An Open Letter to My Dear Former Students

Dear Former Students,

As Christmas approaches I have a few words especially for you. I speak here not only of those of you that I know well, but also the many familiar faces who never had me in class as a professor but saw me every so often on campus. We passed through important years together in the life of a growing school.

I want to say, first of all, "Thank you!"

It's beautiful to watch your lives mature after you graduate from college, to see the adventures, the work, the young families, and to continue on the path of life together as adults in solidarity.

I love your pictures: the places you live, your travels, the food you eat, and--of course--your kids. I can relate directly to kid craziness. Most of mine have gotten older, but it wasn't so long ago when they were all little. And, of course, I still have one that qualifies as a "little kid" and requires the attention of a little kid (though not nearly as much as when I started writing this blog over four years ago).

I also know that some of you are experiencing troubles, sorrows, frustration. Some marriages have led to separation. Children have been a source of many trials. People have grappled with various illnesses, including mental illness.

Some people have left the Church. I know that. You have found that the old inspiring speeches and the charge of "Instaurare Omnia in Christo" and even a solid (but by no means complete) education have been inadequate for the complexity of the world you now live in. And the questions of life are larger than you had realized.

I'm sorry, of course. At a college, we can only do the best we can with educating and building up a constructive environment. We teachers and administrators have our own idiosyncrasies and limits. We are sinners. Please forgive us.

But there is nothing in this world that can address the complexities and answer the questions that are not just intellectual but that constitute the depths of you as a person. Only Jesus can do that. The real Jesus: that tremendous Person who loves each of us with a wild and unpredictable love.

Sometimes when people "lose the faith," they are actually going through a phase of life in which what they're really "losing" are their own reductionist ideas. They are finding that it's not enough to know philosophy or theology as a collection of logically connected terms. It's not enough to have ideas about God. They are finding that they cannot live life with a mere conception of God, Christ, and the Church that is devoid of mystery, relationship, and the freedom of love.

We can become disoriented when we are stripped of our illusory images and false self-confidence. But we can also allow a space to open up within us where the Mysterious One who is beyond-all-things can really begin to speak. We can rediscover Jesus and what it means to belong to Him in the Church.

Dear students, we are all suffering in different ways. Maybe in school we teachers didn't appreciate that fact as well as we ought. I'm sorry on my own behalf. I had many sufferings in those days and yet I knew so little about compassion. I think I have learned a bit more since then.

The poor internet is not much. Just pictures and words, often ill-considered words. But I hope it at least reminds us that we are not alone.

You are not alone.

Whatever you're going through--whether things are going well or badly, whether your faith is strong or weak or gone entirely--the journey that you and I began to make together at a little college in Appalachia continues. We can still help each other.

Whatever may be the distractions of the internet, this possibility is one of its great benefits, and it is a special blessing for those of us who are united in Christ. To be able to pray for one another and share one another's joys and sorrows is a real grace.

And for those who have drifted away for whatever reason, or find themselves in darkness, please remember that we are still with you. I'm still here. I'm still your old professor, though I have no plans to lecture you. We're at a different place in life now. It's more important that I listen to you.

That is something I am always ready to do.

I'm Still a Teacher, Even Though I Can't "Do the Job"

Over the past four years, this blog has been one way in which my work as a teacher has continued even "after" everything came crashing down in 2008. My task has been reborn and even expanded in ways I never would have imagined before chronic health problems brought about my (very) early retirement from the standard classroom and the dynamic life of a college institution.

I've done an awful lot of "blogging" -- enough to have realized that a blog is its own kind of place for communication.

I was going to commemorate with Internet bells and whistles my one thousandth blog post, but apparently I passed the thousand mark without even noticing. (This is post number 1005.) Although I have been posting more pictures and experimenting with multimedia formats, writing is still the main feature of the Never Give Up blog. I try to use my understanding to see the purpose of things and to express myself with words.

I also have a lot of problems. Nevertheless, even when I feel overwhelmed, I try to articulate what I think is the meaning that I'm seeking, or rather begging to see in all of it.

