My voice shalt thou hear in the morning,
O Lord; in the morning will I
direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. Psalm 5:3
When He went ashore,
He saw a great crowd; and He had compassion for them and cured their
sick. –Matthew 14:14
Compassion asks us to
go where it hurts, to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear,
confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in
misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. ... Compassion
means full immersion in the condition of being human. –Henri Nouwen
Here
I was engaging in the most glorious action of all human and of all superhuman
life – I was communing with the very God of the universe himself. He was
showing me His very heart, even the angels can do no more than this. I forgot
that my being choked down against the bottom, of an ocean like an octopus, and
like an octopus in disposition, too, makes no difference at all. A prison or a
dungeon makes no difference if one is with God. We preach and profess that as
true, and it is true, but upon my word I do not see many people who seem to
have experienced it. I am exactly like these Moro women and children. “Bapa,”
they say, “may I have this?” If I say “Yes,” they forget to take it, but if I
say “No;” they beg me for it. August 21, 1930, Letters
by a Modern Mystic, Frank Laubach
I
sure saw a great crowd yesterday. It was our school's “Meet and Greet.”
One
of my jobs as Magnet Coordinator is “increasing diversity,” and I humbly
confess, I rocked the numbers this year, if statistics mean anything, which
they do, in The District. In 1974, black and
Latino students sued TUSD, alleging intentional segregation and
unconstitutional discrimination on the basis of race and national origin. For
some 40 years after the parties settled in 1978, TUSD has operated subject to a
federally enforced desegregation order.
So
yesterday I stood at the front door and welcomed each and every family to a
brand new school year. Because of fears of malintentioned intruders, our doors
must remain locked during school hours, so I stood there for three hours, with
my foot jammed in the threshold, and my hand and smile outstretched. And I am
pretty sure, for the most part, that this group of ever-so-diverse folk would
not be welcomed so much at the other schools where I have taught. Just
guessing, for a wide number of reasons, once again, most of them related to
those statistics that now hang heavy over all school administrators’ heads.
After
the Meet and Greet, the staff all filed into the library to listen to the part
time school psychologist and the part time school speech therapist and the part
time school nurse and the part time new exceptional needs aide and me, the new on-top-of-everything-else
Reading Seed Coordinator, to review our two loaves and five fishes in order to
feed this restless, hungry crowd spilling out to the very edge of legal class
size limits. We can’t turn anyone away.
And as I looked around the rather tattered room, I know that each one of these
folks has chosen not to turn anyone away. Working in The District is a choice.
The
saddest conversations I overheard yesterday were the lunchroom chats, as
yesterday was the first day we were to all sign up for our health care
benefits. Guys, you cannot believe how rough it is. For each and every person
sitting around the table filled with leftover bean taco fixings, insurance for
their children is one third to one half of their monthly take-home paycheck.
These monthly paychecks are under $2000 a month. One of the exceptional needs
support teachers teared up. Yesterday we celebrated her pregnancy, after five
years of hopeful waiting, at last she and her husband are expecting a child in
March. She has no idea how they will make it financially. So now it turned into
a bittersweet celebration as we scooped up salsa with slightly stale chips.
Then
we all headed back to the classrooms. The classrooms with no air conditioning.
Most of the teachers have gone out and bought those plastic box fans, but it is
still a hot and sweaty chore, stapling cheerful charts and alphabets onto the
sixty-year-old walls and rearranging and rearranging chairs and tables. The
fifth grade teachers sent me to the warehouse for twenty more chairs because all
of the classes have thirty students registered, and a bunch of other chairs are
busted, but no more are to be had. The nice warehouse man said he would be on
the lookout. I gave the teachers chairs out of my room, a book closet, where I
hold Professional Learning Communities, and I will figure something out by next
week. Actually, no one could fit into my room anyways, because there are
thirty-two boxes of old texts to be shipped out… from when Ronald Reagan was
president. I am a big fan of declutter. Mostly what I did all day was
tall-person chores, reaching up high to stack and clip and detangle.
But
there were happiest conversations I had were the “I missed you Ms. Christy”
ones as little arms wrapped themselves around my long legs. And I gotta say,
each and every one of these kiddos was ready for the new year. New haircuts,
fancy dresses, slicked up shoes. Ready to dream big.
And
I think back to the longing in my heart, my weekly Tuesday prayer to “make a
difference in this hurting world.”
This
is what I have asked for, again and again, from Abba, father.
Here I am, engaging in the most
glorious action of all human and of all superhuman life – I am communing with
the very God of the universe himself. He is showing me His very heart, even the
angels can do no more than this.
Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of
the least of these brothers
and sisters of mine, you do
for me.
