Category: Faith

For the Rookies, On the First Day of School 2014-2015

For the rookies in 2015-2016!

There's nothing better than brand new school supplies!
There’s nothing better than brand new school supplies!

At the very core of education, in your own classroom, there is nothing like the magic of educating kids. Nothing. You see moments in a kid’s life, flashes of brilliance and frustration; you hear them laugh, you see them cry. You are mom, friend, sister; you are at once the coolest cat and the biggest bitch; you will love them, and have days where you could climb a mountain; you will hate them and have days where you wish it was still legal to smack them.

You will love their parents. You will hate their parents. You will see some beautiful souls and some souls bound for the deepest parts of hell. You will hear stories that make you believe in the human spirit, and stories that give you nightmares. Students will lie to your face; parents will lie to your face. One day, a student will tell you a truth so terrible that you will wish they had lied. You will help them while your heart is breaking inside.

You will want to save them. Then you will learn that some kids are not meant to be saved by you. And you will cry.

You will know you are on the right track when the question of your reputation results in fierce debate between the kids who love you and the kids who hate you. Change is hard for teenagers, just like for grown ups. When you push them, they’ll push back. Stay strong. I once had a student named Jerome revise a paper 9 times to get a B and when he did, he hung that thing proudly on the fridge. And didn’t speak to me for two weeks.

I was so proud of him.

You will make mistakes. Tons. There’s no way to talk to 200 kids a day and not say something stupid on a fairly regular basis. When you do, just apologize. They will respect you forever because no one ever apologizes to teenagers. Let them learn from you that apologies don’t make you weak, they make you honorable.

The kids–they will strip you down and make you see who you really are. Then, if you let them, they will make you better, even the ones who make you crazy first.

Maybe them most of all.

So best of luck. You’ll need it between principals trying to make quotas and veteran teachers with an ax to grind and an entire political system that likes to demonize your profession. But it’s not cliche that you are in charge of the future so you have to find a way to manage. You’ll want to quit. All of us wanted to quit sometime in that first year, usually in January or February.

But hang on.  I promise that by May you will feel much better.

Grace Walking

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It isn’t often that grace walks around on two feet in this world. But grace is walking in Charleston.

Felicia Sanders played dead in a puddle of her son’s blood. He died. She survived to offer mercy to his killer.

Nadine Collier’s 70 year old mom went to that bible study and didn’t come back. Nadine offered forgiveness.

Bethane Middleton Brown’s sister was killed, leaving behind four daughters. But Bethane told the world “We are the family that love built. We have no room for hating.”

I don’t know if I could do what they did. Maybe, now that I have seen them do it.

A mother. A daughter. A sister.

There are some people calling these women weak, saying things will never change if we appear to accept and forgive the things that are done in the name of hatred, ignorance, bigotry.

But these women aren’t sending a message to men. They are talking to the evil that walked into their sacred house of God and tried to rob them of their faith.

And they are telling him that he failed.

Wherefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

2 Corinthians 12:10

If you want to help the people of Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC you can donate to these two funds, one to help the church members and one in honor of Reverend Pinckney. Or you can send an email of prayer and support directly to the church from the Contact US button on their website.

Rescue Task Force to Nepal

In times of widespread disaster, I am always impressed by the way the world responds.  Sometimes, though, it’s hard to know where to send your money so that it will have the most impact.  We’ve posted before that Dana’s uncle, Gary Becks, founded and still works with a global volunteer disaster relief organization, Rescue Task Force.

Rescue Task Force currently has two teams scheduled for Honduras and El Salvador bringing dental care, clean water, and medical services and a team leaving for Cambodia and Laos this Thursday.  But even though all of their US-based teams are tied up helping in other areas, Rescue Task Force has a team that is based in Bangkok, Thailand, that is working to get disaster supplies and relief to the victims of the earthquakes that have rocked Nepal.

100% of donations made for Nepal will go directly to supplies for the earthquake victims.  All of the aid workers are volunteers and will hand deliver food, clothing, blankets, basic toiletries, and baby necessities.  If you would like to donate, please visit www.rescuetaskforce.org  And join us in praying for the families in Nepal and the rescue workers that are so desperately trying to reach them.

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The Pieces of My Heart

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Yesterday our pastor, Father Mike, came to talk to the adult formation class. He was supposed to have a list of questions to answer, but he left it at home. So instead, he asked “Does anyone have anything they want to ask?”

One of the dads said “Sure” and opened up the can of gay marriage.

