Dear church member Part Two

I wrote this at the beginning of the year and wasn't ready to publish it then. I am now.

It is a continuation from another letter I wrote last year.

10/01/15

Dear church member who has forgotten us

Hi. Remember me? I'm the one who wrote that slightly-too-honest letter that a pastor's daughter should not have written. The one who accused you of being unkind and uncaring and said she was angry at the world... and God. Yup, that one.

I thought I would reintroduce myself because I'm not sure you remember who I am. You might have forgotten my family too. We're the family with depression. That disease/condition/sin that we all talked about after Robin Williams committed suicide and you found out about us? The subject has gone somewhat out of fashion. It's had its limelight; we've had our fifteen minutes. Our time is up. Clear the stage. Time to talk about abortion again. Or is it gay marriage this month?

The problem is, we're still here. And no, it has not gone away. Turns out, this thing does not just magically die once you bring it out into the open. It has not, sadly, moved on with your interest. Oh, how I would love to step off this stage, but even though you've left the theatre, and the lights are out, we're still here. In the dark. With it. It still lives with us, still colours our lives, still makes us feel alone, angry and afraid.

I can understand why you might have forgotten us. I should not be so hypocritically judgemental. I too have tried to ignore it. Since we last spoke, I have tried to run. I have focused on my own life, my own struggles, poured myself into other places and people away from home, filled my days and thoughts with other problems that are more manageable. Sometimes without even realising it.

But, unlike you, I cannot ignore this thing forever. I am attached, tethered to it. Although I try, I cannot run from it. I must return eventually to where I belong: in the midst of the discouragement and questions and frustration and silence, with my family. It's just, I thought you were family, too, and, I thought I might see you here.

Maybe we paint our masks a little too accurately. Maybe we can act okay a little too well. Maybe you really think we are okay. Maybe you are just uncomfortable. Maybe you just don't know what to say. Maybe I convinced you a little too well that we had to do this alone.

I didn't mean we wanted to be left alone.

What exactly am I saying? I'm not sure, and that's not fair on you, I know.

Maybe I'd just like you to be the church. I don't know how, and that is unfair on you.

But I wish someone would join us in the depths. It is dark down here. And we're so tired.

Our Story

Last term, I gave my form three's a spoken word assignment: have a go at writing a performance poem and share it with us. In a moment of foolish courage I told them I would also write one and share it with them. I should do this more often: it was hard! The following poem is what I came up with and shared with them. Entering into the fear of sharing personal writing outloud with a group of teenagers was a good exercise and made me even more proud of each of them.

A week ago, I returned to the place that certified me to teach and that introduced me to some of the people who have contributed to the teacher I have become and am becoming. As this trip back to the beginning has forced me to reflect on where I've come, this poem has become more and more important to me, one that sums up my current philosophy of education more succinctly than the paper I wrote in Educ 398 ever did, and I've been reminded of how much I owe to people in my past and present. I cannot name and speak adequately to them all here - perhaps that will be a future post, but, after a wonderful coffee with one of my student teaching advisors and Eng 101 professor, I remembered, yet again, another professor who I am not able to catch up over coffee with, and whom I owe so much. Mr Bill Vande Kopple taught me so much about teaching and English, but the most important and most enduring lesson he taught me was to love students: to believe in them, to try to see their world through their eyes, to be on their side. I could never put words to what this lesson means to me.

I am deeply sad that he is no longer here. I wish I could have had coffee with him this week and told him about my students and the teacher I am today, about this journey that I am on that is so exciting and terrifying, breath-taking and beautiful. And how integral of a part he played in it.

Our Story

Did you know that

when you step through that door

Timid and shy

Trying to sink into the floor that stubbornly refused to open

To creep under your invisibility cloak that's run out of battery

or bold and dubious

Ready to do battle, armour on,

Your arsenal of eye rolling and stubborn silences at the ready

Wide-eyed and

wary of all things new and adult... like me

When you stepped in

You stepped into my story.

And I stepped into yours.

