Teaching, Living, and Learning

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

AN UNIMAGINABLE POWER

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

“Have we not all one Father?”

--Malachi 2:10

This morning I was struck, again, by this forceful thought: the power of each present moment is infinite. I’m not sure why that thought, which I have often pondered, felt so overpowering this morning, but it definitely did. As I stood in the bathroom shaving, I felt like I was part of an immeasurable force, one that has been exerting its steady and irresistible power for untold eons. It’s a power that seems to exist in time, over zillions of year, but actually it exists only in the present moment – right now. Absolutely all of this inestimable power – the “Father” that Malachi speaks of -- is present in each split second of life. It’s an astonishing truth to consider, one that makes shaving at 6:04 a.m. an especially notable experience.

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I found this quote (below) in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park. She's describing Fanny Price's home at Mansfield, but the words exactly remind me of the atmosphere I try to maintain in my classroom:
" ... no sounds of contention, no raised voice, no abrupt bursts, no tread of violence, was ever heard; all proceeded in a regular course of cheerful orderliness; everybody had their due importance; everybody's feelings were consulted."

...........

The following quote is from David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I would like my classroom to be like Dr. Strong's school:

"Dr. Strong's was an excellent school...It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honor and good faith of the [students], and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of these qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a share in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity."

If I replaced "agent" with "teacher", this passage from a short story might, I hope, describe me in my classroom:
"The agent spent his days in following what seemed to many observers to be only a dull routine, but all his steadiness of purpose, all his simple intentness, all his gifts of strategy and powers of foresight, and of turning an interruption into an opportunity, were brought to bear upon this dull routine with a keen pleasure."
-- from "The Gray Mills of Farley" by Sarah Orne Jewett