Sometimes I articulate it pretty well, and it "sounds like" I have acquired a vital understanding of deep things.

But please do not mistake this for any kind of wisdom. I am not a wise man. I am a desperate man who speaks and writes because for me the search for understanding has an urgent intensity. For me the need to think (at least while I'm awake) is like the need to breathe. I'm just trying to stay alive here. But I also know that in the end all my words must surrender....

Nevertheless, right now, I still have these words. And I have this desire to share my words with others. Indeed, I am charged with task of sharing these words with the persons who are entrusted to me. I am called to share the search for beauty and truth and goodness that propels my own life, to walk with others on this journey and to help them with whatever understanding I find.

There is a "light" that nearly always "stays on" somewhere in my soul, not to dispel my own darkness so much as to enable me express my experience in words -- my experience of weakness in faith and the obtuseness of bodily and mental affliction, as well as the strange and mysterious presence of Another and the hope He generates and sustains within me, a hope that refuses to go away.

A charism is at work here, rooted in the enduring vocation of teaching. I may not have a "teaching job" anymore, but I am still a teacher. I couldn't stop being a teacher even if I tried. When I perceive something -- even if it has only gained a tenuous and embattled foothold on the shores of my heart -- I am moved to communicate it.

I try to cooperate with this grace. It is an impetus that sometimes "overrides" my illness and my physical and mental exhaustion, giving me the energy and capacity to speak and write. (Unfortunately, "overrides" does not mean "takes away" -- rather it stirs around the whole mess and sometimes makes it worse. It helps too, however, in ways I don't understand. But that's another topic.)

This charism also works within a whole complex set of motives, wrestling with pride, self-love, enormous vanity, the desire for appreciation, and all the distortions, hesitations, and fear that come from my damaged mind and stunted emotions.

No doubt there are many wasted words.

Nevertheless, people find something in all my words that helps them. Not many people, perhaps, but a few. The charism shines through, because this grace has been given first of all for you who read or listen to me and are drawn by the Lord to see the mystery and the pain of life in a different way.

A charism is given to build up God's people. In that sense, the fact that I'm a bumbling, incompetent Christian and a hypocrite looking for applause doesn't matter. If you find anything helpful in what I say it's because He loves you and wants to encourage you, strengthen you, and draw you to Himself.

He also wants to shape my life, and I really want to live the truth of this charism!

Well... sometimes I really want to. Often I forget all about it, or I say something like, "Jesus make me holy... but not yet!"

Most of the time, I'm just afraid. I'm afraid of the depths. I'm afraid of suffering.

But something is different. There is this hope. I know He is here, He is with me. I have hope because He has touched my life and awakened hope within me. Hope is the living memory of that encounter and the fruit of His embrace that continues even when I can't "feel it."

It is this hope that fills me with an urgency to express encouragement: "He loves us. He is here with us. He will not abandon us!"

I feel like I'm nearly drowning in the flood of life, but something moves me to tread water and swim as best as I can. I sink under the water a lot, but in my struggle and thrashing I've also seen the land. It's not far away. And here we are -- all of us awful swimmers in these deep and strange waters -- and I can't help crying out, "Look, look, this way. There is the land. We are going to make it! We are going to be okay."

I Shall Always Be a Teacher

Professor in his duds, 2003. Only a goatee back then.

Well, it's September already.

The older kids -- John Paul, Agnese, and Lucia -- are pretty much back to their normal school routine. At Chelsea Academy this means plenty of study, plenty of sports and other activities in the fresh air, plenty of formation in their faith, plenty of fun, and plenty of homework too. They also manage to eat and sleep, somehow. (Haha!)

John Paul is a Senior now. As parents have been saying since the beginning of the universe, "Where did our little baby go?" But there's not much time to think about that: too many things to do this year. The college application and discernment process is well underway already.

College...

The beginning of September makes me think of the many years when I had a normal academic routine, as a student and then as a teaching professor. There are advantages, certainly, to the "quieter" style of life that I now must live, not the least of which is the freedom to make my own schedule. But I miss being caught up in that great swell of activity and anticipation and "new beginnings" that are always in the air with the new academic year.

