Patience and Grace

Today I am procrastinating.

Why? 

Partly because Spring Break started for me this week. Partly because I have a weird chest cold, and sitting at home browsing my computer, or reading a book, or knitting, is about the best thing I can do for it (that, and plenty of tea of course!). 

Yet there is one more reason: I am procrastinating because I am between projects. 

Last night I finished a short story I've been working on lately. My literary paper, on the mystic Julian of Norwich and C.S. Lewis, is between revisions and waiting for a friend's feedback. 

The only current projects I have are those I have not yet started: a planned interview with evangelical singles, a planned series on books evangelicals ought to read, a planned series on women of faith. I have the ideas, and I like to think they're good ideas, but I don't want to actually start the project. 

There are two reasons, I think, why I don't want to start these projects. 

First, to start a new project is to court failure. Just because I sit down and make a list of books I think Christians should read doesn't mean I'll ever get around to writing a blog post on it. Even if the blog post is written, there's no guarantee that anyone will read it. It's awfully tempting to simply not start, and never fail. 

Second, the first part of any project is often the hardest and most discouraging. Planning, developing, reworking ideas - all these things take lots of time. If I decide to write a new story, I can't simply sit down and start writing. I spend hours thinking through the story, changing my mind about the characters, writing and rewriting the beginning. If I start a series of blog posts on women of faith, I pour hours into choosing women, and more hours into researching women, long before I actually hit "Publish" on the blog. Planning is hard work, but planning means I have almost nothing to actually show for my progress. 

In other words, starting a new project means I have to have lots of patience. Like a gardener, I need to be willing to sow the seeds, then wait without growing weary for the fruit. 

I do not have much patience. Yet good writing demands patience. Life demands patience, the willingness to wait and work for good things. 

This semester in literature, I am privileged to teach bright, insightful students. Yet I notice they seem frustrated sometimes when they don't understand the poem on the first read, when they come to class still not understanding the poem. I tell them, That's not the way it works. I tell them, It takes time, and a lot of work, to understand literature, I tell them. It's okay to come to class not knowing what the poem means. 

I'm not always sure they believe me. My students are not in the wrong here, simply caught up in the lie that society tells us: real success happens instantly, not gradually. If something is good, it will simply "click". That's not true, but we believe it anyway.

By no means are my students the only ones who fall victim to this lie. I do too, as the fact that I am procrastinating on my writing projects indicates. Teachers and leaders do too. A friend of mine recently told me that years ago when she was in college, only one of her teachers really seemed to have faith that she'd accomplish much in life. She showed up at her conservative college with short, spiky hair. She never fit in with the cool kids. No one knew what to make of her. Certainly no one predicted that she'd be where she is today: a leader in a flourishing urban ministry overseas. 

As a teacher, her story is a challenge to me: I must remember that there are no "bad" students, no students incapable of learning or success. Every single student I teach is simply developing, and if I have patience, I may see her make progress, beautifully. The grace of God is slow, but certain.  

More broadly, I am reassured that patience is the key to life. It is oh-so-easy to get frustrated or discouraged when life doesn't look the way we want it to. When our plans fall through, when family members give us hell or sleepless nights, when we goof up big time again, we think we've failed, that life is a shambles. 

Not true. With time, and patience, and grace, all we find so frustrating now we will find transformed. 

Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.*

*Behovely: Necessary. This quotation comes from Lady Julian of Norwich, a mystic Christian writing in 1300s England.

For the Love of Teaching

I've learned, as a teacher, that some days rock; some days, really don't. On Wednesday, I had the second kind. On Thursday, with a good night's sleep between me and my mistakes, I thought of this verse:

Mark 10.17-22

17 Now as He was going out on the road, one came running, knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life?”18 So Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not commit adultery,’ ‘Do not murder,’ ‘Do not steal,’ ‘Do not bear false witness,’ ‘Do not defraud,’ ‘Honor your father and your mother.’”[c]20 And he answered and said to Him, “Teacher, all these things I have kept from my youth.”21 Then Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack: Go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, take up the cross, and follow Me.”22 But he was sad at this word, and went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

What strikes me about this passage is that Jesus loved the young man.

In truth, the young man is not being very lovable right now. He's self-righteous, self-centered, and greedy. He asserts, probably loudly, how well he's kept every commandment; he keeps his wealth instead of giving it to those who really need it, and walking with Jesus. Jesus has every right to be frustrated, even angry, with the man, and we know from the incident at the Temple that Jesus could get angry. 

Yet Jesus does not get angry. He does not even get upset. All we are told is that Jesus loved the young man, for no observable reason whatsoever. He simply looks at the young man, and loves him.

No matter what the young man does, no matter how he hurts Jesus here, he cannot sin himself out of the love of Christ.

