Badgerfem
On Jesus, education, and other non-controversial topicsTransition
It seems like every time I start a new phase in life, I need a blog to sort it all out. My New Orleans one has been too precious to distort into something else that is clearly different, so I’m keeping it for archive’s sake. There’s a new one coming, and if you still want to follow me, that’s just dandy. I don’t even know who reads anymore, and mostly write for myself, and for the curiosity to see who’s coming down the rabbit hole with me.
New address forthcoming … thanks for staying with me.
Sincerely,
M
Closeout
Today was my last day of TFA teaching.
Tomorrow is my last day of TFA employment.
I submitted my letter of resignation to my principal and the district.
At 2:30PM tomorrow, I will be a TFA alum.
Baal
You stand before the shrine; your hands are cracked, your soul is weary. The well is dry. In every fiber of your being, you are screaming for survival. “Why have you forsaken me?” you cry out. “Why will you not respond?” The idol stares back, wooden, lifeless; its lovelessness destroys you.
You lost your job. Your marriage fell apart. Your father died. Your best friend committed suicide. Bad things happened to good people. Injustice prevailed, despite the years you spent fighting it. Evil triumphed. Hope was lost. Your heart is breaking.
What do we worship? Where do we run to? What things destroy us? You dip your cup; it comes up empty. Your sorrow carves into you, ever more deeply. We are cracked and running out – we are desperate to be full.
Israel submits itself to Baal. In wretchedness, our souls cry out. We ask for something, anything, at this point, we don’t even care what it is – postmodernism, new makeup, sexual addiction, eating disorders, abusive relationships, drugs and self-destruction and any other man-made machine of death we can hook ourselves up to. On the brink of death, we ask desperately for life.
In our own personal hells, Jesus intervenes, steps in softly, and says,
“I have purchased you.”
The hell of lovelessness, of idol-worship, it dissipates around you like a fading cloud. The prison bars you railed against – they fall away from around your bruised and battered body. The wounds, so clotted with blood, so buried deep within you – they are ripped wide open, plunged into alcohol, balmed with a healing serum, smoothed over with new skin. You are restored. You are cared for. You are healed.
My heart cries out, my spirit shouts, I’ll praise your name forevermore.
This is what I did on the airplane
Purpose
It can’t possibly be true that the purpose of life is to be happy. First of all, it doesn’t seem possible to simultaneously be happy 100% of the time, no matter what, and continue to be sane. It doesn’t make any sense that in life, people die, atrocities are committed, opportunities are lost, and bad things happen to good people, and through it all, you’re supposed to just put on a smile and make the best of what you’re given. That can’t possibly be all there is to life on earth – that we’re literally just tolerating and persevering through an endless series of terrible things, until we die. If there are people out there who actually live that way, I can’t imagine they are actually mentally stable. In the same way, it just doesn’t seem mentally healthy to constantly anticipate the doom in everything, making joy impossible. Every fortuitous occurrence in our lives that brings us joy cannot possibly be overshadowed by “death”. The chipper people would probably argue that death makes all those things “brighter” because by putting an endpoint to our positive experiences and making them finite, we give them value – like how streaks of rainy days make our single picnic days better. The former approach to life is self-serving. It’s just all about how we can stay happy, regardless of the things we do to ourselves and others, or what is done to us. The latter approach to life is pointless – it serves literally nothing, because nothing ultimately matters, because we’re all going to die either way and make life meaningless beyond its actual existence.
I also feel like all the miserable people I know are the ones who are trying to make themselves happy. This makes sense, because they probably don’t want to be miserable, but nothing they are trying is working, and I think they are actually going insane trying. This job will work. This new makeup will work. This new relationship will work. This new city I moved to will work. These new friends will work. This new technology will work. These new dishes and housewares will work. This new furniture arrangement will work. I promise this time, it will work. The more things they try, the more failures they experience, and the crazier it makes them – because instead of trying something completely different, something that is not a THING, they just keep on trying more THINGS, getting more crazy, and wondering why nothing is getting better.
