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 18th 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.
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.