(Don't look at me like that - I can't help it

I didn't ask for you to be here

Blame Miss Grinley.)

but here you are

and here I am.

I'm in your story and you're in mine.

It's a story of drama:

Of prefects who give 5 page essays

on the gravitational pull of the earth

in French

due

oh shoot, yesterday!

Of little brothers who jump up and down

on your head

in the middle of the night,

Of friends who oh my word did you hear what she said to her when she was in the bathroom about what she said last week on the way to talk to her?

It's a story of romance:

Of boys with beautiful smiles

Of heaven on earth crushes

and end of the world break ups

It's a story of horror:

Of mishaps in Chemistry

and mouths hit by hockey balls full of blood

Of dragon teachers

with voices and mannerisms you can imitate like hollywood pros

A story full of comedy:

Suck your cheeks in and try not to laugh comedy

Sit down and cry comedy

Of lunch spilt on laps

And embarrassing moments in bathrooms.

...

My story has drama too:

"Wait, what period is this?"

and, "She said what about my teaching?"

And comedy:

"Miss Bell, you already did this lesson."

and "Oh shoot, this is not my classroom... these are not my students!"

And even a little horror sometimes:

"I gave them how much homework?"

"You want me to teach where?"

And maybe a little romance...

okay, there's no romance.

Multiple plot threads

genres

characters

all pulled through that door

when you walked in.

How will we ever find a structure?!

I think

Together

if you come out from under your invisibility cloak

and put down your weapons

If I let go of my need to structure

stories and life

I think

I hope

I dream

we can write a beautiful story

here

We can weave a tale so beautiful and glorious

that no one out there will believe that it happened.

A story where we create a new place

A place that is safe enough to make

mistakes

friends,

safe enough to love

yourself

beauty

A place where brave heroines fight bullies

and bullies dissolve into... ordinary kids

where secret dreams can be let out

dancing across the room like butterflies

and kept, safe, in gently cupped hands

where we can learn what it means to be

ourselves

each other

someone else

where women win epic battles with powerful words

that heal

where the dragon can be slain with a rolling laugh

and magic wands turn tears into diamonds that we wear with pride on our necks and fingers

like badges of great honour

where you can speak up and be silent

when you want

where the layers can be shed

and you can be Anyone

or just you

For a brief 40 minutes

For 40 minutes

we can dream another world

Together

Because you stepped through that door.

February, 2015

But one was white

I witnessed a very sad, but unfortunately typical and accepted, interaction the other day. It was between two men. They were about the same age, but one was white.

The white man had come into printing shop to get some copies made while I was waiting for my own order which was being worked on by another man (black). The white man had to wait to be served. As he did, the black man came in, greeted the white man waiting and walked to the other side of the counter. The white man responded well and I remember feeling positive (a white man's good response makes me feel positive; it surprises me).

I forget who it was who started it, but one of them commented on the constant rain we had had for the last 8 days, and they started talking farming.

The white man said the rain was good. The black man agreed, it was good because people were out looking after their crops and planting. Something about this comment made the white man tense up. I wondered if he used to own a farm. It would have been a large commercial farm that produced exported wheat or tobacco, not maize to feed his family. These men were from different worlds. The whole atmosphere changed. He said, if they were planting, they were too late. Expert. But the black man was an expert too, and, unfortunately, he did not seem to feel the change in the atmosphere. He said, no, the rains had only started in his home in Mutoko in December and so there was still time.

The white man had shut down. He was focused on his copies.

The black man, however, was warming up. He had been positively received at the beginning of the exchange and he had unexpectedly made a connection with this murungu, not something that happens every day, clearly. He was determined to take advantage of this rare happening and was clearly passionate about farming, like any good Zimbabwean. He continued talking. Eager to share, to connect, to be heard.

Sorghum, which we grow in Mutoko, can be planted now...

But the white man had his copies and enough. He had left the conversation long ago. He repeated "Sorghum?" over his shoulder as he walked out the door, leaving the black man finishing his sentence to the air and me, a silent but suddenly very large, observer.

