Thanksgiving Hymn

My heart is filled with thankfulness
to him who bore my pain;
Who plumbed the depths of my disgrace
and gave me life again;
Who crushed my curse of sinfulness
and clothed me with his light
And wrote his law of righteousness
with pow'r upon my heart.

My heart is filled with thankfulness
to him who walks beside;
Who floods my weaknesses with strength
and causes fears to fly;
Whose ev'ry promise is enough
for ev'ry step I take,
Sustaining me with arms of love
and crowning me with grace.

My heart is filled with thankfulness
to him who reigns above;
Whose wisdom is my perfect peace,
whose ev'ry thought is love.
For ev'ry day I have on Earth
is given by the King,
So I will give my life, my all
to love and follow him.

Great Moments in the History of my First Year Teaching

This is one for the books, folks.

So today, I began my next literature unit on the Odyssey by Homer. I've been nervous about this unit for weeks, because the last time I'd read the Odyssey was in 9th grade, and I'm not really sure I understood it much better then than I do now recollecting it. Thankfully, my principal graciously allowed me a day off of my normal work to plan for my next unit. I spent about a full working day's worth of hours focused on preparing -- reading SparkNotes, reading commentaries online, emailing fellow teachers with ideas, and beginning to read the book. I figured I did not have time to completely read through the book all the way before I began teaching, but if I read the notes enough to be familiar with the plot line and if I closely read well ahead of where my students were, I should be fine.

The version of the text that my school owns is a "children's translation" titled, The Children's Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy. Notice that it starts out with, "The Adventures of Odysseus." The opening lines of the book also read, "This is the story of Odysseus, the most renowned of all the heroes the Greek poets have told us of..." So, naturally, I figured, this is the Odyssey--it clearly says it's a story about Odysseus. I will admit I had a little pause about why the first 120 pages focused mostly on Telemachus (Odysseus's son), but I know enough to know that epics tend to include very long, divergent story lines, and I figured the focus on Telemachus was really to just highlight the story of Odysseus. I planned on and began teaching the unit today, explaining clearly to the children (so they would not be confused, as I first was) that we were reading the Odyssey, which is the tale of the quest of Odysseus but also (apparently) of his son Telemachus.

Then I had a brief meeting with our special education teacher, who was arranging accomodated materials for some students. She remarked, "Oh, you're reading the whole book? They only read half of it last year!" I was a little surprised, and a bit concerned that I would not be able to finish my unit in time if I was assigning twice the material that was covered last year. I reassured myself by saying this just meant my course was extremely rigorous, and in all my meetings with the principal she had never once suggested that I shorten the book. Besides, I am morally opposed to shortening books in general, so I decided to move forward and not worry too much about her comment. In class, however, a student raised his hand and asked, "Ms. Stuntz, this book seems to be broken up into two sections. Why is that?" Taking the tactic I have learned from previous teachers, I tried to speak as the confident authority even though I was also confused, responding, "The editor must have broken the Odyssey up into two chunks to make it more manageable for the reader." Child convinced. Problem solved.

Except these two suggestions in one day were just a little much, so I decided to seek a third opinion. I asked another teacher, "Do you happen to remember if and, if so, why they only read half of the Odyssey last year?" She paushed, and then said, "Oh, I remember! Because this is a really abridged version and the first half is actually the Iliad, so they just read the Odyssey." I paused, and began to giggle a little nervously. "Do you know the Iliad at all?" I asked. "Does it, by any chance, focus on Telemachus?" "Oh yes," she replies, "it's all about Telemachus's journey." "Oh no," I reply back, "I have just planned for and begun to teach the children the wrong book."

Now, this is not completely and utterly disastrous. There are many ways to solve this problem. The state of Massachusetts requires me to teach an epic; it does not have to be the Odyssey. This year, in spite of what I said on my course description, it may in fact be the Iliad. I also could have them read part of the Iliad as "background" (after all, it does come first) and then have them skip to the Odyssey and finish that. Or, we can read selections from both and search through them for epic conventions. These are all reasonable options for moving my course forward.

One very concerning questions remains, though. How am I going to explain to my children why Ms. Stuntz, who is a self-proclaimed expert on epics, was so confused that she could not tell the storyline of two entirely different epics apart? As my friend said, "Won't it be great to be a second year teacher?"

These are a few of my favorite things...

Occasionally I need to remind myself of things I am thankful for, particularly on days when I am prone to complaining (i.e. today). Here is my list, off the top of my head, at 12:30 am:

--rain against my window
--bubble baths
--anything chocolate
--friends who make me take myself less seriously and look to Jesus
--poetry
--biographies
--television, particularly The Office (is that bad??)
--soft blankets
--lamplight
--my car, and the fact that it has not broken down since this summer
--hymns
--an amazing family who love me and love the Lord
--my brother playing piano
--photographs of people I love and miss on my walls
--books that remind me that the world is bigger than myself
--slippers and bathrobes and anything else soft and warm and cozy
--coffee in the morning
--hot tea or chocolate at night
--having more than enough to eat
--easy forms of communication (telephone, internet, even webcam!) with far-away friends
--having a job where I get to love children
--time to rest on weekends--even when it is not enough, it is a time to rest and for that I am thankful

I have not posted in a long time, mostly because I have been a little too overwhelmed to write. I will try to post more later, but in the meantime, please pray for me to have a heart of thankfulness for the blessings I have been given and to live for God's glory and not my own, to rest in his peace and not my own efforts.

