The coffee’s cold, the fish is dead, and little brothers don’t appreciate the cruel irony of their snack choices.
The truth sinking into my bones and settling into my soul is this: learning is not separated from life. This school we’re creating is a boots on the ground, dirty fingernails kind of institution that takes us through every subject and every emotion every day.
The fish died and we learned how saying, “At least…” to a grieving person is never an acceptable platitude, how “at least” never takes away the hurt like we wish it would. The fish died and we learned how to rally around someone suffering while also giving them space to feel and to process at their own pace.
We’ve learned that phonics rules don’t make sense, they’re never absolute.
“Biye” follows all the rules of silent e making the vowel say its name, and yet the word is correctly spelled, “buy.”
Sometimes even when we do all the right things, even when we memorize the rules, there are times we still end up on the wrong side of things. Even though we do everything right, we somehow end up wrong. It’s phonics. And it’s Breonna Taylor and Sarah Everard and our Asian brothers and our Black sisters and our LGBTQ loved ones and I don’t understand it. It’s life and it’s hard.
We’re working it all out with fear and with trembling, learning how to be humans together in the midst of suffering and loss and intense frustration. Just being people together is hard, especially in this boiled down concentrate of humanity that is our pandemic experience.
But the things distilled reveal so much about human nature, about resilience and sin, about me. It’s uncomfortable and beautiful. The Refiner’s fire always is. Pain mingling with fury mixing with grace, as the coarseness is stripped away and we learn how to be with one another. Learn to be and stop pretending.
This education I’m getting is owl pellets and copy work, repetition of days over and over and over, days so ghastly and gorgeous I ache for them to end while simultaneously mourning their loss.
And that’s life. Life is the education, which I suppose is the point. I just desire to be a better student, to shake off my procrastination and grumbling, to look at challenge with curious eyes instead of cross resentment. I’m not there yet. I’m still learning.
I’m learning to write and trust my words to Jesus, not to worry if you understand or misconstrue my meaning. I’m learning accept the humility that comes from releasing words into the world and letting that vulnerability stand under the scrutiny of strangers and the more worrisome eyes of those who love me, those I might disappoint. I’m learning to release and let my words dissolve like bread thrown into a pond, chewed up, swallowed, and spit out by fishes pleasing to some and to none at all.
I’m learning to be more accepting of “close your eyes and hold out your hands,” learning to trust that I’ll be handed a blessing and not a snake. Why is it so frightening to trust? All is grace, after all.
I’m learning is all. I hope you are, too. I hope your studies lead to the eternal conclusion that you are loved, you are loved, you are loved.
Let’s recite it and memorize it and copy it down in cursive until we know it as a truth more absolute than 2+2 = 4, more dependable than “I before E,” more real and pure than we could ever really fathom.
I’m still learning. I hope you are, too.
ohblessyourheart 