I think if my students were asked to rate my mental stability they'd rank me a yellow or red on the crazy-o-meter. I can imagine what they must think when they hear me telling a kid that when he says "I don't care," that I'm going to "care times 10" (like that guy in the Bible, "Jesus, do I forgive them 7 times? Response: 7 x 7!). You shrug your shoulders, I unshrug mine 10 times. So I'm walking next my class in the hallway trying to "unshrug" my shoulders while they tried not to laugh.
Or the other day when some of students and others saw, during dismissal, a grandmother "go off" because she was ignorant of our dismissal procedures. At one point she told me that she was 51 and wasn't going to argue with me, peppered with a few choice words the building crowd of kids surely heard. Afterwards I claimed that my ten plus years in school allowed me to fire back when parents (and grandma's) get unruly. I feel like Howard Beale from "Network" ranting on the airwaves: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
So what am I complaining about?
Perhaps it's the urgency of teaching as we know it. Or as I have become to know it. It's 2 hours of Reading, almost 2 hours of math and it's mostly intervention because the kids come so behind. I had a first grade teacher tell us in exasperation that she gets all her kindergartners on level and where there are supposed to be. So what happens by the time they reach 5th and they are barely reading above 2nd grade level? All I keep referring to is that the #1 thing all the kids and parents need is an infusion of the Holy Spirit.
I know what that must sound like to a skeptic reader. News headline: Teacher confirms Holy Spirit raises tests scores! But that's what's different about the teaching of today. Data, short cycle assessments and individualized instructional plans. I try to get in God as much as I possibly can by just living life in a such a way that's attractive and energetic. I get fired up over "I don't cares" and ask my fifth grade girls to give me ideas to make their recess more of a safe place instead of the current pack-of-wolves mentality where they feasts on each other's insecurities (They want to play volleyball and board games). But how much of a positive change can I really make when I can't mention the one difference that lasts a lifetime?
I met a former teacher a few days back and reminisce about the old days. You can chuckle with any veteran teacher about mission statements, resurrected reading programs, defunct math initiatives and new administrator regimes. Our new superintendent fits this new breed of thinking. He sends weekly emails with craft ideas, random thoughts and pump-me-ups. My old friends remember when the last superintendent came in with fanfare only to retire years later before the idea of change flamed out along with 6-figure a year cronies and failed proposals. The "good ole days" were somehow these idyllic images of white kids in rows sipping instruction through twisty straws of knowledge.
All I remember from my early days of education were ruler knuckle slaps, bus ride shenanigans and holding my food tray above my head during 2nd grade lunch detention. If those were the good ole days, I somehow missed the memo.
But that's what we do in most facets of life. We hark back to some bygone era with fond remembrance and it gives us that distant, far-off look. I love my memories. My Uncle Richard and his hairy legs, my cousin's birthday parties where we blasted pinatas and ate a never-ending supply of beans and rice. My dad working for Ozarka water, that blue uniform of his that made him look like a water mail man. My mom's dabble with smoking. Running the neighborhood with Jon Patterson and trick or treating until the homeowners grew too tired to stay up and decided to leave their candy bowls on the front porch with a note. But in times of change and and upheaval, we cling to the old with such ferocity that we fail to see the advantages coming our way.
Our church is going through some major changes. New initiatives, a strengthened vision and the dust and new paint smell of reform. I haven't been in church long enough in my adult life to know any different. How can I when my son looks for his friend on the "new members" bulletin board in hopes of seeing them for the first time. But other families have chosen to leave. Good men, strong families. One of the reasons I've been just as urgent with the men's study is I want not to lose one more good man to the lure of another church. Where's the adversity and trial by fire spirit? We want to be fed by the Holy Spirit but we don't always like to feel the flames of conviction.
It reminds me of serving on team for Emmaus walks. During the weekly meetings, the scripted details and logistics are spoon fed to us so that the experience for the new pilgrims will be enriching and inspiring. Inevitably it comes down to standing aside while the Holy Spirit leads. Then there's the meatloaf. On each Emmaus walk, because it's a live-in retreat, you're fed like no other church function in the history of food. The meals are quite legendary, and when any of them are changed, people react. The meatloaf dinner was a Saturday night staple of each walk, but really only for those team members who were blessed to serve on team. As far as the pilgrims knew, it was a meatloaf dinner. To the live-in team, the experienced Christians who were the leaders and conduits of Jesus, the meatloaf was akin to the fond cul-de-sac bike rides of their youth. Several years ago, the meatloaf went away for some new meal, I think a pork loin. Someone hijacked the meatloaf. And Christians, men and women alike, took issue. Not with doctrine, not with the delivery of the tent poles of faith, but the meaty goodness of a meatloaf that was no longer there. There became so many rumblings, the leaders finally had to literally remind the live-in team that their longing for the days of the meatloaf were coming off as more of a complaint.