Graham Green writes in The Power and the Glory, "It was for this world that Christ had died; the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater glory lay around the death. It  was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or a civilization - it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and corrupt." In the end, this is the message of the cross: that beyond all our expectations, beyond anything we have actually earned, Jesus loves us. 

This is a reassuring, comforting truth of the Gospel. 

It is also a challenge to me as a teacher. 

Sometimes, my students are easy to love, like when they write notes telling me that my class has changed their life, or purchase purple shoes as an in-class joke. Sometimes, they're not, like when I catch them on Facebook in class, or whey they blow off homework assignment after homework assignment.

How do I respond to this? Unfortunately, all too often I do the opposite of what Jesus does to the young man: I do not look at my students and love them; I look at what they are doing, and get upset.

This, I think, is the key difference between Jesus's love and my lack thereof: I get distracted by what my students do; Jesus, not one to get distracted, sees only the young man, created in the image of God inherently valuable, distinct from all his poor choices. Nothing the young man does can erase the fact that he was meant to walk with God, and nothing my students do should erase my love for them.

This doesn't mean, of course, that I should be a pushover. They deserve, and often desperately need, their teachers' love, but sometimes what they need most of all is tough love, the kind that doesn't take late homework so that they learn to respect deadlines, or the kind that gives out that F when needed so that students actually learn to write well. Nor does loving students mean I let them get away with whatever they want in class. A student using Facebook may be distracting to the other students, for instance; loving students means loving all the students, making sure that everybody thrives in class.

Honestly, though, reminding myself to be strict is really a reminder I do not need, like telling a child that it's okay to have a cookie every now and then, or like telling a couch potato that it's okay to have a day without exercise. The reminder I really need is this: The most important thing I can do as a teacher is love my students, regardless of whether their behaviour pleases me or frustrates me.

Because in the end, it's not about me.

This, I think, is what trips me up. I make class about me: I need to rock this lesson, I need to get them interested in this 1600s essay, I need to earn their respect. Class is performance, and I am the starring character. How different from Jesus's love, which went to a cross on which he could win no glory, simply for the love of half-hearted and corrupt humanity. How different from what class is meant to be, a journey in which students become better writers, better readers, better and holier thinkers.

Sometimes, we Christians pour scorn on those who say they believe that Jesus was a great moral teacher. He was the Son of God, we exclaim!

True, but He was a great teacher, the very best. In the same way that humanity is made in his image and meant to be like Him, I want my teaching to be made in his image.

Teaching made in his image is not, ultimately, about doing thorough research or understanding Milton's Areopagitica; it is not about whether I have the students' respect or their attention. Teaching in the image of God is about whether I love the students. If I can do that, everything else will fall into place. Will every day be perfect? Absolutely not. Jesus was the perfect teacher, and yet Judas betrayed him. But regardless of what my students do, I will be doing what Jesus did: looking at my students and, by the grace of God, loving them.

May it be so.

Why Write?

Author's Note: On Friday, my Creative Writing students will be turning in their Statement of Purpose for the year. In solidarity with them, and to help me write the rubric, I am writing my own Statement of Purpose. Do enjoy!

Writing as a Spiritual Gift

Whatever St. Paul says, the church has persisted in idolizing some spiritual gifts. Intellectually, we acknowledge that all spiritual gifts, all talents, are necessary to the healthy functioning of the body of Christ, but publically, we latch on to certain gifts as the coolest in the Kingdom of God. In the early church, the cool gift was speaking in tongues; in evangelical America, spiritual encouragement. We pair up with fellow believers to mentor them; we group up with cell groups, grace groups, life groups, and Bible studies; we attend Sunday-morning coffee hour regularly, holding a doughnut and ready to affirm fellow believers that are struggling; we ask people, "How are you?" and wait for them to emote to us so that we can support them. 

Don't get me wrong: I'm not complaining. Far better that we support each other in the faith than tear each other down. Here's the problem, though: I am notoriously bad at encouragement. I've never mentored anyone in my life, or for that matter, been mentored. Almost no one emotes to me, which means there's rarely someone for me to encourage. Especially since my hope is to not only teach my students writing but also teach them about Christ, this failure to launch as an encouraging mentor can be discouraging. 

Last October, I shared my discouragement with a friend, someone who excels at encouragement. What she said stuck with me: Stop worrying about a gift you don't have. Work on the gifts you do have.

I later mentioned this advice to another friend. She, in turn, told me about her sister Laura, a writer. According to one of Laura's writing teachers, not writing when you can is a breach of social responsibility. Do you have good ideas? Yes? Then share them, so that other people can benefit from your thoughts.

