Tag Archives: humility

Naked Among Friends

Posted on by under Guest, Travel & Place

The day of the trip was gorgeous, sunny and warm. I arrived at the shoreline nervous and hopeful, wanting to make a good impression. Sarah had invited me to the lake, and Sarah would understand how I felt. She was a female pastor, like I was. We both knew what a struggle it was to feel out of place in a profession that tends to be mostly male and mostly older. I didn’t get invited to golf games or men’s retreats, and so I wanted to make the most of this day–connecting with colleagues while inner tubing and water skiing.

16810235579_4f640d352a_oAfter setting up lawn chairs and drink coolers around a barbeque pit, Sarah asked if I’d like to try jet skiing. I’d never ridden a jet ski before, but watching people zipping around the lake inspired an unusual confidence to try something new.

I watched as Sarah took the jet ski out onto the lake, the handlebars parallel to the footstand as she floated on top of it. Then, as she picked up speed; she came up to her knees. Finally, after going even faster and taking the handlebars up to a perfect 90 degree angle against the footstand, she happily stood tall on the tiny machine cruising along the top of the water.

It looked easy, as hard things often do when done by an expert. When she handed the jet ski over to me, I made my first attempt, revving the engine too soon and losing control before I got the chance to raise to my knees. I tried again, same result. Over and over I held the handlebars, floating on the surface, coming close but always losing my grip and letting go before I could stand up.

Without fail, as soon as the the handlebars slipped out of my fingers, the jet ski would begin to circle, zipping around and around in the cool black water like an eager puppy hoping I would play its favorite game, waiting for me to regain control. Frustrated and embarrassed that everyone on the shore was watching me get schooled by this tiny plastic machine, I tried to keep smiling as I adjusted my swimsuit and climbed back on, sure that I had it in the bag this time, only to feel the jet ski power away from my tired hands again.

On my ninth attempt, I felt it. I was going to get up this time. I had the handles firmly gripped and as the motor began to pick up speed, I was ready. And then – whoosh – the force of the motor blew back into the water and took the bottom of my black tankini with it.

I was naked from the waist down.

I motored forward, trying to slow the machine as I bobbed behind it, holding the handlebars horizontal on the water. Each second put me farther away from my now missing bathing suit. Even if I could have stood up, I didn’t want to show off my exposed lower half to everyone enjoying their afternoon at the lake. As it was, the force of the motor was pushing that most buoyant body part to the surface, effectively mooning every passing boat.

Not knowing what else to do, I decided to cruise into the cove where our group was eating lunch. I thought if I explained the situation while staying a little way out from the shore, I could ask someone to throw me a towel and possibly save myself the humiliation of this new group of friends and fellow ministers seeing my backside.

I held steady in the water at the edge of the cove.

“You guys,” I yelled. “The jet ski blew off my bathing suit bottoms. Can someone throw me a towel?”

After a few moments of confused looks from the shore, I yelled again, hoping someone would take pity on me.

A guy in his lawn chair stood up and yelled back, “Um, we don’t know you.”

I looked again and realized that indeed, this was a different cove and a different group of people than I had come with. I waved and began to motor away, my rear end floating to the surface as the strangers on the shore began to cheer.

I found our friends two coves down. I tried yelling for help but before I could even begin my story, they applauded, laughing, and threw me a towel, telling me that they’d heard me yelling to the strangers down the lake.

The camaraderie the rest of that afternoon was rich, the ice having been clearly broken by my lake-wide display. Instead of being embarrassed or feeling alienated by my escapade, I felt the welcome and affection that comes with shared experience. I lost my bottoms and with them my nerves, finding instead a place among friends.

* * * * *

100_1050“Naked Among Friends” was written by Lindsey Smallwood (far left). Lindsey loves being near the water and usually manages to stay fully clothed. A former pastor and teacher, she now lives in Boulder, Colorado with her husband and two young sons where you’ll often find her chatting at the park, walking by the creek or writing on the couch. You can read more on her blog Songbird and a Nerd or find her on Facebook.

Pelican photo by Lars Plougmann

 

The Last Day of School: Lessons in Humility

Posted on by under Role & Place, Uncategorized

The first day I walked into a classroom and the door closed, I was terrified. I was all alone with 14 8th grade students. The room was oddly silent. I was in a very foreign world: an inner-city school, a middle school teacher, and math class. None of those phrases fit me. I am as white and upper-middle class as they come. I do not have the hip persona to connect with a middle schooler; I am more bookish and odd. Also, I barely knew what was going on during my own middle school experience. Relating to my students was like trying to jump across the Grand Canyon. Lastly, I was teaching math even though my passions, majors, and expertise are in literature and history.

When my first class started three years ago, I began by listing the rules of the classroom. I am not a rule follower in just about every area of my life, yet here I was expected to give and enforce obedience to many little rules. I told the students what I expected of them throughout the year:

“Show your work.” My 8th grade math teacher was somewhere rolling his eyes.

“Turn in your homework on time.” Some of my teachers are still missing many homework assignments from me.

“Write neatly.” This was just laughable. As my students quickly found out, I have probably the worst handwriting of any teacher ever.

By the time I was done with the rules and expectations, I was stunned to find myself still enclosed in this room with a bunch of students for whom I was responsible and was supposed to teach. I was even more shocked to find that even though the first day’s lesson was complete, I still had 25 minutes left in class. This was the first of many times where I had to think on my feet while teaching. I opened my text book and taught them Chapter 1 Lesson 1 from our Algebra books. Oddly, they followed along, did not immediately discredit me as a teacher, and learned something.