In class tonight, one of the men were studying the sermon notes from our previous pastor almost 19 years ago. It was his last sermon from the pulpit, and from what I understand, it laid a foundation of changes to come and an inspiration to adhere to. I wonder if his words were prophetic or lip service. How many people who listened live 19 years ago are still members now? How many of them have been awaiting the new changes like songbirds, or have they kicked themselves because the money they tithed is now considered a loan rather than payment.
There's been some serious prayer for direction and discernment towards the men's class and where God is taking me and the men of our church next. The more I blog and talk about trusting God, God inches me further away from my comfort zone. The meatloaf was never mine to begin with. Lucky for me, I like to share.
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
Pause. Listen. Play
Sometimes we think listening for God means we must listen for some omniscient booming voice, a cross between an echo and Marlon Brando in Superman. Some people do have some great stories. Mine have always been the indirect kind, the right song getting into the car after share group, meeting that certain person, good conversations and being convicted at church. It can even come from books we are reading and movies we see. It's also being more intentional and being open to listen. I don't want my moment with God to be on the downward spiral of some benign event. I want them to come in the mundane, the ritual, the part of life you least expect.
God spoke to me in the form of 4 fifth grade boys who were destined to be separated due to their past year's behavior. Each time one of them morphs their face into some ball of pouty immaturity, He speaks. Or when one steals a homework, erases the name and enters his own in hopes of getting credit, He speaks. Or when they perform outside of their expected zone of failure, He speaks.
God spoke to me at the gym last week, when some random stranger with chiseled arms stepped out of his way to give me a hi-five as I lumbered through a set in the circuit. It's been in the form of text messages from friends. It was in the voice of my mom. He lies in the heart of my sister.
Tonight He spoke to us in a movie. My son and I have been pausing through segments from "Life of Pi" over the past week. The kids ask so many questions when we are watching something at home I'm pausing to get through it all. Eventually we get to the meat of the intro, when Pi begins to find his foundations in God. His mother is a Hindu and he's shown sneaking through a comic book like adaptation of Krishna. Later, he meets Christ through a series of encounters with a priest. He cannot understand how God loves the world of sinners but he finds himself enamored with this Jesus character. Later, he finds the ritualistic prayers in the Arabic tongue to his liking and begins to incorporate Muslim practices into his daily life as well.
During dinner, his scientific father and disapproving brother chastise him over his juvenile theology. Cruz chimes in, "They should just leave him alone." He sounds a little like the boys' mother from the film. Cruz, of course, sees everything through a Jesus prism. He does not know about the world's other religions that will surely try to contradict his views. But he hears "God" and knows it to be His. One in the same. Clear cut.
So the movie gets paused. I give an elementary synopsis of Hinduism and Cruz jumps into asking me if I was always a Christian. i love these questions. I tell him I knew God existed, I knew what Jesus did in only a definitive verb-like sense, but not what it meant to me personally. This past summer he accepted Jesus into his heart at summer camp. I told him it was something like this that occurred some years back for me. You can't just know of God. You have to bring him into your heart. You have to want to be like Jesus. (Meanwhile, my little girl is telling the entire house she is definitely a Christian because she wants to be like Jesus everyday.)
I don't even know the segueway from one conversation to the next. But my wife came in next from the kitchen after being asked the same questions I had been answering. I know that in her faith walk there was a time of acceptance and a time of doubt. Much of that doubt stemmed from a suicide in her family. It would be disrespectful to bridge that sentence with that story. It's not mine to tell, but I can reflect on the impact the story had on my children. Reycina, to her, all is black and white.
That's just stupid.
My son is the questioner. He has to see the logic in the actions. He cannot go from point A to B without all the connections making sense. I know the leap from what drove his deceased Uncle Terry to take his own life will not be understood by a 4th grader considering the family that loved him undeniably still wrestles with that question. But the topic brought forward more conversation about the words we choose and the feelings we generate sometimes conflict with God's overall plan.
