Slow Travel

One of the Brothers in California told me about the time when he was sent to the Philippines as a missionary, over fifty years ago. He said that it took 17 days by boat. I like that. Today it only takes 17 hours by plane. On a ship, you might spend the time walking along the decks, chatting with passengers, having leisurely meals, doing some writing or reflecting or nothing at all, and enjoying the rhythm of the journey. I’ve never heard of anyone suffering from “ship lag.” On a jet airplane, on the other hand, you are slotted into rather confining seats (“Yes, sir, 22D is down the aisle and to the left.”) in very close proximity to people you don’t know (Whose elbow will get that arm rest?), kept busy by mystery meals that appear and disappear within 20 minutes, seduced by multiple movies of dubious character, and lulled to catatonic complacency by the rhythm of the engine drone. Perhaps “jet lag” is nature’s way of telling us that traveling this way puts us out of sync with the universe, as if we didn’t know that already.

To be fair, plane travel is entirely practical for most people. It’s the quickest way to get from point A to point B on the globe. If we had the time, most of us would likely choose to travel differently, by train or ship or even by car. There are still vestiges of the excitement of that kind of travel, even with airplanes. It may be seen in the way people jostle to get onto the plane at the beginning of their journey, happily settling their baggage in the overhead, stuffing their magazine, books, snacks, etc. in the seat pocket in front of them, harboring the simple excitement of going on this really fast jet ride. However, that same excitement seems to be reversed at the end of the plane trip, when most people can’t wait to grab their stuff, escape down the aisle, hurry up the ramp, and move out into the more familiar surroundings of mother earth. What began with eager interest ends with stoic relief.

One might make an analogy to the way that people approach life. Some see it as a journey to be experienced and enjoyed, as children do, while others see it as a burden to be largely endured, as some older people do. Some are happy at the prospect of life’s daily moments, while others are fearful of life’s daily challenges. Most of us are probably a mixture of both, weighing more to one side or the other depending on circumstances and the state of our digestion. But all of us are provided with the ability, the opportunity, to choose our disposition. Abraham Lincoln is said to have remarked, “People are just about as happy as they make up their minds to be”. We can all probably think of a few friends or family members who are good examples of this. In fact, the ability to make a specific choice shapes the consequences of that choice and its effect upon us.  The phrase “Fake it ‘til you make it” works because it’s driven by choice, achieving its transformative power from the effect of cumulative choices. What we choose to do literally changes our world and that of others.

I’ve always liked some advice that St. John Baptist de La Salle gave in a letter to one of the Brothers: “To my mind, what I must ask of God in prayer is that he tell me what he wants me to do and inspires me with the disposition he wants me to have.” The second part is the interesting bit, because we don’t often hear that about prayer. Yet I believe that it may be the real driver for the first part. Our disposition / perspective / attitude / viewpoint / frame of reference provides the means to focus in on what’s important and what’s next for us.

Maybe that’s why ship and train journeys continue to be attractive; not because they are efficient but because they are not, giving us a chance to quietly walk the deck for a while. It makes me wonder if my frequent flier miles can be used for ship or rail travel. That would change my disposition about flying quite nicely.

Lawrence da Silva, RIP

This last week, God called to his side one of those individuals who quietly works in the background to achieve great things. Lawrence da Silva, the Chairman of the Board of Governors since SJI International's inception, who led the drive to establish the school in 2006, passed away unexpectedly on January 1, 2013. It had been largely through his enthusiasm, drive, competence, connections, and generous spirit that we were able to admit our first batch of students in January 2007, within 10 months of the school’s conception. If ever there was someone who could legitimately be described as a driving force for the school, it would be Lawrence da Silva.

Those of us who worked with him on a regular basis, either through the Board of Governors or through regular interactions on school issues, came to appreciate his wisdom, his vast professional experience, and his wonderful personality. He was one of those individuals who is able to make others feel important, no matter their role or status, simply through his open smile, his supportive words, and his clear direction or suggestions. One felt quietly blessed simply by being with him.

Lawrence carried a great love and respect for Lasallian education that dated from his WWII experience in early childhood when he first encountered the Brothers. He never forgot the kindness shown to him at that time and spent a life that was also naturally generous toward others, especially those most in need or abandoned. Attending Lasallian schools in Singapore solidified his commitment to the transformative potential of education, and his professional life focused on all of the unseen background elements of a successful educational enterprise (administration, finances, HR, facilities, etc.), leading him to become a superb, well-respected, and wise administrator. In his own humble way, he advocated for the simple realities of human life and human relationships, building respect while holding people accountable through recognizing their human dignity and simply enjoying the opportunity to interact with those around him.

