March 3, 2019

TEACHERS  AND  LEARNING

INTRODUCTION

I would like to preach on the theme of “Teachers and Learning.” That’s the theme that especially hit me when I read today’s first reading and the gospel.

So a homily entitled, “Teaching and Learning.”

ACTION STEP: JOURNAL

I was trying to come up with an action step: something to do because Lent is coming up. Ash Wednesday is this week and the question used to be and I hope still is, “What am I going to do for Lent?”

Catholic Magazines suggest all kinds of action steps, things to do for Lent or things to give up for Lent. Have you done any thinking about this yet. New Year’s Resolutions last a few days, but for many people, Lenten Resolutions last the 40 Days of Lent.

How about the following?  Last year someone told me they did something practical and they were really happy with the result by the time Easter rolled around. They kept a Lenten Journal.

I went over to Office Depot and bought this notebook for 2 dollars.

Suggestion: For this Lent get a notebook like this and jot down learnings from your life. We all have a lot of them, but they are inside us. If we take the time to jot them down, wow, what a surprise. We have learned a lot since our birth and we often don’t know it.

So for this Lent, an action step would be to keep a journal. It only has to take 10 minutes a day, preferably in the evening. Cut out some junk TV or something else and I guarantee you’ll find this experience life giving. So why not sit down and jot down life’s observations. What you have learned. What you know. What you have figured out so far.

Who knows? Maybe 100 years from now, long after we are dead, someone in the family will find out jottings and this 2 dollar notebook will be worth $100,000 on some Antique Road Show some time in the next century.

FIRST QUESTION: YOUR BEST TEACHER?

First question for your journal:  Who was the best teacher you ever had?

I love to ask people that question. Surprise people know very well who their best teacher was. They will tell you the name of a fourth grade teacher or a Social Studies or an English or a Math teacher in high school. I love to ask teachers that question especially and they give their answer immediately. They have thought about it and often that teacher, he or she, is the reason why this teacher chose to be a teacher.

Who was your best teacher? Maybe it was a parent or a boss or a friend or a co-worker.

And then as you write that down, you’ll think of other teachers.

So the first question, Who was the best teacher you ever had? is a good first question for your Lenten journal.

SECOND QUESTION: WHAT DID YOU LEARN?

The second question is a tougher one. What did that person teach you? Answering that question helps us to articulate what we learned and this is much more valuable than just listing a person’s name. This second question is hard work, difficult home work, heart work, mind work, but it’s worth the work.

It might be a high school basketball coach who sat us down because our ego was too big – or we weren’t studying or we goofed off – and our team lost because of our mistakes or non-thinking.

It might have been a French teacher who pushed us into really learning a foreign language and as a result we went to France for a year and that experience opened our eyes to so much more in life.

THIRD QUESTION: EXPERIENCE THE BEST TEACHER?

The third question is this: What have I learned from the experiences of my life?

We’ve all heard people say: “Experience is the best teacher!”

People talk about  the school of hard knocks or their parents refused to pay for their college and that was the best education I ever received. I had to work my way through college. It took 6 years, but it was all worth it.

But experience is not the best teacher. The best teacher is reflection on the experiences of life. What did I learn from what has happened in my life?

I’ve heard people say that someone can have 30 years experience and another person can have one year’s experience 30 times.

What have been the experiences of my life?

The birth of a baby can change a mom as well as a dad. Or just one of them. I’ve heard people say, “Wow was I self centered and only thinking of myself till we had our first baby. I was changing my baby son one night and I laughed because I was saying, “Wow. This used to be the wife’s job. Wow have times changed. Wow is this changing me.” And changing a baby changes people. They make us change our schedules. They make us change our sleeping patterns. Wow.

Or going away to college, or the military or on a volunteer program, or  the death of a parent, or being fired, or being in a car accident, or moving to another state, or winning the lottery or admitting I have an addiction, can all be great learning moments. And often the most humbling moments can lead to the greatest risings.

So the third question is more than what have been the big experiences of my life. The better question is: What have I learned from the experiences of my life.

TODAY’S READINGS

Today’s readings gave me this theme of “Teachers and Learning.”

FIRST READING

Today’s first reading is from Ben Sirach. He lived some 190 years before Christ. He is a great wisdom teacher. Read his book or scroll. It was a favorite for Christians in the Early Church.

He gives lots of short pithy statements that have lots of experiences behind them. They are sort of like the sayings you can find in Reader’s Digest. I love to keep a whole bunch of Reader’s Digest in the bathroom. They are wonderful reading while on the pot.

In today’s reading he says to not judge by appearances. Don’t we all do that?

He says shake the sieve and see what’s really there.

He says that the true test of what a potter molds appears if it can take the heat of the kiln.

He says when a person speaks, you know a lot more about a person.

He says that the fruit of the tree shows the care of the tree.

LADY WITH THE PEARLS

As I look at my life I see dozens of times that I judged the book by the cover, judged another person by their outsides.

One time I was working on an AA woman’s retreat. I use this example many times. There was this lady who really stood out.

I began to really notice her on Saturday morning of this weekend retreat. She had on a gaudy purple dress, an enormous white hat, large white pearls and she walked around with this big white vinyl pocketbook.

I judged her to be a character, a floozy, a nothing. Sorry. But I did. As the day went on I began to realize she reminded me of a dummy, this big enormous fake person at Coney Island when I was a kid. We used to love to go by this fun house. There she was, this big laughing dummy, who would shake back and forth, laughing and laughing.

As a kid we’d love to see her and laugh with her and even sometimes go into the fun house.

