The Grandiose and the Clickety Clack

My favorite grandiose thing.

Lately I am in the mood for lots of space to breathe. That's why I suddenly changed this blog to its most minimal possible form.  What it was before the sparse white was suddenly too much.  So many books! So much shelving.  I am, today, a fan of less being more. Black and white, like the solid look of a big clunky typewriter.  That's how I imagine thoughts forming in front of me today.  I only want the clickety clack and the silence and the breathing room and the space. 

In the last day I've been heavy hearted.  I've been thinking about my friend, Kari, who died, and the bigger scope of the world, and how much I don't understand.  I've put it in front of God, which made it a day of relief.  When I forget this, I quickly have a despairing heart.  But yesterday the silence was good.  In the course of a day, I usually say a lot of words, and share a lot of thoughts.  Sometimes it's also nice to just NOT do that, and see what happens instead. 

It all started when I went to church.  The pastor was talking about Galatians, but I ignored a lot of that and just started thinking with God instead.  I had a lot of questions...the kind of questions that I started wondering about when I was much younger.  Sometimes when I would vocalize this, good steady people in my life would remind me that I don't have to figure those things out.  Not just living with the castles in the air.  I think they wanted to get me out of the angst.  That made them feel better, but it didn't help me until I had the time to land somewhere.  My mind was usually still reeling.

Here's what I wondered about when I looked like I was listening to a message about the Galatians....

...why I am loving hydrangeas so much lately and noticing them wherever I go
...why people get old and what that is like to be there instead of being young
...why I am sitting in this place in the world with this look about me instead of being somewhere else
...why I have the name Jessica Christians
...why I just lately saw that I happen to know a lot of Irish people with strong Irish backgrounds
...why last year my patterns started to look suspiciously like teacher burnout (I know this answer, but still, the thought came)
...why the last name Christians also describes my faith in Jesus (this would be unusual and awkward if I was Jewish)
...how many people wonder if I am a Christian based on my last name when they first meet me compared to those who never think of it
...why I'm having really crazy dreams lately
...why it's easiest to have road rage when pulling into the church parking lot 
...why there are child brides in the world
...why we put God in a box all of the time (He's so BIG!!!)
...why people misunderstand each other so much
...why the pastor looks a LOT like an RD I knew from Bethel, and why I am always frustrated that no one else at church knows the RD I'm talking about (they look alike A LOT)
...why you feel close to some people but not close to others
...why Kari died when she did
...what people are religious about (and whether or not I EVER like that word)
...why facebook creeps me out more and more every day
...or why sometimes the soul feels so connected to the body but other times it just does NOT. 


In high school, my mind would be reeling with a question like this about history during history.

  

Example: Did women of that day know they had something in them that compelled them to step out of their social structures, or were they in it for so long that it never occurred to them to think like an independent woman in this century would today?  How seamless are the thoughts that are thought throughout human history?  Would I want to write a book if I were alive in 1755 instead, or would I want to maintain a good farm because I'd never read a book at all?  Basically, what transcends time and is unavoidable, and what locks you in to where you are?

These are the things I stop to wonder about when I need to stop grading and imagine something on my own so that I still like history.

Once in high school, my history teacher took the time to stop and say, 'What if you had a brain like Jessica Christians? What if you thought about all of the things she considered in one day?' and everyone started laughing. And then he tried to answer my question.  I didn't feel bad about it because that classroom was, as Florida Maxwell-Scott says, 'fierce with reality', and these people were friends. And clearly it was an open place to be. (I would NEVER have asked questions like this in math class.  Ever.  I tried not to ask questions there at all.)

I do not remember what I asked though, which is actually kind of a relief. I was kind of ridiculous in high school (like lots of others, I know) and I didn't seem to know it. Now I know when I'm being ridiculous.  It's either for the sheer fun of it or I am self-aware enough to tone it down.   Back then, the teachers just had to go with it, and help me grow into a good, more mature version of myself, and that's what I try to remember too when I see this in my students. We are all this way sometimes, and they need the grace just as much as I do. I think the reason teenagers get pegged more with this is because they have less of a filter. Adults are good at hiding all of the ridiculous things. Which is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad.

I'm not talking about ridiculous in the way that describes 'doing one thing that scares you'. I'm talking about 'digging yourself into a hole and not knowing how to back out of it.' THAT kind of ridiculous.  I will witness a lot of those moments when teaching this year. GREAT.  It's another one of those unavoidable things. My job is then to gently, and without judgment, help them just lower that shovel.

Yesterday at church, when I was thinking about everything grandiose all at once, my soul felt very removed from the look I have and the body I'm in.  Which is a very weird feeling.  Do you know what I mean?

I know other people know this feeling because one day, in the first year I was teaching, a student brought this up, unprompted.  I often feel conflicted about how politically correct I need to be in my classroom with the word soul.  I know other people don't think that you have a soul, but I do.  And I think my students definitely have souls too, and that is what makes life as a teacher REAL.  When you look anyone in the eye, you can see the soul thoughts there. 

That's why photography is so compelling, right?  And this is why I think that if I could look someone in the eye from 1755, I would know right away if they really liked their farm or if, instead, they wanted to write a book and just didn't have any paper.