The generosity of his time, talents, and treasure was truly exceptional. He would not want me to share any details of the ways in which he supported the school financially, through scholarships, building fund donations, annual fund contributions, and special projects, especially in supporting students in need. Suffice it to say that his financial support equaled or exceeded the amount of time and effort he spent in both establishing the school and in ensuring its ongoing success. We owe him a deep debt of gratitude and will very much miss his guidance, support, and friendship.

The direction that he established for our school, through his decisions, recommendations, and wide-ranging conversations, is one that we gladly maintain and will continue to advance. We have started a scholarship fund in his name, thereby acknowledging his deep interest in supporting students in need, and we will honor his memory best by making the school flourish in its every endeavour on behalf of those entrusted to our care.

May God grant him eternal rest, and may all of us be inspired by his example and deep faith in God and others, thankful for the grace of having shared in the life journey of this truly outstanding Catholic and Josephian.

Saint Nicholas - Sinterklaas

There is a very fine tradition from my youth that I rather miss. It is the tradition in Holland of celebrating the feast day of St. Nicholas on December 6^th. The early memories from anyone who grew in that part of the world are as fondly recalled during this time as are your own memories from Christmas times past.

St. Nicholas was a Greek Bishop in Myra (present day Turkey) in the 4^th century who gained a wide reputation for kindness and charity, especially in regard to children. There are a host of wonderful legends and stories around his life, many of which have been retold over the centuries simply for the pleasure of relating something about the goodness of human nature.

Here is the one that I like best. Saint Nicholas (or “Sinterklaas” in Dutch, which eventually became “Santa Claus” when brought over to the U.S. by the early immigrants) learned that a poor man had three daughters. But because they were poor, they had no dowry and therefore would not be able to find a good husband. He found out that one of the daughters was hoping to get married to a fine young man but despaired of ever gaining a dowry. Therefore, St. Nicholas had one of his servants go to the poor man’s house at night, place a bag of gold in front of the door, knock on the door, and run away to hide to make sure that they received the gold. (Hence a Dutch tradition of going to relatives and friends homes around this time, placing a parcel on their front step, ringing the door bell, and running away to watch them from a hidden location.)

When the second daughter was about to be married, he again found out and sent another servant with a bag of gold. But this time, they were watching the door because they had anticipated that this might happen and wanted to thank you the secret donor. So instead the servant saw a partially open window in the house, pushed aside the curtain and threw the bag into the room before fleeing. (Hence a Dutch tradition that for several days prior to December 6^th, a family with young children may be at dinner and suddenly toward the end of dinner, a hand reaches into the room from a previously closed window and throws candies and small hard cookies all over the room, but to the delight and screams of the semi-frightened children.)

Finally, the third daughter was to get married, and the poor man’s family watched the door and the windows for several nights. This time, the servant saw what was going on from some distance away, climbed up to the roof of a neighboring house, and made his way to the chimney where he dropped the bag of gold down the chimney. The daughter happened to be drying her socks inside the fireplace, where a very small fire was burning. The gold bag fell and dropped right into one the socks, where she found it the next morning.

The tradition from these stories, of course, is the giving of gifts on the saint’s feast day, and subsequently on Christmas Day from Santa Claus. But there is one other interesting tradition that comes from the fact that St. Nicholas is also the patron of pawn shops. From the Middle Ages forward, the symbol above every pawn shop has been three golden balls, symbolizing the three bags of gold that St. Nicholas had provided for the three daughters. Merry Christmas.

Ends and Beginnings

The ends of things very often become the beginnings of other things. Here we are at the end of the school year, and I’m sure that you, like myself, have found the time zipping by with little sense of decency for the seriousness with which we had approached it. The traditional analogy of “time is like a river” seems more and more apt, as often we are carried along with little volition, and all we can really do is admire the scenery in passing.

But there is one thing that seems to remain, to stay with us on that river, and it is the grit of relationships, those bonds of all-too-human personal encounter that both irritate us and give real traction in life. Somehow, despite all the rest, a real relationship or friendship endures, even grows. Its epitome is expressed by William Shakespeare in Sonnet 116: “Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come. Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, but bears it out even to the edge of doom.”

