Today a drenching rainstorm sprang out of the clouds around 2:00 and proceeded to beat down on the school for the next hour or so. It came on very suddenly. One minute the air was silent and motionless, and the next moment it was loudly humming with one of the heaviest rainfalls I’ve ever seen. I don’t think any of us were ready for it; there was a look of shock and surprise on most of the faces I saw. It got me to thinking, as I drove home through a blanket of rain, that no human prepared this rain, or organized it, or set it in motion, or controlled it. We love to believe that we have everything under control, that our days can be planned and orderly affairs if only we stay alert, but here was this storm that unexpectedly pounced upon us, as if to remind us that, in this vast universe, things happen pretty much whenever they must. We little humans don’t, in the end, have much to say about it. I need to remember this truth as I go about my teaching day by day. Yes, it’s important for me to carefully plan my lessons each day, but actually, truth be told, it’s a little like planning a transatlantic route for a small sailboat. It’s good to have the plans in place, but any mariner knows that a thousand variables, sudden storms among them, will be affecting the little boat as it makes its passage. He sets his course, but he also says a prayer to the god of the winds that it will take him eventually to a good place. As a serious teacher, I plan my lessons diligently, but I always keep an eye out for those swift and startling explosions of life that are constantly happening in my students, in me, and in the surprising world around us. I realize that I am, in the end, at the mercy (and mercy is a wonderful virtue) of an infinitely graceful and governing power. I plan my lessons, and then I pray.