I write more specific reports for my supervisors on another page, but then I come here to record more general thought in an attempt to see a bigger picture. The work of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (On Death and Dying) was the common thread this week.

One of the reading assignments for my 9th grade students this week was an interview with Dr. Kubler-Ross on coping with terminal diseases in children, and how ‘unfinished business’ must be taken care of to forestall more serious problems when it is too late to communicate because a death has intervened. I explained to my students that the classic stages of death and dying as described by Kubler-Ross in her landmark book could be expanded to any loss situation. I had almost forgotten a counselor once told me that it did not take a death to grieve; one could grieve a future that suddenly was lost for some unexpected reason.

I know I grieved when I was honest enough to admit that I was not meant to be a career officer in the Marine Corps and I think I went through every stage. Twenty-seven years removed, some things still hurt about leaving the Corps but losing one life allowed me to live others I never envisioned. I grieved other sudden changes in family life that meant a future was forever changed, and a particular vision of that future was lost. Each school I worked at, and then moved away from, was a time for celebration, but grieving too. In every instance I think I would have to admit that I went through denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance to some degree or another. The essence of Kubler-Ross’ work is that we all go through these stages to a greater or lesser extent, and if we know this, the stages are a little easier to handle.

After a person I visited in ministry a short time ago died (we think) of a drug overdose, and after visiting people who are in wheelchairs living a future I am sure they never envisioned earlier in their lives, I suddenly saw some connections.

I think I am working through these stages of loss in my teaching career. This career will end in two years. I would like to go longer but I will not extend my career if I do not have enough left to give. I have been in denial, and anger, that I am at the stage of a career where I have less value than a newer, cheaper, and probably easier to work with, teacher. I want to get to the acceptance stage as soon as possible because then, no matter how long I continue to teach, it will be easier to let go when the time comes.

In looking at the past in terms of being a teacher, I have also had to look at the future. I devoted many years to getting a degree, and trying to answer a perceived call, to shape myself into a person better able to help my local church community. Lately I have been trying to come to terms with the fact such a future is unlikely. I had hoped to build a bridge from the end of a teaching career into another kind of service in my community, and for reasons I do not really understand, I do not think that is going to happen. And so I have to mourn a future I wanted, one that is not going to happen. I am actually farther ahead in this process than I am in the teaching although I am not sure why, probably because of all the years invested in teaching.

Twenty-eight years ago I came to the decision that I was not meant to serve a lifetime in the Marine Corps and I tried to let go. I embraced another career of serving, one I was much more suited for although I could not see it then.

Here is to hoping that history repeats itself. It will be easier to let go of teaching, when that time comes, if I can believe there are still other ways to serve. If such service is not local, I think I can do that. Perhaps I am promised other sheep, in other pastures, to use a very old, and yet serviceable, metaphor.

And so here is to service, and teaching, and ministry, and sheep, and my freshmen….

I have had a surfeit of support this in some ways this year. Some past students have contacted me. Despite a couple of very ugly parents I have gotten to deal with, another parent asked me not to look at retiring too soon because “I have other kids coming up and they need you…”. I have been told I was liked, I have been told I was disliked. I have been told I am a leader, I have been told I am insubordinate, but I don’t think any teacher, administrator, teacher, or student has ever told me “you are needed”. “Needed” for what I wonder?

While I have been pondering mental and physical fatigue, and wondering if I will ever get ‘it’ back again I have been also wondering what I would do instead. Despite my internship in pastoral ministry, lay pastoral ministers in my denomination barely exist, much less get paid.

Strangely enough, some of this started taking shape for me while I was watching Grey’s Anatomy last week, a particularly grim episode which culminated with a young woman having to watch one parent die, remove another from life support and wait while he died, and then tell her younger siblings they were now orphans, all this on her 18th birthday.

I almost turned off the episode. It reminded me of far too many times in my life when I was the one who got to tell friends or relatives that someone they loved had died. I was a bit surprised when totals started coming into my mind. It has been many, many times. I have done other things, harder things than telling, at the times of sudden deaths, but I still can’t discuss them much less write about them. All of the deceased were known to me.

