Very funny, God.

Sometimes God is funny.

He's funny because He is acts in such unexpected ways which is, of course, the source of an awful lot of humour. Saying or doing something so unexpected that it will confound expectations can be risky, of course, but God does that all the time in ways that are funny, if only we were paying attention.

Okay, so God is funny. We really shouldn't be surprised at that. God is so much more than the limits that we humans can set that we can't help being surprised when he surpasses them. I mean, we work so hard to put Him into a box or keep Him safely in his sanitized compartment and, then, he pops through a wall, telling you to put your finger in his side or something. Now, that is kind of funny, if in a rather unexpected way.

Mind you, this is something I've known about God for quite some time. He does have a habit of throwing odd things in my way, especially when I least expect it. Sometimes these are happy surprises, like an unlooked-for gift. Sometimes they are 'are you kidding me?' surprises. Sometimes they don't look like a gift at all.  The happy surprises are easy enough to take. Who doesn't like a true gift? Who can't be grateful for that? The 'are you kidding me?' surprises are a bit harder to take, but these are usually things that I can appreciate, at least, the irony and settle into, eventually. The things that don't look like a gift are no fun at all, even if I value of the gift only in retrospect. Yet, what all these surprises have in common is that they are further proof that I don't have God all sussed out and that God does know the gifts I need so much better than we do. These kinds of gifts, especially the ones that don't look like it, remind me that I'm not God and that God isn't going to do whatever I expect in the way I expected it. Faith tells me that this God who defies expectations know what I need better than I do. and that He's playing a much longer game than I am.

So, when I found myself laughing out loud in the Bulb Room near the entrance to the Mediterranean Gardens at the Royal Botanical Gardens Centre on Saturday, I knew that God was being funny again. It was funny that I only then realized that the smell of hyacinth and narcissus which was wafting through the room forcibly reminded me of the gardens in the airport at Palm Springs, where, even as I was standing there, my wife and children were flying towards- smells which signal for me rest and recuperation after a long, busy winter. It was funny because I suddenly recalled that there were many of the plants that I knew and loved from those visits- cacti, bougainvillea, citrus trees, aloes- were waiting just beyond those doors. It was funny because I suddenly was reminded that much of California enjoyed a Mediterranean climate and that, this March Break, my trip to Greece with students was trading one Mediterranean climate for another. It was funny because the reason why I was even at the RBG was that I was taking a break to rest, reflect and work on some spiritual exercises from a church group I was involved in and I had kept feeling led to come to the RBG even though it was a forty-five minute drive away and I honestly didn't remember that this garden was even there. It was funny because God snuck up on me and gave me a blessing, completely unlooked for. That would make this one of those nice surprises, but I'm not complaining.

I spent four hours or so, wandering about in that garden. I did my exercises. I walked around it four, five, six times. I sat when I needed to. I prayed the first six verses of Psalm 19 several times. I was happy. I got tired. I sat down. I wandered about again. I realized I was walking the garden like a labyrinth (ha, ha. Very funny, God). I said goodbye on my last lap. I felt I was visiting an island of peace without any real worry about time or what I had to get accomplished in the next few weeks. Given the frantic pace of my life right now, that peace feels like something of a minor miracle, a true sabbatical.

I'm still processing that visit, so I'm not sure what that time I spent in the Mediterranean Garden meant. Perhaps the blessing is enough. Perhaps there is more to it. I really don't know.

But God is kind of funny.    

Messiness

The truth is that teaching is messy...and I'm not talking about my desk. Teaching is messy because it deals with human beings with their own needs, desires and flaws. Teaching is messy because a teacher is trying to help their students to learn and one of the most important things that our students have to learn is to stand on their own and learn to be themselves; not the person that the media tells them to be, not the person I want them to be- themselves. That may mean making mistakes. That may mean struggling. That may mean an awful lot of things. It may mean a mess.

Contrary to the commonly held opinion of my students and the shifting papers of my desk, I don't like mess. Very few people do. When my desk piles up with paper and the shifting sands of marking, memoes and handouts cause me to forget what the surface of my desk actually looks like, I can feel my anxiety rising and my frustration growing. I feel out of control, anxious and out-of-sorts until I take the paper bull by the horns and begin to separate and sort. When I'm done, my life comes back into order and calm returns. As I tell my students, the state of desk is an index of my state of my mind. When it is in disorder, so am I. When it is straightened and organized, I'm calmer and more serene.