I keep sleeping with people. They keep making me feel empty. This next one will fill me up, though. It’s going to be different. It’s going to make me full. It’s going to work. Where am I? I can’t find my wallet. My keys are gone. Who is this person? I have to get home. I still feel miserable. I’m never drinking again. Why can’t I feel full? I need somebody. I’ll find somebody tonight. They’ll make me feel full. I’ve got to keep trying. This has to be the answer. It’s just not the right person yet. This seems like the right one. Why can’t I be happy? Where did all my stuff go? How did I get home? How come I’m still so empty? They said this would make me happy. Why am I so miserable?
You should really stop sleeping with people. It’s not making you happy. God, you’re so judgmental. What’s wrong with you? Why are you so crazy? There’s nothing wrong with me. I’m totally fine. My life is great. I’m going to go out tonight and do whatever I want. It’s what everybody else wants. It’s the best. I’m so, so miserable.
How come I am the crazy one?
The purpose of life can’t be to make yourself happy. It can’t possibly be true that all the education, development, opportunity, money, and other forms of resource we receive are all directed at making ourselves happy. This seems to suggest our sole purpose in life is to serve others – and that also can’t be true. People who commit their whole lives to serving others crumple in half and die. It’s too much. There’s too much need. We can’t do it all. Things are too broken. Too much evil in the world exists. One person can’t carry it all – and millions of humans can’t carry it all. Giving your life to public service is powerful, but it’s also not IT. This is another good way to make yourself go crazy. Why are the schools still broken? Why are people still trafficking humans into sex slavery? Why does the government keep taking my money and coming up with ways to keep me in jail? Why don’t people do what’s right anymore? Why is money so powerful? How come terrorists are blowing up planes and subways to kill themselves for ideology? What the hell is going on in the world? How can I stop it? What if I can’t stop it? I don’t think I can stop it. I can pour my whole soul into this and nothing will matter. I guess I can always go back to making myself happy. Oh, wait, I already went insane from that. But I still feel crazy. Why am I crazy? How come none of this makes sense? I’m a good person. I never hurt anybody. I pay my taxes and take care of my family. I pick up my friends from the airport. People recommend me for professional positions. Why am I so crazy?
There’s this thing called peak oil everybody is freaking out about. It’s like, something to do with us running out of oil or whatever and then everybody will have to go to war for their gasoline and we will all go broke from keeping our cars running and our world is going to end. I swear there’s something else that’s happening that isn’t like peak oil, but it is. It’s like, everybody is coming to this spiritual DEATH POINT, and we have all decided that there’s only 1 of 3 ways to go, and the choices are –
1) I will spend my whole entire life trying to make myself happy, marginally succeed at certain moments, mostly fail and hate myself and die miserable and alone.
2) I hate everything and everything is pointless. I will spend my whole entire life trying to make myself happy, but because I hate everything and everyone, I will never succeed. I will end up either killing myself or dying miserable and alone. This is also called misanthropy.
3) Let’s adopt some kind of philosophy or religion to make ourselves feel better and give definition to the series of mostly disconnected events that ultimately make up our lives. Here is a buffet line of religious gurus with all different kinds of ideas about the universe. You get to pick whichever philosophy makes the most sense to you. Everybody will respect everybody. Nobody is right. Everything is still going to be meaningless. You will ultimately die somewhat less miserable and possibly not alone.
Let’s analyze. These choices suck. Everybody is going crazy, and it’s because they are making themselves crazy, and then all the people around them are going crazy because it’s contagious and the less sense people make, the less it makes sense to try to make sense, because nobody else is trying to make sense so why bother.
How come there was this different story that nobody ever told me about. I keep just trying to go around, telling it to people, and everybody ends up telling me I’m crazy. Or, they are super polite to me, and they smile and they nod, and at the end of it they say, “Good for you!” like I have just finished telling them that I got a new car and it’s finally the kind that I needed, or that this haircut really works for me and wouldn’t you know, that’s been the key to my salvation all along. Or it’s also kind of like when you show someone your new [whatever] and it’s like, something really cute that you like a lot, and you can tell they secretly think it’s ugly and they don’t want to hurt your feelings, but since you’re like, not stupid, you can tell they think it’s stupid anyway, and then you feel crazy because they’re like nodding and smiling and saying how great it is and really that’s not what they think at all. Anyway, here’s the different story, and I think this story is way, way better than Choices 1 through 3, because all those choices end up in suicidal depression or like mental instability and pointlessness where you go around filling up your crazy-ness with pottery and CDs.
