JOURNAL: September 9, 2006

This past week was a forceful one, but yet, in seeming contradiction, there was no “forcing” involved. All week I felt a wonderful energy in my teaching, an energy that kept me flowing along smoothly from class to class, lesson to lesson. I taught with a coolness and attention to detail that’s unusual for me. It was almost as if some enormous power was pushing me along, and I could do nothing but yield and allow it to happen. The best aspect of all this is that I didn’t seem to have to make anything happen. The good teaching and learning, the steady stream of successful present moments, happened without my help, without my customary forcing and pushing and shoving. Somehow the week became a beautiful one, day after day, and all I did was go along for the ride. This, surely, is one of the greatest mysteries in my life. Good happens to me moment by moment, hour after hour, and none of it is planned and organized and implemented by me. Yes, my thinking and planning appear to be part of the cause, but the big question is: What causes my thinking and planning? For the answer to that question I have to look to the infinite, universal force that provides all answers and all power. I certainly felt that force in my classroom throughout this first week of school.