This way of seeing writing stuck with me. For far too long, I've seen writing as a hobby, something to be indulged during the long hours of a snowy afternoon, practiced after dark when the whole house settles down. Yet after dark, I'm tired. I'm more likely to hop on Facebook, read up on the Mars One mission, scroll through Buzzfeed drooling over pictures of delicious desserts that I will never make. I've always known I was wasting time; I've never thought that I was wasting my spiritual gift. I may not be gifted in giving spiritual comfort, but dang it! I'd like to think, at least, that I'm gifted in writing. 

By this point in the 2014, many people are starting to give up on their New Year's resolutions. Yet just because New Year's resolutions don't work that well, doesn't mean that we should never make goals, that we should drift through life aimless, terrified of setting a goal lest we fail in our attempt to reach it. 

Here's mine: I want to write more this year, and all the years subsequently. 

For me, that mostly means writing non-fiction: more blog posts, more essays submitted to online publications (Relevant, Converge, Gospel-Centered Discipleship). Six years of writing literary analysis for my bachelor's degree, my master's degree, and my master's thesis means that non-fiction is far and away my strength. (And yes, non-fiction can be creative.) But just because we have a weakness doesn't mean we need to succumb to it. Therefore, I also want to write more poetry, more fiction; I especially want to try new things with poetry and fiction - more structured poetry, more frequent poetry; more fiction altogether. I want to stop worrying about the gift I do not have and focus on the one I do.

Writing in the Church

St Paul reminds the Corinthians in his first letter that the church does not function properly unless every gift is being used; stress any single gift too much, and you threaten its well-being. A car won't run correctly if we put on brand-new tires, snazzy hubcaps decked out with bling, and forget to change the oil. Why should we expect the church to run correctly if we polish one gift and neglect the others?

Right now, the church is excellent at forming relationships. What else do all those life groups, cell groups, or grace groups do besides build relationships between believers, providing them a space to come together weekly and share each other's spiritual and personal burdens? What else does the stress on mentoring do, but remind people that they need a confidante to help them get through hard times, and remind people that they need to care about others going through the hard times?

Unfortunately, what the church is not excellent at is reflection. Adam McHugh and Susan Cain, both of whom have written extensively about introversion, point out that almost nothing about church promotes deep reflection. The meet-and-greet at the beginning of the service, the doughnut-and-coffee hour, the Seven-Eleven songs that replace deep theological hymns and liturgies - all these favour emotion, not thought.

Here is where the gift of writing comes in: While believers who are good at dealing with emotion can do so, we who do not excel at dealing with emotion can trade in thought. We can, by our writing, draw our fellow believers back to issues we need to contemplate, back to reflection on our God and our relationship with Him. In many ways, the role of a writer in the church is similar to the role of a single in the church. We who are single are a symbol to our married peers, reminding them that human relationships are only for a time; the highest and best of all relationships will be with Christ in heaven. Likewise, we who write, we who reflect, are a symbol to those who do not, reminding them that life in Christ is not meant only to be experienced but to be thought about carefully.

Is it possible that to some extent, we writers even do the thinking for our brethren, a kind of heavenly division of labour? In St. Paul's words, some believers speak in tongues; some teach; some organize and direct; some show mercy; some pray. Could it be that some of us minister to the emotions; others, to the thought? That when our relationship-savvy brethren come to what we write and think about, they discover there something not germane to their own spiritual life?

Obviously, the question is a tricky one, all the more so because not having a particular spiritual gift does not excuse us from spiritual responsibilities (I may not have the spiritual gift of prayer, but I should still pray, for instance.) All the same, my hope as a writer is to supplement the church's focus on relationships with analysis and reflection, to remind my fellow believers that we love Christ not only with our heart but also with our mind.

Writing for Me

Still, these dreams are somewhat grandiose. Is it not presumptuous to think that I by my writing can change the church? Perhaps. I am, somewhat unexpectedly, reminded of the safety instructions delivered on an airplane right before take-off. "In event of cabin depressurization," they warn, "Put your own mask on before helping those around you." Only a foolish sense of heroics would violate these instructions: Try to help someone else with their mask first, and you may run out of air. You may endanger not only yourself, but also the person you were trying to save. 

I wonder whether it is only my foolish heroics that hopes my writing may draw the church back to reflection, supply the deep thought necessary for life in Christ to thrive. Perhaps the real reason for my writing is much simpler: When I am writing, I am reflecting. 

Remember those Buzzfeed articles I mentioned earlier, with all the beautiful dessert pictures? Scrolling through those is not conducive to deep reflection. Not even my newest intellectual hobby, reading the New York Times online every morning, really promotes reflection. Reading the articles may give me stuff to reflect on, but so long as I am reading what someone else wrote, I cannot be alone with my own thoughts. Not until I write, or at least until I sit and think, like Descartes in his window, can I reflect. 

