Sunday after a long weekend of rehearsals and performances for my kids. I have been working on lesson plans most of the afternoon, after shoveling for close to an hour. My back is sore and my eyes are burning. But, I am pretty much prepared for my week of teaching.
Of course, I'm also preparing for the big event tonight. Got my snacks and drinks. Some Fritos and cheese and peanuts. I'm all ready for the big show: the Lady Gaga halftime concert. Of course, I have to get through two interminable quarters of football first. When I said this to my 16-year-old daughter, she said, "That's exactly what my gay friend said." I'll take that as a compliment. My daughter is not homophobic. She has lots of gay friends, and she was just stating a fact.
I'm a lucky guy. I have two kids who are open-minded and accepting of everybody. I have a beautiful wife. And Lady Gaga is singing tonight.
Today's episode of Classic Saint Marty first aired almost six years ago, when I was thinking about the important things in my life . . .
February 8, 2011: Saint Josephine Bakhita
Right now, I'm teaching Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road
to my writing and literature class. It's one of my favorite books, but
my students, as I anticipated, are struggling. They're struggling with
McCarthy's language and style. His themes and ideas. More than one of
them have said out loud during discussions, "I hate this book."
What
I really think my students are struggling with is maturity. Most of
them are only just out of high school a year or so. I guess I can't
really expect them to feel the terror of the dying father for his young
son in The Road when they can barely keep a goldfish or fern
alive. They just don't have the life experience to appreciate the
book. Today, I tried again to make them "get it." I had them write a
journal entry about the one thing that's most important in their lives.
My goal was to make them think about the difference between need and
want.
One of my students wrote about his eyesight.
Another wrote about her cocker spaniel. One girl wrote about her faith
in God. They were all incredibly sincere and earnest. The students who
didn't read their journal entries out loud looked stricken, as if I
were going to ask them to strip naked and dance to "Funky Town" for
everybody. I could tell that I hit pay dirt with some of them, that I
pushed through the layers of Facebook and iPhone numbness to something
real, raw, and alive. Then I read them what I had written:
"This
novel makes me stop and evaluate all the things I regard as important
or necessary on a day-to-day basis: Diet Mountain Dew, books, teaching,
students, lobster pizza, car, jobs, money. However, when I reflect
on the nittiest and grittiest, those things in my life that really do
give me a reason to get up every morning, I would have to list just
three: my son, my daughter, and my wife. I can't winnow the list any
more. It's a choice I can't even contemplate. There's a terrible scene
in William Styron's book Sophie's Choice where his main
character, Sophie, is forced to choose which of her two children will
live and which will be executed. It's a moment so brutal and agonizing
that I can barely read it. If I were asked to choose just one thing I
cherish most, the one thing I would rescue from destruction, I
couldn't. I couldn't make a choice like Sophie makes. It's unthinkable
to me. Wife? Daughter? Son? I know I'd end up like Sophie, haunted
the rest of my days by the cries of the choice I didn't make."
Too
many people in the world today are forced to make decisions like that
in places like Sudan, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. Life-and-death
decisions. Today's saint, Josephine Bakhita, was stolen from her family
in Sudan by slave traders around the year 1879. After many years and
many owners, Josephine was freed. She wound up in the convent of the
Canossian Daughters of Charity. She joined the order and served as
"cook, gate keeper, and keeper of linens." She died on February 6,
1947. When Pope John Paul II canonized her in 2000, he referred to her
as a "universal sister...[who] can reveal to us the secret of true
happiness."
Josephine Bakhita--former slave, nun,
servant--found happiness in the religious life, in throwing her energies
into helping others. She became Christ in the lives of people who were
sick, broken, cast-off. She took a life of slavery and turned it into a
life of compassion and love. That was Josephine Bakhita's choice.
You
see, it's all about the choices we make. That's what I wanted my
students to understand today. When all the elements of my life are
distilled--job, money, iPad, Kindle, car, clothes, stuffed-crust pizza,
all of it boiled off--what are the oxygen and hydrogen of my daily
existence? What do I need to survive?
If it's a cell phone, I may be a student.
If it's food, money, a car, I may be a janitor. A nurse. A lawyer. The President of the United States.
If it's love and compassion, I may be a husband. A father. Or a saint.
It's my choice.
This evening, I have a poem I wrote a few years ago, as I was waiting for my daughter's ballet class to finish. Appropriate for this ballet recital weekend.
Saint Marty is grateful for a little quiet this evening.
Praise for Waiting
by: Martin Achatz
I scribble these lines in my journal
As I wait for my daughter’s ballet
Class to end, her to come out of the studio,
Flushed from grand jeté, allegro, pirouette.
I treasure these moments of waiting
At the end of the day, in my car,
Radio silent, evening creeping into air
Like frost on a kitchen window, delicate
Fingers of cold and dark.
This moment,
Suspended between dinner and sleep,
Seems timeless, the way pictures of Garbo
Seem timeless, black-and-white, eyes
Focused upward, as if some lover
Hovers above her, waiting to press
His lips to hers, taste her meter, rhythm,
Sonnet of skin, snowdrift body.
Words cannot, will not touch these long
Seconds, no verb or adjective coax
Onto page the pure pleasure of possibility,
Reaching out like an unwritten poem.
I close my eyes, understand why Garbo
Flickered out when she did, left the world
Waiting for one last word, one last glimpse.
A snapshot. My daughter
caught mid-leap,
Waiting, as we all do, to descend.
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