There was no way to save the situation. I could not pretend to have any knowledge on farming and while I would have been interested to know what it was that made sorghum a crop that could be planted after the rains had started, trying to continue the conversation would have just made what had happened even worse.

The black man's discomfort and surprise at being left, so rudely and unkindly, stranded, in the middle of a sentence, an assumed connection, a presumed equality was hard to see. I wished I had got my printing done elsewhere.

Such a small interaction, hardly lasting five minutes. But how telling, and how sad, that we are still here.

He thought he could have a conversation of equals. But his partner did not see him as a partner at all. They were about the same age, but one was white.

2014: the word is love

A few days ago, I spent a very comfortable and refreshing couple of hours reading through all my writing/journaling from 2014. Much of it is not publishable (not very good/too dramatic/might lead to a loss of job) but, particularly with my bad memory, it was good to look back on the year and remember. It has been, as I have alluded to in a few posts, a challenging year. I'd like to write a beautiful blog post, looking back and summing up the year with a few clever metaphors and a touch of humour thrown in here and there.

The truth is, I don't know how.

I'm still processing many of the things that happened last year. I'm still trying to work out what I think about so many things.

I've started a few "sum up" blog posts, and I just can't finish them. They all feel too big, or too fake, or too forced.

I have a good friend who once said that she found that she had a word for different seasons of her life depending on what she was learning or thinking or going through at that time. As I've read through my (sometimes highly emotional) writing from the year, and when I think honestly through all that has happened in my family, at school, in my head and heart, it is clear what my word is. Love. I'm in a love kind of place write now. But it is not heart-warming, fall backwards onto your bed, gooey and sweet love. It is hard, sometimes burningly painful, stretch you beyond yourself love.

I tried to write a list of "lessons on love" but, although real and true to me, it ended up sounding cliche and dramatic and sort of cheesy. In sum, I've learnt that relationships are worth pursuing, fully and wholeheartedly, but with eyes wide open to the risks that they bring. The degree to which you open yourself up to love, and loving people and places and things, is the degree to which you can by hurt, by love and by those people and places and things. Donald Miller wrote in his book "A Million Miles in a Thousand Years" (which I highly recommend, by the way) that there is "no joy without pain." Love and deep relationships can bring so much joy, but they take so much work, and, sometimes, pain. I think, though, I think, it is worth it.

One of the poems I studied with my Lower Sixes this year was Sir Walter Raleigh's The Author's Epigraph, Written by Himself. I made my students write their own epigraphs, which kind of freaked a few of them out but ended up being a really great exercise. I wrote my own, which is below. At the end of it all, I want to be someone who moved and loved, fully and completely, disregarding the risks.

Epigraph 16/09/14

Remembered here is one

who moved

and loved

fully and completely

(who spoke for and heard

those who needed voice and ear

and left each place

a little better for her presence)

disregarding the risks

of doing so

and propelled by

a joy, peace and love

not her own.

Upper Six 2014: "You have been that someone"

Yet again, I've been absent for far too long. The term and the year have ended. Goodbyes have been said to students stepping out and away into the world that is not high school. This year's goodbyes were particularly hard.

You have been that someone

Dear student

Last year, I said

“This doesn’t happen with everyone”

to some of you.

Every now and then

you meet someone,

and this weird thing happens.

You have been that someone.

This year, it’s been hard to write,

hard to think about this moment,

because

You have been that someone.

How to put into words that weird thing?

Let me try.

I have watched you

grow, through so much,

pushed and pulled, by so much,

and so many.

I have seen you

fall and get up

shout and cry

sing and dance

break rules and fall into line

be so hard and so kind.

You have

inspired me

with

your courage and perseverance

in the face of so much hurt

your kindness and compassion

in the midst of your own battles

your enduring passion and ability

to sing in the storms.

I have been

inspired by your strength

moved by your song

challenged by your honesty.

It has not always been pretty

It has not always been fun

It has not always been easy

But I would do it all again.

Yup, even those times.

