Tag Archives: Silence

A City, Stopped

Posted on by under History and Place

Fifteen years ago, my wife Maile and I drove the straight stretch of 95 North where it races through New Jersey, slowing to a stand still as we waited to drive into New York City. The traffic converges there, just outside the Lincoln Tunnel, then slowly submerges, everyone holding their breath for the passage under.

But what I remember most is the way the smoke still billowed from the ground on the other side of the river, a cloud of it reaching out over the Hudson. We were moving to England, one month after 9/11, and the whole world was tipping off its axis.

* * * * *

Our move to England required visas, and those pieces of paper were tied up at the British consulate in NYC, so we hit the road that day in hopes of retrieving the visas personally and in time for our flight to London the following week.

I had been to New York City many times before that, and I looked forward to returning. There was something about the chaos of the city, the constant horns and maddening flow of people, that made it feel like anything might be possible. But when we drove up out of the Lincoln Tunnel and turned to enter the parking garage in the heart of the city, we were met not with the promise of adventure, but by guards with machine guns.

There had never been guards outside the parking garage, but there they were, carrying machine guns, staring straight ahead. They wore what looked like police riot gear. Their faces were emotionless landscapes. They asked for my driver’s licence. They searched the car. They reluctantly took down our license plate number and waved us through.

Still shaking, we climbed out of the car and then out of the underground garage, out into the light. It was then the silence hit us.  New York was quiet. I couldn’t believe it. A hush hovered in the alleys and drifted through the streets, like fog, and everything was muffled by it. Barely any of the cars blew their horns. People scurried from here to there, looking over their shoulders.

And there was the cloud. Always the cloud. Rising up like a smoke signal.

* * * * *

We sat for a few hours in the office. We presented our passports. We got the small pieces of paper we needed to start this new life on the other side of the Atlantic.

We walked the quiet streets back to the parking garage and we found our car. The same guards waved us off, and I stared at them in my rearview mirror. They were the new reality.

Back down through the tunnel, up and out again, then south on I-95, all the way. But I kept glancing in my rearview for as long as I could see the column of smoke, and it was deep, and it was foreboding. In those days we wondered what might be next.

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* * * * *

A few weeks later, visas and passports freshly stamped,  we walked the streets of London, our new home. Black cabs sifted through the traffic, gliding past pubs and red telephone booths. A low, slate-gray sky was barely held up by the buildings.

And on that day, everything stopped. Everything. Cars. Pedestrians. Businesses stopped serving people. A minute of silence for the United States and all that we had lost in 9/11, and a minute is a very long time in a city.

I’ve never experienced anything like it before or since. A city, stopped.

* * * * *

Shawn is a writer living in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. 9/11 photo by Kristen on Creative Commons.

The Inner Room

Posted on by under Secret Places

I am at the front of the room, facilitating conversation with the ten teenage girls who signed up for the seminar. I don’t have any experience with youth ministry but I was willing. In a small country parish, that is enough.

I recognize a few of the faces in front of me, members of faithful families who have “regular” pews.  I’m not sure why the others are here. Perhaps someone convinced them to come or they were so desperate to get out of the house during the summer weeks that they showed up. Their faces are a blend of emerging confidence and awkward child-likeness. They are lovely and quirky, innocent and fear-filled.

On brown paper, written in my fanciest handwriting, is our theme: You Were Made to SOAR! The themes are bulleted below: Sacraments, Silence, Service and Renewal, Relationship, Real Joy.  At the moment, I’m setting the stage to talk on the topic of silence.

“Some describe silence as going into your inner room. A place inside where you are safe and calm and you can talk to God — even if everything on the outside is crazy.”

We flip to Matthew’s Gospel and read about going to your inner room. I talk about the holy witness of people who were imprisoned and couldn’t “do” anything to serve God that we still recognize as saints. Their eyes indicate engagement; the ever-so-slight creases on their foreheads show it’s not quite clicking yet.  

I hesitate for a moment and glance downward around the bland classroom, a little unsure about sharing something vulnerable. When I was their age, I always felt like I was on the outside from my peers. The little girl in me is still afraid: Were they going to judge me? To ridicule something precious?  

“For example, when I am trying to get serious about silence, I envision a cozy cabin in my mind.”  I glance up to see if it will be okay to continue with the illustration. Seems so.8a4c4b877410e253d9c7e52aaa7afd74

“I roll up the thick carpet on the floor to reveal a trapdoor. With a candle in my hand, I open the door and descend into the dark cavern below. It’s a cool, safe space –no spiders!– and when I am ready, I blow out the candle.That’s my inner room.”

