Millstones
“It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than that he would cause one of these little ones to stumble.” –Luke 17:2Pastor Dave called this “the millstone award.” The first time I even contemplated the boyency of a millstone was about 1989 or so in a chapel held at the Saint Patrick’s building on Dennison Parkway in Corning. When Dave took over the church and school, he found some arrangements backwards to his way of thinking, and began to turn our little world upside down.
One of the first changes came in the form of our morning chapel seating arrangements. Harry Jackson, the first pastor, had moved all of the older kids to the front two rows. They were unruly at times, passing notes and joking; a distraction to the gravity of morning theology. In order to make an example of their bad behavior (explained as evidence of the evils of a public school education) Pastor Jackson moved those troublemakers to the forefront of our microcosmic universe.
When Pastor Dave arrived, he took exception to having their hulking, pockmarked, pubescent forms leering at him in the front rows. Why force the little ones to crane their necks? It was an affront to symmetry and logical order.
This was when I first heard about Millstones.
“Do any of you know what a millstone is?” he asked us. And of course we didn’t. Had we ever seen grain ground in a wind or water mill?
“A millstone is a huge piece of rock, shaped like a lifesaver. It’s used to grind big things into little things.” He had a way of speaking down to us and lifting us up at the same time. “How easy do you think it would be to swim with one of those around your neck?”
Turning his half smiling intensity on those older kids now slouching in their seats he seemed quite benevolent. “I want to save you guys from having to swim like that. Until you can be a GOOD example, and not make the little kids behind you stumble, I’m going to move you to the back.”
Pastor Dave’s entire philosophy was about being a good example, and earning a good report. He abolished a hateful system for punishment based on negative reinforcement, and began to reward good behavior instead. At that time his ideas seemed progressive and modern. There was freedom to breathe under his gaze, as long as you weren’t earning yourself a giant stone life preserver.
He taught us that Jesus cared about children. We read examples of Jesus being kind to kids, speaking to them when the adults were rude, even demonstrating that having a soft childlike heart was a sure way to heaven.
“Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.” -- Mark 10:15-16
Childhood is a difficult period for anyone, in any culture. The path from defenselessness to self reliance is fraught with many perils. We awe and wonder at species which lay millions of eggs to have but a few survive, and yet humanity is much the same in its loss of the weak and defenseless before they even know the possibilities of life.
In Christian culture, however, children are the foundation for perpetuation of a once-oppressed religious culture. Evangelicals in particular cling to their interpretation of the bible as a guide for the future. We heard almost every day about the “end times,” and the “tribulations” we could expect as chronicled in the book of Revelations.
Wars, and rumors of war, famine, pestilence, the emergence of the Anti-Christ; our world was destined to be bathed in the blood of innocents and the machinations of devils and demons.
“I have dreams,” Pastor Dave often told us, “where tanks roll through our streets, and Christians are lined up and shot. What will you do when this happens?”
And so there was a sort of strict urgency to our education, like officer candidates during a time of war. “The harvest is great, but the laborers are few,” meant that we would all have to learn to reap souls for God’s kingdom as quickly and efficiently as possible.
No time for doubt, no time for dissent, these Christian soldiers in the bodies of children had to “get with the program” quickly, or find a new school.
And yet what of a child like me? I was moody and quiet, withdrawn into an inner world where I constructed worlds and wonders much more adventurous than a pew in a frigid church auditorium at 8 am. I was passionate, angry at times, and I asked questions constantly.
I still have the report card where Mr. Falkenburg wrote “Mark’s know-it-all attitude sometimes restricts him and hinders his ability to learn new information,” hardly qualities found in a good Christian soldier.
Within these report cards was a grading section for “Christian character,” and my grades there were always indicative of a strong internal disregard for conforming to the rules of the HCA system.
Puberty generated a flood of emotions unexplored and unprepared for. Confusion about my relationship to the universe, distrust for my parents and teachers, despair about my corpulence, and depression about my failure to draw the attention of any girl I knew left me more moody and despondent than ever. The last things on my mind were redoing algebra problems that made no sense to my artistic mind, playing the dented and tarnished heap of brass Mr. Rae gave me for orchestra, or memorizing the specifics of ancient Hebrew kings for tests in Bible class.
I wanted to know what I was living for, why was I dragging in these painful breaths, why was I suffering alone with no possibility for reprieve?
Somewhere in this struggle, my personality and its particulars became incredibly distasteful to several of my teachers, particularly to Mr. Falkenberg.