This may seem a bit overblown for a simple reflection at the end of a school year. Yet little do we realize the experience of others. It wouldn’t be very wrong to say that for many students, big changes lie ahead around the bend. What to parents or administrators or staff members with years of experience might simply seem to be another holiday break before school resumes, to others is the end of one world and the beginning of a whole new world of experience, whether it be Grade 1, Grade 6 (PSLE!), Grade 7, Grade 11 (IB!) or NS.

The good thing is that most of us look forward more than we look backward. We seek new things ahead, and these carry greater weight than those things that we’ve left behind. We still appreciate Woody in his toy box, and we may even carry him with us to college, but he’s now a passenger on a brand new ride. The great wonder of humanity is the fact that we can wonder at all. When imagination is ignited by reason, magic happens.

At some point in one’s life, the whole thing sort of reverses. What was old once now seems new, and those new-fangled things are just newer versions of old notions. We return to things in the past that had never received much attention from us and discover previously unknown realities because they were previously, quite literally, unseen. Eyes are opened, and what had been there all along, what was available all along, becomes graced with new meaning and suddenly carries real substance. (The bible is chock full of those stories.) Life begins anew.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

         (T.S. Eliot - Little Gidding V)

Thanksgiving and the PSLE

There is an interesting contrast happening today (Thursday). Back in the U.S., they are celebrating Thanksgiving. It is the busiest time of the year for airports, highways, and transportation systems. Everyone is trying to get home to their families, because this is a time to celebrate the fact that we have a family, that we are part of a family, and that “family” is an important thing. It was Robert Frost, the American poet, who said: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Home is the one last refuge from unrealistic expectations.

As all of you will know, in Singapore it is also the day when the PSLE (Primary School Leaving Exam) results are made known. Young Grade 6 students far and near will find out how well they did in this all-important examination. Can they now go to the high school of their choice, or will they instead go to a school with some lesser perceived value? The PSLE, from what I’ve come to understand since my arrival a short time ago, is something that is much more likely to bring anxiety than to relieve it, much more likely to cause stress than to dissipate it. It is a marker for what is expected, both now and into the future. There is no refuge from expectations when it comes to this unique and inescapable academic rite of passage.

Since I have not experienced the PSLE (I don’t want to, thank you) and since I’ve not been a parent of a student who has experienced it, I cannot fully perceive the potent power of the PSLE. What I have heard, however, are the views of older Singaporeans who say: “Oh, yes. We had that exam. But our parents just told us to study. They did not stress over it, and we did not stress very much either. We just took it.” Apparently at that time, this exam was pretty much like any other exam: probably difficult, but okay if you studied what you were told to study. And most students had a pretty good notion of how they were going to do on it anyway, because they knew themselves better than their parents.

There seems to be a lot written about today’s phenomenon of PSLE frenzy, some of it self-propagating. The government seems to be trying to tone down the volume a bit, which is a good thing. Others say that parents will now just have to find other ways of determining the best schools for their children. That is also a good thing, because perhaps they will stop for a minute and really think about what is going on. Young people are not little adults, miniature versions of themselves. They need to be good young people before they can be good adults. Expecting them to be adults (“Act like an adult!”) or to have adult expectations of themselves (“If you fail this, you will not be able amount to anything!”) is as unrealistic as it is sad. Expectations should be an invitation, and perhaps even a stretch goal. But they should draw out, not push in. Let kids be kids. The rest of life will be here soon enough.

Let’s stretch our expectations of ourselves. Let home be home. Let home feel like home. Let home be the place where you know they will take you in, PSLE results and all. Meanwhile, pass the turkey.

Pick Up a Book

Either in the evening or the early morning, I like picking up a book or an article that is worth reading and spend 15 minutes exercising my mind and tweaking my soul. It’s not a lot of time, but it can add up. The key is to find something that allows you to read the uniquely insightful or the quietly unpredictable. The idea is to drip-irrigate the soul.

Several writers fall into that category for me. Annie Dillard and Thomas Merton are clear candidates. You simply cannot read anything they’ve written and not walk away with a curious and peculiar interior twinge that sits in a corner of your mind and begins to seep into your consciousness at odd moments throughout the day. The poet Billy Collins is another writer who drops in unannounced and ferrets around one’s mind with humour, insight, and poetry.