From the looks on their faces, I *think* the concept has clicked now. It’s okay to transition to the next step.

We walk over to the church, and I prep them, “I am going to play two songs and then, we are going to sit in silence for three minutes. It might feel like a long time but I’d like you to think about YOUR inner room.” My nervous energy hasn’t dissipated. Something in me wants their approval, wants them to think I am cool. I push the arrow button on my outdated technology and the songs fill the space, a musical repetition of the phase: ”Open the eyes of my heart, Lord.”  

When it’s time for us to be silent, the seconds creep by, and the creak of the pews is a telltale sign of the girls shifting uncomfortably in their seats. When I glance around the open space, there is a definite awkwardness lingering in the air; a couple of the girls are giggling into their hands. I’m tempted to cut it short but keeping my eyes focused on the rounded edge of the pew in front of me, I push forward with the plan.

The time of silence blessedly comes to an end and when we walk back to the hall, the girls fall into small groups to chitchat. I trail behind and try to come up with a backup plan to fill time if needed.          

As we settle back into the session, I pose the question, “Would anyone like to share about their inner room?” My voice is upbeat and confident but my spirit fears that awkward silence will again fill the space. A moment passes.

But then, they begin.

“I was at the ocean, the noise of the water blocked out all the other noise.”

“I thought about the couch in my house…I knew my family was nearby but I was alone.”

“I thought about crawling inside the tabernacle in the church.”

“I imagined myself in bubble that was filled with love.”

My heart rejoices at their responses. “Thank you, Lord”, I shoot a silent prayer.

One brave girl pushes back. “I don’t get it. I don’t know what everyone is talking about.”  The blue streak in her long hair is apparent as her fingers seek out split ends.

I affirm her willingness to speak the truth of her experience and try to say it another way.  “You know that voice in your head that can be really mean, that tells you all sorts of nasty things about yourself?!? I am trying to suggest that there is a place inside of you where even that voice is quiet.  And that’s the place that you talk to God.”

Her eyes shift slightly and a flicker of impact is momentarily revealed. She continues to push back but now, it is for the sake of rebelling. “Yah well, I don’t get it.”

“That’s okay. Stay open to the idea and maybe some day it will make sense.”  

We push on to the rest of the day’s content, talking about how a sacramental worldview and silence help you to understand how you are to serve. Service is a theme the girls connect with easily and the conversation flows naturally. The tension I have been holding in my shoulders begins to release.

At the close, we gather around a candle and I invite everyone to share their prayer intentions out loud.  Their voices ring out in the silence as we make our requests known to God. I am troubled by the magnitude of what they carry.

“For my mom who is fighting for her life with cancer.”  

“For my friend who has to leave her foster home.”  

“For my cousin who is in jail.”    

That night, I open the door of my secret place, the rustic cabin of my mind.  The floorboards creak as I walk to the center of the space.  Lowering to my hands and knees, I roll the thick carpet and raising, stash it in the corner.  My fingers grasp the metal handle of the square door to reveal a wooden staircase and raising it, I descend, bringing the glow of a candle into the space momentarily. 

In the silence of my inner room, I recall each of their faces.  I sit on the cool of the floor in the dark chamber and I pray.

mary bio YAH

 

Trading time for breath

Posted on by under Time & Place

It’s Monday, the day I most need yoga and least have time for it. At 3:58, I rush across the bamboo floor of the studio, flustered and sweaty. Calm, centered-looking people who are already on their mats dot the studio, assuming some type of restorative/meditative/stretching pose that seems to highlight and mock my perpetual race against time.

Does being centered make a person on time, I wonder, or does being on time make a person centered?

Maybe I’ll never know.

I unfurl my pea green yoga mat, then make too many trips back and forth for various props, with each pass noticing another one I’m still missing. As I set up a block to sit on, my mind bounces around: a client I forgot to email; my daughter stretched on her bed as I left home, promising she would start her homework; a dinner ingredient I forgot to put on the list for my quick grocery run after yoga.

Ginger root ginger root ginger root ginger root, I chant to myself as I wind my hair into a hasty top knot. Even as I try to commit the necessary ingredient to memory, my brain ricochets its response: You’ll forget you’ll forget you’ll forget.

Scolding my unhelpful pessimism as our yoga instructor welcomes us to the practice, I settle into a cross-legged sukhasana, replacing ginger root and you’ll forget with that calming word: su-KHA-sa-na.

