War Pigs

Hello Peoples,
  Today found me waking early on yet another Saturday morning.  Unlike the previous Saturday, I was  on my bicycle at 7:45 pedaling about the town.  Houses whizzed by or, if I was going uphill, stood almost still. About halfway through this adventure my body realized that it was awake and, what was more, it was active.  Immediately my mind screamed,"WHERE IS MY COFFEE???!!!!" as it is prone to do when caffeinated bliss is delayed.  I did my best to quiet my waking mind and pedaled on.  Flowers bloomed, birds chirped, and on certain streets there was the pungent smell of stale cigarette smoke hanging heavy in the air.  All in all, it was a nice way to spend an early Saturday morning before the rest of the waking people left their houses.  All of this was powered by the music posted below.

  You might not think this would be a nice soothing way to pedal away an early Saturday morning, but if so  you need to change your way of thinking.

    Yesterday  morning I decided I was tired of standing at the front of a boring old classroom.  The white cement block walls were closing in on me.  Simply add a bed against the wall and a toilet in the corner and it would have felt much like a prison.  So, we went outside.  Don't read too much into this, but as I sat on the low brick wall of a flower bed with my students cross-legged on the ground around me, I felt a little bit like Jesus.  Understand, I am not claiming deity.  I have no Messiah-complex. C.S. Lewis writes that we all have an inherent likeness to God that we have been created with, but what is possibly the nearest to God is that likeness that we have to seek and work at.  Its the likeness to Christ himself here on this earth loving all, giving of Himself, feeding the hungry, that we are really after.  I have always had a hard time being merciful and loving others.  I see these two things ("love and mercy" to quote Brian Wilson) to be inextricably connected.  I like to illustrate my lack of these things by recounting to people a time when, at a summer youth group camp, I took a very long and very detailed "spiritual gifts assessment".  While my gifts were very clear when the numbers came back showing us our strengths, my weaknesses were no less obvious.  My eyes were drawn less to the strengths and more to the -4 (yes, negative four) that I had gotten back in the area of mercy.  Very much bewildered by this,  I approached the person responsible for the "class" (this is not what it was, but it gives you an idea) and showed it to him.  He chuckled (?) and told me not to worry about it and it might just be something that I had to work on.  Oh how right he was.

     When I first began student teaching I wrote in my ST journal, "I have to pray and pray that God will have mercy on me so that I in turn can have mercy on others.  I lack mercy.  I lack love."  That was day one.  Now I am on day number (?), have only one week left, and the situation is much different.  I still have to pray for mercy (both to and from me), but my prayers to God and conversations with Hazel have gone from "I want to love others" to "loving others sucks."  As Hazel pointed out to me recently, "You've spent the last few years closing yourself off to others and keeping yourself from feeling.  Now you love others and its probably a hard adjustment to make."  Thank you Hazel, you are correct.  I've been thinking a lot about this. Its hard loving others.  Its hard caring for my students. When we care for others every piece of us may scream (like my body screamed for caffeine on this morning's bike ride) to retreat to isolation; to find someplace safe.  But Christ came to love the world.  Christ literally poured Himself out for us, and if we are to truly be like Him we must do the same.  As Lewis says in The Four Loves, 

To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal.  Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries;  avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.  But in that casket-- safe, dark, motionless, airless -- it will change.  It will not be broken;  it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.  The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation.  The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all dangers and perturbations of love is Hell. -Lewis p. 121

   I said that I felt like Jesus.  Yesterday, sitting there with my students at my feet, I realized or perhaps caught a glimpse, of the awesomeness and vulnerability of a life spent in relentless pursuit of Christ's example; of a life spent loving others.  The masses at his feet took on new significance in light of the class at mine. I realized that a life lived loving others is a dangerous one. Nothing is ever guaranteed, but as Christ loved us and poured Himself out for us, so must we, Christ's followers, do for those at our own feet.

Marvelous Things

Thus one Need-love, the greatest of all, either coincides with or at least makes a main ingredient in man's highest, healthiest, and most realistic spiritual condition.  A very strange corollary follows.  Man approaches God most nearly when he is least like God.  For what can be more unlike than fullness and need, sovereignty and humility, righteousness and penitence, limitless power and a cry for help?

-C.S. Lewis

    This week we have been watching To Kill A Mockingbird in class.  As predicted, this has been a rather interesting experience.  I have learned a few things through showing this film to my 9th graders which if you would like to know you may find out from me personally as I don't feel like posting them here.  Suffice to say that to today's 9th graders depictions of racism in 1930s rural Alabama are nothing.  The brilliant thing about showing this movie to my Civics class, though I can assure you the brilliance is completely accidental, is that the defense loses. Great!  I'm not racist.  I hate no one and I dislike proportionately.  I'm not saying this is great because bias and hatred win out in the end.  I'm saying its great because it illustrates the need of a court system and not just individual separate courts. My students actually understood the need for appellate courts after watching the movie.  Talk about a great illustration.