At which point, most people screwed themselves down into their seats. I know I did. When religious folk start talking about gay marriage, I listen fearfully, waiting for them to say the thing that means I have to get up and walk out, the thing that breaks tiny pieces off my heart.

Those pieces have names, children I have known and taught. Most of their faces blend down into one specific child, bullied into cutting precisely spaced lines up both his arms.

Three of those pieces belong to good friends, married almost as long as Shea and me, and their sweet son, who they had to fight to get baptized in a Catholic church. They are good moms, with a strong devotion to Mary, like most Catholic moms. They try to go to Mass every week, but sometimes the tension is too much.

Two pieces belong to distant cousins, together for almost fifteen years.

And two to the couple who have lived next door to my parents for over twenty.

Four to the family down the street, with their sweet and wonderful daughters.

One to a dear friend who is a fierce defender of our faith and also gay and drinks far too much to reconcile those two truths in his life.

So when people of God rail angrily against the dangers and threats of gay marriage, I want to hold these pieces of my heart up and say “But what about them? They are beloved children of God too. And we are hurting them in God’s name. We are turning them away. How can this be right?”

But it wasn’t like that yesterday. No fire and brimstone. No black and white. And best of all, no anger.

Father Mike explained the church’s position clearly, and the biblical basis for definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. He delineated between legal marriage and sacramental marriage. He revisited the church’s position on the sanctity of life and the way we are called to treat all people with love and kindness.

But then he said the thing that I have been waiting for a priest to say. I don’t remember his exact words but here’s the gist:

“This is a tough issue. And we have to struggle with it. It’s not enough to simply say one thing or the other. We have to engage it and pray over it and look to the Word of God.

Because we have these people in our lives who are good and we love them. So we have to understand that it’s messy.”

It’s messy.

Shea and I stand apart from our church on homosexuality. We struggled with it. We prayed. We saw the people that God walked through our lives and we know that love does not come from evil. We contemplated leaving the church. We walked out of Mass when priests preached hellfire and brimstone and sanctioned bullying. We wrote letters to the bishop to complain.

We decided to stay.

We decided to choose love.

Love for our friends and family and their relationships. We witness and support their commitments, and share the struggles of marriage and parenting.

Love for anyone searching for who they are. I always tried to be a safe and soft place for my students to land when they were wrestling with life. Now we try to be safe and soft as a family.

Love for the goodness of the church, for our faith and traditions.

Love for the humility of Pope Francis and Father Mike who remind us that it’s messy.

I asked Father Mike yesterday if my friends would be welcome to sit in his church, as a family. To raise their son as a Catholic.

And he said yes. Because of the sanctity of life. Because we shouldn’t keep anyone from a relationship with God. Because Jesus called us to love.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, but I think Father Mike has the right idea.

 

You Can Take It With You!

 We’re celebrating two years by looking back on some of our favorite posts.

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My very first post on Full of Graces was “Here”.

This is part of what I said:

And now…I know this: my life is not a highway anymore. Once I slowed down, I noticed that I had arrived. I was Here.

This is not about being a stay at home mom. That’s not what I mean by Here.

Here is a place for which my husband and I hoped, prayed and worked.

Here is a destination to be savored and explored.

Here there are graces and blessings and peace.

Here is what I wanted; I need to stand still, right Here and live it.

The journey is important. The journey pushes and strengthens us. But every journey needs a destination, or it’s just wandering.

When I wrote those lines, I was more hoping they were true than knowing for sure. But that’s kind of how I roll. I think about how life would be if and then I set out to make it happen.

Sometimes, I succeed. Sometimes, I don’t. And sometimes, a better truth comes from all that effort.

When I made my life still and calm and prayerful, into the stillness came a loud awareness that we needed to make a change.

Let me tell you, it wasn’t very long either. Makes me wonder what other stuff I missed in my loud and busy previous life.

So we made a journey. And the journey taught me a lesson about Here.

Here is a lot like Truth. Static AND dynamic. Here is more about heart and people than it is about place.  My Here is here, same as it was there. The same graces and blessings and peace. Same God. Same gratitude.

We just picked it up and moved it 750 miles.

But if I had never learned to stand quietly and still, I wouldn’t have recognized my Here. And then either we wouldn’t have moved or I would have left my Here behind.

Then there would be no Here here.

Or there.

Holy Dr. Seuss.

My point is that first we have to learn to stand still and quiet in our Here, filled with graces and blessings and peace. And then it doesn’t matter what happens next because the Here is portable.

We can take it with us.