Mind you, it isn't my literal mess that has led me to this blog entry. The mess that is teaching is not, really, a physical mess (although that doesn't help), but a figurative one. It is, in fact, a relational one. How could it not be? I teach, all told, about a hundred and eighty teenagers in a year- all of them very individual, all of them with their strengths and vulnerabilities, their desires and needs, their hearts and their heads. They are all struggling to make sense of their lives in the here and now as well as the future promise that they represent. Some of them come through this period of growing and learning with grace and aplomb. Others face struggles that would daunt an adult. Some fail. Some succeed. Most get through. All of them have good days and bad days. So do I. The messiness of teaching is that no one can predict how we are going to meet or collide in the classroom. From one day to the next, no one, much less the teacher, can quite predict what will be needed that day. Sometimes it is firm hand. Sometimes it is a listening ear. No one quite knows.

Yet, amid the chaos of a busy high school classroom, I try to remember Henri Nouwen's definition of hospitality as a place where one's guests can be themselves (I'm paraphrasing, but I think I'm right). Yes, there are things to learn. Yes, there is marking to do and report cards to write. Yes, there are legitimate professional expectations upon me in my dealings with students. But, at the heart of it, the best sense I've made of my teaching is that my students are the guests that God has sent me for a limited time. They aren't mine to control. They aren't mine to manipulate. They are their own selves and that is what I need to value. I hope their stay with me will do them some good, but I don't even get to control that. That is probably a good thing, but it can be a hard thing.

Like my students, sometimes I succeed and sometimes I fail in my teaching. When I fail, I try to pick myself up and learn what I need to learn. The messiness of a high school classroom can be humbling. It can also be a beautiful thing as the place where my students come into their own. Teaching is messy, but, in that mess, I hope and pray my students find a safe place, where we play with language and rejoice in what we learn. If I can manage that, that's all the success I need.

Peace,
Phil

Nunc Dimittis

Lord, now let your servant depart in peace

according to your word, 

for my eyes have seen your salvation

which you have prepared before the face of all people

to be a light to lighten the Gentiles

and to be the glory of your people, Israel

                                                                                   BCP- Compline (adapted)

Most years, I'm caught a little by surprise when Candlemas (aka The Presentation of the Lord) comes around. By late January/February, the excitement of the Christmas season has worn off and the slog through the mid-winter usually means a slog through marking and report cards. So, today, while I knew it was Candlemas because I was called in to wave smoke about in the service, I was focusing on making sure that I knew where I was going in the dance which is an Anglo-Catholic service. So, when the Gospel came around and I got to heard these familiar words from Symeon as he encountered the baby Jesus on the occasion of his presentation, I smiled. I smiled because this passage has meant so much to me that, when, over the course of years, I cobbled together a mostly memorized evening prayer, I made sure I memorized this bit from the BCP Compline service because I just feel better about life, remembering this salvation which has brought light into my life and the lives of so many others. This prayer is a familiar friend and an image that I return to nightly because it reminds me that, no matter how the day has gone or what failings I might have demonstrated that day, that the coming of Jesus meant that whatever was wrong in me or the world would, eventually, come out right. 

Yet, this promise isn't all sweetness and light. As our preacher pointed out today, the Nunc Dimittis isn't the end of Symeon's prophetic statements. After Symeon blessed them, he continued by saying "This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel and be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too.". Wow, thanks, Symeon. First, you promise that somehow this little infant would be a sign of hope and the coming of God's kingdom, then you promise strife and pain as a result. Really? Talk about mixed messages!

Again, as our preacher pointed out, this juxtaposition isn't as jarring as it looks. When it has been dark for a long time, the appearance of a light is truly something to rejoice over, but, after that first rush of gratitude, sometimes, one looks around and realizes just how grotty our surroundings actually are. And that realization may not be an easy one to make because the light may reveal something that we'd prefer not to or which we have persistently denied as part of our lives. We need the light to see how to move forward, but, sometimes, the moving forward means cleaning up a mess we'd sooner not have to clean up. In a situation like that, we could try to ignore the mess, but that is hard when everything is illuminated. Or we could claim the light is distorting the true picture. Or we could just move away from the light, back to the familiar darkness. Or we could just use the light to clean up the mess and move on. What we do, I suspect, will also dictate our attitude to what the light represents and how we'll react to it. 

I know that I need the hopefulness of Symeon's blessing of Jesus, but I, also, know that that hopefulness doesn't come easily. For Symeon, that hope only emerged after a lifetime of waiting and longing and it is all the more poignant because we know (as he himself knew) that Symeon would never see the fulfillment of that hope in Jesus' life, death and resurrection. Yet, I wonder if it is the fact that this hope is hard-won is what I find is compelling. I can see well enough around me to know that I'm in the need of saving- not in the sense of being teleported to a different reality, but in order that my life is transformed to something useful both to those around me and to God. I need that light to lighten me, so I can see the gloriousness around me, even amid the mundane, workaday world I live in. I may not always like what that light reveals, but I know it is better to see and fix, than to stumbled around aimlessly. 

So, I'll pray the Nunc Dimittis again tonight as I usually do, perhaps with a bit more awareness of the edginess of this prayer. I pray for the serenity to look into those places where the light shines in where I don't necessarily want and the courage to do something about it. 