Currently, the interesting writer for me is Ronald Rolheiser, a very popular Catholic author and theologian who is in great demand as a guest speaker at conferences and the like. The reason is because he is accessible, insightful, and spot-on with his remarks. He forces you to think by drawing you into a reflective stance. He writes, for example, that we “…for every kind of reason, good and bad, are distracting ourselves into spiritual oblivion. It is not that we have anything against God, depth, and spirit, we would like these, it just that we are habitually too preoccupied to have any of these show up on our radar screens. We are more busy than bad, more distracted than nonspiritual, and more interested in the movie theater, the sports stadium, and the shopping mall and the fantasy life they produce in us than we are in church. Pathological busyness, distraction, and restlessness are major blocks today within our spiritual lives.” (The Holy Longing, Pgs. 32-33)

If this is the likely situation for many of us, one can only imagine what it may be for our children. The expression “You are what you eat” is as true of our souls as it is of our bodies. For example, there are terrific things available through technology that enhance our lives and enable greater leisure activities. But by itself, technology does not lead to better things. Through them, however, better things may be pursued. There are choices involved.

The use of technology itself is a choice, perhaps subject to degrees of attachment, and we should occasionally remind ourselves of the “choiceness” involved. Some years ago, a college student who had become concerned about his dependence on technology decided that each Sunday would be a “screen-free” Sunday. No television, movies, computer, phone, or whatever might have a screen. You can imagine the result, both on the first day and after several months of practice. I don’t know if I could begin to do the same thing very easily, but I’m interested in trying, because retreats of any kind are retreats of some kind, and this little personal retreat from technology sounds as if it may be worthwhile.

Picking up a book and exercising one’s mind is one thing, but actually doing something that tweaks one’s soul is much more difficult; rewarding perhaps, but certainly beyond the zone of comfort that, for many, leads to Thoreau’s “lives of quiet desperation.” And there’s so much more to life than that.

Start with regular sips from a good book or article and see where it leads.

Between Skepticism and Hope

Today, as I am writing this newsletter, the American election is being held, and I haven’t got a clue as to who may win. By the time you read it, the hubbub will have died down, the winners will have had a great victory party and the losers will have made a speech about unity in the country. And then life moves on.

It is rather amazing that we (I’m speaking as an American now) spend so much money and so much effort on something which seems to be so much larger than anything else on our horizon. Surely we should have gained a better sense of perspective by now. Why is it that “hope springs eternal” in so many situations in our lives? Everyone gets very excited about the new possibilities brought to life by a new candidate, only to find out later that the expectations outreached the realities. One election is hardly over before the next is being planned, and the whole cycle repeats itself.

It’s a human characteristic to live somewhere between skepticism and hope, whether the focus is on elections, or on human relationships, or on theology. We expect the best, and if the best does not happen, we just have to wait a bit longer. One saint who supported this notion was Julian of Norwich, who lived 600 years ago and heard in a vision from God: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” She was either blind to reality or profoundly touched by reality. I vote for the latter.

Elections are opportunities to exercise our capacity for hope, a time to take a step in a direction that we know to be good, even if we find out later that we didn’t get as far as we had thought. That’s the nature of hope, real hope, a faith-backed hope. It is the kind of hope that a loving parent has for his/her child, no matter the circumstances. It is hope that sustains one’s vision of life, that shapes one’s faith in life.

Such hope may also be brought to bear on our relationship with God. In fact, it must be if that relationship is to be real. The faith that God hopes in us as much as we hope in God is what gives faith vitality. Believing that God places trust in us is as much a motivation to do good as is the awareness that we have hope in God. Think of a parent urging a small child to walk across the grass. That’s hope in action on the part of both parties, one teetering on the edge of catastrophe and the other participating with anxious, but encouraging, concern. Both have their arms out, just beyond reach, and each draws on the other as their source of hope, a relationship of love. Then walking can happen.

I heard Timothy Radcliffe, O.P., once say in a lecture: “You know, ongoing progress is not a biblical concept.” Real life is never predictable and often difficult, from biblical times to the present. But just because life is not perfect doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t work towards improving it. We move from hope to hope, teetering along and trusting in the loving relationships that sustain us, especially those relationships that we may not fully know about.

So perhaps voting is not such a bad thing after all, because hope is always a good thing before all.

