New Posts

I haven’t bothered blogging in a while. I just put up two posts that were requirements from the Program Manager of the Mississippi Teacher Corps. The first one, titled “A Day in the Life,” is what it sounds like. The second, titled “J-Dizzle,” is about my favorite student. I like the first one much more than the second, myself.

We Need Him Every Day

The title of this article carries with it a simple message that was kneaded into the dough of my soul this past Friday. I’m sure I could’ve preached a sermon or two about it before this episode, but an experience of it is worth much more to me than a sermon, memories and tears so much more than maxims and syllogisms. For you, my reader, who must take it in second-hand, I pray God gives you some measure of what I have tasted and seen.

IN THE MIDDLE OF THIRD PERIOD, while my kids were taking a test and I was doing the rounds, a student raised his hand to ask for a sharpened pencil—a common request from those who are about to be caught with no classwork done. I padded my right side. Nothing but my keys. I reached into my rarely used left pocket and found a pencil, which I removed quickly, pulling along with it a few shredded Kleenexes, once wet with tears but become crusty. A potent thought popped up. I handed the student the pencil and continued my rounds, fingering the Kleenexes. They reminded me of something that I thought I ought to write down. From the podium I grabbed the clipboard on which I’d been keeping a rough record of my students’ behavior throughout the day. In the middle of the top sheet was a prayer, or maybe a note-to-self: “My God, my God, your mercy is so great.” (When did I write that? It must have been during first period.) I recorded the left-pocket discovery just below it, and then threw the Kleenexes away discreetly. Why jot down this event? Why bother continuing to recall this morning’s tears when I could just destroy the evidence of them and move on?

Because these had been the tears of God.

EARLIER THAT MORNING, when I entered the copy room, I encountered one of my colleagues whom I would often find in this very place before school. Despite efforts to appear ready to tackle the day, she could tell that I had been crying.

“Oh! What’s wrong?” she asked feelingly.

I told her that I had been crying all morning, but that my tears were a good thing. “I don’t know if you’re a believer or not, but God speaks, and when he speaks it can be hard to hear.” After a moment I added, “The tears are a good thing, this morning.”

She nodded silently. Not a believer. We went about our business.

EARLIER THAT MORNING, I stood in my kitchen dressed for work. It must have been just before 06:00. I slowly poured coffee into my travel mug. In the dimness, it looked like ink. The half-and-half, next, softly trickled in, forming at first little storm-clouds against the blackness. They billowed and grew. Eventually these clouds overcame the whole sky in the mug, even the unseen realms behind the sky, and transformed the little world in there from night to day.

Suddenly, after the coffee whitened, a prayer escaped the trap of my fleshly mind: “God, if you don’t give me grace today, I won’t make it.”

By the time I had the lid on the mug, I was crying. So little time had elapsed. I had not spilled my coffee. I had not remembered some past frustration. I had not thought ahead to a dreadful future.

These were the tears of God.

I cried because God spoke.

To tell the story well and rightly, I should not yet put what he said into quotation marks, because I didn’t sort it out or force an articulation of it until later. In short, he impressed upon me my weakness and foolishness for such a prayer. “God, if you don’t give me grace today, I won’t make it.”

Weakness. My flesh raged at this. The first tears were hot and angry, aware of my inadequacies, waiting at the edge of my eyelid and threatening to announce my failures to the world. I couldn’t make it on my own, not even for one day, a Friday.

Foolishness. My spirit broke at this. Those first tears were pushed off the edge into the oblivion on my cheeks, followed now by genuine, liquid sadness. Of course I couldn’t make it without him! Fool!

These first words from God and the corresponding tears threw me into darkness. And then, just as suddenly, a drop of cream. A new word poured into me, forming at first little storm-clouds against the blackness. They billowed and grew. They mushroomed until all of me was changed, homogeneously tainted by grace as coffee is whitened by cream.

This is the picture of revelation.

These were the tears of God.

Beatitude. My spirit revived. The rest of my tears spoke of mixed gratitude and pleasure. Not a day goes by that his grace isn’t here with me; every day that I “make it” is a day that he has made.

Eventually my housemate noticed me in this state. He had been waiting on me for a ride to school. He tried to comfort me, and then the whole matter burst out of me in a few words: “We need him every day.” He agreed. We shared this thought for the next thirty minutes on our way to school. I cried the whole way there and tried to sop up my tears with those Kleenexes. He prayed before we  went into school to make copies. And I knew without a doubt that these were the tears of God.

Jesus Christ said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing” (John 15.5).

Other Blog: Hard

I put up a post, “Hard,” on the blog I keep officially for the Mississippi Teacher Corps.

