I was just listening to "When Will the Water Stop" by Dispatch, the background music annoying me as I tried to focus on writing. Getting up to turn off the music, I noticed that the rain had stopped.
I was looking for my SLANT poster to hang in my new classroom. Sit up straight, Listen, Ask and questions, Nod and answer questions, Track with your eyes the teacher and your fellow students. Not finding it in my stack of posters, I paused in a moment of exasperation, then felt summoned to the closet where I found it immediately.
Waiting for my wife and mother-in-law to return from errands, I called them via cell to find out what a neighbor had left for me recently. They couldn't tell me at the moment, but seconds later that same neighbor walked by.
Much of the last few months of my life have gone like this: a series of beneficial synchronicities. But this time has also corresponded with a daily attempt to surrender my atheism and my ego, turning my life over to a "Great Spirit" that, admittedly and in all humility, I do not understand. While I do not understand this "Spirit", which many people call God by one name or another, I have decided to submit to It/Him/Her.
From hence forward in this journal, I will call this spirit Him for the sake of brevity. I have lived a life for which I could apologize endlessly; however, whoever happens upon this and becomes a reader will probably find such apologies tedious, so let this stand as my last apology for matters of diction.
Now to the project at hand: I believe that I have come to know how God works. What I'd like to experiment with and deduce on a daily basis is how God can work through me in the classroom. My intent with this journal is to record, predict, muse upon, and study this work in the course of the 2010-2011 school year. The task I set for myself is a 1/2 hour of writing each morning from 6-6:30 am before starting the final preparation for each school day. I will begin with a quote from the "Message from God" that I get every day on my Google home page, then I will reflect on how prayer and bible study will influence my teaching.
By "teaching" I mean everything that I do as an educator from correcting to counseling, from lesson plans to grading, from hallway conversations to obervations of staff meetings. As a public school teacher, I have no intention of praying or reading the Bible with my students, nor any intention of evangelizing in any way. In fact, I plan on being as reticent as possible about this project. Jesus said that when you pray, you should do so privately in a closet, not on a street corner so as to make a spectacle of your devotion. That's what I shall try to do.
Perhaps I'm wrong and these synchronicities--great and small--are mere coincidences. Perhaps simply by focusing on a few things, one tends to find them going about one's day. That can't be argued. But, in any case, without evangelizing, there's no harm in this project as Hippocratic set it forth for all the physicians, "First off, do no harm."
But what if there's so much more than a few interesting coincidences.
Today's quote from "Two Listeners" is "You are to feel plenty. My storehouses are full to overflowing. You must see this in your mind before you can realize it in material form."
An overflowing storehouse to a teacher would be roster of students, all of whom did their best and grew and learned throughout the year. It would be a year in which each student recognized him/herself as a positive agent of transformation in his/her own life and our community.
I have to go now and continue the project of getting my room in order for the school year. But that's what I'm going to aim for, that's my goal: all students growing and learning and doing their best; all students as positive agents of transformation.
Before leaving, here's a quote sent to me as part of a story from my good friend, Alan Burt.
"God is so big He can cover the whole world with his
Love and so small He can curl up inside your heart.
When God leads you to the edge of the cliff, trust Him fully and let go."
