Teacher as Shepherd

Do you know anyone who is a shepherd – a real, live shepherd with a bunch of sheep to manage? I recently read an article about the shepherds in Switzerland who are losing many sheep because of the growing wolf population, which is a protected species there. The wolves are having a feast. Imagine being a shepherd in that situation. It’s not easy, but they’re doing the best they can in this centuries-old profession. The same could also be said of teachers today. It’s not easy, but they’re doing the best they can in this centuries-old profession.

When Jesus in the Gospel of John (10:10-16) talks about shepherds, it sounds as if he knows what he’s talking about, comparing the good shepherd against a hired man who doesn’t really care about the sheep, running away at the first sign of a wolf. The good shepherd, on the other hand, knows his sheep and cares for them, even to the point of being willing to lay down his own life for them. That’s a very dramatic statement! I doubt if the sheep really appreciate how much they are cared for by the shepherd, and what the shepherd does to protect them, to lead them, and to care for them. But the shepherd doesn’t mind. He is happy to be a shepherd, and all he wants is to be a good shepherd.

De La Salle, in one of his Meditations, compares the teacher to such a shepherd, somebody who understands students individually and also knows exactly how to best guide each one, treating students with great tenderness, and adapting instructions to what the student is able to understand. I think that we all know of, or remember, a teacher who did something like that for us. This was the teacher who looked at us as a “somebody,” a person who was distinctive and had unique gifts and talents and interests and motivations. This was the teacher who quite obviously cared about us, although he or she didn’t make a big fuss about it. They just showed their care by how they treated us and what they did to help us along the way.

Many successful people, when they are interviewed and are asked how they became so successful, often begin with the phrase “Well, there was this teacher…” The thing that made a real difference in their life was one specific person who was able to touch something inside of them, something that made them want to learn, something that opened up their capacity for wonder, for exploration, for knowing and doing more than they had thought possible before. Such teachers were teachers in the way that Jesus and De La Salle talk about. They were shepherds of the souls of their students. For most students, I doubt if they really appreciate how much they are cared for by the teacher, and what the teacher does to protect them, to lead them, and to care for them. But the teacher doesn’t mind. He or she is happy to be a teacher, and all they want is to be a good teacher.

All this is worth thinking about. Teachers are called to be shepherds of souls. Especially in a Catholic school, they bring Jesus and the Gospel alive for their students. For some, they may be the only Gospel that their students will ever read.

Teachers don’t look for thank-you cards. That’s not why they became teachers. But it’s really nice when students do thank them, even if it is a bit awkward and different, and even if it doesn’t happen often or right away. The point is to be grateful.  When a student – present or past – does express gratitude, teachers are genuinely touched and remember it for a long time afterwards. And I think that students remember also. Teaching blossoms in mutual gratitude.

Keys to Learning Well

In the school’s mission statement is the phrase “Enabling youth to learn how to learn …” What does that mean? And how do you know when it happens?

Mission statements are notoriously imprecise and aspirational. But that is on purpose. The nature of a mission statement is to draw us forward, set us on a path, provide a fixed direction, point out the mountain we would like to reach. Some companies even have two mission statements, the official one and the unofficial one. For example, this is the case for Google. Their official mission statement is "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The unofficial one, officially recorded in its 2004 IPO prospectus, is “Don’t Be Evil.” The first statement is predictable and rather dull. But the second is quite interesting, because it causes the reader to think about what that phrase could mean in an organization.

Our own school’s mission statement has aspects of both in it. Schools are about youth and about learning. That much is fairly obvious. What is less obvious, but all the more important and perhaps worthy of reflection, is the fact that one part of our mission is to enable youth to learn how to learn. The focus of the learning is on learning. This focus is part of the educational environment, whereby not only are facts, figures, rules, systems, insights, relationships, etc. learned outright. But within that process there is an intentional effort to enable students to discover the ways that they are involved in the process of learning itself, are agents in the skill of learning, and thereby may become more deliberate about the learning that they want to accomplish.

