Teaching Experiences.

Oh I could use a little sunshine today. It's rainy, which was fine at five o'clock this morning as I listened, half asleep, to my better half getting ready for work. The falling rain outside was comforting, the perfect sound to drift in and out of sleep to.
But now, at four PM, I'm feeling gloomy. It's not just today- it's the season in general. March. We are at the end of winter, those cold, crazy days, but can't yet see the light of summer when I will feel the sun, that giant source of life, warming my entire body, awakening every pore on my skin.
Thinking of the sun's warmth reminds me of those long days in July or August at the Millpond, sitting in low chairs, eating jerky and drinking a cold beer, watching the boys splash and play in the water, talking for hours with Joey as the sun makes her way across the blue sky. Pure delight.
Besides the weather, life is...big. So much bigger than I had ever anticipated. I'm starting to notice connections in all the different areas in my life: the home part, the work part, the exercise part, the church part...more and more I am getting opportunities to use my passion to inspire and encourage others along the way. Not to offer solutions (who has those?), but to, as Nouwen says, "articulate in words and actions the human condition in which we participate and who encourage us to face the realities of life...to [have] the courage to enter so deeply into human suffering and speak from there."
I have a passion for people.
In teaching exercise I have a passion to see people do more than they ever thought they could, and to find joy along the way as they use their bodies for what they were intended: to move! My heart is that my students would stop competing, with others and with themselves, and start enjoying the movement, the breath, the sweat. The results will follow, but they are not the point.
In church, my passion is to break down walls. Let people know it's okay to be themselves and not have to put on their church faces when they walk through the doors. That honesty is the foundation to knowing God, and letting God know you. That it's intimacy, being with God, that transforms us. Our lives flow from Him, taking our 'trying to be good' from being a noisy gong to a real, deep, love for ourselves, the way God loves us, and in turn for those around us.
At work, having compassion for our patients and the staff that is trying so hard to navigate in this changing world of health care to take care of them. It's a slow process, a process that takes a long term perspective, one that sees "interruptions" as the real work, as opportunities to recognize a defect and take the steps in order to eliminate it to bring more and more value to our patients.
And at home. Fostering my passion for people "out there" to the little people sitting at my dining room table, the two little men God has gifted to me. Taking time to be with them, get to know them, listen to them, even if it's about Star Wars this guy and Legos that. Sundays especially, while Noah is napping, telling Ethan, "I want to be with you. Let's play."
We built a lego jeep today. He's so damn smart.
Reminds me of a funny story.
So yesterday we were on our way to the park and Ethan says to me, "I don't think I should be going to the after school program."
"Why?"
"Because there are bad words written in the tunnel outside where we play."
"Oh really? What bad words?"
"Fuck."
"Oh..." and then Noah repeats it, really slowly, like he's trying to get a good grasp on how to say it properly.
I'm freaking out of course.
"Okokokokokokokok, stop, stop, stop....."
"But mom, what does it mean?"
Oh would somebody just crash into the car right now or something, an earthquake...anything would be great...
"Well..."
Noah says it again.
"Noah, hunny, we don't say that word. It's not nice. It's not polite. It's very very bad."
"But, mom, what does it mean?"
"Well, um...." Is that a trash can I could crash into?
"It said like fuck off, or of, or something...."
"Yes! Yes! so it means get away."
"Oh, Okay."
Big, deep sigh of relief from mama. And then we had a similar conversation about shit. And as we pulled into the parking garage to meet our dear friends and their little ones at the park, I prayed fervently that my boys would completely forget about this lovely conversation, especially Noah, lest he pass along his new found knowledge with his friends and then their parents would get to have the lovely experience I just had.