I would do them all again.

I’m so proud of you.

I’m so grateful to have walked

part of your journey with you.

I’m so privileged to have listened

to your fears and jokes and joys.

Every real conversation has been an

Honour

held deep in my heart.

May you find, dear student,

places you can breathe and flourish in,

people you can love who will love you,

things you can do that will give you joy

and make you come alive.

If you find yourself

in places you can’t

with people who won’t

doing things that don’t:

Get out. Leave. And Stop.

You deserve

so much more.

So, dear student,

Go,

with all my blessings

of joy

and peace.

May you find truth.

May you never lose the light

Or the song.

If you do,

come back.

I’ll remind you

Because you are that someone.

Miss Bell, October 2014

Dear church member who is discussing this thing called “Depression” like it is the flu

I wrote this weeks ago and it has been read and reread, edited and chopped. I do not post this flippantly. It is a large issue that many are talking more about recently. I’d like to add my voice to the discussion. I do not address my convictions about what depression is and what we as Christians should think about it in the piece, but would like to say here, briefly, that I personally believe that depression is an illness, with complex causes and facets, that may or may not have spiritual aspects. It can, and should when advised by a medical professional, be successfully treated with medication. When science and medical knowledge given to us by people with God-given abilities and wisdom open our eyes to ways to improve our lives, we should listen and accept this gift. Christians who need to go on medication to be able to live a life free from the hold of this illness often feel immense guilt, and this is wrong. We as the church need to be aware of the damage we do to people within and outside our community, by not speaking about this, and other mental illnesses, in an open and loving way, often alienating both those suffering and their families, and helping to create feelings of guilt, shame and isolation. Whatever your thoughts on the theology of this issue, I hope that you can read my letter below with the same openness in which it was written. Thank you for listening.

* * *

10/09/14

Dear church member who is discussing this thing called “Depression” like it is the flu

I have heard your discussions, or news of your discussions: theological debates and philosophical arguments on the origins and meaning of this thing called “Depression.” Oh, it is so interesting to bat ideas around like tennis balls, back and forth, resting occasionally to consider what God might say in His Word, then, using whatever verse you have found to hit the ball with renewed vigour. I have no desire, here, to hit the ball with you. That is a conversation for another day. This is just to remind you, in the midst of your game, your intellectual discussion, that mixed up in this thing called “Depression,” there are people. Other people who are struggling to understand it as well, but not because they enjoy the stimulating conversations, the batting of the ball, but because they live with it. I am one of those people. I have lived with it in my house. Its darkness has covered the room I sleep in and painted grey the windows that I wake up to. I cannot speak for those who suffer from this thing called “Depression.” No one who has not felt the depth of their darkness can be so foolishly presumptuous as to attempt to describe what it feels like. For that, we need to put the ball down and listen to them. There are many who have courageously stepped onto the court of our game and tried to share their world; we would do well to just sit down, be silent, and listen. I am not one of those, and will not attempt to tell their story. But, I can tell the story of one who has lived with this thing called “Depression” in my house as it has consumed someone I love.

I would like to tell you what it is like to live with someone you love who is suffering from Depression in just three words.

Alone. Because of the silence surrounding this disease, the stigma attached to it, and the church’s often unkind and ungodly reactions to it and the people who have it, it is impossible to not feel totally alone. As you watch your loved one suffer and sink further and further into darkness and silence, away from you, you have to do it alone. No one knows what happens behind the walls of your house. No one is let in. A face is painted, and then you get in the car, go to work, school, church. Sometimes the mask slips outside the walls and someone sees a glimpse of the reality, a hint of the pain, a suggestion of something not quite right. But nobody asks, really. And usually, you hold things together, until you come home. And then, face washed, you see the reality happening in your family. The silence, the pain, the confusion. Even at home, however, you cannot afford to be fully real. You must be strong. You must continue, day in and day out. Fighting the despair, in the one you love, and in yourself, on the outside at least. Sometimes contradicting, sometimes just listening, accepting the negativity, the tears, the hopelessness, the silence, the gloom that falls and settles into the rooms in which we must live, eat, and sleep. And you must do it alone. No one enters into that place. No one knows, and if they did, they would not understand. They could not move in. You must continue, and continue, and continue, alone.