The more we know about our own learning process, the better learners we become.  For example, I know that I need a quiet environment in order to learn well, and that I need to “ramp up” my learning process so that I can get to a level of engagement that puts things into a higher gear. The simplest example is from many years ago, when I delayed writing my PhD dissertation (as most candidates do at some point in the process) until deadlines loomed and something radical was needed. After thinking about my best learning process, the solution appeared. For six weeks, I put myself into a Trappist monastery in California, pictured above, where for five weeks (the first week was for ramping up) I worked calmly but intensely for many hours of the day in a profound, natural silence punctuated only by prayers and meals. At the end of that time, 80% of the dissertation was done, basically due to zero radio or TV, simple vegetarian food, a peaceful setting, and an inescapable personal regimen – no distractions possible – punctuated by good prayer and liturgy.

That’s only one example, and it may only apply to me. Your way of learning best is likely to be quite unique. But when you identify it, the more you may pursue it, and the better you will learn. A friend of mine who became the CEO of a large company showed me a room next to his third-story office that was empty except for a window overlooking the outside and two rows of airplane seats. He told me that he thinks best on airplanes, and so he had this little room built for his private thinking and planning time. He, in fact, had learned how he learned best.

When you learn how you learn, you will learn more quickly, deeply, and intensely. Each new insight about your own learning will add to your personal set of learning tools, ready to go into action when needed. How to start? Take a short but serious inventory after you have learned something really well. What allowed that to happen? Push, push, push for the reasons. Those results, in the long run, will be more valuable than whatever it was that you learned really well. Like a coach who is able to reflect back the small movements or behaviours that will lead to greater performance, by being your own “learning” coach, you will identify your own best behaviours for learning.

If someone told us that we could take a pill to help us learn better, as in the movie Limitless (2011), we would probably buy a year’s supply. Actually, we have those pills already inside of us. They just need to be identified and brought into the light of day. After that, it’s mostly “Take as needed.”

Getting People to Learn

“There is no system in the world, or any school in the country, that’s better than its teachers. Teachers are the lifeblood of the success of schools. But teaching is a creative profession. Teaching, properly conceived, is not a delivery system. … What great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage. In the end, education is about learning. If there's no learning going on, there's no education going on. … The whole point of education is to get people to learn....” (Ken Robinson, TED talk “How to Escape Education’s Death Valley.” www.ted.com)

All of us have been both teachers and students. Most of us have been professional students for a good part of our lives. We have gone to school longer than most people have held their jobs. We know how to be a student. And so we also have a pretty fair grasp of what it means to be educated, a notion and reality that is likely to grow with age and wisdom, although not without some sense of irony.  "Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously." (G K Chesterton)

The idea that teachers are key to any school is something that is too obvious to be noticed. Like the advantage of having an opposable thumb, or the fact that our eyes work so well with our brain, or the reality that things like faith, hope, and love are part of being human, it’s one of those facts of our existence that is as comfortably taken for granted as the clothing we wear. The founder of the Brothers, however, started this entire Lasallian movement by not taking teaching for granted, but rather building his schools on the trust, community, spirit, enthusiasm, talents, and aspirations of those young men in 17^th Century France who believed that education could transform lives. Ever since, every school that claims John Baptist de La Salle as its inspiration and guide has discovered the truth and power of the key insight that good teachers bring learning to life in young people.

Ken Robinson in his talk also shares contemporary insights that De La Salle would recognize. For example, Sir Robinson says that high-performance school systems “individualize teaching and learning. They recognize that it’s students who are learning and the system has to engage them, their curiosity, their individuality and their creativity.” De La Salle said 300 years ago that teaching involves “knowing each individually and discerning the right way to guide them.” He advocated the use of visual instruction, the incorporation of skits, dialogues, or songs to help children capture moral lessons, and included training in practical arts such as needlework, keeping accounts, and life skills. Good manners were also instilled as a necessary part to Christian upbringing.