I feel the word rolling through me slowly, syllable by syllable; it flows and spreads rather than ricochets. Sukhasana. Its mere foreignness and lyrical rhythm help me shift from a day marked by meetings on my calendar, check marks on my to-do list, and billable hours measured by my laptop’s digital clock.

Yoga class was one of those calendar items—the last one of the day. Now that I’m here, I do my best to let go.

Sukhasana.

*  *  *  *  *

“Observe your thoughts. Acknowledge them,” my yoga instructor says. “Then let them go with your next exhale. Transition from your day to your yoga practice. Your only task now is to turn your attention inward and follow your breath.”

I’m not good at letting go. I’m good at making things happen, by pure force of will and careful strategy. In almost all other parts of my life, time equals progress—steps walked, words typed, hours billed, rugs vacuumed, cakes transforming from formless batter to sliceable delicacy. But in yoga, time is liminal. It speeds up or slows down according to my ability to access more breath, to find the far reaches of my lungs.

I am here. I am here.

This is the mantra I turn to most often to quiet my mind and deepen my breath—an adagio in four counts, inviting my breath to dance with parts of my body it hasn’t visited all day.

Inhale: I – am – here – (rest)

Exhale: I – am – here – (rest)

When I’m surprised by the instructor’s gentle voice saying “Begin to bring your awareness back to this space,” I know I’ve done it: I put time in its place, if even just for a short spell.

*  *  *  *  *

“Your back legs can be straighter. Even straighter. Reeaach through those finger tips, getting as much length as possible in your waist!”

Our instructor is walking among our mats as we all exert ourselves toward the best Warrior One poses we’ve ever achieved. She gently taps up on knees that aren’t straight enough, and lifts up on rib cages that could find another millimeter of length. As she wanders to my side of the studio I straighten and lengthen even more, hoping my back leg is one she won’t tap. At this moment I want to impress her as much as I want to punch her.

“Good! OK, hold it. Hold it. Just one more breath.”

One more breath my ass, I think. My deeply bent front leg begins to take on a trembling life of its own as our instructor forgets the definition of “one more breath,” pausing to align someone’s uneven hips.

In the agony, time becomes time again. There isn’t a clock visible in the studio, but there is a second hand ticking in my mind, mocking me as it did in middle school PE class when I was being timed for the dreaded “flex arm hang,” my arms betraying me in violent tremors.

Finally we are released from our deep lunge misery and allowed to “rest” in downward facing dog.

“That was wonderful!”

I’m a sucker for her enthusiastic praise every time.

*  *  *  *  *

6449941549_23f87d5c87_bFinally we transition into everyone’s favorite pose: savasana, or “corpse pose.” I’ve worked hard, so I sink into it gratefully, like one who has earned the right to release every muscle in her body.

But my love for savasana stems from more than my immediate need for a rest; I love it because there are no other moments in my busy life when I give myself permission to fully let go. No control. No effort. No holding what has been or what’s next. No seconds ticking into minutes.

For a while I am only a body, existing outside of time.

*  *  *  *  *

(Savasana photo, above, by Robert Bejil.)

Kristin bio YAH

My True Self Was Hidden in the Woods Long Ago

Posted on by under Time & Place

There’s no easy way to access the woods behind my grandparent’s former home in suburban Philadelphia. But before my grandmother sold the house, I took one last rambling trip into the woods with my fiancée, Julie. She needed to see this place with me before we lost our access to it forever.

The stone steps that I used to tramp down were covered with dirt and leaves;  no one had set foot on them in years. We wound our way through some overgrown bushes that had taken over the trail, and hit the old dirt bike track that a kid down the street used to zip around on all summer. In the winter that steep, narrow trail had been a kind of toboggan track. The steep starting point was made all the more exciting with the large bump toward the bottom that sent my plastic sled shooting into the air. The massive rocks that popped out here and there added to the excitement when we didn’t have enough snow.

We passed the massive tree that had fallen over and had served as the bench for countless teenagers who ventured into the woods at nighttime to make massive bonfires. In the morning I used to poke sticks around in the ashes they left behind.

2015-06-Life-of-Pix-free-stock-photos-trees-forest-light-jordanmcqueenLooking up from the fallen tree, we could see the ridge line where my friend had seen a deer for the first time. Those woods were jam packed with deer, and hardly a day passed without seeing a few. He was maybe nine or ten years old, and as a child of the suburban edge of Philadelphia’s city limits, could only shout, “It has a tail!!!”

But nothing in these woods compared to its real treasure: the stream. It wasn’t much of a stream. It was hardly wider than 8 feet at most points, and who knows what kinds of pollutants had run off into it. But this stream, had always served as my main destination.