No Class Left Behind

One of my better insights came to me today as I edged my way through to success: no two classes are the same. Before today, I had been treating each of my classes the same. I was ignoring the dynamic, the peculiar character of each class as a whole, created by the members of that class. To have the same expectations for each is fine, but the methods for discipline and management do not need to be homogeneous. This came to me all at once, as I noticed that some of my chronically sleepy students were awake and attentive for the whole period because of an adjustment to the beginning of class. If, within the first twenty minutes of a 104-minute block, I “open the floor” (my procedure for allowing them to chat quietly while they work), it may look a lot different from my other classes, but it takes advantage of a certain dynamic. I would rather have a chatty classroom than a sleeping classroom.

Today, I have the distinct sense that I am learning from some of my mistakes. Finally. Now, when’ll the next catastrophic bundle of stress hit me?

Mes Souvenirs

I just heard news about the old Victorian house of my childhood in Bath, New York. When I lived there, it was painted a traditional, pleasant beige with maroon trim and accents, and maybe green shutters. Now, according to my informant, it has become quite a spectacle. “Let’s just say it will never disappear during a blizzard,” she remarked. Luckily for everyone, there will invariably be a blizzard in western New York, within the next decade; so we can all put her observation to the test.

My first thought about the news was that I have no attachment to the house. I never did. I wasn’t sad to leave it, and I don’t care what becomes of it.

Indeed there are no emotions in my memory surrounding that house. To my surprise, this is not an instance of my otherwise very bad memory. I remember feeling nothing when I moved. I remember trying to feel nothing about it. I remember telling others that I felt nothing.

But all of this remembering comes as quite a shock. I do have an exceptionally poor memory. So the fact that I have memories surrounding the process of leaving this house makes me think that my first thought was missing the mark. I think my memory is accurate in telling me that I wasn’t sad to leave it, but it betrays something else by being able to recall that negative emotional fact so distinctly.

This is all just a big preface to what I intended to write about: my memory has been bad “for as long as I can remember,” but there’s a mystery here that is begging to be explored.

My father also has a troublesome memory. He is encyclopedic in some ways; ask him about modern music or botany, and then be prepared to sit down. He cannot, however, recall much of his childhood or teenage years, nor a lot of more recent events. My mind works on a pattern similar to his, I assume. I can remember things that I’ve heard or seen or read so long as they are filed into a kind of encyclopedic system. But “what happens” to me or to others around me often pass away quite quickly—if not falling into that larger filing system, with its apparently finite number of labels for significance. I cannot remember most of my childhood. I don’t have a good sense of important dates: for example, when I first moved, or at what age I started playing soccer, or when my parents were divorced, or when I became friends with so-and-so. After poking and prodding I can sometimes narrow them down, but it doesn’t come easily, and each time I try to think about them I have to go through the same process of narrowing down.

And then the mystery.  I now suspect that this old house has so many memories tied to it. I wonder: “How much of this poor memory of mine is only so because I attached my thought to things along the way, and then the things themselves were taken from me?” This attachment carries a different sense than the one in my first thought, mentioned above. It is not that I am attached to the house in a way that necessarily provokes an emotional reaction, but that I is attached to it.  With the things, such as that house, coming and going, there is an I that comes and goes.

What if all the “happenings” that I have forgotten are only gone because I filed the memory externally. They’re not gone simply because they are in the past, but because I let them fall upon something else that did not endure or stay with me. Maybe I could have tried to attach them to something else within me that I wouldn’t lose, and they would have remained. (Is that what we call “learning”?) Maybe I am too much in the habit of letting “what happens” stay outside, stay tied to the things that I won’t take with me, things whose likeness it is hard to imagine without an external likeness….

None of this is new for psychologists.  I’ve read about it plenty.  But I hadn’t experience the significance of the thoughts for myself until tonight.

My next mission is to get my hands on some old and new photographs of the house, to see what else emerges.

A Brief Thought on Expectancy and the Faith of Abraham

One of my bosses gave an introductory speech today in front of the first-year teachers in the Mississippi Teacher Corps, the program through which I am living and working in the Delta for the next two years. He said he disapproves the language “high expectations” and “low expectations.” We should not have any expectations, he advised.

Now, upon reflection, I see that it is impossible not to have expectations. It is even good to have expectations. But what my boss is driving at, if I am to agree with his advice at all, is the question of that about which we have expectations. He was saying, I think, that we should not have high or low expectations about the kids we’ll be teaching, the conditions under which we’ll be teaching, etc.  But I don’t like the language of high and low expectations, nor can I see myself, in any honest way, having no expectations.