Perhaps this is a selfish reason for writing, but it is nonetheless important: I want to write more so that I can reflect more, so that I am spending my mind and intellectual energy not on an endless array of food pictures on the Internet, but on things that matter. Like the scientists of the 1600s, I want to think God's thoughts after Him, and to do that, I need to think, and write.

Poet Dorothy Parker is said have to claimed, "I hate writing. I love having written." The same is true for me: Is writing hard? Absolutely. It's much, much easier to just read Buzzfeed articles. It's much easier to email a friend than to write a poem. I spent nearly two hours on this blog post alone, without editing. Yet the benefits from having written are endless: Having written means that I have reflected, that I have thought about the world I live in and the God who designed it - and that is a treasure worth all the work.

An Open Letter on the Eve of Finals

To all my freshmen students:

Tomorrow morning you start your very first round of final exams. Good luck! I hope they go really well - as well as you are hoping, even better than you are expecting.

My first semester in college, I started studying for my tests two weeks in advance. Trust me, I know exactly how stressful finals week is. So now, on the eve of all those big tests, I want to offer you a little encouragement.

First of all, you'll do fine. Have you studied? Showed up at class all semester? Paid attention? Then there's no reason to worry. Worrying can actually make you perform worse. Keep studying, and studying hard, but make wise decisions that are not influenced by your fears about the exam. Don't, for instance, skip a night of sleep to study a little more. Taking an exam on a foggy brain is not a wise move. Don't skip meals because you're nervous or studying too much. Taking an exam on an empty stomach is also not a wise move. You're smart and dedicated students, and you've got this. When final exam time comes, sit down, pull out that scantron, and trust God for the rest.

More importantly, remember this: Your finals are only a very small part of your academic education. Even your grade is only a very small part of your academic education. By "education", I'm not referring to the various life lessons that you learn living in the dorms, pitching in at church or holding down a job. I'm referring to what you actually take away from the course: The letter grade, whether it be an A or a C or even an F, is a poor indicator of what you've learned in any given class. I personally learned more in some of the classes I received a B in than in some of the classes I received an A in: Expository Writing, for instance.

Your final, scary as it seems right now, is not the most important part of the course. The most important part of the class is not the letter on your transcript; it is not the printed red number on the bottom of your scantron; it is not even the litany of facts and dates you may be able to rattle off afterwards. All that will be forgotten.

No, the most important part of the class is how it changes you. Do you think new thoughts? Have you picked up new habits? Found God somewhere unexpected? Do you see Him more clearly? Hopefully, the answer to this is Yes.

Perhaps the most life-changing class I took never had a final exam. I fell in love with my class in Milton, especially with the fiery anti-censorship tract, 'Areopagitica'. Yet days before the end of the semester my senior year, a campus-wide whooping cough epidemic forced administrators to close the school early. Faculty were given a choice between giving a shorter, earlier final exam or simply skipping the final altogether. As I remember, most of my teachers picked the first option, but Dr. S picked the second. She used that final class period to deliver one last lecture on Paradise Lost. This was not, or at least not entirely, out of kindness to the students; Dr. S was one of the hardest graders I ever had. No, her decision was a decision of priorities: Exams are important, but the truths that we learn in class, truths that perhaps cannot even be covered on the exam, are far more important.

I still have my notes from that class. According to my notes, the final books of Paradise Lost hold out, in defiance of Adam's fall, a promise of hope: that "All this good of evil shall produce" - in other words, that whatever errors we commit, Providence shall erase them, and correct the sum. That final class was the story of Redemption, of the foundation we believers have in divine grace. Such truths are, obviously, worth so much more than a grade on an exam.

You may not have a whooping cough epidemic to get you out of exams, but what you do have is this:  the opportunity, in every class you take at Emmaus, to discover such truths for yourself, and to be changed by them. Those of you who take English Composition with me have (hopefully) already made such discoveries: for instance, that all truth is God's truth, that sometimes the deepest truths (even the truth of the Gospel!) are communicated by story. Yesterday at lunch my student A. told me about a discovery she made in her Old Testament class: that Leviticus, despite its reputation for being a dull and legalistic book, was actually shot through with evidence of God's grace and His desire to walk close with His people.

Hold fast to these discoveries. Long after the exam is finished, long after you've forgotten your grade in the course, these truths are the ones that you will remember. These truths are what make your education worthwhile. They guarantee that not only your mind but your soul and spirit are growing as well, that you are being transformed into a thoughtful, Christlike individual.

Study hard for your exams, by all means. That's a good decision. But even more than that, study hard to discover, in every class, more of Truth, and more of Christ.

Good luck tomorrow!

Your teacher