Teaching, Living, and Learning: SALVATION

Friday, July 17, 2009

SALVATION

In the Bible reading for today, Jesus says to a man, “This day is salvation come to your house.” This day. Not tomorrow or yesterday. Not sometime in the future, but this day, in these 57,000 moments stretching ahead of me. This Friday, July 17, 2009. Salvation – as the dictionary says, “the preservation or deliverance from destruction, difficulty, or evil.” Today I will be preserved and delivered. It takes a powerful force to preserve and deliver, and I will, indeed, be in the presence of, and part of, the strongest possible force – the force of the gently unfolding and infinite present moment. I will be preserved from destruction, yes, but not only destruction. I will also be delivered (rescued) all day from “difficulty or evil”. That’s an amazing thing to realize, that on this day I will be (am, right now) part of a power that knows no boundaries or limits, and that instantly destroys any difficulty or evil. This is the true meaning of salvation, and it has come to my “house” on this day. Rejoice!

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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