Sir Robinson states that high-performance schools “attribute a very high statue to the teaching profession. They recognize that you can't improve education if you don't pick great people to teach and if you don't keep giving them constant support and professional development.” De La Salle believed the same, telling his teachers that they followed in the footsteps of the apostles, given the gift of instruction, exhortation, and teaching. (M 78.2, 145.3, 193.2) Such "great graces from God" entail a grave responsibility. "It is God himself who has led them to you; it is God who makes you responsible for their salvation [Heb.13: 17].” Professional development in the ministry of teaching was equated with personal development in the journey of following God. De La Salle and the early Brothers are credited with initiating the movement for “normal schools” that trained teachers, having done so for non-Brothers and Brothers alike during his lifetime and far beyond.

The point is simple: Great learning depends on great teachers, and this has always been the case, whether in the 17^th century or in the 21^st century. The deeper realities persist about teaching and learning. Through great teachers, students have the opportunity to discover glimpses of the Promised Land and to be drawn in by the numinous mystery of God’s presence within themselves and within the people and the worlds that they encounter.

What a wonderful responsibility, mysterious adventure, and great vocation!

Built for the Infinite

“We are built for the infinite, Grand Canyons without a bottom. Because of that we will, this side of eternity, always be lonely, restless, incomplete, still a virgin – living in the torment of insufficiency of everything attainable.” (Rolheiser, The Holy Longing, Pg. 157)

This is one of those quotations that starts off really well and ends somewhere else. Both sentences appear to be true, but where one is rather noble and grand, the other is rather depressing. It’s nice to think that we are built for the infinite. But if that means that we will be “living in the torment of insufficiency,” the whole thing doesn’t sound so desirable.

Of course it’s not a new notion in the world of serious, honest, and sincere reflection. For example, Saint Augustine said “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Bhuddha used poignant images: “If you sleep, desire grows in you like a vine in the forest. Like a monkey in the forest, you jump from tree to tree, never finding the fruit – from life to life, never finding peace.” The Bagavad Gita says “The mind is restless and difficult to restrain, but it is subdued by practice. … The peace of God is with them whose mind and soul are in harmony, who are free from desire and wrath, who know their own soul.”

We are all conscious of a certain restlessness that is part of who we are as human beings. It’s the thing that gets us to start new projects, go on vacations, check out restaurants, seek the latest gadgets, explore the neighbourhood, play games, and even gamble. All of those things are outside of ourselves and bring some vestige of satisfaction. The activity of pursuing them provides ongoing assurance that there must be “something” that will bring completeness and full contentment. It’s not true.

Anything finally worthwhile and truly fulfilling comes from the inside rather than from the outside. Nothing new here either, except perhaps for the curious fact that we hear this again and again, and it’s something we generally agree with, but it’s also something we don’t actively pursue, generally speaking, as much as we pursue those toys of contentment. Young children know about what’s important intuitively and older people simply after long years of experience. The important things are all about what happens inside of ourselves. This is what defines our relationship with the world around us and other people. It’s also the great adventure of life, that inner journey of discovery, informed by our experiences, circumstances, and community of life.

Every once in a while, I visit a large and impressive forest or Redwood grove. Standing there, surrounded by these massive living plants that are hundreds or thousands of years old, I’m silenced and awed by their sheer presence, fully alive and yet totally immovable, rooted for centuries and yet connected to the vibrant web of life in which they dwell, intimately vested in nature’s cycle and yet bearing a solid independence that is inarguable.  It makes you think about the ground of our own being during our brief time of life. It reminds me to worry more about the important stuff than less about the unimportant stuff. It might even make me stop checking my email as often as I do, or surf the internet in a sort of technological equivalent of restless insuffiency.

The solution is not easy, but it is close at hand. Very few of us genuinely do no know the better way. We just have to start with a trickle of good habits. Even the Grand Canyon started out as a small trickle of water, and look at what became of that.