This might not have been such a problem, except as Principal of the school and teacher of several subjects including English, History, Bible, and even Gym meant that I had to be in his presence several times a day. Several times a day, several days a week, our wills collided and sparks smoldered.
I’ve heard people say, “We all think our teachers hated us,” but this was far more tangible than the hormone-inspired angst and paranoia of adolescence.
One of the issues between us was my problem with “talking in class.” I was insecure, and afraid to be unheard, and I was learning at 13 the power of humor as a tool for social acceptance. A few well placed jokes had the power to win friends and gather interest from your peers. Like all teenagers, I sometimes went overboard, and my voice has a tone and ring to it that carries over the crowd. Often, even in the non-HCA teen bible classes at church, I would be reprimanded for my comments to my friends.
Those teen classes had a formula to them, where Mr. Falkenberg would talk, laying heavy layers of theology on our souls, and then he would lighten the atmosphere with a witty observation or comment. In this pause the entire group would breathe a collective sigh, and break form and attention for a moment. It was a social art to know how many comments you could make in that small pause, and how loudly, before he launched into the next stage of his sermon. While all of us were learning these social boundaries, I found myself being reprimanded time and again for being “too loud,” even with threats to send me back to my parents for the remainder of the evening.
One night I turned to Spike before the start of class, “I’m tired of getting yelled at, man.”
“Yeah, you always get in trouble,” he agreed.
“I wonder what would happen if I didn’t say anything at all?”
“You should try it.”
And so the plan was enacted. I would lock eyes with Mr. Falkenberg and maintain unwavering discipline all evening. Nothing would deter me from showing that I could be as determined and austere as any adult in that church. Nothing would give him plausible reason to reprimand me and embarrass me in front of my peers.
The second or third pause of the evening everyone chuckled and laughed easily. I sat and looked into his eyes, almost without blinking. I felt Spike turn to say something to my in my peripheral vision, and then turn away when he saw my stony expression.
“Let’s see you yell at me now,” I was thinking, “I’ve done nothing wrong.”
As if he had heard my mind, his voice cut through the easy comments of the others into my icy silence.
“Cannonball!” it rang out like an assassin’s singular gunshot, “why is it that EVERY CLASS, you do this?”
I blinked. Was this a dream? Was I going to look down and see that I was in my underwear? All the voices and easy motions around me were fading in to hushed awe. All gazes were split between him and I.
“You waste the time of everyone here. It’s incredibly rude, and I’d rather you didn’t come back if you’re going to behave like this.” I could feel hot tears stinging the corners of my eyes. I refused to break. This was the very definition of unfair, unjust, impossible in the kingdom of God.
And so I never came back. That was the last time I ever willingly subjected myself to his classes. In my mind, Mr. Falkenberg’s theology and his idea of justice (social or biblical) was suspect. He was bent on humiliating me in front of my buddies and the girls that I liked. He was intent on holding me to some standard that was impossible. How could I say less than nothing? It was as if he would never be satisfied with me until I was someone else.
Mr. Falkenberg forbade me to draw in class; disbelieving my explanation that the doodles and sketches helped me remember things. Even though he was an self-proclaimed advocate of progressive education, and often used songs as memory devices, the concept that an artistic mind would be triggered to memory by images rather than dry words on a page was loathsome to him.
He banned my use of any science fiction or fantasy motif in creative writing, promoting that these genres are somehow inferior to other forms of fiction or prose. While I accepted this because he said it would “encourage me to grow as an author,” I felt as if I had been withheld from something I was good at… known for even.
The second major event that stands out in my mind came during my senior year. Every senior class took a trip of some kind with Mr. Falkenberg, a sort of celebration and vacation combined. My brother’s class went to Virginia beach, where they visited three venues of interest for each of the graduates. Spike and Adam Bailey hiked a section of the Appalachian Trail with him, exploring the splendor of the mountains and reveling in testosterone. Kelly and Amanda went to New York City, where they took in the culture of restaurants, shopping, and off Broadway shows with him and his wife.
And then there was me, the sole senior and the only member of my class. What could I possibly want to do with him alone? Where could I go with a man who ridiculed me in front of my friends where I would even feel like talking to him? I avoided the idea as long as I could.