Well, that Saturday night there was a big meeting and the MC announced, “We have two guests speakers tonight.” The first got up and gave a speech. I don’t remember what she said or what she looked like. Nobody remembers talks or sermons. At least that’s my experience. Then the MC got up and announced the main speaker of the evening. She was a state supreme court justice etc. She had lots of credentials and lots of experience. Then who got up to speak: of course, the joke was on me. It was the lady in purple with the big white vinyl pocketbook. She was a good speaker. Of course, once more l don’t remember her talk, but I do remember the inner talk I gave myself, not to judge people anymore.

And of course, I have done it several more times in my life and every time I feel like a dummy and have a good laugh at myself.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Last week on Public Television they had a three part special on Abraham and Mary Lincoln: A House Divided.

Forgetting what Ben Sirach tells us in the first reading today, people saw Abe Lincoln and thought he was country hick, a real rube, a geek that people gawked at.

In 1860 Lincoln ran for president in the Republican Party – which had started back in 1846. He was invited to go to  New York City in October. William Herdon, his law partner of many years back in Illinois, said that he really worked for months on his talk.

The talk was moved to Cooper Union Hall in Manhattan. An eyewitness reported, “When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall, tall, - oh, how tall! and so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man." But he said Lincoln’s "face lighted up as with an inward fire; the whole man was transfigured. I forgot his clothes, his personal appearance, and his individual peculiarities. Presently, forgetting myself, I was on my feet like the rest, yelling like a wild Indian, cheering this wonderful man." There were 1500 there that night and Lincoln was the obvious presidential candidate for the Republicans for the next national election.

He had gone to William Seward’s territory and came out the winner.

In 1860 Lincoln ran against Stephen Douglas in the national election. The democrats split their ticket with Douglas as a Democrat from the North and John Breckinridge as Democrat from the South. They had campaigned against in each other in 1858 to become senator from Illinois. Lincoln was 6 foot 4 and Douglas was 5 foot 6 or so.

On November 18^th of 1863 they had a ceremony at the Military Cemetery at  Gettysburg, Pa. for the soldiers who had died there back in the previous July. 51,000 had died. A monument for the dead was being dedicated at a ceremony. The main speaker was Edward Everett from Massachusetts. He was to speak 2 hours. They invited as an afterthought, the president, Abraham Lincoln. He was down to zero in the polls, because of all the slaughters of Northern Soldiers.

Edward Everett spoke 1 hour and 57 minutes. I guess when you speak that long, everyone has looked at their watch a hundred times. Then Lincoln spoke for 3 minutes. Lincoln worked on his speech late into the evening. It was only 10 sentences, 272 words. Which speech was remembered? Of course it was Lincoln’s. It changed the mind of the North and the purpose of the Civil War aim.

So as we look at the journey of our life, as we write the journal of our life, who our best teachers were. Often it’s not the person we would expect, but some mechanic, or some friend, or a grandmother, or some person there in the backroom of our life.

TODAY’S GOSPEL

Today’s Gospel presents Jesus as a wisdom teacher. I’ve run into Catholics who have given up on the Catholic Faith. I have been part of lots of High School Retreats. I would tell young people who have given up on Jesus, to accept Jesus at least as a great teacher. In fact, I would say, he might be the greatest wisdom teacher of all time.

Test him out. Forget the miracles in the gospels. Forget the biographical stuff (born in Nazareth, heads towards Jerusalem, is arrested, but the night before he dies, he has a great supper with his followers, and then dies the next day) and just listen to him as a teacher. You’ll be amazed at his teachings.

Today he gives some of the same teachings of Ben Sirach. The tree is know by its fruit.

But his big teaching for today, at least it’s the one that hit me, is that of not seeing specks in our brother or sister’s eye and take a look what’s in our own heart and  mind and eye.

I have given talks all over the place and many times people think they are complimenting me when they say, “I wish my mother in law was here today to hear what you had to say.” Or “I wish my son or daughter heard that.” And I smile and say, “Thank you!” but inwardly I say, “Be glad that you were here today and heard something that was for you, not them. I have learned that when I say that, it’s even more a message for me and I’m avoiding something in myself by laying it on someone else.

As they said to Jesus, “Physician heal yourself!” every preacher must first apply the word of God to themselves first. Otherwise it will be the blind leading the blind.

MOHATMA GANDHI

There is a story somewhere about Mohatma Gandhi. A mother came to him once and told him that her son had an addiction to candy. Could he come and talk to her son and straighten him out.

Gandhi paused and then said, “Come back in one month exactly and lets see if we can do something then.”

The lady came back in a month and Gandhi said, “Now what is it again that you want me to do?” She said, “I want you to talk to my son about his addiction to candy.”

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s go and see him.” Well, the mother brought Gandhi to her son. Gandhi said, “You stay here and let me talk to him alone.”

The lady went outside and Gandhi came outside a while later and said, “Everything will be okay.”

Sure enough the kid got over this addiction to candy and started to eat the right stuff. The mother as intrigued and went to Gandhi and said, “Why did you wait a month? Why didn’t you go and talk to him the first time I came to you.”

“Oh,” said Gandhi. “I too have an addiction to candy and I wanted to see if I could give up candy for a month, before I told someone else to give up candy.”

CONCLUSION

That’s my homily. If you looking for something practical to do for Lent, my suggestion for this Lent is to do some journal writing on what you have learned from life so far. By Easter, you’ll be amazed how much you’ve learned, who your teachers were, and how much is in your inner library.