Beauty nearest

“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are.

When we strive to become better than we are,

everything around us becomes better too.” 

– Paulo Coelho

Teaching is a creative art; it is the finest work I know.  And last week, I was given a small gift that demonstrates why I stay rooted and grounded in this profession.  It’s a short, simple story, but moved me quite profoundly.

My principal had this idea:  he wanted to give every child in school a book for Christmas, and he wanted the book to be on each child’s reading level so s/he could actually read it.  We set about creating the book order;  it took a little time and I’m sure it was not as accurate as it could have been, but we purchased a book for each child in grades pre-K through 5^th. 

Children were asked to enjoy the book over the holidays, but as an added incentive to read, our principal asked children to create a “brown bag book report”—writing a summary of the book and placing 5 objects in the bag that represented some aspect of the story.  If they followed these instructions, they’d be rewarded with special time with him-together they’d play Loteria (Mexican Bingo) when they returned to school after the holidays.

Over 140 children brought their brown bags to school after Christmas.  Let that sink in.  That’s a great response for children who had the option of creating the project.  The idea was a hit. 

We held the first session of Loteria with pre-kindergarten students.  The little group of 9 children entered the library with their small brown bags, and the principal asked them to share their stories with each other. They excitedly told each other about what they read.

Then our principal shared his own brown bag.  He told the students that he read The Alchemist by Paul Coelho.  I’ve read the book, and I instantly felt sorry for the man.  I thought, “Oh my goodness.  These are pre-kindergarten students.  They’re never going to understand the book he wants to present.”

Then the magic happened.   

He begins to pull various items out of his bag…a map to signify Santiago’s journey- the shepherd boy who would need to travel all the way to the Egyptian pyramids in pursuit of mysterious riches.  He shares a compass, to demonstrate the many twists and turns of Santiago’s journey.  Out of his brown bag, he pulls his beautiful gold watch, to explain that Santiago wanted the alchemist to help him find riches like gold, crystal, and precious treasures. 

Finally he asks our students to look at the last treasure in the bag.  It is a compact mirror.  And our principal opens the mirror, asking each little four or five year old child to look in the mirror to see the treasure.

Eyes wide, each child finds in the mirror, an image of himself.  Our principal walked around the group, giving each boy and girl an opportunity to find his own reflection. One little girl held her cheeks beneath her little palms and exclaimed, “Are you kidding me,” awed that she was the treasure.

Oh the beauty of that moment brought me to tears.

Teachable moments are fleeting, despite the fact that we spend nearly eight hours a day in a classroom.  But this was indeed a teachable moment.  In that library, at that moment, nine little ones knew without a doubt that the treasure Santiago sought was the same one we all seek—to know our own value.  

Small lessons with profound beauty are the reason I stay in this profession. In this classroom. In this school system.  Paul Coelho wrote, ““The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.”   I am so grateful for the wisdom supplied in moments like these.  

 “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

Merry Christmas...or not

I wish I was a mind reader.  Then I might really know what to do here.  I’m in over my head.

I’ve spent my professional career as an educator at Title I schools.  Title I means that a big chunk of the population we serve has high needs in critical areas—our students may lack basic necessities like adequate food, shelter, support.  

For twenty-five years, I’ve served children on antiquated campuses as well as kids romping around brand new school yards.  I’ve taught school in Georgia, Germany, Indiana, Florida, Texas, and California.  I’ve worked with little ones and big ones, of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, and exceptionalities, not unlike most educators I know.

Children have surrounded me in classrooms equipped with every tool and with no tools. I think I can reach and teach anywhere.  My own children will tell you that I teach even when my pupils don’t want to be taught.  But this year…oh this year.

I’m posted on a campus that is distinguished by labels that we don’t like—100% free and reduced lunch; 100% poverty; “academically unacceptable”; in “academic recovery” …labels that say very little about what’s going on behind each classroom door. 

I’m surrounded by committed teachers as well as newbies.  This is the first year for most of us to serve on this campus.  And we’re all in over our heads. We were all placed here for a reason. I was posted here to see if maybe a robust library program could impact learning, along with many other initiatives. Everyone’s working hard, staying late, striving to set up “rigorous learning” opportunities that will help us make the mark.

The jury’s still out on how we’re doing.

The decision about “what works” is still hanging in the balance and will swing like a pendulum until state testing is complete later this spring.  Then maybe some of the labels will come off.

But despite my years of teaching experience, I’m still learning.  As it turns out, I’m still naïve about what poverty means. 

