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.