Along the shallow points I built bridges out of carefully piled rocks. Along the deep parts I skimmed pebbles. In the winter I slipped around on its smooth, icy surface with my wooden ice hockey stick and a hard rubber puck. Some days I even carried my hockey net down so that I could practice elevating the puck.

I don’t remember thinking all that much about those woods as a kid. I just remember being drawn to them every day. I never had to weigh whether or not I “wanted” to go into the woods by myself. If the weather was clear and I had the time, I typically headed down without a second thought.

I wish I could remember when I stopped going down into the woods. Something changed in me. As I grew up and “matured,” I lost sight of the freedom I found in the woods. I started thinking about it more. Going off into the woods suddenly felt a little riskier, even though I was far larger and stronger than I had ever been as an elementary school child.

At a certain point I stopped wandering in the woods. I never came close to rediscovering that desire to roam in the woods until going away to college. Perhaps the weight of guilt to pray more prompted me to take more walks in the woods, but soon the tiny patch of woods became a sanctuary of solitude again. When Julie and I returned home for that last visit in the woods behind my grandparents’ home a few years after graduating, I was finally remembering that something significant and sacred had taken place in those woods.

But concurrent with this realization, the path to those memories was becoming obscured and uncertain–like steps covered in leaves and dirt.

These days I feel a tiny tug to get better at seeking solitude, to love it the way that little boy loved venturing into the woods. My days are crammed with screens, conversations, and tasks. Somewhere deep within myself, I can sense a part of myself trying to find his way back into the woods. Something craves that solitude, to make it automatic and natural and to feel completely safe and at home in my own company apart from the noise and worries of life.

Was my time in the woods was just the product of youthful leisure? Or was it the purest expression of myself, now overgrown? Did I just go through a phase that is now dead and gone, or did my young mind try to set something in motion that I have needed so desperately as I enter middle age?

I like to think it was a divine mercy that prompted me to take that final trip into the woods with my future wife, and to mark off that place, in our shared memory, as something significant and worth sharing. If I have any hope of finding my true self, I suspect that it can be found wandering in my grandparents’ woods.

Ed bio YAH

Waking Up

Posted on by under Sound & Place

I am three, and I’m waking up from my afternoon nap in the right way: Slowly. Contentedly. In my own time and space.

I’m in no hurry to open my eyes. The bedroom is dim from the pulled curtains, anyway, and I’ve memorized every sight I would see from my place on the bottom bunk.

6259167128_a64b881939_bAn airplane flies overhead. In our house, below a well-traveled flight path to the airport, it’s a sound as common as a truck roaring by on our busy inner-city street. Whenever the house is quiet and I’m quiet, it seems there’s the sound of a plane somewhere in the sky.

The window is open in the bedroom I share with my brother, who, at almost-six, is too old for naps. I can hear the neighborhood kids playing outside. Laughter and shrieking, then protests, complaints.

Now the sound of a hose as more water is added to the plastic wading pool in the yard next door. I can picture the blue pool, the grass clippings floating on the glistening water.

There’s the voice of the bossiest girl, who is not the oldest but is the most sure of what she wants and how to get it. Just the tone of her voice conjures a snapshot of her hands on her hips, one hip jutted out to the side.  

My eyes are awake now, primed by scenes my ears have fashioned. I get up, my pigtails lopsided from their time on the pillow, and leave my bottom bunk to follow the sound of humming to my mother.

*    *    *    *    *

We lived on the ground floor of the house on Walnut Street until I was five. It was my first home. There are photographs to inform my visual sense of that place, but I can’t really claim them as memories. What I truly remember, from deep in some audio file my mind, are sounds.

Like the sound of my mom humming.

Our living space was small, making it easy for sounds to travel from one room to the next. My mom loves silence, but sometimes I think she loves it because it’s like a blank canvas—an open space for her to hum or whistle into as she folds laundry or chops vegetables. In the house on Walnut Street, her humming was my homing beacon as I navigated the waters between independence and security.

Sometimes upon waking from a nap I could hear my grandmother’s musical voice coming from the kitchen—a one-way, joyful conversation that meant an “audio letter” had arrived in that day’s mail. With my grandparents far away in California and long distance phone rates too costly for either household’s budget, my mom and grandma regularly recorded newsy updates on small, table-top cassette players. The tapes were mailed back and forth in padded manila envelopes.

If Mom was recording a letter to Grandma rather than listening to one, she would announce my appearance into the small microphone, inviting me to talk. “Oh, here’s Krissy! She just woke up from her nap. Krissy, say hi to Grandma and Grandpa! Tell them what kind of cookies we baked this morning.”