Finding Your Precious Bowl

There is a story about a young Buddhist monk and an old Buddhist monk who were walking along the countryside, carrying their begging bowls. They came to a stream and began to cross it, stirring up the sediment on the bottom as they made their way across. In the middle of the stream, with the water now up to their waist, the young monk suddenly stumbled, losing the grip on his begging bowl, which promptly sank and disappeared into the murky current. He lurched to save it, but all he came back with was dirty water and empty hands. The old monk quickly came over, and together they probed the bottom with their feet, trying find that begging bowl. After a fruitless ten minutes of searching, shuffling along a whole stretch of the stream, the young monk grew frustrated. “What will I do now? That bowl was my most precious possession? What a stupid thing to lose it. I’ll never find it again!”

    The old monk calmly looked at him and said, “Settle down. Don’t get all excited. The bowl is still there. You just can’t see it right now. But I have a suggestion for how you can find it. Do you see that large tree on the other side of the stream?”

    The young monk said, “You mean that really big one by the edge? Yes, I see it.”

    “I want you to go over to that tree,” said the old monk, “sit down on the ground beneath it, close your eyes, and meditate quietly for 30 minutes.”

    “What good will that do?” said the young monk. “My begging bowl is somewhere in this stream, not under that tree.”

    “Just do as I say,” replied the old monk. “I will go ahead of you, and you can catch up with me later on. Just go sit beneath that tree and meditate. You will find that all things will become clear.”

    The young monk did as the old monk had told him. He walked out of the stream, sat down beneath the tree, and meditated for a full 30 minutes. The old man walked off and disappeared over the hill. After 30 minutes, indeed the young monk had calmed down. His spirit had settled, and his mind had begun to clear. The frustration was gone, and now he was just a little sad about losing his bowl.

     But when he opened his eyes, he found out that the stream had cleared up as well. All the sediment that they had stirred up had settled down to the bottom, and now the water was crystal clear, with the sun dancing on the surface of the rippling current. He was able to see to the bottom of the stream in all directions, and straightaway he saw where his begging bowl had landed, gleaming in the reflected sunlight.

     He stood up, walking into the stream, reached down, and picked up the bowl. Then he rushed to catch up with the wise old monk who had known how to find clarity. His most precious possession was all the more precious for having been found.

The end of a school term and the beginning of a vacation is a time of excitement and thoughts of precious things yet to be. Plans and packing lead to unanticipated experiences, probing ventures or adventures, and the occasional stumble. Perhaps there will even be a time when it appears that a precious thing was dropped or lost – through the unkind word, the forgotten gesture, the genuine mistake. In the turbulence of the situation, the effect may easily become greater than the cause, and suddenly a small thing has become a large one, the mouse has transmogrified into a monster. For reasons quite unclear, some precious object (friendship, love, forgiveness, kindness, tolerance, peace, etc.) appears to be irretrievably lost.

This is the time to allow the point of a vacation or break to come forward. Find a quite place. Be still. Let things settle, both inside and outside. At the appropriate time, open your eyes and observe the clarity of genuine reality, unfettered by swirling sediment, as clear as a sparkling stream. Find where that precious thing has landed. Heave a sigh of relief, and then walk over – please do walk over – and pick it up from below the surface. Then be on your way with new appreciation and a firmer grip on the thing that once was lost and now is found.

Fascination & Fear - The Crucifix

“In the crucifix you see, in the most vivid, convincing way, 

God speaking to us about his great love.”
- Cardinal Basil Hume, OSB -

The crucifix, which is a cross with the body of Jesus displayed on it, is such a strange religious image. For those who are not familiar with the mystery that it conveys, the image of a half-naked man nailed to a cross is crass and almost grossly graphic. Why not a nicer image, such as the resurrected Christ in glorified robes and a crown, against a plain cross in the background, with perhaps a sunrise as well? Some cultures even accentuate the negative effect, with the figure of Christ bleeding profusely, displaying sad eyes and a suffering expression. Why would we want to look at that? It both attracts and repels us. Why is that? What attracts us to it, and what are we afraid of?