Meanwhile the school continued to fundraise for a senior trip I was trying to escape. And the burden of tradition bore down on both of us with the passage of time. Around the third quarter of that year, Mr. Falkenburg brought in several brochures for missions trips. At first I had a spark of hope that he might agree to send me on a trip to another country with some group of strangers like “Youth With a Mission,” or even one of the missionaries partnered with our Church. Instead, he began to speak earnestly to the students in the class below mine about the possibility of a missions trip with them. Several groups offered cheap group packages for members of a single church or school, and Mr. Falkenberg began to lobby for the participation of what would be the largest senior class as soon as I was gone.
At this period in my development I had begun to read and research ancient European history. My love of “Morte d’Arthur” by Thomas Mallory lead me backwards in literary history, through the fiction of Stephen Lawhead (conveniently sold at even Christian bookstores) to a study of ancient Gaelic traditions.
They were a people I admired; the first I had read about who were equal parts poetry, romance, art, and war. They shook the foundations of their world, they flourished in the bronze age, and were brought first under Roman control before being almost obliterated by the Anglo-Saxons, and finally having their traditions erased by the Catholic Church. This story had romance, adventure, and the grand scope of a tragic ending that captivated my teenage heart.
And then Mr. F. came to convince me to spend my unknown funding on a missions trip to Mexico. Mexico? We were taught to follow our hearts, the Lord would give us a vision for a people to evangelize. The Pastor’s daughter loved India, my brother had been to Mexico and Spain, why couldn’t I be called to Ireland?
“They don’t need missionaries in Ireland,” he told me.
“What do you mean? It was on the radio a week ago… a man walked into a preschool and shot five little children! They have the IRA and terrorists!” I was again struck that this whole dispute was unfair.
“You know what your problem is?” he asked me in a room where only myself and the junior class could hear his acidic tone.
“I don’t have a heart for Mexico.” I said. Flatly and without emotion.
“Your problem is that you’re a coward. You’re afraid.” And he turned on his heel and left the room.
I was shaking. Every muscle in my arms and shoulders was tense, hormones coursing through my body and straining for action. I was ready for a physical fight, I wanted it with all but the tiniest corner of my mind.
How dare he call me a coward? How dare a man who uses his position to belittle a fat teenager call someone else a coward? How dare a man who never saw me in a fight, who didn’t know how terrified I was of this school and yet I still came every day… how dare that man call me a coward?
And so I stumbled a little further. I stopped going to Church. I stopped freely walking through those doors and looking at a man on the platform leading us all in songs about the “Steadfast Love” of the lord in a position of authority and power, who thought of me as a coward. Why should I participate when every event was under his scrutiny? Why should I place myself under his hand, when that hand caused me so much pain?
I was lucky for many years to have Pastor Dave as a shelter from that pressure. I think he saw me fading, withdrawing from all but what was explicitly mandatory. In my heart I was as far gone from there as I could be, my body alone belonged to them until the day of my graduation.
Most of the students I observed fell into two distinct camps, or they left the school quickly. They were either able to win Mr. Falkenberg’s favor, or to find a way to understand and agree with Pastor Dave. No middle ground, and few exceptions that I can remember.
When I graduated HCA, I faded from the spotlight like a whisper. I attended church perhaps 3 times during the following summer, and I saw the teachers in public perhaps twice more. I knew whatever future my life held wasn’t in the unforgiving glances of adults who saw me as spiritually inferior and devoid of character.
Occasionally I’d hear small reports of people asking where I was, what I was doing after I graduated. As far as I was concerned, the less they knew as a gossipy collective, the better for my mental health.
Sometimes those little messages carried through my mom, or a friend’s parent would surprise me. One of them came from a Monday night prayer service (which I had always hated, as they didn’t even include a message or music) with a guest speaker. During an intense round of prayer and supplication, one of the church elders announced that they had a vision from God. As he described his vision of the church parading through the streets, he suddenly asked “Where is Cannonball?” The way it was described to me by several people that were there, there was a hasty round of questions where I was, almost as if people had suddenly realized I was missing, when I had actually been gone for months.
Apparently his vision had included me, as a member of the worship team ministering to the public. This vision was not of the past, or the future, and that elder eventually left the church as had I.
Post HCA existence was a minefield. The “world” as we called it was not the den of evil I had been taught. There were no demons manipulating my co-workers, no apocalyptic wars on the horizon, Armageddon was far from the realm of bills and college. And yet, within that realm was a feeling of loss.
