Fall in Virginia is quite a different matter from the same season in New York or Oregon, the other two places in which I have experienced its bittersweet mingling of pulsating life and coming death.\u00c2\u00a0 It has always been my favorite season of the year, but here in the steamy South (I know it gets steamier south of here, but this is all the steam I can bear) it is a completely different matter.\u00c2\u00a0 Fall, when it finally comes here, is a more about the weather than the calendar, and when the weather finally cools I tap into that combination of renewed energy that comes with a new academic year and the melancholy of remembering that winter will soon close in around us.\u00c2\u00a0 My melancholy has an extra depth this year as I watch my sister\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s struggle with pancreatic cancer, a struggle she stands no statistical chance of winning, but still we hope.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
This is a time to meet faith questions head on – – or, perhaps, to meet one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doubts head on.\u00c2\u00a0I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s why I found the recent story about Mother Teresa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doubts on NPR\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Weekend Edition both startling and compelling.\u00c2\u00a0 Host Scott Simon, who had interviewed Mother Theresa in 1984, at which time she had told him she was not a saint, reported on a forthcoming book called Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light.\u00c2\u00a0 The book contains some of her letters to her confessors and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153will apparently reveal that for more than 50 years, most of her life as a nun,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she doubted the existence of God.\u00c2\u00a0 Now, on the tenth anniversary of her death and well on her way to official sainthood, some are calling her an atheist and a hypocrite.<\/p>\n
Simon suggests that reading her letters reveals her as something closer to rejected lover than serious doubter, adding that in her homespun cotton sari \u00e2\u20ac\u0153she seems more the word of God made flesh than any pope in golden finery,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if you found her calling among the dying and destitute of Calcutta, it would be hard to hold frail, starving children in your arms and not ask, even shout, where in this hell is God?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 This story, together with my annual reflection on the changing seasons, suggested a couple of thoughts of relevance for educators.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
My first thought is about the teaching power of the liturgical year, whether one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s liturgical orientation is high or low.\u00c2\u00a0 And here I offer three resource recommendations, neither of them new, but both highly useful.\u00c2\u00a0 Gertrud Mueller Nelson, in her To Dance with God, writes of the way in which the gospel coincides with the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mystery of apparent death and finalities\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which confronts us in autumn.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We consider in these days,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she says, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the saints who have gone before us.\u00c2\u00a0 We consider the souls of our forebears, known and unknown who have died.\u00c2\u00a0 Just as the harvest has been gathered into barns, as the children have been collected into schools, the saints and souls have been gathered as a heavenly harvest or brought before our consideration, because it is the nature of things.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 The Sunday scripture readings as we inch again toward Advent, she continues, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153have been picking up the themes of endings, a looking for Christ\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presence with us, now in glory, in the fullness of time.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Also worthy of reading is John H. Westerhoff\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s A Pilgrim People, in which the author suggests we Christians are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153a strange lot.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 When we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re most faithful, he says, we are like the unsophisticated, devoted shepherds who \u00e2\u20ac\u0153while going about their daily rounds longing for a new possibility, waiting in hope for a new possibility, living prepared for a new possibility, open to the mystery of God . . . saw what only the eyes of faith can see.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 What they see, of course, is good news \u00e2\u20ac\u0153but it is also awesome, because it is only a possibility, the mystery of a baby in our midst.\u00c2\u00a0 But that is enough, and so we come and bow down before his light and give thanks for the gift of sight.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s T. S. Eliot who wrote that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153what we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning.\u00c2\u00a0 The end is where we start from . . .\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all of a piece – – the gathering in, the beginning again, in the fullness of time.\u00c2\u00a0 Rejoice!\u00c2\u00a0Rejoice!\u00c2\u00a0 Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.
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\nMy second thought is about how we teach.\u00c2\u00a0 When I try to put myself inside Mother Teresa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skin, I cannot imagine NOT crying out to someone about the horrors she witnessed and to which she relentlessly responded.\u00c2\u00a0 Outrage, coupled with the need to assign blame, is pretty human, so far as I know.\u00c2\u00a0 And so are doubts.\u00c2\u00a0 Do we who are educators create learning environments in which doubts can surface?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the end, Scott Simon noted, while Mother Teresa denied she was a saint, she said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153we should know that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not necessary to be a saint to do good.\u00c2\u00a0 You need willing hands, not clean ones.\u00c2\u00a0 If we wait for our souls to be totally clean, our time on Earth may slip away.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d
\nOne more resource recommendation: Margaret McMillan Persky\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Living in God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Time.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Persky notes that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153all things have their appointed time, so rest is available, peace is possible, and joy is always at hand.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Pilgrims on the kairos road, she adds, have a calm awareness that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in the midst of the frantic demands of everyday life, God is at work doing a good work in them, through them, even in spite of them.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Fall in Virginia is quite a different matter from the same season in New York or Oregon, the other two places in which I have experienced its bittersweet mingling of pulsating life and coming death.\u00c2\u00a0 It has always been my … Continue reading ![\"judybanner1.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/07\/judybanner1.jpg\")
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