     Both fascination and fear are bound up with the crucifix. The image fascinates because it is strangely compelling and it elicits fear because there is pain involved. Frank Sheed used to say that after all his studies and reflection and prayer, the only real thing that he could say about the mystery of redemption is that only God could do it, and it hurt. The fact that God is the main character is fascinating, but the fact that it hurt and may hurt us if we take it all seriously is cause for fear. Even when love is part of the picture, perhaps especially so, fascination and fear kick in big time.

     This combination of fascination and fear is not a new one. There was the classic description by Rudolf Otto of the “numinous” reality of divine presence and power as  “mysterium tremendum et fascinans” in the 1923 publication The Idea of the Holy (Oxford University Press). Subsequently, this description struck a chord with people, and authors as diverse as Carl Jung, CS Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Carl Sagan, and Richard Dawkins have built on Rudolf Otto’s work.  A quotation from Huxley gives a good notion of what is meant: “The literature of religious experience abounds in references to the pains and terrors overwhelming those who have come, too suddenly, face to face with some manifestation of the mysterium tremendum. In theological language, this fear is due to the incompatibility between man's egotism and the divine purity, between man's self-aggravated separateness and the infinity of God.”

     Our own human experience provides plenty of examples of the same sort of encounter. There is the range of vicarious, fascinating/fearful enjoyments, such as the tragedies of Shakespeare, the popularity of UFO’s and horror movies, or the attraction of Halloween. There are the Xtreme games (online or not) and TV shows, car-racing and encounters with bears. There is the more personal sort of version, which includes learning a new language, dating and friendship, keeping a pet or a garden, and figuring out what to do with your life. All of life’s pieces have both a fascinating and fearful aspect to them, according to one’s history, approach, perspective, and follow through.

     When a crucifix is seen as a focused, fascinating, yet fearful symbol of how life is and/or may be, then the key dimension of love jumps to the fore. Parker Palmer once wrote that we must "...allow love to inform the relations that our knowledge creates." We have to work to allow love to happen. God’s love, however, is a constant reality, available to us through the mystery of Jesus Christ, and available to others through us. In Anthony Bloom’s words, “At times one can give one's own life more easily than offer unto death the person whom one loves beyond all; and this is what God, our Father has done. But it does not make less the sacrifice of Him who is sent unto death for the salvation of one person or of the whole world. … We will never be able to experience what it meant for Him to die upon the Cross, even our own death cannot disclose to us what His death was: how can Immortality die? But what we can learn, what we can discover by communing ever more deeply, ever more perfectly through a daring, wholehearted endeavour with the life, and the teaching, and the ways of Christ - what we can learn is to love in a way that approximates more and more to that love divine, and discover in this love the quality which unites death as forgetfulness of self, ultimate and perfect, with the victory of love, Resurrection and eternal life.”

The Seminar of Life

Earlier this week I attended a small evening seminar at SMU (Singapore Management University), hosted by one of the professors there whom I had met some months ago at a dinner. He turned out to have been friends with two Brothers in California who were also good friends of mine (both have now passed on). We had some fine conversations that evening at dinner, and we have since met several times. This was the first time, however, that I was on “his turf” participating in an event such as this. The topic of the informal seminar was university education in Singapore. The people in the room were from various backgrounds and were currently involved in a variety of professions. But most of them had been Fulbright scholars at one point in their lives, and most were native to Singapore. They were bright people with bright backgrounds who had a very wide range of present circumstances, ages, priorities, and daily lives; in other words, a great group with which to have a conversation about a serious topic.

I won’t try to represent or capsulize the conversation here, let alone tease out some sort of answer or conclusion about the present context and possible future of university education in Singapore, based on that seminar. But I will try to relate the foundational thrust represented by the simple fact that it even took place.

We all have an abiding interest in engagement and knowledge, whether through words, or pictures, or symbols, or relationships, or tinkering, or play, or any of a hundred other activities. Our drive is to know and to be engaged in that knowing. Some may do so better than others, but I will bet that most of us remember when we have done so well, and we appreciate it all the more in the remembering.

