Confession:

I know I've written about it before, but the subject comes back to haunt me. This afternoon, as I left the staff room, a French colleague said, "You shouldn't carry so much sadness on your shoulders. It weighs you down." We had been talking about the great slaughters of the 20th century and how I always wonder whether I would be one who simply went about her business quietly, as great wrongs went on around her.

As I walked home and then on around the top of the mountain to clear my head and heart, I began numbering the great wrongs going on around me even now. And in me. They range from exploitation of poor day laborers to communal prejudices to the usual school issues of cheating. Then there are the more insidious evils of teachers not truly caring for their students. When I see students struggling under what seems an unfair burden, I get so angry. Even more stomach-churning: what do I do with those who claim to bear the name of Christ and stand in opposition to His love and mercy and self-sacrifice? I begin to taste bile.

Feet get so dirty here, it takes constant scrubbing to try to keep them clean. Even then, I despair when I look at the cracks of dirt in my heels that I never seem able to scrub away. And you should see my heart: I'm returning to some of my old high school questions about hypocrisy when I look around me. Dark cracks of anger and frustration are starting to creep up. But what will I do to stand up to the evils around me? In me? What will I do to insist that all of us faculty treat students kindly, fairly, lovingly? What will I do to make myself more patient with the student who calls for study help at 10pm? In the end, these failures of ours become great evils.

Sometimes I want to weep at the hunger I see in students for meaning and for true peace. The classroom offers so much more than the chance to get ahead in life. Students learn to wrestle with the deepest, darkest areas of our hearts--and I'm privileged to share in their wrestling. I had a student today write that he has a theory about history: everything we do really comes down to seeking comfort. That's all humans ever really care about. They'll sacrifice everyone around them for the sake of their own comfort. But he obviously wasn't satisfied with his answer. Who thinks that seeking your own comfort is noble? admirable? achievable, even? I want to tell him, "Yes. You are correct. We only seek our own comfort. I know One, though, who gave up His comfort for the sake of ours. His life in me makes me able to daily lay down my comfort for the sake of yours."

...then I hear a little accusing voice say, "Oh really? How much of your comfort have you actually been willing to give up?"

Forgive me, Father.