Peace, 

Phil

Busyness

I think one of the first things I say after the obligatory "I'm fine" when asked about how I am by someone is "Busy". That doesn't, of course, make me unique. Life is busy and it seems to be getting busier and busier. That isn't anything unique to me or to my profession. Most people are just plain busy, partly because the demands from work are increased and partly because the pace of life has sped up along with the technological innovations which make it possible. Many, many commentators have commented on this increased pace in life and have duly lamented it...often without any serious desire to change it. And, if I'm to be entirely honest with myself, while I recognize the problems of my own over-busyness, I'm not sure my desire to slow down is very strong either.

Busyness, for me, makes me feel like I'm contributing and like what I do matters. In my busyness, I accomplish a fair bit, even if it never quite feels like enough. Despite complaining, in my head mostly, that I don't have time to myself, I have to admit that I like having a project to do, preferably three or four. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I know that many of the things I do as a teacher benefit my students in ways that, perhaps, I don't always know. The work I put into curriculum, marking and extra-curriculars are goods for their own sake. They are contributions to the life of my students and to the life of the school. And that is a good thing.

Yet, this week, I kept going back to a comment by Lauren Winner in Still that busyness is the new sloth. That is, we are conditioned in this society to use our busyness to avoid people and obligations and, in the end, God. It is easier for me to say "I'm okay. Just busy" to someone asking how I am because it permits me to limit my conversation with someone, from really engaging with who they are and how they're doing. It is easier to limit my prayer time with God because x needs to be done and, God knows, that is something that needs to be done- I know that because You told me. It is easier to disregard those interruptions where, as Henri Nouwen has pointed out, are often where God is calling us because I've busy doing something else for the Kingdom, thank you very much. Busyness, for me, can be a way of avoiding engaging with people and the world around me. And God, of course.

Ironically, busyness, also, causes me to lose sight of the value of the work that I'm being busy with. My focus shifts from working well to getting it done so I can make a notch for another achievement. Work, real work is an offering of one's skills and creativity, given by God. It is another way to connect with God as we give the work as an gift to those around us. Busyness makes getting it done, accomplishing something more important than the offering. It disconnects me from the value of work-the offering of myself to God and my fellow human beings. It becomes a task, with little intrinsic value- just something to be done and ticked off on a job list.

None of this isn't really a sudden revelation for me. This old compulsion has been and old friend/enemy for a long time. Nor do I surrender to it without some resistance. I recognize that there are times that I just have to drop what I'm doing and listen up to God. I know those interruptions in my day matter, especially when I get that chance to show up when God is calling. And I know that I need to slow down and pray deeply. Sometimes, I even manage it. When I remember all those things, life makes more sense and less like I'm running on ice. It's hard to slow down and just let go and let God. When I do, though, I'm less anxious and less stressed. I can do the work in front of me better and more peacefully.

Presentations

Presentations play a fairly major part of my life as a teacher. I present lessons to students. I might present PD to colleagues. I listen to presentations from both students and colleagues. This week, I had some fairly important presentations to give: my presentations to incoming Grade 8 students and to their parents. Those are important because they mark the beginning of my annual efforts to convince teenagers to take Latin with me in sufficient numbers to keep my program healthy and vibrant. More presentations follow, of course, to grade 9s to take advantage of a second change to enter Latin, to my current students to convince them to go on to higher levels-, but these Grade 8 presentations are pretty important because they set the tone. I'm always a bit anxious and it has only been in recent years that I've found that I can let go of that anxiety by remembering that God will give the students He wants me to have, so I really just need to trust that. I can make the presentation, but I don't control the outcomes.

Yet, other things this week got me thinking about presentation. In particular, I got to thinking about my own tendencies to want to give presentations to God; that is, my tendency to want to craft a neat, organized and, if possible, engaging little presentation about what I'm intending to do rather than the messy process of asking for help while I'm still discerning. It would be so much more comfortable to just report my solution to whatever it is that I'm trying to sort out and just get God's little red stamp up in the right corner- preferably with a gold star or two for good work. Of course, that isn't how discernment is supposed to work and my tendency to want to wrap things up merely causes me to anxiously chase my own tail trying to solve the problem myself. I know that, whenever I'm dithering, it is almost certainly because I'm trying to think my way to that presentation and I need to stop and start asking questions about why I'm trying to solve this problem on my own. Then, I need to take it to someone- God, of course, but, since God tends to work through other people, someone else who can help me sort out the tangle that I've created in my own head. The times I do that usually are the times when decisions become more clear. And that is why I'm getting better about remembering to do it eventually. . 