Sure, I'll continue to be "special resource associate and scholar in residence" at the John XXIII Montessori Center (which starts up in a couple of weeks). That means at least that I will be getting up early in the morning with everyone else and going to the Center's office. It will be a good change of atmosphere, but it's not the same. It's not my classroom. It's been over six years but I haven't stopped missing it.

Still, I remain a teacher, and not only "at heart." I have found new forums in which to teach, and new subjects too. And I remain a student. In these last several years I have studied and observed and learned so much, from books, from other media, from observation, from endurance, from the whole scope of this unusual life.

I am convinced that the best teachers are also perpetual students; they communicate to their own students the enthusiasm about what they are learning. The best way to guide the search for truth (in any area) is to be on it one's self. The teacher is the one who is at the head of the hike, looking for the hilltop through the laborious path, and when he comes to the top and sees the view, he shouts back to the others: "Come this way, it's here, look at this wonderful view!" The teacher is the one who wants to know all about what he is seeing, who studies the map so he can understand as much as possible -- not only for his own personal appreciation but also so that he can point it out to the others: "There is the river that flows into that lake where the old fort is, and beyond the horizon there is...."

The teacher is also the one who sees the next hill, and says, "now we have to climb this one!"

Give It All To God

“I’m a failure.”

I know, this is a pathological thing with me. It’s time for some mental exercises. In fact, it’s time for some physical exercise: a good walk around the neighborhood in the breezy late afternoon with Teresa. Time to think of my blessings, time to love my wife and my children, time to do the work that has been given to me. Study. Reflect and make judgments. Write. Or just try to get better.

It’s time for some spiritual exercises. Listen to your spiritual director: this idea of failure does not come from God. Pray, “Jesus, I trust in You completely.” “Come Holy Spirit.” Take your mind off yourself. Up, up, up, eyes off yourself, look to God, look to others. Mary, dear Mary.

The failure monster still hovers around, like a heavy atmosphere pressing against me.

I miss the past. I miss my classroom. “You will be a great teacher,” said Msgr. Giussani. So I taught. I taught my heart out. The fact is, I often felt like a failure even as a teacher. What difference was I really making? I was never one of the “rock stars” at the college. I wasn’t a name that buzzed on students’ lips. There were a few, every year, who saw something–they appreciated my effort (our poor human frailty, alas, always likes to be appreciated)–but more importantly they “caught on,” they understood what I was seeing; sometimes they saw it even better than I did. This is the thing that a teacher really loves.

Too many, however, were just bored. I tried, I tried so hard for you kids. I wanted to shake you and say, "look at this, look at how beautiful it is!" If only you knew, dear students. I wanted you all to see it.

In any case, I did my job well. But my health broke down. And I felt like a failure.

“You will be a great teacher.” How? When?

When I can, I make good use of this long and strange sabbatical. I’ve written a book. I’m writing another. I study assiduously. I try to understand the world I live in, and God’s plan for it. I seek to communicate through new channels. But I’m not going to kid you: some days are just plain washouts. “It” just doesn’t get done. And if someone tells me I need to go exercise on a day like that I’m going to tell them to shut up....

“I feel like a failure.”

Give it all to God.

I think everyone feels like a failure in some aspect of their lives. Maybe God has brought me to this condition so as to awaken compassion in me for others. God still loves me in my failure. His love is deep and fundamental: He loves me, period. No conditions. But he also manifests this love in my life, in our family life. Without the failure of my teaching career, my wife never would have gotten her training and certification and become the wonderful Montessori teacher that she is today. She is a great teacher. And our family has grown closer. Perhaps more important than anything else is the fact that we are keenly aware that we are not the ones who are in control....

I know that the words, “God loves you” are not cheap. In these days I hear with compassion about people who lose their jobs. People who are sick. People who are struggling with all sorts of problems. People who just don’t think that what they do is worthwhile.

I think I can say this without being cheap: “Give it all to God. He loves you.”