Teaching has been for me over the last three years an immensely personal and taxing job. I know there are many jobs which are more physically exhausting, but for me as a deeply introverted person, teaching is the most mentally and emotionally draining job I could imagine doing. Every moment with my students requires intensely thoughtful but intuitive responses to the immediate needs of many growing, emotional human beings. The Christian school I work at rightly asks its teachers to be habit trainers and disciple makers as well, but those parts of the job take an incredible amount of emotional energy. Every student I have taught carries a personal story, more often than not, those stories include poverty and broken families. But categorizing them never fully remedies their brokeness or sees them wholly as they are: human beings who desire to know and be known. This manifests itself in a thousand different ways. Sometimes in uncomfortably bold ways, and other times in quiet conversations. Each one teaches me something new, and in their own character and actions, whether good or bad, I find reflections of myself.

These reflections often reveal my own brokenness.

I have learned while teaching that to serve in this world as a Christian means to incarnate Christ in His most down trodden and bruised moments. Before I could really serve though, I found deeper and deeper layers of pride and selfishness. They were peeled back painfully and then trampled on as I thought I was doing a great service, but found all I could really do was pour myself out and hope to give something of value. When I think about the rough sides of serving, there is this deep, dark image that comes to mind from Shushako Endo’s book Silence. In this book about the persecution of Christians and Portuguese missionaries in Japan during the 17th century, this little statue of Christ is rubbed down to almost a non-image by the feet of the apostatizing Christians who instead of facing the suffering of persecution step on the statue to symbolically reject their faith. Their feet trampling Him with their rejection mar His face. Somehow this seems like the place Christ stands most deeply saving the world – He is the one serves us even as we deny Him.

In teaching I have found seemingly never ending tasks required to repair the broken breaches, and then as I work, the breaches within me have leaked my own sinfulness out into the kids’ messes. There have been deep, painful moments of brokenness in teaching which seemed to completely unravel any good I was doing. Sometimes it felt like the effort I was putting forth was getting nowhere and somehow the students or the parents or the world were just trampling down upon the work I was doing. But I think this often is the reality faced in serving this world: we get stomped on and don’t always see the benefit of it until much later. In humility we serve a beyond not our own.

There is this lovely poem/prayer often attributed to Oscar Romero but actually written for his memorial service which goes like this:

A Future Not Our Own

It helps now and then to step back and take a long view.
The Kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.

We accomplish in our lifetime only a fraction
of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of
saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession
brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives include everything.

This is what we are about. We plant the seeds that one
day will grow. We water the seeds already planted
knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects
far beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of
liberation in realizing this.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning,
a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s
grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the
difference between the master builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders, ministers, not
messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own.

 

This is my last day teaching in a classroom. I am thankful for the rest to come, but I am even more thankful for the lessons on humility and service which I have received the last three years.

A Beggar in a Summer Storm

Posted on by under Season & Place

My favorite word is ‘jaded.’ I love the odd flowiness of it and its root reference to a beautiful stone. But its meaning is what really gets me. Webster defines it ‘as made dull, apathetic, or cynical by experience.’ This seems like such an apt description of myself and many others. We are thoughtlessly wasteful of the joy and wonder of the world. Even if we are aware, we are often only viewing it in reference to what it has to say about us, who we are and how we are seen. We fear the sacrifice and suffering which might end this self-centered apathy and make us humble beggars seeking a wonder we do not own. Instead, in the midst of the abrading banality of life we lose vision, we numb ourselves, and we fall asleep.

During the summer months, I am jaded. The oppressive Texas heat shuts me inside both my house and myself. I find little joy in suffering through 105 degree days. If I have to walk or work anywhere outside during the summer months, my clothes turn into wet, salty rags.

Several summers ago, I was still at Texas A&M taking the last few classes I needed before I could graduate. The whole summer I walked to all my classes. This lead to the ruining of a few shirts after dreaded 20+ minute walks across A&M’s vast campus. The summer was full of heat, humidity, and horrible cricket infestations. Nature was a dank, fecund destroyer, but there was one day from the summer that I will always remember.

It was early in the afternoon in the middle of July. I was walking back from my History of 19th Century England class where I would laugh at every other sentence my sarcastic, thickly accented British teacher would utter. As I traversed across a lonely part of the large campus hurrying to escape the numbing of another oppressively hot day, rain came pouring down on me from a sun soaked sky. I stopped, stunned… awake. I held my breath wondering at the intercession of rain. A moment passed in the brief shower before I found cover underneath a gazebo to wait for it to stop. After walking home and sitting down, I wrote the following:

The grey light sheds raindrops onto the motions of my weightless body. Falling drops tinge me with their bombardment and the sensuous smell of rain emanates a taste of life. The reigning clouds lift me out of the heavy weight of a Texas summer sun. The passing rain is not more than a breeze and a grey shadow, but swift, this life is poured into the world.

There are stories about blind men who can see the world through the echoes of pattering rainfall. The rain’s knocking on the sides of the world opens the eyes of their minds. Are we not blind souls unawake until we hear and feel a knocking on the hard surfaces of the world? Are the poignant passing of pain and bitter tastes of life a rainfall into our world? Are true moments of sorrow and joy, the depths of human experience that mingle together in the heart of the universe, not the heavy beating of a life-giving rain?

Now I sit sedately in my comforted chair and would pass this world away, but a merciful God acts sorrow and joy into my heart with cauterizing nails to awaken me to the cloud of His presence.

The thunder roams off in the distance admitting that it too is a beggar at His feet.