I could barely talk to students in my classes, feeling like they were of a different species. Steve, who had left HCA after a few short years, was almost a mystery in himself. He was charismatic, he attracted friends (although usually weird personality types), and he was known to the teachers and students. Better yet, he had a Plan for his future; a vision for a career and something beyond college.
Without the will to be a missionary, and any other real skill from high school, I had nothing to pursue. Although science and math escaped me, I was enrolled in the science program at the local community college. Wrapping my brain around calculus and biology, I felt trapped all over again, as if the fingers of HCA’s grasp extended beyond its doors into my life beyond.
I dropped out after a year, and worked full time as a minimum wage assistant manager at Blockbuster Video. In high paced, under-paid retail I excelled. I was employee of the month constantly, every district manager I met raved about my customer service skills. And while I felt devoid of some greater purpose for my life (and devoid of companionship) it seemed like the best I could manage to wear my uniform every day, and slowly pay down bills from a bad year of community college.
I chewed through the summer blockbuster rentals, the pop movies, the cheesy plots and big budget films in a hurry. What was left were quirky films, like 70’s exploitation, Japanese Animation, Science Fiction, and old kung fu movies. I moved from my histories of the Celts to a study of the Samurai while I immersed myself in Kurusawa films.
Little did I realize I was being observed as I began to gravitate towards something I couldn’t even name. I was questing for a way to find meaning in my life, or even in my death, and Bushido (the code of Samurai honor) seemed to offer an expression of this search. For them, you died either in battle, or you died in training. Either way, you were dedicated in death as in life to personal development and honor. It was supremely better than the crushing philosophy of Christian school, and the banal repetition of a minimum wage retail job.
The person watching me was a man from the generation ahead of mine. For several reasons he will remain anonymous in this tale, although he serves as important part of this final chapter. He observed me carefully, had several direct conversations asking me what I thought of the “Hagakure” or the “Book of 5 Rings,” and finally asked me a strange question:
“Would you want to train?”
I knew he had served time in the military, and possibly learned some martial arts there, but my opinion of modern armed forces was shaped by military guys telling me they thought “that asian shit was pointless.” I couldn’t imagine anyone intelligent throwing away centuries of martial development because a gun was easier. Guns jam, bullets run out, and there’s no honor in pulling a trigger and pointing in the general direction of your enemy.
But he offered a chance to get to know someone from the past of my church, someone who had left long before I was old enough to know why. In that, I hoped, I might find some answers.
The first night we trained, I sat on the dusty loose earth of a tilled field and saw a new world open before my eyes. My teacher said “warm up” and I finished my simple round of stretches quickly. I had no concept of warming up the muscles for an intense work out, and sat in the dirt waiting for our class to begin. He shrugged, and marched over to the corner of the grass and retrieved a large wooden pole. Suddenly, he started taking strange shuffling steps, and spinning the staff at an incredible pace. The wood blurred in the fading summer twilight, and became a continuous brown blur over the light color of his face and hands. With a shuffle and a pounding step, he leapt into the air and the staff did a rotation around his body. Dirt from his boots kicked up in little clouds as he would vary the patterns, or change the direction his body faced. Always his body was relaxed, and yet focused as if slaying hundreds of invisible enemies. His eyes were distant, and still I knew they saw my expression of awe sitting on the ground.
I had practiced with a bokken (wooden training sword) doing excersizes from books for months, and yet I had no idea people could move that way outside movies with wires, props, and sped up cameras. For the first time all the myths I had read about martial arts heroes seemed plausible, every door beyond what I thought people could do began to slide open.
And then the staff spun to an abrupt stop, and he turned to me, holding it out.
“You’ll learn this first.”
I had my doubts… extreme doubts. Obviously this person overestimated my capabilities. I had actually flunked gym several times because I was unable to dribble a basketball and run simultaneously. How could I spin a stick meant to hurt people and move my feet the way he did?
And yet, with patience and military discipline, he drove me to focus and control my body. Session by session, I slowly gained the skill and the rhythm until one night…
“Whoa!” we had been warming up before practice, spinning staves in the winter moonlight. He had suddenly stopped and exclaimed, leaving a puff of exhalation in the crystal air.
“What was THAT?” he asked.
“What?” I was afraid I had made another mistake of some kind.
“That move you just did”
“Oh, this?” I did a simple series of motions he had first taught me months ago.
“No, Jackass, that other move you just did. You know, the behind-your-back and over-your-shoulder thing.”
“Oh… I was just messing around…”
“Show me how to do that.”
