i am about 60% ready to go back to teaching. i left because i was becoming less and less like the person i wanted to become.
i've been realizing that this is not an external battle that i need to fight (placing blame on teaching for burgeoning cynicism, substance abuse, and fraction-alization of my core); those things are still happening, and i'm on what seems like the longest vacation ever. the fighting is less frequent, for sure, but the tendencies are still there.
what it is is an internal battle of character and integrity - one which forces me to confront my core and turns me from the distractions of my periphery. i can't blame school or my students or the system for everything difficult; i'm the same wherever i am, and that is the frightening part. without relentless introspective work, i won't be who i want to become; and the reason for the failure won't be the circumstances, it will just be my own doing.
* * *
Church was awesome today.
Why do I wake up to gunshots at 3am, sigh momentarily, and then go back to sleep so quickly? Why do my one-day-a-week work days at Life (and pretty much the last 4 years there), where I am face to face with the needs of students and teachers and a hurting city, feel like a just a job?
I realized today that it's because we become accustom to the normal. After four and a half years in Oakland, all of it - the violence and the fear and the chaos - has become normal, expected, unshocking. I expect nothing different, and it is because I believe nothing different is possible.
Have we forgotten what God can do? What God is capable of? Have we expected nothing from Jesus?
I do not want to live in normality and be devoid of reaction. I want to expect miracles and majesty again. I want to know what awe feels like again.
because you say so, I will cast down my nets.