Story #4
There was a society that was falling apart. Everybody was killing each other and ruining their own lives and families, and people were oppressed and hopeless. These guys were in power and they pretended to be holy and really they just crapped on everybody else and thought they were like, the best, except they totally weren’t and like spent all their time bad-mouthing people and not using their power for helping all the lepers and sick people and poor people and raped women and abandoned wives and starving soldiers and all other people who were not them. This man came, and he came from God. People thought that was ridiculous because God was like, important, but not really, because if He was really important to them they wouldn’t be like killing each other and enslaving people and sinning and doing all kinds of bad things to themselves and others. But anyway, it was wrong for somebody to say they came from God, because that made them the most righteous, and the self-righteous people who ran everything were only in charge because they were the most righteous, so nobody could be better than them or they’d get kicked out. But this guy went around anyway and like healed a bunch of sick and lame and deaf people and raised others from the dead. And all these people who thought they had nothing to live for suddenly realized the power of God and like saw what life could be like if they gave their lives back to God again. This made the self-righteous people mad because all these people didn’t want to follow them any more because this new guy was like, so much better.
So they made up a plan to actually kill him, and they got this one friend of the new guy to sell him out. But New Guy knew this was going to happen, and he even like, said so to those friend-people, and the friend-people secretly felt really bad inside because they knew he was right, and like still couldn’t own up to it even though they were supposed to be special and the new leaders and the friends of the New Guy. At any rate, Traitor Guy sold out New Guy to the Romans for a handful of shekels or something equally pointless. And New Guy who raised people from the dead and brought people’s sick daughters back to life and gave homeless blind people sight again got thrown in prison. They gave the people the chance to kill either him or this other criminal who was also in prison. Still, the people were like, maybe we should kill New Guy anyway, so … he didn’t get out.
The day came from New Guy to be killed and he got up and went willingly. People jeered at him and threw stones at him and mocked him the whole way. He was laid onto a cross and they drove nails through his hands to make sure that he stayed on there and then he hung up there until he bled and suffocated to death. He did this because he loved everybody and knew they needed to be saved from themselves. His followers wept and were really sad because they thought New Guy was going to stay around forever and that all his prophecies were true. If he died, they thought, there couldn’t be any more miracles coming, or new amazing stuff happening, because New Guy bit the dust like everybody else, and when death happens stuff stops happening too because that’s all the life they knew and thought was possible at the time.
Then 3 days passed and New Guy rose from the dead and walked free forever again. Some women came to bring him spices and put them on his body like burial rituals and he wasn’t there. They got madly excited and overjoyed and went home and told everybody, who thought they were crazy. Peter, this one friend of New Guy when he had been alive, was sad and confused, so he went to the tomb and his friend’s body was gone. He didn’t know what to do, because this changed everything. If New Guy was alive, that meant God’s plan had succeeded – and everything his friend had told him was really true – and a new Kingdom was coming, and we didn’t have to be miserable anymore, because there was a God that loves us and sent his only son to have his life taken from him so that we could live forever and be happy in his light.