So I would like to abandon my boss’s language in an attempt to take in (at least in part) his advice.  I’ll turn instead to Kierkegaard: “He who always hopes for the best grows old and is deceived by life, and he who is always prepared for the worst grows old prematurely” (Fear and Trembling, Eulogy on Abraham).

As I recall my past self to my present self, I see that I have been like the latter kind of man depicted here, like him for a long time, since I was around sixteen. Maybe as a boy I was otherwise, and maybe as a boy I decided to be like this man, always prepared for the worst, grown old in heart so early. This would be like the man who has low expectations, in my boss’s language. This would be someone who had moralized and learned to despise the world in a sophisticated way—a La Rochefoucauld who tries to turn all virtues into vices. He sounds like a wise old man, but is only old (in heart) and not necessarily wise. It is sadly what I became.

The first man, who hopes for the best, would be like the man who has high expectations. This man is doomed to a different kind of failure, a failure to genuinely live and experience and grow, though he grow old in his disappointments.

“But Abraham had faith,” writes Kierkegaard, “and therefore he was young.” The old man and the prematurely old man, then, are the unfaithful. The one unfaithful because he believes according to his own wishes, puts trust in a self-made lie, and the other because he only trusts himself, if even that. Abraham trusted in the promise given by God. In my boss’s language, Abraham had expectations neither high nor low, but he did indeed have some expectancy; he expected exactly what was promised to him, something no one without faith could ever expect. The measures of high and low are within the realm of what is possible. Abraham expected the impossible, for what was promised was impossible when it was fulfilled.

So I must fight against that prematurely old man in me, the one who hopes for worst in order to defend himself against the heartache that comes from infidelity, the pain from disaster, and the wretchedness from failure. I must have faith, joy, be at peace, be young. And I must not let myself become the self-deceived man who refuses to acknowledge heartache, pain, and wretchedness. I must have faith, joy, be at peace, be young. This faith means that I will take heartache, pain, and wretchedness for what it is: there should be no defense against it, and no excuse to brush it aside.

Now my next step is to listen, to hear what God might promise me in Mississippi, so I’ll know exactly where to aim my expectancy—not high, not low, neither to the right nor the left, but right at what has been promised.

A Testimony of Outstretched Arms

What follows is another quoted article from my old blog.  The unnamed sin to which I referred numerous times is masturbation, a strange question that plagues the mind of most young men who put any emphasis on the word purity.  I put this up as an informative warning, but there is nothing graphic about its description below and it can be read, I think, by anyone without offense.  It should be noted that I am not making universal claims about masturbation, but about conscience.  If my reader’s own conscience is stirred about masturbation particularly, then I thank God.

I lay on my backside with my arms stretched up to the ceiling—no, to God. I didn’t know how to escape the torment. I couldn’t run away from the temptation, because it was with me, inside me. This temptation is like a shadow, it seems, that cannot be detached by struggling with hands and feet and teeth and sweat and blood. Everyone experiences this temptation, for I know that no temptation overtook me except what is common to all humankind (1Cor. 10:13). Like my shadow, it would always be touching at least one part of my body, because I cannot keep my feet off the ground for more than a few seconds. But even shadows are melted, dissolved, destroyed utterly, in the presence of the Father of lights, in whom “there is no variation or shifting shadow” (Jam. 1:7 NASB) What? Is the devil saying that even the Great Light would cause me to cast a shadow behind me? Not if his light also shines within me! So I wait for that day with longing when “the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Re. 21:23 ESV; cf. 22:5, Is. 60:20)—to be surrounded and filled with light that overcomes the uncomprehending darkness!

I couldn’t escape my shadow as I lay there. As much as I affirm Paul’s command to “flee from idolatry” and all sin (1Cor. 10:14), I was on my back with no strength in my legs, because there was nowhere to run but upward, and I had no means to get there but the strong arms of my Father, to whom I was reaching. With plain confidence Paul teaches, “With the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (v.13). Some New Age “sage” may prescribe a remedy for escape, if he admits to avoiding sin at all, by means of inward contemplation or confessing that the body is illusory. I, however, had to pray to the Almighty; otherwise I would drown in my own shadow. To go inward would’ve been of great benefit only if I had a mind to consult my conscience or the Holy Spirit. But when I looked inward I did not set my mind of things of the spirit but on things of the flesh, and there was only death looming at the advice of inward contemplation. To say that the body is illusory would’ve given me adequate excuse, like the Gnostics conjure up, to dive into my sin, for if the body is an illusion, then the crucifixion of Jesus Christ is nothing more than a stage show (cf. 1Pe. 2:24), and also the sins committed by the body are illusions, and my conscience ought to be free in all lawlessness. But “we must not put Christ to the test” (1Cor. 10:9). No, I had to pray and trust. “God is faithful” (v.13), and only by the mightiest hand can his people be delivered from slavery (cf. Ex. 3:18-20). My help couldn’t come from my own devices. The priest Aaron was commanded to bless the people thus: “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace” (Nu. 6:24-26). Blessing comes from the Lord, the Lord, the Lord. I cannot bless myself and keep myself, my face does not shine with glory that can heal, and the storm in my mind cannot give itself peace. The Lord must look upon me and be gracious to me if I am to live another day.

