student poetry!

Read my students' poems! I asked the seniors to write a poem in response to "Cry the Beloved Country" and I was delighted with the result. After a difficult month, seeing the fruit of this exercise has given me "purpose again for my strength/Like the laborers returning to work from a strike" to quote David's poem. It made me happy that this assignment inspired Josh to put so much creative effort into his first poem and that it gave Shea an outlet for her spiritually sensitive observations.

and with the rest of the literary world I turn to...

a poem that a former professor of mine says is "the Purgatorio between the Inferno of “The Waste-land” and the Paradiso of the “Four Quartets.” And I'm always appreciative of an allusion to Dante.

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessed face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

-"Ash Wednesday" - T.S. Eliot

goal-making

For me, making goals is a matter of bravery. I fear failure. I asked my 9th graders the other day what they fear most and aside from 15 year old boy silliness ("I fear cellulite on old women in bathing suits"), that same boy said "I fear failure." Yeah, you and me both. And that is why I avoid making goals. Running through my mind right now are my to-do lists from my senior year of college with bullet point after bullet point of massive undertakings with little time or just enough time and not enough diligence.

I am ready to be courageous. Goal-making, here I come.

Goal #1

I want to put more effort into creating beautiful spaces. I don't have a track record of putting much thought into consistent organization (order in the unseen) or aesthetic pleasantries for my living spaces. I am challenged/inspired by friends Andrea and Mary , coworkers, and blogs by people I don't know who will have more domestic success in a day than I'll have in a lifetime.

First steps for Goal 1:

1. In the classroom: Clearing out rubbermaid containers full of my materials I used over a month ago.

2. Picking up half my closet off the floor after my too-long endeavor to find the right outfit for the Mardi Gras party I attended last night. (First time celebrating Fat Tuesday and it was on a School Night!)

Goal #2

I want to grow herbs. Cilantro, basil, and mint.

Roadblock: I have a black thumb. Seriously can't keep anything alive. But I am determined to have success!

First steps for Goal 2: Buy pots. Buy seeds. Reread those how-to-grow-herbs articles.

Here is what I tell myself:

In the span of a year, I went from screwing up box brownies to cooking delicious meals for my family every week and baking cookies that have become just slightly infamous (for good reasons) in my little community, I can manage a little space-shaping and herb-nurturing.

thoughts of rebuilding

Right now I'm teaching Cry the Beloved Country to seniors in a Modern World literature class, and I can't help but feel unworthy of it. I'm confounded by the resilient hope of Stephen Kumalo - the souls of his family are shattered and the mending may be impossible. Not to neglect the context of this story, which is the real suffering of native South Africans leading up to the establishment of the apartheid, but I just feel this fear and hope so deeply within my own context.

I'm thankful to be reading this again.

The main character Stephen Kumalo is a parson in a small South African tribe where the men and women are leaving in droves for the bigger cities to find their spouses and children, never to return themselves. Stephen and his wife receive a letter that his sister Gertrude, who left years earlier for Johannesburg to find her husband, is sick. He finally decides to take the train to Johannesburg to find her and his son Absalom to bring them home and "rebuild the tribe." He finds his sister in the slums; she has become a prostitute and has a young son. Ashamed but desperate to leave, she goes with Stephen and they travel together to find Absalom.

"While Kumalo was waiting for Msimangu to take him to Shantytown, he spent the time with Gertrude and her child...He could not expect her to talk with him about the deep things that were here in Johannesburg; for it was amongst these very things that saddened and perplexed him, that she had found her life and occupation. Here were heavy things again...never again did they speak of the things that had made her fall on the floor with crying and weeping.

He had bought the child some cheap wooden blocks, and with these the little one played endlessly and intently, with a purpose obscure to the adult mind but completely absorbing. Kumalo would pick the child up, and put his hand under the shirt to feel the small warm back, and tickle and poke him, till the serious face relaxed into smiles, and the smiles grew into uncontrollable laughter. Or he would tell him of the great valley where he was born, and the names of hills and rivers, and the school that he would go to, and the tops above the Ndotsheni. Of this the child understood nothing; yet something he did understand, for he would listen solemnly to the deep melodious names, and gaze at his uncle out of wide and serious eyes....

Sometimes Gertrude would hear him and come to the door and stand shyly there, and listen to the tale of the beauties of the land where she was born. This enriched his pleasure, and sometimes he would say to her, do you remember, and she would answer, yes, I remember, and be pleased that he asked her."

I asked my students "Have you ever been in a situation with a close friend or a family member where the one thing you feel the need to talk about is the one thing that is off limits?"

*nods*

"What often happens to that relationship if you can't get past that barrier?"

"It dissolves."

To be willing to endure the silence because you know it's the only way to keep them near - that is the sacrifice. I felt it deeply when I read this passage.

How can we help to fill the void left by sin and fear? This books challenges me to mend in small ways, for instance, when I observe conflict between two students in study hall and know that one is assaulting the worth of another. And in big ways, when someone I love doesn't know how to love herself and she needs the committed celebration of her place in my life.

"The tragedy is not that things are broken. The tragedy is that they are not mended again."