But I Digress

In the beginning, the elohim created skies and earth.

Welcome back from the Labor Day holiday.  All you workers out there, and that is most of us, I feel your pain.  I know your frustrations and quiet moments of desperation.  I know all you withhold inside.  

I know you are being compelled by your financial situation to maintain a professional silence.  Maybe sometimes your head hurts or your neck stiffens or your heart pounds because your life at work is unnecessarily filled with hours of enduring the vanities and indignities from others whose position and salary give them authority over you.  

It is the true American Dream that we who work must endure. Whether in the private or in the public sector, we who work find ourselves dealing with being a replaceable part of an indifferent machine.  

I know.  I'm there too at this time in my life.  I can only point to a few times in my life when I was truly happy at work.  

I am a school teacher.  I love my career, the thought of it and the commitment to it, but I have often said in jest that if it weren't for the students teaching would be perfect. That is because I love being around teachers.  

The truth is that those whom we work for often make the job distasteful and full of stress. 

What gives solace for me is when I go to a place where I know I am always welcome, received gladly in fact, and the motivation of my exertions is ever glorified.  

I teach the toughest students in the county.  I am an alternative school teacher.  My work is Dr. King's work.  It is civil rights work. 

I do not do it for money.  My pay is slightly above a first year teacher’s pay even though I am a sixteen year highly qualified veteran of the lectern.

I teach whom I teach because I love God.  I adore God.  This God of love has been my most prized obsession.  I am in some ways a fanatic, but in the good sense of being one who adores.

For example, I love the Big Orange (Go Vols!) especially during this time of the year, but I would never poison any Auburn trees or celebrate if something horrible, short of losing to Tennessee, happened to anyone associated with the University of Alabama.

I would certainly never pray or practice any kind of malice towards a rival team or fan even if they are my team's primary nemesis.

As much as I love the Tennessee Volunteers, I love the Atlanta Falcons even more. I have been a fan since I was nine years old.  I recall the days of Cannonball Butler and Tommy Nobis.  

The Saints are our biggest rivals.  I cheered them on when they won the SuperBowl.

That is what you do when you adore.  I love my teams, but the sport is greater, and every year I look forward to football season.  If there were not Vols or Falcons I would still love football.

When I contemplate God, my adoration for that greater which is greater than can be conceived inspires me to love what lives and breathes within God.

Thus, I teach whom I teach.  Most teachers avoid my crowd even though my students deserve better teachers than those other students enjoy.  

Mine are the castoffs and castaways whom God loves, and no matter how tough the job is, I must always remember who loves us all and be there when renewal time calls.

So to that place I go.  Of course, I find I really like the students.  They are children after all—dangerous, many of them, and capable of atrocities--but children nonetheless.

Indeed, it is the system I despise, and my eyeballs could well become stuck, never to roll again in their sockets, the next time a so called “higher up” tells me to do something that is utterly inane and related more to CYA concerns than instruction.

CYA is “Cover Your Ass” for those of you who do not know this primary educational acronym.

Blessings…