  What I absolutely love about this movie, and something that I have  become increasingly obsessed with lately, is the idea of a fight worth fighting even when the logical end says you're going to lose. I love that Atticus knows from the  beginning that he is going to lose the trial.  Granted, he knows they have a better shot in appeal (as he tells Tom Robinson), but that doesn't make him give up the fight in  the beginning.  He argues his heart out knowing that the end is not in his favor. This is so very similar to our lives living for Christ.  In the end, victory is guaranteed.  After all, we have victory in Christ.  But our part in that victory is another story.  Will it be our role to die (figuratively or not) for the later victory or will we fight to the end?  Is it our job to gain glory or walk away humbled?  It is not the end that makes us, it is the middle, the life.  I doubt they did, but I hope my students caught this.

    It has been interesting to note that maturity is not limited to an individual basis.  Maturity also exists on a group basis.  The mature pubescent individual, when placed in a group of immature pubescent individuals, will  become immature.  This happening, the group will protest being treated like small children, stating, despite their actions to the contrary, that they are mature "adults".  I am trying to teach them that as we act, so are we treated.  I tried this in reverse, at first, treating them as adults and expecting them to rise to the challenge.  To some extent some of them did this, but to another extent 9th grade is just a fancy name for 3rd.  Point is, there still needs to be order.  They still need guidelines and to be held to them with consequences for breaking them.  This is consistent with God's own setup in the Garden when he told Adam and Eve to eat from any tree but one.  He gave freedom to grow, while still keeping order in their lives.  It is an interesting thing to note that freedom and structure are both necessary for the spiritual and mental growth of the learner.

    Speaking of spiritual growth, I've been reading C.S. Lewis again. I know, shocking.  I can usually be found with a copy of something by Lewis or Tolkien tucked under my arm or nose.  I love a soft lamp, extremely noisy music, and a book. Add to that our good ol cat Aberforth attacking Hazel across the room and the night is perfect.  I have been realizing A Lot lately, my need for God.  Lewis talks about it in the Four Loves the fact that none of us can say to God, "I don't need you.  I just love you disinterestedly."  and yet that is our goal to harness this need we have of God and to build upon it a love that comes from our admiration of God Himself.  It is not enough to love God because of our need of Him only.  We must love God because of Him.  Granted, lately I am very much in the Need-love phase. Student Teaching will do that to a person. Every day I am made more aware of my need for Him, and yet everyday this need for God makes me aware of how much I love Him beyond that.

    Back to education, I also read in The Four Loves last night, from the chapter Likings and Loves for the Sub-human, "Nature will not verify any theological or metaphysical proposition...To discover God we must make a detour- leave the hills and woods to go back to our studies, to church, to our Bibles, to our knees... our real journey to God involves constantly turning our backs on [nature]."  This is, obviously, about nature, which is completely relevant to me.  I mean, whenever I go to the place where the picture in the background of this blog was taken I say, "God is real.  This proves it."  To my mind though, speaking specifically from where I am in student teaching, it says something else.  You see, I have been trying to teach "Truth" with "truth," which I think is not a bad thing necessarily, but it can only, as Lewis puts it, provide the "content" to put into words the faith that we have.  Lewis goes on to say that without nature and his appreciation/experience of it he would have had no concept of fear of God etc.  This, truth is necessary for my students' understanding of Truth, but it is not, ultimately, enough.

Those Evil Natured Robots

     Every day when I get stressed (and every day I do get stressed), I do two things.  First, I take a Tylenol.  Second, I start hearing the voice of Wayne Coyne in my mind (no, I'm not crazy) singing Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots part 1.  The line, "Oh Yoshimi, they don't believe me/ But you won't let those robots eat me" is oddly soothing in the middle of my day.  This fantastic song about evil pink robots making war on mankind reassures me.  No matter how tough my day gets, I'm not going to be defeated.Or maybe I am, but if so, the fight is worth fighting.