I thought of other hard things I had done professionally as a Marine, teacher, or emerging minister. I wondered ‘why me?’ Why do I seem to be the one when something happens who gets asked to do the hard things? I can honestly say that I asked without bitterness or the feeling of being any sort of victim; I just wonder about strange things I guess.

Then an answer came from somewhere, phrased in the second person strangely enough, the answer was “because you will….   Really? Is that what it is? James Joyce wrote about the eternal “yes” in Ulysses. I had never looked at it that way, but I it is true. I will not ask someone to do something terrible if I can spare them the pain of doing so, and it has always been that way. Then I began to wonder why.

Three days later I happened to be the second person to arrive on the scene of a trailer fire. I saw a young man I had just met leading a young woman away from the fire, and then he headed back towards the house. I found out the woman’s sister was still inside so I followed the young man. The young man met the other person as she came out the door so we did not have to enter, but we would have. We restrained the young women who wanted to go back in after pets. The police and fire department arrived a few minutes later. Now I do not wonder why John and I were placed there at that time and place, it is because “you will”. As the volunteer firefighters arrived, and the police secured the others I gave thanks for others who will. Maybe that is the missing link, maybe I was told you are needed  because I was also told because you will. Maybe that is the question I need to consider, not ‘can I do it?” but ‘will I do it?” I already know the answer to that, I will if someone  needs to.

Every now and then I have a visceral reaction to a song, book, or movie that bypasses my rational thinking centers and goes directly to the core of my being. Often it is music that produces a reaction which has tears streaming down my face. At such times I am thankful for a dark theater, sunglasses, or for being alone. I used to be ashamed of these reactions,  falsely attributing them to not being ‘normal’, a condition of being that I now consider vastly overrated and ill-defined.

When these situations occur I am not happy unless I have time to explore whatever it was that penetrated all of my defenses and renewed a sense of vulnerability to life that I am not always comfortable with; I ponder, and worry at them in a way that reminds me of my dogs with their bones. The most recent song that has affected me in such a way is “We Are Young” that I heard in a choral arrangement the night before last.

I am not elderly, but I am not young. The song’s verses include lines or ideas that would not quite fit in my classroom or my ministry training. After downloading the song and listening to it numerous times I, perhaps, have some inkling of why the song has such a powerful impact on me.

At first I thought it was because I did not have the extended youth that today’s young people seem to have. High school was not a particularly easy time for me. My family life had more lows than highs. I graduated from college at 22, and I was a father and Marine Corps pilot at 24, a combat veteran at 26, and I started a new career with very low pay by the time I was 28. At first blush, there was not an abundance of ‘youth’ in my personal timeline. I carried burdens I would not ask others to carry from the time I was eleven or twelve, and only recently have I laid some of them down.

Cuz I found someone to carry me home….

However, trying not to host a pity party for myself, or  be too maudlin about my own past, I went a little deeper.

There was the Chinese fire drill at the drive-in when Donna Brown slammed my car door with a speaker on it. The resulting crack in the window lasted as long as the car and always served as an honorable scar and reminder of an innocent good time.

I remember driving through the park at the edge of Lake Helen without benefit of headlights, or roads for that matter. I held the unofficial record for the fastest drive from North Platte to Gothenburg  on Hwy 30 without the aid of headlights; a full moon helps. It’s probably not a good thing that I have several good memories involving cars and incidents best not taught in driver’s ed classes.

I distinctly remember the feeling of cold steel in my hands as I hid on top of a gasoline station tower while the police 70 feet below tried to figure out who had hung a dummy of a local teacher from said tower. And throwing the dummy in the river. And the excitement when the same police thought the  dummy was a victim of a homicide. An unknowing friend reported seeing a body in the Platte when she arrived at work.

So let’s set the world on fire….

Maybe youth left my life during the memorial service when my first friend died in a helicopter crash. Or perhaps when I first heard that a second friend had died while flying an aircraft I had flown the day before. It could have been while I was standing by the coffins of three friends killed in action before we sent them home. Or while I read the letters of a young Marine killed in an accident. I had to read them all to make sure nothing was sent to a mother which would deepen her grief. I don’t remember feeling young when I left the Corps although I was only 28.

