Afflicted, Not Crushed

They were great questions posed to me last week by a new colleague:

“How did you keep going in the first months of the school?”

“How do you keep on doing it now? I feel it’s so hard.”

Obviously since the first query is about the past, that one is easier. I talked with her about some of the “tricks” I came up with to cope with a new country, a new home, a new course, a new school, a new kind of student, a new kind of educational experience. I told her I drank a lot of Diet Coke—somehow it reminded me of home. And I took my new portable DVD player (compliments of my treasured sister) to the gym and watched episodes of “The Golden Girls” while on the treadmill. Somehow that mixture of the Coke elixir and the stamina of the old gals on the sitcom gave me a lift.

But I said the real support came from thinking back through my life to my own (non-fictional!) role models and imagining how they had endured trials and tribulations. I would think about great teachers and family members who had emerged from life as survivors and champions to me, and imagined what they had done to find peace and solace. As I thought about my two grandmothers, heroic, yet gracious; fierce, yet elegant ladies if there ever were, the inspiration was easy. These women of faith looked to biblical sources for sustenance. I would think about biblical passages that each had cherished, and somehow channeling their own struggles and desires to stay afloat, I found the will and resolve to make it while ev-e-ry-thing was new to me here. I remember walking one day to the gym, DVD player and Diet Coke in hand, and I paused in front of the gym—I heard my father’s mother’s favorite psalm in my head, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord.” As I repeated that mantra I noticed where my own eyes actually landed—on the other side of the very same hills on which David had uttered that petition millennia ago. Very powerful stuff.

Telling the colleague about the fall of 2007 was pretty easy. Probing my sense of stability right now, processing the current challenges and crises, well that seemed a little more difficult. I eagerly responded that my students in my classes provide me with a real sense of joy and purpose and accomplishment. But beyond that classroom door, well, life has been rather enervating. What is sustaining me???

I thought back to my role models, and something came up rather interestingly about the nature of education and how we make it through tough times. As this teacher was talking to me, I noted that working in education, and I guess, the faith in education is really a hand-me-down thing. I mean, here we were, discussing strategies of coping, and I was handing-down my tried-and-true-for-me methods. This teacher/mentor thing is a communicable thing. We receive these words, at first, by relying upon reliable people, those whose life experiences we trust, whose words are believable because they are believable.

When Thomas Jefferson wanted to know if there was an easy water route to the Pacific, he chose his old friend and neighbor, a man he knew, whose word he trusted, whose integrity was unquestioned: Meriwether Lewis. Lewis, in turn, reached out to an experienced frontiersman with a solid reputation, William Clark.

Lewis and Clark plunged into the unknown. They could have reported back anything. They could have made it all up. Or they could have mucked it all up by being lazy, imprecise, unethical, inept—any number of things. Lewis’ and Clark’s maps and notes were believable because they were believable. They were deemed to be trustworthy, worth investing in, worth gambling on.

I thought about the “interviews” I enjoyed in the late 1980s with my best teachers, asking these trustworthy people about managing teaching. I thought about how I went to Brown for graduate school because of the reports of my friend David, as he plunged into the graduate school unknown, reporting what he saw and experienced.

So as I was talking with this colleague I thought about what I had just been teaching this week—the art of the Early Christian church. This had always been a rather lackluster unit at Hackley since they just weren’t interested in the growth of this former mystery cult! But the unit on spiritual art has been dynamic and exciting here—these people understand spiritual devotion in a palpable way, and they are fascinated as to how it links to what they know about religious dogma and theology. I thought about how I had taught about Paul that day, and what Paul had meant in the transformation of the church—kind of publicizing and advertising this church.

Paul had been another source of inspiration for my family heroes. I recalled how in his letter to the Corinthians Paul had reported back on his explorations abroad. He told them that he had made it out there, beyond “the Rockies.” (okay, just follow the analogy!) He told them that the journey had been hard, but he had been made whole. He was loved.

But Paul does not begin with the easy part. He begins with the struggle—the same difficult, daily emotional experiences where those Corinthians were. He began his story knowing their stories, their lives, what ailed them, what frightened them, what caused them despair. Indeed, Paul writes in that letter in plain language: “We are afflicted…we are perplexed…we are struck down…”

As my brain went over those words, I could have addressed the faculty here and said the same words, these raw and spare words, and probably watched them nod knowingly.

Paul reminds the Corinthians that we humans are earthly vessels, and we are brittle things, fragile and breakable.

But Paul is writing to them not merely to confirm what they know, but to report back, as a reliable source, what they do not know…on the new territory he has explored.

I thought how those words are incomplete of the passage. “We are afflicted…we are perplexed…we are struck down…” is just the part that the bone-weary might hear. Let’s restore the rest of that passage:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; we are perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed…”

All of this came out to the colleague, and I rushed to point out that the important word, the operative word, the pivot word in that directive turns and depends on but!

So this Thursday afternoon, as we look back on a trying week, a trying season, We are afflicted, I admit, but not crushed. We are perplexed, I confess, but not driven to despair. We are struck down, I can report, but not destroyed.

Because Paul was believable 2000 years ago, this faith was passed on. Because my grandmothers were believable this faith was passed on. Time to hand it down.