  Psalm of the Day

"How long, LORD? Will you utterly forget me? How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I carry sorrow in my soul, grief in my heart day after day? How long will my enemy triumph over me?  Look upon me, answer me, LORD, my God! Give light to my eyes lest I sleep in death,  Lest my enemy say, "I have prevailed," lest my foes rejoice at my downfall.  I trust in your faithfulness. Grant my heart joy in your help, That I may sing of the LORD, "How good our God has been to me!" Psalm 13

  Certain siblings and I, actually it may just run in our entire family, have always been very suspicious of people who are always happy.  I don't mean joyful or smiling.  I mean full on June Cleaver nothing-has-ever-been-or-ever-will-be-wrong-in-the-world-it-has-never-rained-the-sun-has-always-shone-care-bears-sesame-street-tele-tubbies-buckets-of-ice-cream-happy-happy-happy-fun-times people.  To these people I often quote the wisdom of the Dread Pirate Roberts, "Life is pain.  Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something."   I think that David would agree with me.  This morning I read this Psalm where David was feeling overwhelmed by the struggles of life, but he ended with praising God because he had faith in the Lord's goodness.  I also read a quote from Edith Stein saying, "Do you want to be totally united to the Crucified? If you are serious about this, you will be present, by the power of His Cross, at every front, at every place of sorrow, bringing to those who suffer, healing and salvation.”  Serving God is not comfortable, but it is good.  It is good because it brings us exactly where we need to be: on our knees and resting on the strength of God.

     In other news, I was informed by a patron of my local coffee establishment that the world is ending.  That's right, the signs have come about, the stars have aligned, the messages have been made evident here on earth that the apocalypse is upon us and the world is over.  Hell fire and brimstone!  I was astonished by this news.  Maybe you won't agree with me in my opinion that the world has been ending (end times) for quite a while now, but I think that you can all join in my skepticism of yet another claim that the anti-christ is here and the world is about to explode. No, its not even skepticism about that. Its more of a fatigue of theories on the end of the world resulting in closeted discussions and paranoia. Granted, with the middle east being in the situation that it is,  the world actually might explode, but that's not what he was talking about.  My question though, for this person and for myself, is if we really believe that the world is ending why are we only standing around discussing the details among ourselves and not going out to make sure that the world is ready for it?  This question has made me come to two conclusions. Either we don't really believe what we say we believe, which would result in action, or we don't really love the way we say that we love, which would also result in action. Either possibility is frightening. Does anyone really believe anything anymore?  Do I really believe anything anymore? If I believe something it should be evident in the things that I do.  Thoughts are not enough. Belief also takes action.  I think that for a long time I haven't believed anything other than the current song on my ipod, the movie on the television, or the latest Braves game.  I've been awfully comfortable and it is hard to really believe anything when you are comfortable.  Maybe its student teaching (which has made me very uncomfortable) and the fact that my faith has finally been put back into practice, but I think that finally I am beginning to believe again. I'm understanding the need to put actions behind my words and thoughts. I would like to say that I am completely 100% happy with this, but I'm not.  I hate it.  I feel pain everyday for the lostness of the world and of my students.  A very large part of me wants to go back to my couch where I can write papers at the last minute, drink coffee for energy that I won't use, and read about people I don't care about.  I've realized though, that I can't do that.  I care about my students and the people around me.  God has placed me on the front lines for the next couple of months of student teaching at least and I am overwhelmed by it, but I am on my  knees and it is good.

But someone will say, "You have faith; I have deeds." Show me your faith without deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do.-James 2:18

Oh the joys of Student Teaching

I, like Aladdin, have entered a whole new world. Except my whole new world has nothing to do with seducing my girlfriend with a super cool magic carpet. No, this whole new world that I have enterered into is the wonderful world of public education. Let me tell you about it.

First of all, it is amusing. I have heard various theories on who built the pyramids (none of them including aliens, mind you) ranging from the Greeks, to the Romans, to somebody back then. I have also heard it speculated that the Articles of Confederation failed due to the colonial inability to pay off their war debt from World War II (or was it the Civil War? Yeah, thats it, the Civil War). All of this has, at various times made me want to A) laugh hysterically, B) cry hysterically, or C) curl up in the fetal position and continue with A or B.

Let me say, I realize that these are students who don't know the above facts from history, and that's ok because it is my job as the teacher to show them the truth. I know this, so don't think that I am just whining because kids these days don't know Luther Martin from Martin Luther (do you?). I'm not. I'm honored to have the opportunity to teach them. With that in mind, it saddens me how lacking their understanding is of the basic foundations of society. It's not that they don't know that disturbs me. What disturbs me is that they have been brought up to not know. We as a society have become so narcissistic and entertainment focused that we neglect to teach the coming generations the lasting principles that have made us great. We now teach students to let success come to them and focus on making money rather than teaching them to pursue success and focus on working hard. What is the cure? I don't know. I'm just a student-teacher, but I'll tell you one thing. I'm going to find out.