Christian Living

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His Job Description

It has been said that we teach best what we need to learn the most and that we are all teachers and learners. My first teacher was my mother, but I don’t remember the early lessons. I do remember a lot of rather large people around me, and that my mother always seemed to be one of them. The next teacher I remember was Sister Gertrude, whom I feared more than death and even more than the other black clad, hooded Sister creatures. Then I remember Mrs. Rooney, who turned out to be the kindest person I was ever to encounter. She was my second grade teacher and she radiated gentleness and tenderness even more than the hooded Sister creatures excreted fear and loathing. In fourth grade, I learned she had gone blind and I recall it as the first time I was to doubt the love and wisdom of God.

By the third grade I learned that I had to sit in the back of the glass because I was bad and stupid. In the sixth grade, I encountered Brother Mark, who discovered that I had a hearing impairment (Only because he also suffered from the same) and allowed (insisted) that I sit in the front row and that I was not bad or stupid. In the seventh grade, I was beaten senseless by Brother Christopher, who taught me that authority was never to be trusted, something I had suspected every time my father got drunk and started a fire in the basement. In high school, my mother reappeared to teach me algebra, which is pretty remarkable, considering she only got as far as fourth grade in school in Ireland. There I also battled Brother Mark, the Dean of Discipline who taught me that authority also was capable of fairness and that it sometimes even had a heart and who, after been transferred across the country, came out of nowhere to shake my hand as I stood in line for graduation.

Then there were my friends from the wondrous world of the written word. Jack London, who taught me that life was a lesson dying to be learned. Charles Dickens taught me that the uniqueness of others made my life richer. Victor Hugo taught me that life was to give, not to take. Erich Maria Remarque taught me that evil and goodness had many different faces. James Hilton taught me that contentment without challenge is not possible for humans. Joyce Kilmer taught me that simplicity could be serene and seductive. Fyodor Dostoevsky taught me that without God, nothing has any meaning. Robert Frost taught me the poetry of every day living. St. Augustine and Josh McDowell taught me that Christian belief had moral authority as well as intellectual integrity. Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwan taught me it also had beauty and splendor that grows as Christ grows within our hearts. The rest are too many to list.

My addictions taught me that God created me with an unbearable emptiness that only He could fill. My sin taught me that He literally was dying to fill it. Teenage acne taught me the treachery of the flesh and temporal beauty. Rembrandt, da Vinci and Van Goethe taught me the power and pain of divine beauty.

But it is the one they call “Rabbi” or “Teacher” who gives meaning to all lessons. He teaches me that; my desperation is overcome by His Hope, my disloyalty by His Faithfulness, my fear by His Courage, my loneliness by His Companionship, my coldness by His Compassion, my pride by His Humility, my vindictiveness by His Gentleness, my shallowness by His Depth, my anxiety by His Patience, my hate by His Love, my violence by His Peace, my weariness by His Rest, my selfishness by His Kindness, my impulsiveness by His Self Control, my evil by His Goodness and that; "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Desperado 7/17/04 RED

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