We can burn brighter than the sun….

I heard the song  for the first time almost 27 years later. I knew I had a meeting scheduled for the next morning that would prove difficult, it was comic, tragic, and demeaning. The most memorable accusation tossed out was that I was insensitive, and I did not know about the feelings of young people.  This from someone who was 10 years old when I began to teach.

Carry me home tonight, just carry me home tonight….

I think the impressions of my ignorance on the part of my accuser are false. I think I well-understand the sensitivities of young people. Most of all I remember, and then I grieve. The song makes me grieve the exuberance of the young people singing who are celebrating a blissful night of being young, and the mistaken belief that they have the strength to come through all challenges unscathed.

If you feel like falling down, I will carry you home….

Although an outwardly disorganized looking INFJ, I like to  have schedules and endpoints although I am willing to be flexible once I have them. In just such a way, I knew exactly when I would end my graduate work, and when I finished, I wanted my diploma and other documentation right now, if not sooner.

Interning in a pilot program is a ‘stretch and grow’ time for me, and it takes me out of my comfort zone in terms of time. The internship is scheduled on a ‘as can’ basis, and there is no defined endpoint. I will be done interning whenever somebody says ‘you’re done’, and that is a good thing. It enables me to concentrate on process instead of product. Ironically, ending would mean doing less in terms of variety because I might be confined to my very small parish, but I am not concerned.

What I do as a pastoral minister, when I do it, where I do it, is something I have completely turned loose of in terms of worry and planning. Perhaps that is what the ancients referred to as ‘surrender’ but the terminology is not important. I trust that I will do what I am called to when I am called to it, and my time should be spent listening for the call.

I wish I could have back the time I spent worrying about time. I would give it to the Alzheimer’s patient I am working with, or the widow I met who is still working through a year of ‘firsts’ although these all commemorate the first time as a widow. I would give the time to the parents of the perfect 12-hour old baby girl I held last Saturday, because I know now how fast that time as parents goes.

Strangely enough, I do not wish for more time for myself for much of anything. Perhaps my only wish is that I had spent less time worrying about being noticed for the things I tried to do. In the rest of my ‘time’, my sincerest wish is that I never be noticed again for good or for ill. I am blessed to work with people who have given me a chance to do good work, and I want to use that time to do the work given to me.

I have 30-40 baseball style caps at home. They used to be the primary souvenirs I would seek out on any given trip, I have at least three from a trip to Alaska. I own ‘been there’ caps in many colors so I could always color-coordinate. Sadly, all these caps now mostly gather dust.

A year or two ago a growth above my eye turned out to NOT be cancerous, but I realized that hikling and kayaking meant I needed a change in sartorial style: I needed a hat with a brim. Not being afraid to experiment I tried many kinds but I finally settled on a “Tilley’, that is, the hat I had wanted all along. My Tilley T4 is the one at the top of this blog, pictured on the top of Estes Cone in Colorado.

Tilley hat meets David in Florence, Italy. December 28, 2010

Recently I purchased another Tilley for winter wear and it arrived with our first snowstorm. Matched with my black coat I look very formal for a town where wearing shoes is considered ‘over-dressing’ but what the heck, I enjoy being different and at least this ‘different’ goes along with my taste for fountain pens in a world full of Bics and jet skis.

Cardinal Joseph Bernadin made the phrase ‘seamless garment’ famous. I admire the way he lived, how he handled those who would have destroyed him, how he handled his final illness, but most of all for his efforts to be an example of a ‘seamless garment.’

I have recently been working as an intern in a pilot program for pastoral ministers. The little I have done so far makes me even more aware that my own life as a husband, father, teacher, lay minister, Catholic Christian, and many more things, needs to be a ‘seamless garment’. My best hope is a young woman, now a student of mine, who has seen me working and living in a variety of situations. According to her, I am ‘just the same’ when I am working a retreat as when I am teaching Whitman to juniors. I hope that consistency is a good thing.