At the end of the day, this is the only story that makes sense to me anymore. This is the only thing that can possibly be true and make me happy. At the end of the day, doesn’t everybody want the same things – to be loved; to be accepted; to have freedom from guilt and shame and terror; to free the oppressed; to see justice be done; to feel good about themselves; to take care of the ones they love; to have their hard work matter, and their saddest thoughts and questions answered? Isn’t this what everybody wants? Isn’t this exactly what Jesus offers us? Isn’t knowing and having Jesus the only way to keep us all from going crazy? How come people think it’s crazy to really want all that, and be able to get it from Christ? How come people keep choosing their chains, not knowing it’s what keeps them from being set free? I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense “intellectually”, whatever that means. To me, I swear that just means people don’t want Story #4 to be true, because it’s like not documented well enough for them or like serves an agenda they don’t like or isn’t factual enough and like, I understand all that. I know lots of people feel that way, and I think lots of questions get asked and most of the time not answered well because not everybody is gifted and equipped to like, be the explainer of all those things. But this new world order, this new American philosophy, this idea that “whatever works for YOU is best” is fucking destroying everybody’s lives. Nobody is willing to admit that it’s destroying everybody’s lives. I don’t understand why I am the crazy one. Everything else seems crazy to me. Even if you don’t live a totally addicted life of self-destructive behavior – it still seems like the most you’ll achieve is like, a house in the suburbs, and kids who will do it all over again after you’re gone. Or if you’re lucky, a record deal. Or some other kind of outstanding human achievement. But that can’t be everybody. What the hell is supposed to happen to the other 99% of people? To the X-percent of the world without clean drinking water, access to schools of any kind, secure shelter and steady food sources, lack of safe sex education and no international status? Are we supposed to just be like, OK with that?
Story #4 seems to be true. It makes the most sense to me. It’s got to be the only way to stay sane and happy. And you won’t get to be happy all the time, but it won’t make you insane. And you get to live forever. So nothing in this life-period has to be like, make-or-break anymore. It doesn’t mean everything is suddenly pointless because we’re all waiting for the afterlife, signaled by Jesus coming down with Pat Robertson to like pick up all the Sunday school teachers and choir leaders who are secretly having sex with people who aren’t their wives and husbands. It just means that like, all that STUFF you think gives your life meaning, you don’t live for that anymore. All those holes in your heart you keep trying to fill up with other people, they won’t be empty anymore. If your family is messed up, it’s OK, because you don’t have to be like them, and you can have a whole new family in God and his community. The people you drive by every day in the project, you know God has them now, that they matter, that once you make yourself willing, He’ll use you to help them.
I don’t get it. Story #4 is supposed to just keep on being one BIG SECRET, and if other people agree with Story #4, you can talk to them about it, otherwise you’ll continue to get the smiling and the head-nodding, or the people who like think you want to lynch gay people. He was persecuted all the way to the cross. He was destroyed for calling people out of sin. He was bled to death for suggesting things could be better. It isn’t a bedtime story anymore. It isn’t a fairytale. It isn’t a command to just “be nice to people”. It’s a God that’s real and loves us. It’s a rescue from the insanity of self-service, from the quest for meaning through impossible world-mending, from the absolute hell of lovelessness. It’s an invitation to life.
It’s a whole new and better purpose.
Recommit
God, you said this stuff was true about my life. You said I would have huge responsibilities for you. You said it was going to happen. God, I’m going to trust you with those huge things. I’m going to trust I cannot make them for myself – even though that drives me crazy. I’m going to trust that you actually love me, and that your ideas for my life are better for me than mine. I’m going to trust that your promises are true. I’m going to trust that you’re a huge God that doesn’t let us down. I’m going to trust that something big is coming to me. I’m going to trust that you’ve got it coming. I’m going to trust that you’re positioning me right where you want me right now. I’m going to trust the arc of my life that brought me to you and the arc into the distance I cannot see. I’m going to just believe right now, even though I have no idea.
I’m terrified. This is hard. I want to believe really deeply. I want my BFF to believe really deeply too. I want her mom’s leg to be healed. I want all these huge prayers to be answered, confirmed, responded to, God, just blow it up, make it real. Protect our hearts. Make us whole again.
High expectations
I realized today, on my after-school run, that high expectations are really less of a reflection on what we think our kids are capable of learning and doing, and really more of a reflection on what we think of ourselves as teachers – what we truly believe we are capable of accomplishing with our students. Any kid can learn anything. That’s just true about humans. We do not all have the same aptitude, but it’s just possible. I would hypothesize that really, where we tend to stumble most as teachers is in self-doubt that we can actually pull off teaching material that is “too rigorous”. We tell ourselves this or that kid “can’t” learn this material because it’s “too hard”, when really we are just scared to try it out, or don’t feel like we can truly teach it that well.