Many of our students are part of a silent neighborhood.

They live in “have not” homes or neighborhoods, silently going without.  I don’t want to disregard those families that are making ends meet. Some kids are just fine; their parents and extended families are providing all they can.  But it’s the “have nots” that keep us awake at night. 

Backpacks of food are sent home several times a month with five year olds or ten year olds, whoever needs the help–just to insure there’s food at the house when they’re not at school. Clothing is provided as needed.  Eye exams are conducted and new glasses show up on faces ready to learn. Paper, pencils, notebooks, shoes...all free as needed. 

And yet.

And yet. 

These kids need something that money can’t actually buy.

Stability.  Security.  Hope. 

Day after day, I’ll prepare to teach and start a lesson focused on my objectives.  In my mind, I'm running down the checklist of the many things I want to teach.  Language arts.  Digital literacy. Databases and information power kind of stuff.  21st Century learner sorts of things. 

But over and over I get stopped in my tracks.  By children who can’t read because no one’s home or literate enough to help them practice.  By kids who have grown lethargic about their own success. By children who are so new to this country that they've yet to assimilate one language, much less two. 

With the countdown for Christmas beating like a drum, I hear from children with wish lists that bear no resemblance to those of my grandchildren…kids who want one thing, or two, knowing that neither item will probably show up on Christmas morning or any other day. 

I get stunned.every.day. by kids who say things like, “I get to see my dad in prison on Christmas Eve…” and behind those eyes that sparkle there’s a pain, a pain that I can hardly comprehend. 

Today a nine-year old wrapped up two paper bookmarks we gave him and tucked them in his pocket—Christmas presents for his “granny” when she gets out of jail. 

A fourth grader asks me, “Did you read my essay?  It’s about my sister.  She’s an angel now.” 

A fifth grader has given up trying to get to school most days.  It's hard to comprehend if he's lazy or hopeless. 

A kindergartener hangs on my every word, like I'm magic because I've told her I like her dress.

This one needs a tissue; that one needs breakfast;  another just wants to be seen and will act out every which way to get attention, uncaring of whether it's positive or negative. 

I don’t know what to do here.  I’m in over my head.  

I hug them.  I welcome them. I hold them and high five them.  I tell them to work hard.  I say that words will make them strong and powerful.  Is it lip service?  Is what we’re doing making any difference? Do I need to say, “Be tough.  Get over it. Do the work?”

Feeling sorry for these kids will get them nowhere.  What’s the proverb-give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day;  teach him to fish and he’ll eat for a lifetime?  But is it fair to expect kids to fathom such wisdom?  We’ve colluded to give our kids the fish and teach them how at the same time.  While we try to prevent an “entitlement” mentality, isn’t every child entitled to warm clothes, food, a fish?  

At the end of the day, I feel like an alien in this environment.

I work with children whose life stories are foreign to me.  They deal with issues that are completely out of my control.  

When I say goodbye at the end of the day, I can think of very little to say.

“See you tomorrow!”

“Read a book!”

"Be safe!"

But the truth is, most of the time, I am at a loss for words. 

When a teacher told me her students cried at dismissal before Thanksgiving break and I asked her why, she said they told her, “We don’t want to go home. We want to be with you.”   

I find myself picking up my jaw and closing my mouth nearly every day.  I read them fairy tales, yet the stories I hear are far from it. 

For Christmas, I’d like these children to live the fairy tale.  I’d like them to peer out their frosty windows, gazing at bright stars in the night sky.  I want them to hear jingle bells and sleigh bells.  I'd like them to be awed by the straw in the manger.  Shepherds keeping watch. Wise men on the way. I want them to wait on Rudolph and all his four-legged friends to land on their rooftops.  I long for them to have a pitcher of milk and cookies all ready for the big jolly guy to skinny down their chimneys.  I'd like them to rise from cozy beds on Christmas morning, to find an overstuffed stocking and an obnoxious pile of toys, regardless of where they land on the naughty or nice lists.

A fairy tale merry Christmas.  I’d love that. 

I'd ask the big guy if he could also throw in a return of innocence.  No lack.  Just love. 

But I know, I'm in over my head.

I want so much more for them than what Santa can provide. 

For Chris...

Comfort

Oh that I could comfort you

With words that would contain

The length and width and breadth of peace

To take away your pain…

But there is

No way around

only through.

Be brave…

Move those muscles long dormant from blessings falling rich and often.

Take nothing for granted.