On my back, I began to speak to him in sheer desperation, and I recounted to him everything that I believed, scrambling in my heart to gain some defense against the tempter. This was my honest prayer: “I believe that you created the whole world, and formed and filled it—establishing your law and imbuing it with your glory. I believe that you created the first humans in your image. I believe that you spoke to them. I believe that they disobeyed and were corrupted because of their desire. I believe that you are holy and require holiness of your people. I believe that you delivered your people from oppression in Egypt. I believe that you gave them the written Law to bless them.

“O Lord, I am confused. There is no written commandment against my sin, and if not for my conscience crying out I would not see any trouble in my soul because of this. A while ago I thought I heard a voice telling me that this was sin, and I thought it was your voice. But it is not anywhere written. How am I to know?”

I paused for a moment, and then continued, because God in his grace made my conscience bold: “I believe that you called Abram and gave him your promise. I believe that you call your people to live by the law of faith, not the law of works. Oh! Now I see, Lord. There was nothing written for Abram. There was only your presence. He heard and responded. Abram was called to a mystery and given a promise that he could not see, but he walked all the same, and he believed in the promises. His faith was credited to him as righteousness. So all whom you have brought into the glory of your Son are called to a mystery and given a promise that can only be seen by a faithful heart.

“It’s faithful obedience to remember what you spoke to me and keep the commandment. And believing that you have spoken to me, and that you do not lie, and that you have never changed since the beginning, and that you always confirm what is written in the Scriptures,—to keep the commandment can only be credited to me as righteousness. I will obey the voice of the Spirit and consider the true testimony of the written words.”

It was an important prayer. In my temptation I was inclined only to think of God as a set of written words, a volume of moral information. The devil will always try to reduce the living God down to an inert and lifeless code—portraying what the Lord says as an algorithm instead of something “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). The written words are not God. For how can the Maker of the world be contained in paper pages and leather binding if “heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him”? (2Ch. 2:6) Jesus rebuked the Jews who searched the Scriptures assuming they could obtain eternal life in them, because really the life is found in Christ himself, and the Scriptures bear witness about him (Joh. 5:39f.). Jesus says the word was not “abiding” in these Jews, who had never heard or seen God (vv.37f.). He doesn’t mean that they hadn’t memorized enough of the Old Testament writings. He means that they were so full, perhaps even full of “sacred” knowledge, that they were unable to provide lodging for the words, in the same way that the inn in the city of David did not have room for Messiah (cf. Lu. 2:7). They knew the words well enough, but they did not have spiritual understanding, which comes only by the voice of the the Spirit.

Likewise, as I was there on my back, I had been regarding the written words of God while not regarding the Spirit, who had beforehand spoken to me about this sin. I remembered that the apostle wrote, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1Pe. 1:16; cf. Lev. 11:44), and another, “God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness” (1Th. 4:7); however, I would not let these words abide in me, to teach me what it is to be holy before the Lord. I would not consider these as applying to the sin to which I was being tempted. “This act has nothing to do with holiness or profanity,” the devil would say. “You did not hear the Spirit say that. It was your own thought. You have not seen the glory of God,” he would continue. If he can get me to disregard the Spirit, then he can get me to disconnect the words commanding holiness from the profanity of the sin.

But when I prayed there, the Spirit gave me words anew, reminding me of Abram and the faith that comes from hearing. The Lord reached down and picked me up. The Spirit’s arms wrapped around me and banished the shadow, relieved me from the temptation. My means of escape was not an algorithm, not a ten-step plan, not inward contemplation, not denial of the world. I was rescued by the abiding word of God and the fellowship with the Spirit, who brought the written words to life in me.

God restored me that day. Praise the Lord. I became again like the disciples after the resurrection: “They believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken” (Joh. 2:22). I believe the Scripture and the Spirit’s words. So I stood and walked away from the temptation, by the Lord’s grace.