Doubt. Just one seed grows like a mustard tree. Unlike faith, doubt can course through your veins like some disease only a filmmaker could fathom. Scanners. In the end battle between good and evil, the Scanners, from an old science fiction film I loved by David Cronenberg, literally stood before one another trying to melt one another's minds using nothing but glances and sound effects. Doubt battles faith each and everyday. I'm a true believer of it. It sometimes festers in me. I prune one seed of doubt and the devil plants another. Jesus pulls me free from the vines and I go and step into the briar patch once again. Doubt about which direction. Another movie comes to mind. Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway. In a movie full of great moments and grand decisions, he can't realize figure out if he should follow the girl of his dreams. Seriously? That's Jesus looking at my movie. He's released it from the pause button and shaking his head and wondering why i'm still in the same place. Seriously? When does this movie ever begin?
I know my life's greatest hits are in his Netflix queue.
God spoke to me in the form of 4 fifth grade boys who were destined to be separated due to their past year's behavior. Each time one of them morphs their face into some ball of pouty immaturity, He speaks. Or when one steals a homework, erases the name and enters his own in hopes of getting credit, He speaks. Or when they perform outside of their expected zone of failure, He speaks.
God spoke to me at the gym last week, when some random stranger with chiseled arms stepped out of his way to give me a hi-five as I lumbered through a set in the circuit. It's been in the form of text messages from friends. It was in the voice of my mom. He lies in the heart of my sister.
Tonight He spoke to us in a movie. My son and I have been pausing through segments from "Life of Pi" over the past week. The kids ask so many questions when we are watching something at home I'm pausing to get through it all. Eventually we get to the meat of the intro, when Pi begins to find his foundations in God. His mother is a Hindu and he's shown sneaking through a comic book like adaptation of Krishna. Later, he meets Christ through a series of encounters with a priest. He cannot understand how God loves the world of sinners but he finds himself enamored with this Jesus character. Later, he finds the ritualistic prayers in the Arabic tongue to his liking and begins to incorporate Muslim practices into his daily life as well.
During dinner, his scientific father and disapproving brother chastise him over his juvenile theology. Cruz chimes in, "They should just leave him alone." He sounds a little like the boys' mother from the film. Cruz, of course, sees everything through a Jesus prism. He does not know about the world's other religions that will surely try to contradict his views. But he hears "God" and knows it to be His. One in the same. Clear cut.
So the movie gets paused. I give an elementary synopsis of Hinduism and Cruz jumps into asking me if I was always a Christian. i love these questions. I tell him I knew God existed, I knew what Jesus did in only a definitive verb-like sense, but not what it meant to me personally. This past summer he accepted Jesus into his heart at summer camp. I told him it was something like this that occurred some years back for me. You can't just know of God. You have to bring him into your heart. You have to want to be like Jesus. (Meanwhile, my little girl is telling the entire house she is definitely a Christian because she wants to be like Jesus everyday.)
I don't even know the segueway from one conversation to the next. But my wife came in next from the kitchen after being asked the same questions I had been answering. I know that in her faith walk there was a time of acceptance and a time of doubt. Much of that doubt stemmed from a suicide in her family. It would be disrespectful to bridge that sentence with that story. It's not mine to tell, but I can reflect on the impact the story had on my children. Reycina, to her, all is black and white.
That's just stupid.
My son is the questioner. He has to see the logic in the actions. He cannot go from point A to B without all the connections making sense. I know the leap from what drove his deceased Uncle Terry to take his own life will not be understood by a 4th grader considering the family that loved him undeniably still wrestles with that question. But the topic brought forward more conversation about the words we choose and the feelings we generate sometimes conflict with God's overall plan.
Doubt. Just one seed grows like a mustard tree. Unlike faith, doubt can course through your veins like some disease only a filmmaker could fathom. Scanners. In the end battle between good and evil, the Scanners, from an old science fiction film I loved by David Cronenberg, literally stood before one another trying to melt one another's minds using nothing but glances and sound effects. Doubt battles faith each and everyday. I'm a true believer of it. It sometimes festers in me. I prune one seed of doubt and the devil plants another. Jesus pulls me free from the vines and I go and step into the briar patch once again. Doubt about which direction. Another movie comes to mind. Tom Hanks at the end of Castaway. In a movie full of great moments and grand decisions, he can't realize figure out if he should follow the girl of his dreams. Seriously? That's Jesus looking at my movie. He's released it from the pause button and shaking his head and wondering why i'm still in the same place. Seriously? When does this movie ever begin?
I know my life's greatest hits are in his Netflix queue.
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