Crazy Enough

"The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do."  Change the world.  Back in the 80s I thought I could change the world.  One person at a time.  I read Ann Kiemel's books...devoured them...about being just one, but that God and I, we'd change the world.  "You watch.  You wait.  You'll see."  That was my mantra.  I embraced the idea whole-heartedly.  I challenged my friends and my students to join me on my journey through change.  It was exciting and energizing to think about...and to make the effort.  I carried that energy with me through the 90s and loved it all, loved the idea that I could make a difference.  In all my thinking about change in my world, there came changes in me.  As I traveled the world, literally, I began to see things differently.  More globally.  I began to think outside my world...and realized it would take more than just me (and God) to effect some of the changes I saw.  That was a good place to start, but it couldn't stop there.  I would have to encourage others to effect change in their world, too, if we wanted to make a dent at all.

In recent years, I have started each of my classes with a 10-minute writing session.  Initially, it was just free-writing designed to wake their brains up, but for the past few years I've been more focused and intentional with what I want my students to think and write about.  This morning, I paired the above quote with another one about making a difference:  "You can't change it all at once.  It's gonna take multiple people at separate stages of people's lives taking and making a difference.  It's not just gonna take me."  I guess that's where I am now--realizing that where I am attempting to effect change in the lives of the young people around me, I am not in a vacuum.  Many came before and many more will come after.  This could be daunting and/or discouraging, and could possibly cause one to say "why bother then."  But there's also this:  "I can do all things through Christ." I am crazy enough to believe it is indeed possible to change my world after all.

Photos taken in Butterfly Wonderland in Phoenix, Arizona

Better Than Light

“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:  ‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.’ And he replied:  ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.  That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’

I first read that quote the year I had literally gone out into the darkness—quit my job at a school where I was teaching, given up my apartment and gone off to work on my doctorate in an environment about as far removed from my life and lifestyle as possible—the huge and ultra secular University of New Hampshire.  I had no idea what to expect.  All I knew was that I hoped I could succeed in a world I had had little or no contact with until that point.

Looking back, I’m not sure how I had the courage to do it, although if you know me at all, you know I am a risk-taker, always pushing the envelope, so maybe it’s not such a surprise that I would do something like that after all.    Although there were many things foreign and even difficult about the experience for me, I don’t regret having done it.  I also learned a lot, the most important being the truth of those M.L. Haskins lines from the poem “God Knows” in her book The Desert.  Any time you put your hand into the hand of God you are in a better light and on a safer way.

This is nothing new to most of us.  In fact, I think probably most of us believe that a life following close to Jesus is absolutely the best life.  Trouble is, it does no good to hold a belief if you don’t practice it.  If you’re not a thinker and a doer, why bother thinking?  Shocking question coming from one who, as a teacher, is continually exhorting her students to THINK, isn’t it? 

Well, I’ve been thinking about doing for a few weeks, now.  This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about doing, of course.  In fact I often think about doing around this time of year.  It’s the New Year, and one can hardly avoid thinking about doing new things, doing things differently, doing things at all!  At least I can’t. Every year for as long as I can remember—and my sisters say I can remember a long ways back, although it’s getting shorter as I get older—I’ve been making New Year’s Resolution lists.  Sometimes they’re long and detailed lists.  Other times they’re brief but cleverly worded lists—working under the theory that a few resolutions are easier to keep than many.  Omit needless deeds, you know.  It depends on how energetic I’m feeling at the moment…

No matter the form, I find myself thinking a lot during the weeks that surround the New Year.  Thing is, that’s the easy part.  Anyone can think, although they don’t always do it.  It’s the acting on the thinking that’s the real challenge.   That's my goal this year.  To act on the thinking, with my hand in God's.  That is definitely better light and safer than the known way.