Embarrassed I walked him through something that I had stumbled on while watching “Drunken Master” with Jackie Chan.
“That’s really cool, man.” We were sweating in the crisp air, and he slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re better than I am, now.”
“You think so?” no teacher had EVER said something like that to me.
“Don’t kill yourself. You’d get killed by somebody in high school wrestling, UNLESS you had a stick. I give you good odds with a weapon.”
And with that, something changed. I was good at something. I was actually good at something dangerous and athletic, and unique. And yet this thing was something to be kept quiet, unseen, unknown. I had to wear my achievement on the inside. No one from my old life even knew I was feeling this change, this sudden rite of passage.
At this point, my only contact with CHC was the periodic dinners or lunches we still had with Pastor Dave. From time to time, although I was never certain why, he would go to Appleby’s with Steve, Spike, and I. We would have conversations about sports (which I could barely follow), about our careers, our college (or lack thereof), and our lives in general. Sometimes I felt that lunch with us was a taste of nostalgia for Dave. Others I felt like we gave him a nonjudgmental respite from the demands of his parishioners.
One afternoon, I met him at the church for lunch, Dave spied the staves in the back of my car.
“What are you building?” he asked with a chuckle.
“Uh, those are actually bo staffs,” I wasn’t sure how to use the right words.
“Like Friar Tuck and Little John?”
“Sort of,” laughing nervously, this was not feeling like a happy conversation, “actually Japanese style.”
“Japanese? Where did you learn that?”
“Well, from ----.” Shoot, good job mentioning somebody else who left the church.
”Really?” a long awkward pause from Pastor Dave. I thought maybe if I just showed him he would see without judging.
I pulled the staff from my car, and began to fall into the pattern of rotations and steps that was my dance of death, and of life. Three seconds later he nervously cleared his throat.
“Hey,” he asked, “you’re not becoming one of THOSE people are you?”
“One of what people?” Asians? Buddhists? Killers? What was he worried about?
“You know,” he said, and then mimed stereotypical karate chops and kung fu punches.
“Oh,” so he didn’t see any change. “No, I’m just trying to get in shape.”
I went back to community college, with a lot of encouragement from my friends and a lot of conversations with my friend and martial arts teacher. Everyone encouraged me to find a place in the world, a niche that would give me some purpose.
“Take some art classes,” Spike said time and again, “you’re paying for it, you might as well do something you love, right?”
So even though I must have heard almost every day from Mr. Falkenberg when he’d reprimand me for drawing in class, “Drawing won’t help you like History class will. There’s no way to make a living with drawings,” I signed up for an introductory art class.
The professor for this class was the head of the CCC art department; a funny little man with stereotypically Irish features and thick glasses. The first day of class he explained that we might be mistaken about the course.
“I don’t want to scare anyone, but this isn’t some ‘cake class,’” Professor Higgins explained. “I will grade you on your development over the quarter. This means that if you don’t work in the class, you won’t get a good grade.”
Great, I thought, I draw all the time. I don’t think there’s very far for me to go.
“How I do this,” he explained motioning to the collection of boxes and bottles arranged at the front of the class, “is to set up the same still life the first and last day of the semester. You’ll all draw it today, and I’ll keep those sketches locked away. Then I’ll set it up again the last day and we’ll compare the two drawings. If you’ve worked hard in the class, even if you’re not an exceptional artist to start with, you’ll get a good grade.”
And so I sat, sketch board propped up from my corner seat, unable to see my classmate’s sketches but knowing that I was one of the elite in that room. As often as I drew, how could I improve greatly over one semester? I even signed the piece as he warned us the time for evaluation had come.
As we tacked our drawings along the cork runner for my first ever in-class art critique, I started to catch glimpses of the other student’s work. I shuddered at what I saw, and had to resist the urge to crumple my drawing and walk out. Next to theirs, mine looked like a child’s simplified scribble. It was the absolute worst in the class, worse even then the self proclaimed “non artists,” and I had been idly scribbling away all through high school.
The only reason I left it up there, and forced myself to stand tall when we reached my drawing at the end, was the spinning staff, and the challenges I had already begun to overcome.
“Now this is really interesting,” Dave said motioning to my drawing, “does anybody know what (Mark, right?) Mark has done in this drawing?”
It was an early morning class, and a lot of blank looks and stares passed through the room. I’m sure I was blushing, I was embarrassed to stand under that scrutiny.
