it is up to the student to do the work

The last time I went to my spiritual director, we talked a lot about the people who have harmed me in my past. This wasn’t really what I wanted to talk about. I’d rather just jump right ahead into forgiving them. She wants me to pick open that wound and study it for a bit. She wants me to dig down to what I’m feeling. Then dig down below that.

Anger, sure. But beneath anger is sadness, and grief. It is a sense of loss, of not-having, of never-will. It is a sense of something that I think should be mine, isn’t.

This is a foreign feeling, and even more foreign that an expert is telling me to stay with this feeling. Surely I should “turn the other cheek,” right? Surely I should “forgive and forget,” right?

But she says to stick with it. Every month I come back and I’m ready to forgive and she thinks I’m not ready yet.

So, par the course for me I made a bracelet to help me remember. I put a bead to remind me of each person who has harmed me. I did this fairly fast, so there are some I’m forgetting, I’m sure, but fast work means that I don’t overanalyze it.

I’ve also been writing about how I was harmed by my parents, and also my brother. Writing about it is hard. I don’t want to dig up these old bones. She had me look at that feeling – why do I not want to talk about it? In part it is because I feel like I am betraying them. I feel like I’m being disloyal to them. We aren’t supposed to speak ill of the dead. Nothing is stronger than blood, right?

I say that they meant well, that they didn’t know any better, that they themselves were raised badly. She says those are covers. That there is something I’m not looking at. That I need to focus on how I was harmed. I need to focus on that I was harmed.

There is certainly a bit of shame that comes in the mix when using the word “victim.” Am I to blame for what happened to me? Is it my fault? Could I have stood up for myself? Was I too passive? By not speaking up for myself, I allowed it to happen. They couldn’t have known they were harming me unless I said something. To not speak up is to give acceptance.

I hate going to the spiritual director’s. Every month, about a week before, I start to dread it. I don’t want to talk about what she wants to talk about because it is going to be hard. I want to make a list and tell her what we are going to talk about and use up all the time so that I don’t have anything hard to talk about.

But then that wastes the whole point of going. It is like going to a personal trainer at the gym and saying all I want to do is jumping jacks for an hour. I’m not going to work on anything meaningful that way. I’ll have wasted my time and my money. She’s like a personal trainer for my soul. We dig down to uncover broken pieces and blockages.

I read once that the goal in life isn’t to learn how to love. It is to remove all the barriers we have put up against love. I think the person quoted Rumi. I’m sure he said it better.

But look, here I go, walking away from the topic again. I’m a wiggly one, always trying to get away from what bothers me. I guess that is normal human nature. We often try to anesthetize ourselves or run away.

Let’s try again.

It is important to acknowledge loss. It is important to admit that it happened. To heal it, you have to know it is there. And that means a lot of digging.

So while I’m constructing the victim bracelet, I’m realizing that these are all people who have sinned against me. And then I think – what about all the people I have sinned against?

Am I justifying? Am I putting the blame back on me? Am I letting them off the hook? Am I avoiding the problem? Sounds like it.

So I’m staying with this. I’m not through it. I certainly want to be. I want this to be over and done and healed and let’s go on to the next thing and make it a happy one, please.

And I’m running away again.

I’ve heard that grief takes a long time. I’ve heard that you grieve for half the amount of time that you’ve known the person. This is grief. This is going to take a long time. It has grown down deep. And just like digging out privet in the back yard, this is going to take a lot of work and some special tools to get all of it out. Leave just a little bit of privet root and it will come back next year. Cut it down at the top and it will get even stronger and root down further. The only way to get it out is to dig it up, all of it. And the only way to do that is to work on it patiently and thoroughly.

Today I only had time for two of the children on my list. I’ve had them every Wednesday since the beginning of school, and I have a feeling I’ll have them until the end of school. Every year there is at least one that needs a little help getting over that wall.

Both kids are sweet, but they just don’t yet get the work that is required yet. Kindergarten is a lot of fun. There are a lot of kids to play with. There are a lot of bright colors. Everything looks like a game. But it is deadly serious work. If you can’t understand your letters, then you can’t read. Then you are stuck in low paying jobs. It is a terrible hole to be in. A lot of your life depends on kindergarten. But, it is still the first month. There is time.

The girl, V, is a native English speaker. Her sister was in this same classroom last year but I rarely worked with her. She could have taught me some things. Right now I’m tempted to tell V she needs to ask her sister for help. She is glad to be in school, and that alone is a good thing. Just learning how to be in school is an important lesson.

Today she seemed obsessed with the letter H and why the human body does what it does. We were working with a board of wooden letters, cut out and colorful. Under each letter was a picture of a word that had that letter as the first letter. Under the letter H was a picture of a heart. She looked at me with her big brown eyes and asked me “why do our hearts beat?” Sometimes the sheer randomness of kindergartners knocks me off guard. When we came across the letter P she screwed up her face and said “Pee? Why do we have to pee? My Mommy pees.”

I swear, I can’t make this stuff up.

The boy, S, is from Mexico. He too is sweet but very distracted. Today his favorite letter was S. Everything was S. H was S. W was S. I think he likes S so much because it is the first letter of his name. He can write his name, sort of, with a lot of prompting, but the other letters are beyond him. Perhaps he doesn’t see the relevance of them. They don’t apply to him, so why learn them?

This is a hurdle all teachers have to face – making the lesson meaningful. The students often think, “Why learn anything just for the sake of learning?” This is a fast-paced world. If it doesn’t have any application to my life, what is the point? The sad part it all is applicable, but it is impossible to explain that in a way that they will believe. You have to live it to understand it.

Today it was reinforced that if someone wants to learn, they will. If they don’t, they won’t. When I first started showing up to tutor, I felt that it was really important that the kids really work hard and get this material. I was really eager for them to learn how to read. But over the years I’ve realized that it is up to them to do the work. I have to be there. They have to meet me in the middle. I present the material in an engaging way and cheer them on when they get it right. But it is up to them to pay attention and do their homework so there is improvement from week to week. I can’t do it for them. If they can’t read by the end of kindergarten, it isn’t my fault.

This is applicable all over life. People have choices. They can choose to learn or not. They can choose to be ready and awake and alert, or they can choose to be asleep. Perhaps it isn’t a choice. Perhaps it is part of their character or their upbringing. Perhaps their parents don’t value education, so they don’t work with them. Perhaps their parents have no education, so they can’t work with them.

Not all baby birds fly. This is a hard lesson. I want them all to do well, but I can’t do the work for them. Again, this is still just the first month. I’ll keep going every Wednesday, and keep trying. I’ll try every trick I have to get them to engage with the material. There is still time, but the longer it takes for them to understand the alphabet, the further behind they are.