About ten or fifteen years ago I was part of a small mentoring organization in the Bay Area. The focus was to identify and nurture “home grown talent” in ministry, business, church work … really anything that involved the integration of faith and vocation. I met some wonderful people, including Cara Meredith.
Cara struck me as thoughtful, a good listener, and eager to learn. We had several mutual friends — not unusual when you both live and work in the same region — so even though the mentoring program faded away I still heard occasional updates about Cara’s life and work.
About a year ago her book The Color of Life came out. It was fun to read her story and hear her share it with others. Cara is a very good writer, so it was an obvious choice to have her as my guest blogger this week.
Cara’s focus in this post is a change from my usual Junkyard items, but I think you’ll enjoy the insights.
The Color of Life
Most every Friday looks the same around here.
My boys, ages five and seven, hop out of bed like it’s the best day of their lives, which, I suppose, it is. Alive to nothing but the present, they relish in getting to pick out whatever they want to wear that day – after all, it’s Free Dress Friday, and all uniform requirements are out the window. It’s also Show and Tell in the first grade and Share Day in TK (Transitional Kindergarten), although why the same activity goes by two completely different names is beyond me.
Soon enough, they’ll run through the front entrance of their school and head straight for the playground for time with their friends.
As for me, I’ll trail slowly behind them, for mine is the slow gait of someone who’s taking it all in, the walk of a woman who’s attempting to breathe in the gifts of the present in a different, gentler sort of way.
After all, I’m here on their turf. This place exists for them and for the hundreds of other kids in the neighborhood and beyond who call this place home. So, on Fridays, I carve an hour and a half out of my schedule to help out in their classrooms and around the school. It’s not a time for me to parent my children, but it’s a time to take it all in and observe – to relish in “the blessedness of being little,” as Shakespeare once wrote (King Henry VIII).
Of course, I’m not always good at being little, let alone understanding little, all the time.
As I organize homework folders in the first-grade classroom, I can’t help but marvel at the patience of the teacher who seems to answer multiple variations of the same question from twenty-four different students.
“Mr. Alexander,” I finally say, when it’s time for me to leave. “I really admire how you’ve used your patience tool in answering all these questions about Reading Day on Monday.” I mean, I’m paying the dude a compliment while employing the standard social-emotional cues of the elementary school environment.
“Why, yes,” he responds. “I’ve found that first graders are extremely concrete thinkers, so all the nuances to all their questions, well, they matter.”
I stare at him, boggle-eyed, while a dozen hands shoot up in the air as soon as he finishes speaking. In his classroom, these six and seven-year old beings are honored and valued and seen as they are – down to the finite understanding and respect for the concrete nature of their brains.
I needed this reminder, I think to myself. I needed the reminder that when my son asks a million questions, it’s not because he’s trying to annoy me with all of his “whys,” but his little brain is trying to make sense of it all.
But would I have the patience to master a gracious response to an entire classroom full of pint-sized beings? That, I doubt.
A few minutes later, the sounds of Simon & Garfunkel greet me as I walk through the door of my younger son’s class.
Slow down, you move too fast
You got to make the morning last
Just kicking down the cobblestones
Looking for fun and feeling groovy
Ba da da dada dada, feeling groovy…
Half of the children are free-form dancing on the carpet, while the other half sit at their tables, drawing and coloring psychedelic masterpieces. When the song ends, their wiggly selves make their way to the carpet.
“What kind of drawing do you think represents slowing down and not going too fast?” The teacher asks her students. “And friends, how do we spell, ‘Ba’?” Her questions exist as an invitation to analyze one of the most famous songs ever written and to teach the most basic of skills. Again, I shake my head in wonder: too often I underestimate what a child’s brain can accomplish, what a young person’s mind already knows and can understand.
And it makes me wonder: If I’ve discounted the abilities of my own children (and of those their age), how have I done this with other relationships in my life? How have I underestimated myself, God, the universe as a whole?
I’ve got a lot to think about.
So, it seems to me that I’ve got no choice but to continue to show up on Friday mornings. After all, Friday mornings – and the blessedness of those who are little and of those who care for those who are little – still have a lot to teach me.
And I, for one, have a lot to learn.
Photo courtesy of Amy Boyle Photography