tribute to J. Louis Martyn in which he said,
But he was even better as a seminar leader, and even better than that in one-on-one conversation, because he always conveyed the sense that, however stupid you thought yourself to be, he was learning something from you. And I believe that he was, that he saw things in his students and, more widely, in his friends, that they didn’t see in themselves. For me, that is the definition of grace.
I think the academy could use a few more gracious listeners!