So, what I think I'm learning is that my relationship with God and others doesn't need to be a slickly designed presentation, but an invitation into a much more dynamic, creative and messy process. When I give a presentation at school, no one sees the false starts, mistakes, and just bad ideas through which I had to dismiss and correct to get the final process. Yet, it is in those false starts, mistakes and bad ideas that I learn and in that creative process that I grow. The point of discernment is not to look good, but rather to learn what live out the life that God intends for me. Like my Grade 8 presentations, I still don't control the outcomes, but I have to trust God, either in prayer or through others, will show me what He wants for me and that is going to be a better outcome than anything I'm likely to come up with on my own. 

Epiphany

It is about the time that life after the Christmas holidays is supposed to get back to normal. The rigours of the Christmas season- the festivities, the gift-giving and gift-receiving, the travel, the visits- are more or less over and the prospect of a return to work and normal life looks almost welcoming. Tonight, it is Epiphany- a brand new season and, if I might say it, a much less culturally resonant one. In fact, compared to the season before it, Epiphany almost fades into the background as we hunker down and look out over the mid-winter snow and begin to hunker down for the long, dark winter. Epiphany, as we often experience, almost seems to represent an ending, rather than a beginning- at least, as it is often experienced in North America.

Now, that experience is funny when you compare it to what the season is actually about. Epiphany is all about the breaking out of the divine into human life; the moments where God bursts into mundane human life and nothing is ever quite the same. So, we see the coming of the Magi to the carpenter's son, Jesus, and the startling pronouncement of Jesus' kingship by the Gentiles. The divine fingerprints are all over this story. The Magi are guided by strange, divinely-produced astral phenomena and are supernaturally warned not to trust Herod. Joseph and Mary are supernaturally warned to flee to Egypt to avoid Herod's fearful wrath and just as supernaturally permitted to return safely years later. It is a strange story and it is one that clearly changes the scene so profoundly that nothing is ever quite the same. God breaks through the humble beginning of Jesus to make sure that Jesus' real, divine status becomes more clear.

All this got me to thinking about those other smaller epiphanies which still break into my life- much less dramatic, but not less disconcerting. Of course, I'm not exactly the kind of person who sees divine manifestations every day over breakfast. No angel has ever jumped out at me and told me to go to a foreign land, even when I first decided to come to Toronto to study. Yet, there are moments in my life where God's fingerprints become visible in unexpected ways and nothing really remains the same after that. Maybe it is as simple as reading Martin Buber's I and Thou for a Philosophy of Religion course and realizing that, for the first time in a long time, I wasn't feeling anxious. Or, perhaps admitting my desire to attend a church service and sense of unworthiness about doing so to a patient friend, who invited me to her church anyway. Or, at the installation of a college president, being commissioned with the other students to live out our vocation in the world and realizing, weeks later, that that was a rather different proposition than I expected.  Or any number of other epiphanies which twisted my life in ways that I really couldn't anticipate. That only goes to show that I'm about the last person to know what is good for me. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing to know about myself.

Yet, I wonder sometimes, because of this, if we don't give Epiphany its due. It seems so much an ending to the Christmas season season that I don't think we appreciate what the Epiphany seasons is supposed to teach us. Epiphany really represents a beginning, a new chance for God to show Himself in his wild and wonderful ways. I wonder if we can't look for those divine fingerprints around us and quietly give thanks for our unpredictable and spontaneous God. May your epiphanies, little and great, shine forth and illuminate the path before you.

Peace,
Phil

Rejoice! Rejoice!

Advent is over for another year and what we have waited for is finally here: the first advent, Christmas. This year, after blogging on the intense, but beautiful O Antiphons, I was almost afraid that the coming of this first coming of Jesus would be a bit of a bathetic crash for me this year. The exalted titles behind the O Antiphons and the dramatic salvation story of Israel which goes on behind them almost threaten to overwhelm the simplicity of the Christmas story as we have it from the Gospels. After all,  the birth of a simple infant to a tradesman and his wife in the middle of a no-account town in a troublesome, but minor province in a now dead-empire a couple of thousand years ago could seem to be a let down for someone awaiting O or Clavis Jesse or Rex Gentium, but it isn't. It isn't because there is more to the story than just the birth of a baby. More was born on that day over two thousand years ago than just a baby. The hope that this story is just the beginning of the restoration of the world to its rightful state first arose that day. An invitation to participate in that restoration more fully than we could have asked or imagined echoes that night. It doesn't matter that that restoration is still going on. It doesn't matter if that restoration sometimes seems to stall. It has started and the hope that it brought with it emerged that night in Bethlehem.

Adonai

So, tonight, on the eve of Christmas, we are called to rejoice at this beginning. Rejoice because God has restore what he has already called good. Rejoice because God come to be one of us. Rejoice because the lion will lie down with the lamb and the Prince of Peace is still coming. .

                                        Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel has come to thee, O Israel. 

Merry Christmas to all my readers. May the coming year be a wondrous one, filled with joy and fulfillment!

Peace,
Phil