During my mid-life years (38-41) at Boston College, one of the most enlivening and deeply satisfying aspects of my studies was the doctoral seminar, a time when the 6 – 8 candidates in the program (all sorts of backgrounds, interests, ages, futures, etc.) got together for 2.5 – 3 hours of conversation around a fairly difficult text or topic, with the guidance of one of the top professors in the department. I must say that those conversations are still with me, not so much in the detail as in the effect. When you sit with clever and articulate colleagues to talk about things that are important, there is an engagement of depth that is as hard to describe as it is difficult to shake off. It is a sort of falling in love with thinking and talking, of being slapped by fascinating ideas and twirling novel connections in the mind, of following fascinating trails behind another’s mental steps, picking up on their enthusiasm even as you stop every once in a while to gaze around at the new – to you – environment. Even if others believe that there’s an ivory tower aspect to the whole thing, at least you can’t argue with the fact that conversations like this invite us to look at the used-to-be-normal landscape from a new height. Like experiencing a wonderful piece of music, something sticks.

The same may be encountered, albeit to a lesser degree, in the things we choose to read or see or think about. Everything around us has the potential of being a catalyst for engaged knowledge. One of the most fascinating things about education, especially perhaps about a program such as the IB, is that that this sort of this becomes the rule, habit, and goal, the expectation rather than the exception. Within the Christian context, the notion is best conveyed for me by Nicholas Lash: "To think as a Christian is to try to understand the stellar spaces, the arrangements of micro-organisms and DNA molecules, the history of Tibet, the operation of economic markets, toothache, King Lear, the CIA, and grandma's cooking--or, as Aquinas put it, 'all things'--in relation to that uttering, utterance and enactment of God which they express and represent. To act as a Christian is to work with, to alter or, if need be, to endure all things in conformity with that understanding."

I really enjoyed that short, one-hour seminar at SMU earlier this week, even if I said very little and listened quite a lot. Sort of like prayer, I suppose. It was the kind of thing that provided food for a hunger that may be rarely acknowledged but is always part of our makeup. The appropriate response is thankfulness, and I thank my friend for having made it possible. May we all be able to do the same for others in our own small ways.

The Risen Christ in Our Lives

This week it’s something different. Geoff Wood is someone whose writings are little known to the general population. He writes for his parish in Sonoma, CA, and I’ve spent a wonderful morning speaking with him. He writes a weekly reflection on the Sunday Gospel. This reflection is for the Gospel for this Sunday (John 15: 12-15), when Thomas learns more than his pessimism might allow for. Geoff’s other reflections are online: http://angelacentergeoffwood.blogspot.sg/ I decided to substitute this one for mine this week because 1) I can’t think of anything better to say, 2) his words describe something that echoes my own experience, and 3) it’s good to share interesting reflections by other people. On the weekend when we celebrate Buddha’s birthday, the openness of the human spirit to realities thought to be beyond our reach is a good thing to think about.

“I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”

With startling rapidity the faith of our civilization seems to be slipping away.  As recently as my childhood Catholics and Protestants for the most part didn’t question their creed.  They were born into it and, as they grew up, it was reinforced by a prosperous Church, plenty of priests and ministers, family solidarity.  We had no doubts where we came from cosmically.  The catechisms were full of answers that were easily memorized.  The sacraments were accompanied by gestures that had become habitual, collectively uniform.  Now, I am speaking as an old man; I’m not sure someone born even 30 years ago has had the same experience.  But that’s my point!  Times have rapidly changed.  The ethnic, creedal solidarity we once assumed had been around forever has broken up.  People of different cultural and even global background have become our neighbors.  And then, 300 years of secular philosophies, of the “supremacy” of science over religion have reduced Christ, for example, to another Socrates, at best – and all options seem open as far as what truth might be.