Not this day, nor hour.

Not this way, nor path.

Be exposed…

Inhale this moment.  

It is what it is.

As surely as the waves crash against a beaten shore

Peace will come.

Wait for it.

It will come.

It will come for you. 

Not Alone: Finding the Love of Your Life

For the past twelve months, I have met with a man named Russ Murphy to collaborate on a book he was born to write.  His wife of forty years, Saralyn,  had passed away suddenly, just four months earlier, and he was bereft. But more than that, he was brave.  He wanted to inhabit his grief. 

I understood from firsthand experience that there’s a geography to grief; it’s a layered terrain that treks through ridges, peaks, and valleys.  I also understood that our Savior and Creator could equip us for the journey, if we would only yield to His heart and surrender to His will. 

Russ did that.  He was willing to surrender, to go wherever that grief journey would take him.  He kept a travelogue of sorts on Facebook, posts that his readers and he called “Not Alone.”  We all looked forward to reading what Russ had to say.  Not because it was entertaining and not because we were voyeurs on his journey, but because he was so transparent, and willing to share what the Holy Spirit revealed to him along the way.   

A singer and songwriter as well as a pastor, minister, and servant, Russ created his own little rituals of mourning, trying to find his way around a prayer circle on his living room floor. His near daily routine of sharing his remembrances and discoveries via social media became a liturgy of sorts, and many who waited for his posts experienced healing and recovery on their own grief journeys.

As we started our manuscript trek, I wanted to understand how different cultures deal with loss. Each society or community has its own sacraments, traditions, and beliefs about what happens to the departed, or what happens to the living.  I thought if I wanted to truly help Russ write his story, I needed to understand grief in a new way.

Confucius directed his followers who were grieving to live in austerity for twelve months; unshaven for forty days.Thank God, thank my God, Russ was not asked to do the same;  no amount of facial hair could have assuaged his pain and he told me from the very start, personal grooming was a huge challenge in the beginning stages of his grief, when he did not want to put one foot in front of the other.

In the Asian tradition, he might have buried Saralyn in her warmest clothing—her sweats, her thick, wooly socks, her red scarf.  Interred in a watertight casket, there would have been no risk her body would be exposed to the elements. The Japanese speak of mourners as “sinking in grief” and Russ has known the desperation of sadness like quicksand.

Had Russ been a Buddhist or Taoist, his grieving might have been stoic, internal; an impossible task for this Caucasian man who wept openly and often, grieving his loss. He might have penned calligraphic poems and left them for Saralyn, alongside incense or sacrifices, creating a shrine to his bride.  Instead he wrote her love songs, and sang them to her or the Lord, whispering when grief tightened his vocal cords and made singing painful and impossible.

Hindus allot thirteen days for grief, to sacrifice flowers and fruits and water to gods and gods and gods.  No flower, no peach, no plum, no earthen vessel could have been left on an altar to lessen the grief this man endured.  Thirteen days of grief would not cut it; he learned only too well there is no timetable, no calendar for sadness or sorrow or healing.  He will be the first to tell you his grief was no greater or less than another; but it was intensely personal and intimate and would fit in no predictable box.

Had Russ and Saralyn shared their faith in the Native American tradition, Russ might have buried some token of his love with Saralyn to symbolize the circle of their lives.  He could have asked a spiritual leader or Medicine Man to moderate her death service, beseeching his ancestors to join Saralyn in making her transition into the afterlife.  As a Native American, he would have embraced the belief her spirit would inhabit the land to which his loved one returned. Instead, Saralyn inhabited the heartland deep inside his soul, and he kept her memory safe and sacred as he mourned.

If Russ and Saralyn shared the Catholic faith, he would have kneeled next to her sacred heart, buried now deep inside his own. He would have sat through mass, participating in the sacraments of anointing and last rites, rosary beads spilling through his long fingers.

Had they both been born into the Jewish tradition, when Saralyn left this earth, Russ might have sat shiva or recited the Kaddish for as many days as it would have taken to learn to let go and leave his grief behind.  No music, no flowers, he might have stood silently above her burial box, dropping dry soil atop the plot where she waited for a Jesus she’d never met.  But Russ knew Jesus well, and Saralyn had shown him only too fully what a friend we have in Him.