“Mark has rendered the objects as icons rather than as values of light and shadow.” Was this a backhanded insult, I wondered.
“This is actually a type of psychological realism. He shows us the objects the way we think of them in our minds, rather than how we see them with our eyes. The trick of drawing realistically is to fool your mind into only drawing light and dark and everything in between, instead of drawing the idea of a bottle or a box.”
And with that, the gauntlet was thrown. I knew in those last minutes of that early class that I had a vital decision before me. I still had time to transfer from the class into something else; Calculus again, or another biology. Otherwise, if I stayed there in that class, I would have to devote myself to this task, and see how far I could go, or if my talent was an empty promise.
Under Dave Higgins’ tutelage I progressed from worst in the class to about the upper third in skill level. He featured my two pieces side by side at the student art show before I graduated, and earned himself the “Professor of the year” award during our graduation. Dave guided me with calm sure advice, and saw that I was determined to try and make something of my love.
And so, the final time I went to dinner with Pastor Dave arrived around the time of my graduation from Corning Community College. He had actually asked only Stephen to dinner, but Steve invited me as a gesture of our friendship. Seated over plates of General Tso’s chicken and crab Rangoon, Pastor Dave looked at me in a perplexed manner.
“Why are you here, ‘Ball?”
“Steve invited me along to hang out with you guys”
“Well I wanted to talk to Steve about his future, but it might not really concern you.”
“That’s okay, Pastor. ‘Ball and I are close friends.” Steve didn’t want to ruin the conversation.
“Yeah, but I want to talk to you as your Pastor, and I don’t have that ‘in’ to ‘Ball’s life anymore. He’s not part of my flock.”
“What do you mean?” I couldn’t tell if he was angry, or…?
“Since your mother left a few months back, I don’t see you as a member of the church. You’re under your parents’ covering now, wherever they attend.”
So seven years of schooling and training amounted to… what exactly? Was I just a lost investment to them? A stray sheep? A waste of good indoctrination?
Later in the evening Pastor Dave felt like catching up a little on current events.
“Can you imagine how all of this is going to change the world,” Dave asked us on the drive back from the restaurant. “The world is really falling apart at the seams.”
“Well, every era has its problems,” I was trying to be objective. My life was looking up, and I didn’t feel like wandering into a gloom and doom Revelations speech.
“But your generation has a lot to account for… especially with this stem cell research going on.”
I had heard this argument from evangelicals before. The problem was that stem cells can be found in healthy adult bone marrow, not just fetal tissue. When I had explained it, his stance didn’t waver.
“It’s still a sin,” he explained with great conviction, “any time man decides to delve into the realm of God he is committing a sin.”
“But Pastor Dave,” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this, where was the understanding man I’d dedicated my yearbook to? “They thought that when the microscope was invented, and again when they harnessed electricity, and then when the first nuclear experiments were done. Somebody’s always going to call it ‘God’s Domain.’”
“Yes but this is different. This is scientists deciding to Create Life.”
“Look, you have what, four kids?” I was out of energy for this kind of debate, “you and your wife have to have ‘decided’ to create at least one of them.”
Exasperated as I was, he threw his hands in the air, “I can’t believe you even allow yourself to think that way.”
“I can’t believe you won’t allow yourself to think.”
Each subsequent time I see Dave or Mr. F, I see their hair grey, their eyes have circles under them. They seem drained, anemic, sick. Each time I see Professor Higgins or my martial arts teacher, though they seem older, their heads are high and their bodies strong.
Perhaps this millstone award weighs slowly, year by year, before it drags a man into an ocean of his own tears. Perhaps guilt weighs on those minds with a power more sharp than my anger at those betrayals.
Either way, what I have learned is valuable in a teacher, is a man who uses his authority to build up his students. Where he finds a vacant lot in their soul, he lays a foundation that can be built upon. A foolish man digs down, undermining the foundations that are there, tearing down perfectly good construction for his own reasons.
Instilling children with fear, self loathing, guilt, and a sense of loss is perhaps (if God is indeed just) the surest way to lead one of them to “stumble,” and furthermore to fall a great height, to their soul’s destruction.
In the world of teaching and parenting there can be no higher purpose than to leave behind boys that grow to men, strong and confident -- men with skills and purpose, men who can provide for themselves and raise a new generation of strong men in the years to come. In this way a single teacher can father a nation, and bring about a positive change in his world.
posted by NY Monk @ 3:25 AM
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