                And so I read today on the Internet a blurb by an ex-Catholic who boasts of his newfound freedom – from the whole “myth” he was taught in his youth.  He doesn’t take the Gospels seriously either literally or metaphorically.  He now embraces an existence (for his kids too?) that stops dead at death!  And yet he’s laughing.  Obviously he has not reached 40 let alone 50.  And he is raising his children as dogmatically in his skepticism even as he was raised dogmatically in Catholicism.  Except again – there’s that Berlin Wall called death that he’ll have to deal with some way or other – or steel himself to it with a display of theatrical defiance?  But is it his fault?  One must admit our Christian tradition shares the fault.  The essence of biblical and liturgical theology poorly taught, poorly understood even by teachers can contribute to disenchantment.  Young people in this day and age and under the influence of bright atheists or agnostics are going to be better impressed.

                But is it, after all, a matter of a better Christian education?   Teaching, be it “literally” or “abstractly” done, won’t be enough.  What has to happen is “conversion”.  This being the Pentecost season, we should be aware that conversion happens when one wakes up one morning a different person, suddenly alive, aware of a spark having been struck in one’s mind, one’s imagination, one’s soul.  The mission of teaching is to arrange the dry grass and wood chips, to strike the flint, to create the spark – in other words educate in a way that allows a tongue of fire to enkindle a blaze of genuine, living faith, hope and love within even possibly a 60 year old Catholic who may have recited his creed his whole life long - but never with a “tongue of fire”.

                “I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.”  Jesus said this at the Last Supper and scholars think he’s foretelling his coming resurrection when he will deepen his disciples’ understanding of what he is all about.  Yet those words are addressed to you too – that if in fact what you have learned about Christ and his mission and origin is still a lot of “information” or piety – then he is telling you there is more to come.  It will not just be a good course in theology.  It will be that waking up one morning aware of a depth and expanse to this universe far beyond the range of any telescope, a sense of a grace permeating creation that becomes a turning point you will never be able to reverse or explain to others.  It means suddenly seeing the risen Christ and dropping to your knees not in a servile way but with astonishment and blurting out: “My Lord and my God.”   - Geoff Wood

Founder's Day 2013

St. John Baptist de La Salle wasn’t always a saint. He was given that title 180 years after he had died. He was made a saint because what he did made such a big difference to so many people, especially people who were involved in teaching and in schools.  And in 1950, on May 15^th, he was also made the Patron Saint of All Teachers. He is the one that teachers can pray to for help when they need some help. That is why May 15^th is celebrated as Founder’s Day in many Lasallian schools.

     The saintly things that John Baptist de La Salle did were not amazing building projects, impressive miracles, or rousing speeches. He wouldn’t have been on the front page of the newspaper, or be mentioned in a blog, or be a singing sensation, or be part of a famous sports star. Those things may have their value, but most of the people who become famous that way usually aren’t saints, and most saints usually aren’t people who become famous that way.

     Instead, John Baptist de La Salle became famous because he did something that each one of us can do. He decided how he wanted to live his life, what kind of person he wanted to be, and then he followed those decisions. Saints make choices that they follow with stubborn consistency.

At some point in life we all figure something like this out. We have to figure out what direction we want to take. It’s a very basic decision because it’s not so much a decision about a career than it is a decision about our basic direction in life. Some people make it and follow it like a laser beam. Others take a longer time and do it gradually. The deliberate kind of decision is like that of a large whale swimming in the ocean, majestic and focused, slow and deliberate, concentrating on one direction and one direction only. The whale decides to go one way and the rest of the body follows. The alternative is more like a large school of smaller fish, where the final direction comes about because of a thousand little decisions, all of whom seem to be independent and without much direction individually. But because they get multiplied and effect all kinds things around them, it's soon apparent to others that a general choice has been made. Therefore, one small but deliberate decision about our life can lead us in a particular direction. But even if we don't make such a choice, all the little decisions that we make every day, in effect, do the same thing.

     For St. John Baptist de La Salle, he made such decision when he was about eleven years old and decided that he wanted to become a priest.  He stuck to that decision and eventually did become a priest, even though it wasn’t easy. But just when he thought that his life was now set, the whole thing changed. The big and deliberate choices were no longer as important as the small, daily ones. (Researchers  say that an average adult makes up to 35,000 decisions every day.) One set of these small decisions led him to do something that he had never even thought about doing, starting schools, training teachers, and beginning the Brothers Order. He said that God “made it happen in a small, hidden way and over a long period of time so that one decision that I made led to another in a way that I did not foresee in the beginning, until I ended up doing something that I really never thought I would do.”