Rules for Becoming a Saint

This week we celebrated “All Saints Day” in the calendar of the Catholic Church. It’s a special day that in many English-speaking countries was called “All Hallows” day. And the evening before, of course, was called All Hallows Eve. Hence, Halloween emerged. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that ghost and goblins, werewolves and witches, all emerged from a church-wide appreciation of those men and women who have stood out as examples of how we could be if we take God’s presence in our lives seriously. Because the scary, mythic, and mysterious are much more fascinating parts of our stories, even as these attention-grabbing images carry with them notions of security, truth, and transparency. Just because we like scary and strange things doesn’t mean that we don’t appreciate the good. It’s just that we usually don’t see the good, the true, or the beautiful unless it’s against a background of the not so good, true, or beautiful.

There is a quotation from Rabindranath Tagore that I used to have in my classroom which relates to this power of contrast: “The dark takes form in the heart of the white and reveals it.” About halfway through the school year, one of the bright, under-performing students would be staring at it, oblivious to whatever was going in class, and suddenly say: “I get it.” Once he did get it, I would invite him to apply the saying to his performance in class, which would be met by a new quizzical look.
Time for chapter two.

Most might think that saints are those who have reached unrealistic heights of glory and achievement, spending most of their nights on their knees and most of their days in contemplative ecstasy. As a matter of fact, there are saints across the whole spectrum of human endeavor, from contemplatives to daily workers, from the learned to the simple, from those with special talents to those with little or no talent. Yet each saint has his/her own unique combination of prayer and activity, a life of faith and a life of action. Perhaps the arena where the “saint” piece is able to mature and emerge is that place where each person distinctly expresses and lives out the essential truths of the Gospel, doing so in an exceptional, yet ordinary, way. A saint does ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

All of the things that you hear in popular mythology today – Do you own thing. Express yourself. Be all that you can be. Live who you are. – are most acutely found in the saints, because these women and men tap into sources of the soul that remain dormant in most people. The oft-expressed hopes of many become a deeply lived reality for saints, without the prodding of songs, posters, and popular expressions. While we flitter about on the surface of daily experience, others have quietly discovered depths of mystery within themselves, often at some cost, that reveal a “white” that they had hardly ever known. Is it any wonder that many older people become more engaged in their spiritual lives as they mature?

I now think that saints are to be admired primarily for their courage, their long-suffering conviction that pursuing the elusive “more” has greater value and importance than pursuing the obvious “more.” What guidelines do we have about what this “more” might look like? You could do worse than look at the Gospel reading that is used for the Mass of the Feast of All Saints (Matthew 5: 1-12). There is nothing better in the New Testament for laying down the “rules” for becoming a saint.

International Days of Peace

This week, the SJI International High School is participating the 6^th annual Lasallian International Days of Peace, an effort sponsored by Lasallian Youth around the world. The week was kicked off by a school assembly with talks, songs, and prayers on the topic of world peace. The short talk that I gave is below.

Everyone seems to want peace, but very few people are actually willing to do the hard work that it requires. Why is that? Peace doesn’t come automatically, although we seem to desire it naturally. You would think that if so many people want it, then it would be pretty easy to do. But the problem is that what we usually want is our own version of peace, our own definition of what peace would look like.

If there is going to be real peace somewhere, it only really happens because you have to give something up. You have to give up the idea that only you are right. You have to give up that only you know what’s best. You have to give up the idea that you’re the only person worth listening to. And all of that is not an easy thing to do.

This is as true of you and your friends as it is of nations at war. People get all hot and bothered about something to the point that they’ve spent so much time on a particular interpretation of things that they can’t back out of it. It’s just too hard. What is needed a good strong dose of the truth. That’s why it usually takes somebody who is not directly involved in a situation – a common friend, an arbitrator, a judge, the United Nations – who can point out the facts or realities of the situation in such a way that both parties come to see that there is another way of looking at things, and perhaps things aren’t as bad as they seemed. Maybe peace is possible. In other words, it requires a change in thinking, a change in perspective, along with a change in action. Once a path to peace is agreed to, then the real possibility of peace exists.

I’ve always been impressed with a story that I heard about two kids who had to split a candy bar between them. One of them had a knife with which to cut the candy bar in half. But now they had to decide who was the one who was to do the cutting. So one of them said: “You cut, I choose.” This meant that one person would cut the candy bar in half and the other person would be the first to choose the piece that he or she would take. I thought that that was a brilliant solution, because the person who was doing the cutting would be very careful to do it fairly, otherwise he or she would end up with the smaller piece. And in the end, both kids were happy with the outcome. “You cut, I choose.”