Russ has shown me, through his journey, that our Lord, Jesus Christ, meets us at our point of need, each and every step of the way.  While every faith, every religion, has its own rituals of mourning, as Christians we are allowed, for a brief moment, to enter into the suffering of our Lord when we experience our own grief.  When we weep, He not only tastes the bitter or sweet of our tears, but He stores each teardrop in a jar.  For some of us, that container is a huge earthen vessel.  For others, it’s a small vial.  

Would that we could go through life with no sorrow, no grief, no tears.  Yet what would love be like if such a feat were possible? To lose, to experience great loss,  is to understand how deeply we may choose to love. Russ discovered that his powerful love for Saralyn resulted in a profoundly difficult grief passage.  As he traversed that path, our Lord allowed him to discover new love, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that He is merciful, good, and worthy to be praised, even as Saralyn left her footprints in the stars.  As it turns out, grief is hard-wired into creation.  Even a bird will weep, searching over and over for its lost love.  

Russ and I met month after month to revise, edit, review, and refine the lessons he received. I interviewed his friends, his family, witnesses to what kind of life he'd lived and was learning to live without Saralyn.  There were twists and turns that no one expected. Yet these events showed Russ all he really needed to know.  His Lord, Jesus Christ, through the holy Father, would show him the way, when there was no other way.  

As we finished the final pages of this manuscript,  I understood that something very profound had transpired.  Russ wanted to share his journey quickly.  He didn’t want to wait to find a conventional publisher.  He wanted to put his words in print within days or weeks, not months or years.  He wanted you to have what he has:  a keen understanding of our faith after it’s been battered and torn. 

I want you to buy his book.  I know it will change you.  It changed me.  And I want you to share it with as many others as you can.  Not because we want it on the New York Times Bestseller's list.  But because we want the insights Russ received to reside in you, the way they have begun to reside in us. 

There is a way to heal from grief.  There is a way to live that is not only right and good, but amazing.  Find out for yourselves. 

We are not alone…

Order Your Copy of Not Alone

Family Time

We’ve just returned from four wonderful days of family time.  It was wonderful to be together, but it was also in turn wonderfully messy, wonderfully confusing, wonderfully funny, wonderfully tense, and wonderfully diverse.  When you put sixteen people with different thoughts, opinions, desires, and expectations together under one roof for 96 hours, it’s bound to be messy.  The beautiful part of being in a family is that we get to be messy with each other and live to tell about it.  Maybe even learn to laugh about it.

In our family, we know what messy is.  We know what it is to go through an earthquake.  We felt the ground shake beneath us when Bo died.  For all of us, the past eighteen years have been in some part about getting over that earthquake, about dealing with the devastation of loss, about recovery, rebuilding, and renewal.  No mother wants to raise a family on her own.  No child wants to grow up without a dad. Earthquakes can rock your foundation, but that foundation can be rebuilt. 

We’re not that different from you and yours.  Each family goes through some form of tragedy or triumph that changes the complexion and complexity of their relationships.  The thing I love about God’s grace is that it’s sufficient for all of us;  it’s sufficient for the siblings who don’t always get along,  who don’t always agree, who don’t always see eye to eye.  It’s sufficient for the extended family members who have stepped into our web of friendships and relationships, all organisms with a life of their own.  I know His grace is sufficient because at the end of the day, we survived the wrecking ball.  We survived the shift of those tectonic plates that set our world off kilter.  We learned how to stand and live upright when sorrow made us crumble.  Not only that, we learned that God's grace is so sufficient He will give and give and give no matter what. 

We gathered this past weekend to celebrate…Christi finished her college degree, begun as a young teenager and put on hold for years of marriage and family building.  We celebrated Carlisle and Michelle’s tenth wedding anniversary, with its own seasons of marriage and family building.  We celebrated my sixtieth birthday, decades of marriage and family building and a whopping red letter day on my personal timeline.  But we also celebrated the fact that love built us and love sustains us.  Messy, imperfect love.   Grace-giving and grace-receiving love. 

No family is perfect.  There.is.no.such.thing.  We all struggle and strive to figure out how to get along, how to grow in love and forgiveness, how to accept and defend our personal and private and public decisions.  That’s the good stuff.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in sixty years, it’s that bit of mathematics.  Start with a and b.  Multiply.  Divide and subtract.  Then add.  And keep adding and taking away until you get closer and closer to our Lord’s vision and version of who we are supposed to be, of who He’s created us to be.  This family is our temporary home.  He’s got a perfect mansion prepared for us.  But in the meantime, our job is to learn how to live and how to love each other like He loves us. It’s a messy process.

Messy and imperfect.  But we are loved.  Oh so loved.