     That’s a great lesson from De La Salle’s life for this year’s Founder’s Day. What we do with the thousands of decisions that we make every day is actually more influential than the one decision we made when we were much younger. They’re both important, but the ultimate effect of those small daily choices is what brings about our real future, shapes our true character, and defines our lived life. Therefore, things like the virtues and character and a compassionate heart end up being the actual guide for all those small choices. Paying attention to the inside parts of who we are will lead us to much more interesting places and people than paying attention to the outside parts of who we are. That was the experience of St. John Baptist de La Salle, and it can be our experience too.

Happy swimming.

Death and Life - Blessing and Curse

“I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.

Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live.” 

(Deut 30:19)

This quotation came to mind as I was thinking about the issues surrounding a recent video that was posted by one of our students to express his frustration with those who choose to stereotype others and who use anonymous (or not so anonymous) means to be hurtful and mean, especially via current social media. Another word that might be used to describe the gratuitous, intentional act of demeaning another person is the word “evil” and all that it implies.

While this word may bring to mind images of fierce-looking beings from Gustave Dore’s drawings for Dante’s Inferno, in actual fact some of the more evil people in the world are and have been, to all appearances, the most common of men and women (characters from The Hobbit notwithstanding). It’s only in police photos that suddenly those who commit crimes look glum, expressionless, unappealing and ruffled; sort of like we look when we look at ourselves in the mirror each morning, which in itself is a good reminder that there is this same capacity for evil within each of us, and we neglect paying attention to it at our own peril. “Men do not differ much about what things they will call evils; they differ enormously about what evils they will call excusable.” (GK Chesterton)

Traditionally, committing a sin is doing something evil, whether to a smaller degree (venial sin) or to a great degree (mortal sin). The three conditions that are given for deciding whether something is a mortal sin are also good gauges to see whether something is just a really bad thing to do. First, it must be something that is a grave matter, something that has serious consequences and truly breaks relationships with others and with God. Secondly, it must be something that is done with full knowledge, with a clear notion that this is something that will hurt others seriously. Thirdly, it must be something that is done with deliberate consent, with the conscious decision to do something that you know to be bad. The Catholic Catechism gives a straightforward definition: “Sin is an offense against reason, truth, and right conscience; it is failure in genuine love for God and neighbour caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity.” (CC1849) Bad is bad even for the bad, because it is the good that defines our core.

Hiding behind an anonymous identity makes evil easy and even appealing. If others cannot hold us responsible, and if we don’t have the capacity to hold ourselves responsible, then all those hidden parts of our nature, the dark corners where the bad bits dwell, have an opportunity to come out.

Gollum wasn’t a bad guy when he started his life, but things went from bad to worse when what he thought was precious wasn’t, and what he thought was evil wasn’t. That’s the glamour of evil. When rain-water discovers a hole in the roof, it begin to drip into the house and ends up making things quite messy, uncomfortable and finally unliveable for everyone. But some people just get used to it.

The fact is that we have a choice, that we can make a choice. That is what the quotation on top is all about. The fact of being able to choose makes it possible for us to drift towards the evil side of things or to the good side of things. The habits of choice that we develop, drip by drip, shape the character we become. Things like anonymous identities, letters or postings, spoken words (gossip), and the like don’t have to be used for bad things, but they are unfortunately more likely to be used that way. It’s a problem that is related to what the church calls the “Original Sin” that is part of our nature, whereby we are “subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.” (CC396) The tendency to doing bad things draws us with a thousand shiny baubles, while that of doing good things seems to require more work. The moral life is not reached for free.

We move our souls each day by the choices we make, online or not, and so change our world and the world of others for good or ill and in ways unknown and unimagined. It pays to pay attention.