Wouldn’t it be great if nations could do something like that? Most of time, however, I don’t think they’ve figured out yet what the candy bar is, let along how to split it up.

World peace is not something easy to achieve, as the evidence shows. I certainly don’t have the magic answer to it all. But there are others who have given hints about it, who have an insight about peace that strikes us as worth thinking about. For example, Mahatma Gandhi said, “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.” In other words, real change in the world depends on real change in ourselves. World peace depends on individual peace, on peace in our hearts, on peace on the school grounds, on peace in our families.

The other wise saying about peace comes from Mother Teresa, who said, “If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” This means that the connections between people need to be recognized, and sometimes they have to be reminded of those connections in order to make peace. It goes right back to the first thing that I said about peace, that it’s hard to do because you have to give up the idea that your view of things is the only one. Once you see – once you really see – that there are two people around that candy bar, and that both have a legitimate interest in the results, then a peaceful solution is often nearby.

So the next time you’re in a situation that could use a peaceful resolution, think about the larger picture, and not only about your own little world. It will help you, and it may perhaps help world peace. 

The Vocation of the Teacher

Here are some six-word “essays” that describe teachers:

            “I remember her fifty years later.”

            “Teachers hold the ladders students climb.”

            “Destroy chains. Shape wings. Inspire flight.”

            “I struggled; she never gave up.”

            “All thirty students raised their hand.”

            “Selflessly dedicated to someone else’s success.”

            “Point out the stars. Provide rockets.”

            “Watch them soar, then demand more.”

            “They doubted, you believed, I succeeded.”

The vocation of a teacher is a precious thing. Many of us take it for granted, and few of us take the time to see its grace in our lives. At SJI International, we’re surrounded by the power and effect of great teachers every day. We’re surrounded by those who bring knowledge to life, set fire to curiosity, and guide inquiry into ever deeper dimensions. Add in wide experience, enthusiasm for learning, a sense of humor, and a real appreciation and love for a wide range of young students - or simply put, a love of kids - and what emerges is someone for whom giving is a habit and mystery is a friend, someone who carries the responsibility lightly but exercises it seriously, someone who knows how to hone the edges of young minds, keep them on their toes, and fill their hungry souls.

Thomas Aquinas called teaching the most generous of all cooperative arts. Like other cooperative arts such as farming, teaching works with what is already there, working with the given soil of individual personalities, backgrounds, learning styles, challenges, gifts, and talents - those who sit staring in front of you at the beginning of each lesson. It’s an art because teaching requires much that cannot be found in books. The best lesson plans are never followed by the best teachers, because lesson plans only set the jazz melody, not the performance. And teaching most generous because it is almost all gift. No one other than students really see it, and most of them forget the details of teachers but remember the power of their effect. A few may return years later to express their gratitude, but that’s about as frequent as children thanking their parents for their upbringing. It’s not really expected either, because it was never done for the thanks it might bring. Teaching, like good parenting, comes from a generous, loving heart that pursues the good of those who have, in God’s Providence, been confided to our care.

I would suggest that the greatest model one might follow as a teacher is that of Jesus. He walked alongside his followers, leading them by familiar roads to unfamiliar places through what he did and said, and in that order. He knew the power and the responsibility of words, their connection to what he did. He spoke to them in a language that others understood, but he also spoke with “authority” - an integrity and wisdom that engages the listener fully. He gave them new ways of thinking and of seeing things, new ways of responding to situations around them, new ways of being in the world. And what He finally gave them, of course, was himself, fully and totally, profoundly and uniquely.

It is that gift of Jesus Christ, that gift of Himself, which we live anew and celebrate at each Mass. It is that same gift of self in our teachers that we celebrated for and among our teachers on Friday morning, October 5th. They are a blessing to be acknowledged.

St. John Baptist de La Salle, our inspiration and Founder, and the Catholic Church’s Patron Saint of All Teachers, in a section of writings about the many miracles that Jesus performed, says this, “You too can perform miracles by touching the hearts of those confided to your care.” If that perspective and invitation is taken seriously, we should realize that the vocation of the teacher is one that continues to be boundless. Wonderful things yet lie ahead.