Anger. I feel a lot of anger. Some of it is misplaced, and that is my problem to deal with, kindly do not tell me that, I know it. But I will not lie; I feel angry. Angry at this disease that has stolen the one I love; that consumes and surrounds them with a dark, impenetrable wall that I can’t break through; that turns them into someone I don’t know, can’t understand, and cannot hold.

I find my anger turned on them in their helplessness. I want to shake them out of their fog, to scream and shout in their face, to beat them into feeling-saying-doing something. But I cannot. Because it would not be fair. And because it would not help. My anger must find another outlet.

Enter unthinking, uncaring people. I feel angry towards people, so many people, who do not understand, who do not try to understand, who do not see that there is even something to understand.

Enter church. Oh, church, how can you stand there and not see? How can you leave your brothers and sisters to suffer silent and alone behind the walls of the houses you give them? How can you ignore the pain that is so evident if you would just open your eyes to it?

And then, when I follow the horrifying train of my thoughts, I turn to God. And, God help me, I am angry at you. How could you do this to us? Where are you in our pain and darkness? Why do you leave us here alone and afraid?

Afraid. I am terrified. I do not know where this disease will take the one I love. I do not understand it and, as I stand watch from the other side, I cannot help. There is no quick fix, no twelve-step solution, no magic formula: I cannot problem-solve this thing. And I cannot step into the darkness with the one I love. I cannot follow. And yet sometimes, an even darker fear stalks me, perhaps, I will follow.

Alone. Angry. Afraid. There are other feelings that drip off this thing called “Depression” when it moves into your house: guilt, grief, pain, hopelessness, confusion. These three, however, accompany me and cannot be shaken off. And this is my experience. I do not speak for all who have had to live with this thing called “Depression” in their house. I do not even speak for every member of my family. I speak for myself. It is not the experience of all who live with and care for family with Depression. But it is mine. Hear it and consider it as you debate the ethics, the origins, and, God help you, the theology of this thing we call “Depression.” And then, eyes a little more open, please, be kind.

A reminder to myself: why I'm here

Today I was reminded why I’m here, at this school. I had forgotten. I’ve always known I will not be here forever; and not even these things will keep me here that long. But I am here now. And now I must remember why.

To clarify:

I am not here for the money. I am deeply grateful for a job that pays well in a country where unemployment is vast, but, let’s be honest, I could move across town for a better paying position.

I am not here for the movement upwards. In Zimbabwean education? Don’t make me laugh.

I am not here for the stability. Four Heads in five years and a departmental crisis every 10 months, I don’t think so.

I am not here for the recognition of how much I do. It just ain’t gonna happen.

I am here to teach:

grammar and spelling,

literature and characterisation,

punctuation and figures of speech,

but also,

how to express thoughts, clearly and well;

to speak up;

to own opinions;

to be brave;

to listen to and accept the thoughts and opinions of others;

to believe, in possibility, self, and hope.

Among other things.

I am here to listen:

to hear truth and lies

--spoken and unspoken--

and to accept that both might be necessary at different times;

to hear stories of pain and joy,

and to feel and carry the weight of both.

I am here to challenge:

students and structures,

values and words,

systems and ideas.

I am here to build and inspire:

people,

stories,

ideas,

hope.

I am here to see:

the potential;

the spark in a timid eye;

the courage/hope/confidence that needs blowing on;

the dark circles that tell stories of long nights;

the heart that wants to be heard;

the pain under the laughter.

I am here to be a safe place:

to provide freedom

to be

and say

and do

whatever might be necessary,

today.

I am here to accept:

whoever comes in and

whoever goes out,

and to protect that right to be.

I am here to make better:

everything I can,

however I can,

one small,

painful

step at a time.

Basically, I am here

to care.

That is why I am here. For now.