She’s a Mil

I started attending a Quaker meeting a few months ago. I tried the Salvos but I just don’t think the main stream church is for me at this stage of my life. I am just loving the Quaker meetings though. We are a small group (only 6 of us) and all of us except one are pretty new to Quakerism so we have been reading a book of different readings called Quaker Basics. Obviously it is all about Quakerism and what the Quakers do and stand for. There is some really interesting and inspiring stuff in it and after the meeting in silence we have breakfast and sit and discuss the readings.

Last weeks reading were really profound for me and spoke directly to a situation I have been having at work. A student of mine a few weeks got a little frustrated with another student in the class who had answered a question he had posed. This is something I encourage in my classroom, I like creating a space in which we all learn together and from each other so I asked him stay back and talk about his problem. I was nervous as this student has also always been quite cold with me as well. However we had the most amazing conversation. He started off quite aggressively telling me that he came to class to learn English from me. He said that in Africa the teacher teaches and the students learn. If the students know so much then they don’t need to come to class he argued. He also said that he didn’t like group work. He told me that the other students in the class were rascist, that he has been studying with them for a year now and they hadn’t talked to him before, only now in my class. I was secretly pleased with this revelation, one of things I have most enjoyed is watching the students build friednships and learn about each other’s culture but obviously it is hard for him so I asked if he would prefer to work with the other Sudanese students. He said he wouldn’t. He is from a different tribe to most of the Sudanese in Alice and in my class and it was this other tribe that came into his village and murdered his parents and older brother. I was obviously shocked but his coldness with me was starting to make more sense. I listened to him as he told me his story, and he calmed down as he did so. He told me about how he came to Australia and his wife and children still in Sudan.

Since then I have thought about him a lot. About his life of course but also his thoughts on my teaching. While I have to say he seems to be a lot better in class since our chat I have been really struggling to work out how I can be the sort of teacher he wants without changing my style completely. Not only do some of the other student’s report to like it but I think it is actually a leads to more learning than a totally teacher centred approach. Not to mention I think it is really the only way I can be, While I was battling with this in my head I read this in the Quaker book. The author is actually a teacher as well, who does traning with other teachers about their strengths and weaknesses so it speaks directly to my problem but I think it works in all areas of life too.

“I ask the teachers to help each other to see that our limitations and liabilities are the flipside of our gifts, how our weaknesses are the inevitable trade offs we must make for having the strengths we have. When I understand my limits as trade offs for my strengths, something new and liberating happens within me. I no longer want to have my limitations fixed for to get fixed would be to compromise or destroy my gift. Instead I want to learn to acknowledge, embrace and live more gracefully within my limitations. So I will never be a good teacher for some students but perhaps I can find a way to keep the situation from souring.”

Book Nine: Poustinia by Catherine De Hueck Doherty
This book is about Poustinia (in case the title didn’t give it away). Poustinia is a Russian word meaning desert or a quiet lonely place. However, it is also a Russian tradition of taking time away to pray, to spend time in silence and stillness, to spend time in the mysterious presence of God. It is something that a friend here has practiced for some time and something that I am interested in trying to do on a regular basis ( 24 hours per month, although I already missed month three). For me Alice Springs is a place that really calls me to prayer and the hut that Keith and friends built is such a perfect setting beautiful, simple and quiet. Anyway, my friend lent me the book. It is an old book and thus some of it was a little bit old fashioned for me and the author is a very strong Catholic and it certainly had more of a Catholic flavour to it than I am used to but all in all it was very inspiring and gave me some new things to ponder.

“One day we realise all these geographical spaces are not enough, that they do not satisfy one’s desire for space. At that point we begin the journey inward. This journey is far more beautiful and satisfies far more ddeeply. The poustinia is involved in the great journey inward, exploring the vast spaces of God. A goal to strive for is when the need to have becomes the need not to have.”

Book Ten: The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville
I heard Kate speak at the writer’s festival when I first got here. She read some parts of this book and they were lovely and so I had been meaning to get to it for awhile. It was lovely to read. In fact I had to try hard not to read it too fast as to try and savour it a little bit. It is a story about a friendship between a white lieutenant in the first fleet and a young aboriginal girl. It was very hopeful really which is not often the case with indigenous issues so it was a breath of fresh air.

“What he had not learned from Latin or Greek he was learning from the people of New South Wales. It was this: you did not learn a language without entering into a relationship with the people who spoke it with you. He friendship with Tagaran wasn’t a list of objects or the words for things it was the slow constructing of the map of a relationship.”

Kate got the idea from some real diaries that were found in which the liutenant records some of the language he was learning and writes about some of the interactions he has with the girl. Kate Grenville is truly gifted in the way that she can write fiction novels about real events that happened (particularly to do with indigenous issues) that some how get to the truth of the matter better than any history book would. Not to mention I am sure they engage people and get them concerned about the issues more than a history book.

“The girls lay quietly and he went back to the notebook. How would he record the joke that he and this child had shared? What had passed between Tagaran and himself had gone beyond vocabulary and grammar. It was the heart of talking not just words and their meanings. But how did you write down truth in a notebook when the truth was far more than the words and actions. When even in English he couldn’t describe what had passed between them. He would have to be willing to go beyond the literal, to take words into some place where they were no longer simply descriptive”.

Book Eleven: Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coehlo
This book isn’t actually book eleven. I think it was more like book six or seven but I forgot to write about it back then so it has become book eleven (and coincidentally it is called eleven minutes). This book is a love story, a love story between a prostitute and a famous artist. It was a very confronting book for me, a lot of dirty sex scenes in all their gory details, but after getting through all that I quite liked it. I like Paulo Coehlo’s writing and his thoughts about life even if they are not completely the same as mine. He managed to write a story about a prostitute, Maria who was a fantastic character, without been in anyway judgmental or condescending while also acknowledging that the work is not good for the souls of anyone involved.

I don’t care whether it was once sacred or not, I hate what I do. It’s destroying my soul, making me lose touch with myselg, teaching me that pain is a reward, that money buys everything and justifies everything. No one around me is happy; the clients know they are paying for something that should be fore free, and that’s depressing. The women know that they have to sell something they would like to give out of pleasure and affection. I need to love - that’s all. I need to love. Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

And I like stories about messy, broken people and their paths to redemption. I also like stories about love when they don’t fit the format of romantic comedy and this didn’t.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I realise that I didn’t go into that cafe by chance; really important meetings are planned by souls long before the bodies see each other. Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn.

I love starting my day by reading Luke and then Richrd Rohr comments on it. My diary is filling up very quickly with quotes (thanks again Jess for the book). Here is one of my faves on forgiveness if the title hadn’t given it away.

“Most apologies people make to you are sort of embarassing and don’t work out because in granting them you are big hearted and generous, a great person and very often other are demeaned. It doesn’t make others feel better about themselves, they just feel you are big hearted. Of course, we would appreciate having some big hearted people around but Jesus is asking us to go one step deeper. Jesus isn’t saying “I’m big hearted, you’re sinful”. When Jesus forgives it isn’t so much an act of mercy as it is a loyalty to the truth of who you are. To really forgive someone is to recognise who they are, to admit and affirm who they are and to know theri best selves will brought out only in the prescence of an accepting and believing person. Forgiveness is believing in a person and not allowing that person to be destryed by self hatred. This is a way of forgiving that doesn’t make you look good but them look good. That is the way God forgives us. In forgiving us God gives us back our dignity and self worth. He is loyal to the truth of who we are. God affrims we are good persons who have sinned, God asserts we are not bad.”