This doesn’t mean that by simply correcting this mindset, we will all automatically become megastar teachers who tap into our hidden teaching talents to drive every student beyond the bar of expectation. But it does mean we should probably challenge ourselves more to think about who we’re really limiting when we limit ourselves – and that is, of course, our students.
Believing in yourself is hard. Maybe it’s not for most people, but a lot of times, it is hard for me. I feel like at the end of the day, though, you really have no choice but to believe in yourself. I think I am usually just scared of being wrong; it is safer to doubt, and be right about my mediocrity. Going out for the big things is too much risk, too much emotional liability. What if I fail? But that’s why all our kids are failing. They’re all asking themselves the same question, and nobody is pushing them to take chances on themselves, to put themselves out there, to really go for something in the hopes that they will win. How are you going to motivate somebody else if you can’t even believe in yourself?
We learned about Nelson Mandela today. I never brought in all the “our deepest fear” stuff, but it’s highly coincidental. And one of my kids asked another teacher after class if we “had apartheid in America”. It’s like one big wall we push on and chip away at all together. One day, it’s going to fall down.
Souvenirs
When Ms. Jalali go back to Minnesota, she gon’ be talkin’ crazy like these children.
– Coach Bryant, Wednesday
These hot fries HOT HOT!!!
–Ms. Jalali, Friday
Beginning of the end
Today, a girl was wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, in the street, on the pavement, in front of the entire school bus lineup. I felt mostly nothing as I watched it from a 2nd-story window. Yesterday, a kid spit on my computer after I stepped outside the classroom to call his parents mid-class for acting a damn fool. I felt nonplussed and wiped the spit off with a napkin and sent him to the Dean after finding his present on my keyboard, then went about the rest of my day. Sometimes I feel rattled, and it’s not during the moments when kids are just like, acting crazy, even though I know they’re consciously doing that stuff. It’s more when they consciously explain to me the situations they truly find themselves in. Like Chris, who stayed after school with me for 40 minutes to explain that school’s not working out, and though his parents tell him not to hustle, he figures he’ll end up doing it anyway, because nobody is hiring and he has to get paid and his parents don’t make enough for him and them altogether. I asked him what if he gets killed doing that, and he explained to me, like one explains that there are 4 seasons in a year or how you button up a shirt, that it will probably end up that way. We are going to pick up applications at 2 more places tomorrow even though I am not supposed to drive my students around after school. “Anything to keep me off the streets,” he says. He knows better, but doesn’t expect better, and that’s what makes it hard to hear.
Since we got a whole bunch of new kids, school has been gradually unraveling. I feel my old self coming back as I prepare to go in every day and regulate. I get exhausted every day because all their needs are on my shoulders when I’m put in charge of them and I am simply not enough. Even giving 110% each day, I’m never going to be enough. They need attention, a job, discipline, excitement, engagement, affirmation, consequences, belief in them, constant supervising, micro-managing, things to be simplified, things to be challenging. They need all the things that human beings are supposed to get from age 0 on. Lately, class has been amazing, and overall, the kids are learning great things. It’s just that every day, I have nothing left. I don’t know how people can do this as a career without some kind of long-term shift in their “compensation”, and I mean that much more broadly than in just a financial sense. Something bigger has to happen, different leaders need to come in, it can’t just all be a few people here and there fighting tooth and nail from 7AM to 5PM. Families need to believe again, children need to want to try again, teachers and leaders need to keep the faith, the ones in power need to fight for us. Otherwise, people start to die out here. People’s spirits start to die in America’s public places meant to start our spirits on fire. And even if you’re the one person insisting, “You CAN achieve, you CAN have other options, you CAN make it, there ARE other ways”, too many other voices rise with anger, with contempt, with condemnation, all various attitudinal manifestations of low expectations that poison our society’s youth, til they believe it about themselves – til they can’t even hear the 1 or 2 voices fighting back, saying, “Don’t give up.” That’s straight Devil-work.
Every quiet day of pushing on becomes a new scream rising.