Actually, I think I would especially like to be the invisible garment owned by the famous Harry Potter. I would guess that no seams show while it is being used, hence the ‘invisibility’ part. I would like to be an invisible tool used to do good work in my home, classroom, and ministry. I think I would be happy to have someone say ‘we never noticed him doing it, but what he did was good’.

I have a student whose mother once taught in our school system. The mother was politely asked to resign, education-speak for ‘you’re fired’. I and the principal helped the person to get another job. Unfortunately, the mother fell apart emotionally and morally and did some lasting damage to her children; her divorce probably didn’t help. My former colleague seems to have made it her life mission to ‘pay back’ the system that asked her to leave, and her children are still attending school in that system. Last year she put us through the wringer while we tried to help her behaviorally-challenged son.  I thought I would get a break this year by having her daughter back in class who was simply awesome a couple of years ago. Unfortunately the daughter has been taught to hate the system and she comes into my class each day looking for a fight. This is not a recipe for a successful classroom experience. The principal and counselor have washed their hands of the family so I am handling it in a way the I hope helps the child and protects me at the same time.

While trying to deal with student ‘A’, I was asked into the principal’s office for ‘a minute’.  Seems a father who is ‘really mad’ made a complaint and threatened the dreaded ‘formal complaint’. I asked who the father was.  Wouldn’t tell me. I asked what I had done. Couldn’t tell me. The principal gave me a laundry list of do’s and don’t's, but no context. I don’t do anonymous very well. He told me he gave anonymity to ‘protect the student’ and I stated that while up to that point I had been disappointed, now I was angry at being told a student needed protection from me. I expected my principal to want the truth for his sake and mine. Instead he seemed proud he had made the problem go away. My view was that he made the problem go away by allowing the parent to anonymously complain and then walk away convinced he was right. The principal would not have cared that the girl in question had been told her behavior was terrible and that she might be sent to the office the day before her dad came in; her father probably would not have cared either. It made a difference to me to know more of the story but to have no chance to defend myself. Of course, this is a tiny town and of course I know who the father and the student are.

At least, I thought, I have a break because I have a meeting about being the pilot intern for a diocesan pastoral ministry program that would get me out of school but I am perceptive enough to suspect that it wouldn’t go well either. All things are connected…. As  I returned from a break in that meeting I overheard my pastor telling two relative strangers about the limitations he faced because “people come to him and they don’t like Ed”. Life is difficult.

If people believe wrong has been done, they will hold onto that belief with a death-grip rather than admit they might be wrong, or, even harder, forgive, make allowances for the other’s human frailties, and move on with life. After a long 17 years in this tiny town I have a lot of people who think highly of me, and a lot who don’t. That is the reward of teaching and coaching in a small town. I am neither as good as some people believe, nor as evil as others believe, but I surely know which group seems to be the one that is listened to.

I think of a friend who took an administrative job, and seemingly abandoned the friends she had made who supported her climb.  I think of the principal I am angry with because he took the political road instead of the moral high road, and to my mind, who sacrificed me in the process.  I think of my pastor who has supported my ministerial education and efforts, but listens to the anonymous complaints of a few (at least I hope they are few, I wouldn’t know would I?) and how I seem to always have to hear how much I am disliked.

A Place of Peace

I fault all of these people on moral grounds. I fault them for concentrating on the negative and ignoring the good that I do. I wonder why they aren’t fair, and then I make a little discovery that I seem to need to discover over and over again in my life. I am treating them exactly in the same way I hate being treated.

I curse myself with the expectations that institutions and people will be better than they are, perhaps better than they can be. I fail to give them credit for the good that they do, and concentrate on their perceived shortcomings instead. This is precisely the treatment I complain of when it arrives on my doorstep. I decry the motes in other’s eyes while ignoring the planks in my own. I ask for balance while maintaining a skewed vision of the world, especially in terms of justice. I ask for mercy while denying it to others.

What I have learned, am learning, and no doubt, will have to learn over and over again is that I am no better.

This is my third year back as a full-time teacher and I wonder why I was so blessed as to have a second chance. I see many, many people who left something they were very good at in order to take one more step on the career ladder, and then the ‘peter principle’ seemed to grab them by the throats. I certainly traveled the same path, but I was allowed to come home, and if that is not evidence of grace I wasted a lot of money on tuition.