Anyway, the first year I taught in my own classroom, one of the students had a moment when he was trying to describe why he could move his fingers a certain way, or why he knew how to write. And when people started to laugh, I shut THAT down right away and said, 'Say more' to this kid who DID say more, and got his point across to us.  Realizing that you are much more than a body is hard to put into words sometimes, but he did it, and other kids got it.  It was a really interesting moment.
 
I always get to a point when I think about thinking like this.  Why, anyway?  What do you do with these thoughts in a meeting at school?  I have a mind that can really spiral into a thousand different directions very quickly.  I even have a face that shows this so I have to be really careful in certain places when I'm supposed to be a diplomat.  There's a time and a place, after all.  When I am comfortable enough though, this all comes out. 

Case in point...

The gym teacher at my school only sees me in the course of the day at lunch, which is the only place I'm away from being the fairly prim and proper Miss Christians I usually am.  We've worked together for 3 years, but literally once a week, he comments on this 'crazy' side of me.  I think he doesn't believe that I know sarcasm.  But it's there all of the time.  I just don't talk like that with 7th graders because sometimes it confuses them.  And then they don't trust me in the same way.  And teaching 7th grade World History without trust is lame. 

Not my classroom,
but a prim and proper look, nonetheless

    At lunch, it's become funny and weird, because others at the table now say, 'This is what she's LIKE.'  People at this place know me.  Heck, THIS guy knows me, but I think he's really hung up on me being prim and proper because that's the nickname he gave me when we all went bowling one time.  And probably because he sees me when I've yanked (not literally) a kid out into the hall and I am making sure they understand what will change about what they're doing when they walk back into my classroom.

So....not the whimsical, free spirited moments of my life.  But when hanging out with teenagers in general, or teaching 8th grade especially, very necessary and unavoidable. 

So, we get it.  My mind is strange sometimes and it rattles around and finds its own pace with these big heavy thoughts.  But yesterday, there was more.

I watched a NOOMA video yesterday that made me cry because it reminded me of Kari.  I know Rob Bell is controversial these days, and I'm not talking about his book 'Love Wins'.  The video starts with the story of his friend, Matthew, and what it was like to learn he had died.  The video is CALLED 'Matthew'.  I know Bell's approach is an appeal to postmodernism, and some people don't always go with that, but this hit home yesterday. 

The most striking thing about this video was that in addition to the things he said, there were very simple tasks shown.  Like, he irons a shirt.  One thing I've realized about grief is that you depend very heavily on the awareness of your physical movements when your mind goes numb.  Somehow, when emotionally numb, those tasks become really important. 

And it's WEIRD that it does, because you picture that grieving for a person means folding yourself up into an overstuffed chair and crying for a while.  But that's not what necessarily always helped me this year.  You have to blow your nose a lot when you lay down and cry for an hour, and I was sick of seeing my eyes in the rear view mirror and not being able to make them look anything but sad when I would drive to see friends.  How predictable.  Sad eyes.  Raw throat.  Lots of tears.  But there's more. 

What helped me this year, in those small physical tasks, was holding babies who had just been born.  Breathing a certain way and blinking away tears.  Or breaking apart a pomegranate.  For some reason that was one of the most soul quieting things I did all year.  Brother Lawrence had it right when he wrote about God meeting you everywhere, even when doing the dishes.   This helped, and God has met me in these places. 

I decided yesterday that my friends have been very healthy in wading through the grief of missing Kari.  That's what I can say with certainty 15 months after it happened.  We HAVEN'T buried it deep down inside.  It also doesn't define us.  Or her.  People sometimes assume that you do that...let those thoughts become cemented and true. 

I did bury the direct thoughts of her at 11:30 on Tuesday, May 24 this year, because I was teaching.  I couldn't talk to students and simultaneously just KNOW that it was officially a year that life turned upside down and she'd been away from us.  Then, later, I found the coworker (who pretty much was sitting shiva with me the day after the accident happened) and said, 'That accident with my friend?  That happened a year ago.  I just had to tell you.'  And they said, 'That whole thing was big.  And I'm sorry."  

But other than THAT, no, we've been very open about missing her. 

   We've railed when we want to and we've been quiet and completely silent too.  Sitting shiva, the Jewish tradition of bereavement that Rob Bell talks about, has HAPPENED, and it's happened when we were all far away.  Distance took us to lots of corners of the world, and we've all managed to do this very thing, at least in part, across the miles.  We miss our friend.  I miss a baby I never met but celebrated and hoped for before the accident.  I think missing her is SO easy because she was so easy to love.  Since then, life has been bigger than I ever thought it was, and certain things have been sweeter, and other things, turned on their side, still feel off kilter.  And God is still good.

When I thought about Kari yesterday, I, as usual, didn't know what to think. But I put it in front of God as I usually do, and then talked to Molly at the end of the day. Another thing I usually do on a day when life is up in the air. She's a very good blend of the logical and the random all at once. She'll let me ramble on for a while and then she'll do something with what I say. Which is the very thing I usually cannot do.

Last night she even let me go on and on about child brides for a while and how a Michael Jackson song applied to a conversation I had last week about affluence and poverty. (Good grief.)  And then we end the conversation usually talking about 'The Office', 'Modern Family, or 'Arrested Development.'

Always a good sign.