My dad’s arrival home each evening was inevitably announced through the stereo speakers: the pop-and-crackle of the needle touching an album. When Dad was home, there was always music playing. Aaron Copeland, Miles Davis, Stephen Sondheim, Bela Bartok, the Beatles, Peter, Paul & Mary—their electrifying, silky, surprising, earthy, and complex notes were the soundtrack of my childhood (the volume always a bit too high for my mom’s taste).

During warmer months, the sounds in our home mingled with the sounds of the world outside. In 1970s Michigan, no one had air conditioning—certainly not those of us renting old houses divided into duplexes in the city’s core. We opened windows, turned on noisy box fans, and spent as much time as possible playing outside with water, or sitting on shady stoops. Private lives were aired to the neighborhood: Everyone’s music and arguments, their clattering pots and pans and crying babies, were heard alongside the passing boom of car stereos, loud mufflers, and barking dogs.

After being tucked into my bottom bunk each night, the sounds of Walnut Street played on, each sound telling me a story. Some were as comforting and present as the hum of my mom’s sewing machine on the kitchen table; others were as mysterious and distant as another plane in the night sky, its seats filled with strangers traveling who knows where. 

*    *    *    *    *

Kristin bio YAH

A Goose in Church

Posted on by under Laughter and Place

“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!”, my platinum blonde friend, Christine squealed in a loud, surprised pitch. Four of us us were standing in a wooden pew when her cry erupted.  

It had been a fairly normal day in our world. Donors dropping off supplies; volunteers stopping in to complete projects; the pregnant women heading in various directions for classeSt marys phxs and appointments. We were all live-in volunteers in a community for homeless pregnant women a few blocks away and attending noontime daily Mass was one strategy for coping with the high-drama environment. Those who were available piled into the broken-down car that was used for errands and dashed into “our spot” in the expansive downtown church a few minutes away.

The abbreviated daily Mass progressed, as usual, through the various stages: the reading of Scripture, a brief reflection, the Eucharistic prayers. During the Our Father, we held hands as we joined together in the rhythmic words that spoke of what sustained us: “Give us this day Thy daily bread” and “Forgive us our trespasses.”  

 Our hands dropped to our side as we said “Amen.” The priest invited us to turn to neighbors and offer the customary sign of peace, a ritual reminder to reconcile with our brothers and sisters whenever needed. As friends and housemates, we offered one another a warm hug, not simply the standard handshake.

At my side, CRay-Ban-Sunglasses-Specials-Summer-2015-For-Men-Women-1hristine had a glamorous flair. Her nails were freshly painted and sunglasses were perched on top of her head. I offered my curvy and boisterous roommate an embrace. As our arms released and she turned to the person next to her, I noticed her sunglasses slipping down the back of her head.

With overeager helpfulness, I lunged to catch the sunglasses and rescue them on their descent downward to the floor.

But, I’ve never been a great catch.

Instead of the glasses, I caught a fleshy handful of her buttocks, in a pointedly vulnerable area.

The sunglasses clattered on the hard cement floor.

She squealed and grasped her backside.

I blushed and muttered a few uncomfortable sounds.

Mass continued.

For a few moments, we suppressed our giggles and twitterings, attempting to think holy thoughts and avoid eye contact. The pressure mounted.

I pressed my hand into my mouth and tried to take in a deep breath, kneeling with my head bowed and gazing at the curve of the pew in front of me. As the holy words echoed around the walls of the Church– “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world”– and the priest reverently raised the Blessed Host high above his head, the laughter erupted out of me.  

I squawked the odd noise of laughter attempting to be contained.

Once noise was emitted, Christine lost control as well.

In this most sacred of moments, we sputtered and croaked, desperately trying to stop but unable to regain the prayerful silence proper to the moment.  

Our efforts to contain the hilarity only spurred it onward. One small noise sent the other into fits and starts. Christine’s face turned red from the efforts to hold the laughter in, and happy tears ran down my face. Other people in the Church glanced at us out of the corner of their eyes, trying to understand what was happening without turning their heads.

We did battle with our laughter through the remaining minutes of Mass.

As it blessedly came to an end, we were released from the hold of sacred silence in holy space.  We pressed our weight into the large door at the back of the Church and walked into the light of street life and bright sunshine.

Among the small group of women gathered on the elevated landing, the clucking began:  storytelling, teasing, retelling, analyzing.  

And the release of happy laughter.

geese

 

 

mary bio YAH

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.