This year I asked my students for a ‘getting to know you’ kind of essay: “tell me what I need to know to teach you better” is how I explained it. My juniors are a little older and wiser than they were when they were freshmen.  They struck a more cautious tone, and then spilled their guts by telling stories that are all too familiar.  These young people are, curiously, one of the classes that have gotten closest to my heart. Curiously because they are not the smartest, most athletic, best behaved nor necessarily the ones who like me but to paraphrase Sancho Panza, “I like them”.

My freshmen remind me of my juniors and I am glad I have enough planned years left to see how they turn out; of course the best way to make God  laugh is to plan your future, but I’d like to be around them for a while.

Reading my student essays is, sadly, both inspiring and devastating. Divorces, drug addictions, abortions,  deaths, unusual living arrangements, you name it, they have gone through it. I don’t know if it is just my local community or not, but these kids have seen the dark side of life too early and too often. I wonder what I can give them and I wake up worrying about them in the middle of the night.

And yet, these kids inspire me.  Their resilience in the face of some tough odds humbles me. I think I am teaching people who are much better people than I shall ever be. Most of them are going to make it, and if all I can do is walk with them as they struggle I will be there.  I wonder why I care about them so much and I think the answer might be right in front of me.  These young people will take all I have to offer. Perhaps we accept each other for what we are in my classroom.  I think they know I care about them and that there is only one way I can possibly care, and that is completely. We don’t need kenosis as a vocabulary word. I can’t teach any other way, and I can tell from their writing, they live kenotically whenever any one will accept what they have to offer.  I wonder why though, people demand from students what they don’t have, and never see what they do have….

I Will Lift Up Mine Eyes to the Hills

For the last four years I have been driving to a small town 65 miles away to meet with a small group for classes. We have not taken any time off so I have driven the 130 mile round trip ‘winter, summer, spring and fall’ as they say, somewhere around 70 times.  I made the trip for second-to-last time this morning and, after four years, I did not think there was much left that could surprise me about the scenery.

It was a cloudy morning and I was a bit saddened thinking that after today, and a celebratory liturgy in October, my little learning group was going to be a part of my past, not my future.  I was listening to a song by Trevor Morgan which very effectively uses the opening words from The Gospel of John. Just as he sang, “You are my light, shine in me….” shafts of sunlight broke through the clouds and touched the high plains landscape on all sides of me. I would love to say one of them hit me personally, but this is not Hollywood.

Still, I continued to listen to the song and gaze at the beauty of the light show breaking the gloom within and without. A noted atheist, Sigmund Freud, once noted that ‘there are no accidents’. I quite agree. The sunbeams lighting not only the path I had traveled, but the path before me were no accident and, somewhere not too far away, God was smiling at his gentle reminder.

“Once upon a time, there was a small boy named Eddie C. Freeborn.  He was born to a couple who quit being a couple a few months after his birth.  His mother later remarried and, at her insistence, his stepfather legally adopted Eddie.  Eddie changed all of his names instead of just his last name because he wanted to forget the father who did not want him.  He became “Ed Montgomery”.  “Ed” is not a name he is fond of but he can live with it: most people find “Edward” too formal and they will not use his nickname which he much prefers. Ed’s father (stepfather) and mother fought often and separated frequently.  Much later in life, in a fit of rage, Ed’s mother told him that his father abused him. Ed never confirmed this with his father; he does not remember any abuse.  The idea however, haunts him.  Ed was damaged by his childhood and refused to admit it.  Ed grew up, married, fathered three children, served in the Marine Corps, and finally became a teacher.  A tragedy with his oldest child left him among the walking wounded, and a tragedy involving his youngest child crushed him.  He wanted to be a deacon once but was rejected by his pastor and parish.  He joined the Secular Franciscans and began to heal. Then he heard about a program called “LIMEX”.  The next four years of identifying, understanding, testing, deciding, accepting, and rejecting were the most rewarding four-year period of his life.

Will I use it? Mebbe so, maybe not….