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[Apr. 13th, 2009|11:06 pm] |
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Ever since the professor at Newman asked me why I wanted to teach English, I've been trying to come up with a better answer than the stammering and stuttering I gave him that day. I still don't have one.
But, I've been thinking, and I think I at least know something that may be more important. That one day I will have to answer for.
For those of you who aren't yet aware, I am attending Newman University this coming fall semester with the intent of graduating in four years with a major in English Education and a minor or double major in Catholic theology. I intend to spend some time teaching in the Catholic diocese as they need me--English, Literature, Theology, Communications, or possibly Theatre--and eventually move to the east coast. I'm thinking somewhere in either Massachusetts or Virginia. Once I get there I want to teach either middle school or lower high school level theology and English Literature or creative writing, but I am especially interested in theology or philosophy. I also want to become a youth group leader at some point.
What I've discovered lately is why. Maybe not all of the why, but a portion of it.
I've gone to Catholic school all my life, since preschool. I have never been in public school, though I have heard from attendees both the goods and the bads of it, possibly through jaded lenses. I don't know. And I've discovered that, among Catholic school students, there is a very sad trend. That of my classmates that have fallen away from the faith, the leading cause of their falling away was the school itself.
That's ridiculous, of course. Because the school has been teaching them about God and His love. What could it possibly have done to drive them away?
What saddens me is the way Catholic schools present God. Not all, not all teachers, not all courses. But so many of them. Most of the ones I have been in. I have been blessed with friends and events in my life that have kept me close to God. But I almost fell away once for the same problem I speak of now. As an eighth grader going into my freshman year of high school, I began some online debates on the Catholicism side, and was shocked to realize that my arguments were not sound. Reciting textbook answers from my classes answered no questions and converted no souls. My pathetic little blind faith crumbled under simple Protestant-typical questions that any intelligent theologian could have easily answered. And one day, the summer before my freshman year, as I served at Mass and listened to a reading about Jesus being the Bread of Life, I somehow turned it into a metaphor and fell away from the Catholic Church.
I returned sometime around my sophomore year, through a series of events irrelevant to what I am discussing now. My point is that the school which had claimed to teach religion well for nine years had ill-prepared me for the challenges of high school. Yes, I could recite all the Precepts of the Church and the lives of the saints, but those things...didn't matter. They didn't help. They had no purpose in a heart that didn't yet understand that God is love. I don't pretend to understand it now, but...
The trouble with Catholic education is that it cannot make a soul fall in love with God, and as far as I have seen, it hasn't been trying. I was taught the commandments before I was taught about the nature of God. It had been reduced to "God says so" and not "God did this for you, so your ultimate good would be served." While the Precepts and Beatitudes and Feast Days are important and vital for a Catholic, they are of no importance to me if I do not understand why they are good. If I have not accepted God's love and mercy, if I "believe" in God because it is what I have been taught and not because I really think He exists, they will mean nothing to me. The first lessons we should be taught as Catholic school students are that God is love, and that His sacrifice was ultimate and total. That every moment of our lives we are being loved so utterly, deeply, and completely that if we but understood a fragment of it our heads would likely explode from the beauty and depth of it. That every second Christ spent on the Cross was so full of love and compassion and mercy and divine sorrow that never for a moment should we feel unloved or unwanted or lonely. How could you, if you truly understood that sacrifice? How could anyone?
Granted, we can never fully understand that sacrifice, or anything to do with God really I'm sure. But just to take that step, realizing but a drop of that love, might make the things they are teaching me now mean a little more. A Father to those who have hurtful families. A Friend to those who are friendless. A Shelter to the ones left out in the storm, Bread for those who are starving, Water for those who thirst. A Hand to hold for the children and the elderly, Arms to carry the weary of the world. Teacher, Master, Savior. I don't give a damn about the Commandments or the Encyclicals, not until I understand this: For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that anyone who believes in Him might not perish, but might have eternal life. God so loved. God loved. Every moment of creation, utter joy, utter love, boundless and unending. Unimaginable, and bled for me and for you. Somehow, someway, I want to understand the tiniest bit of this for myself. And then, once I understand it, I want to give that understanding to my students. I can never force them to believe. I can do nothing to save them. But I can try. I can love them, and attempt, in whatever feeble way possible, to reflect Christ in that love. That is the first goal of my teaching.
The second is this, much simpler than the first. Knowing this love, I do not understand how anyone could ever despair. I have hurt, I have suffered in my life. Don't get me wrong. I have possibly suffered more than some of you would believe I have suffered. I am not a stranger to the rain. And yet, I've never despaired. I've never lost hope, simply because of that love. I've cried and raged and gotten pissed at God and everyone, but I've never stopped having hope that when I woke up the next morning, SOMETHING about that day would be worth living for. This I want my students to learn. I want to teach them hope through love of God. I don't want to hear of any of my students committing suicide, or cutting, or despairing in any way, ever. Total loss of hope, how could you? With love that massive?
Or even if you don't believe, how could you despair? How could you open your eyes on a beautiful sunrise and a fresh, clean world and think for an instant that absolutely none of it is worth it? How could you pass down a street and believe you were alone? If you do, maybe we are not doing our job as good Samaritans. You are our neighbor. You are our friend. You are MY friend, and I love you, whoever you are that is despairing. Think of that! Someone in this world loves you! Someone you don't even know! And I have found the ability to do this because of people who I never considered friends of mine until I looked at them and saw just a hint of their souls, and in that soul, Christ. A proof of humanity, in the most unlikely of people, neither of them Christian. It was a a blessing and a gift and I don't ever expect it again, so I must hold on tight to it. But in all honesty, I think anyone with eyes could see it--that there's something to love about every person, something good in every day, and always a chance to change the world around you. Aida said, if you don't like your fate, change it. Change it. There's always a choice. There's always a way to wake up and live for a brighter tomorrow. I don't understand how you can't believe that, seeing the good in the hearts of humans. Maybe there is evil too, maybe there is sorrow, maybe I am naive. But I have seen good in the most unlikely of people, and so I believe we are good by nature.
And so I want my students to know God, and by knowing God, to also know hope in Him. This is why I will teach theology, this is why I will teach at all. This is what I will live each day of my life for--that by meeting a total stranger, I might remind him or her of God's love. I know I will stumble at times, I know I will fall often. Praise be to You for abundant mercy and forgiveness. You are truly good. I will trust in You and have no fear. Alleluia, glory be to You now and forever. Amen. |
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