Beams of Heaven

Beams of heaven,
as I go through the wilderness below,
guide my feet in peaceful ways,
turn my midnights into days.
When in darkness I would grope,
faith always sees a star of hope,
and soon from all life's grief and danger
I shall be free someday.

Oftentimes my sky is clear;
joy abounds without a tear;
though a day so bright begun,
clouds may hide tomorrow's sun.
There'll be a day that's always bright,
a day that never yields to night,
and in its light the streets of glory
I shall behold someday.

Harder yet may be the fight;
right may often yield to might.
Wickedness awhile may reign;
Satan's cause may seem to gain.
There is a God that rules above
with hand of power and heart of love,
and if I'm right, He'll fight my battle.
I shall have peace someday.

Burdens now may crush me down--
disappointments all around,
troubles speak in mournful sigh,
sorrow through a tear-stained eye.
There is a world where pleasure reigns;
no mourning soul shall roam its plains,
and to that land of peace and glory
I shall want to go someday.

Best decision of my day: to buy this CD (Beams of Heaven, from Indelible Grace) on iTunes to listen to while I grade papers. I've loved every song, but this one especially captured my attention with its rich honesty and hope. I love the volta in the middle of each stanza (oh, that's right, I'm trying to be a cool English teacher with my snazzy literary terminology)--the change from a description of current reality to a description of anticipated reality. I think what drew me in was that the current reality is described first; it's not ignored or downplayed, or even later contradicted. I am struggling to learn to be honest about hard realities, and so honesty really resonates with me at the moment. But honesty about the current situation also does not get the final say; hope has the last word, and so remains the lingering focus. And hope seems so much sweeter when juxtaposed with the groaning and aching of reality before it. I feel like I am groaning and aching a lot recently, although this week has been a million times better than last week. My desire would be that I wouldn't just stop with admitting the ache though: that I could simultaneously admit the very real aches--of separation from my brother and other good friends, of exhaustion from my job, of fear for my students and the temptations they're facing, of sorrow for my dad and my whole family over his sickness, of frustration with my own perfectionism and people-pleasing that get in the way of loving people--and still always turn at the end of the day to hope. Hoping for hope: an interesting place to end this week and begin it all over again tomorrow.

Disappointment

"Dear God, thank you so much that today is Friday!"
--my roommate, on the car ride into work, Thursday morning

Interjections, with excitement, and emotion...

I am exhausted and need to go to bed but had to post this.

Yesterday in class, we were going over parts of speech. In an effort to make my class more engaging, I decided to try mad libs with them. I let them pick their own words and then fill in the story, and without first checking them (dumb first-year teacher move) allowed the students to read their stories aloud to the class.

As you can probably guess from the title of my blog post, one of the parts of speech they were to generate was an interjection. So one of my students read aloud to the class her interpretation of an interjection: "'OMG!' cried the student." Naturally, we all lost it at that moment.

Maybe School House Rock needs to remake their videos for the text messaging generation?

To blog or not to blog?

So a lot has been happening in the past couple of weeks, but I have not sat down to write about it yet--mostly because I know as soon as I sit down to write I will have to process, and once I start processing there will probably be lots of thinking and praying and crying and laughing and generally an utterly exhausting output of emotion involved, and I'm just not sure if I have yet worked up the courage to start that process. It always has to happen eventually, but it takes courage to let yourself start--or I don't know, maybe just to let myself start. Is this true for everyone, or is it just particularly difficult for those of us who like to stuff our emotions to the breaking point? Or would I ever reach the breaking point if I did not hold things at arms length in an attempt to "make it through the day"? It's an interesting dilemma, and every time I believe firmly that I have turned over a new leaf and figured out how to consistently process emotions without hiding them...I find myself in a new situation where there is something daunting to deal with, and I am much more comfortable going into "survival mode" than actually allowing myself to experience reality, whatever it may be, in real time.

The truth is that I really do believe that taking things moment by moment, day by day is such a truer, fuller, best way to live. I know that if I did it, I would have to depend on Jesus more than I do currently. And that scares me. Currently, I live in these cycles where I depend on myself probably for about two weeks at a time; I can trick myself into being rather "independent" for two weeks at a time. But then something happens, and I have to acknowledge how completely dependent I am and have always been on God's merciful care. It usually involves a long night of tears, and then an amazing feeling of peace and rejuvenation in the morning. I'm not sure, but I imagine it's what really falling in love is like--contentment and rest and security even at the same moment of knowing how totally vulnerable I am. But then I get cocky; I enjoy the rest but imagine that my competency has earned it for me; and then as the evidence mounts that this cannot be so, the cycle begins again until I'm once again at the place of having to acknowledge how silly I have been to imagine, and try to live, as though I were self-sufficient. I don't think I even realized how often I do this until I began writing it out, but as I acknowledge it I have to repent of it, and as I repent I begin hope and pray that God can change it. It's totally counterintuitive to me to believe that rest could come from the most exhausting part of my life--dealing with emotions--but it seems to me more and more that I always end up having to view realities in this world through the lens of paradoxes. What I see, what I do, what I resort to in order to "function" is not the true reality; what I hear of and imagine, hope, ache to be true even though it makes no sense whatsoever at times, that is the real truth.

Still a dilemma though: as I seek to process all these emotions, do I blog about them? There's an obvious answer to this, which is, "Please not all of them!" Which I won't do--I have no desire to put my heart and soul out on the internet. But I started a blog originally (and this is embarassing but true) because I am about the most external processor I have ever met in my life, and I thought it might relieve the burden on some of my family and friends if I had another outlet to "externally process" that didn't force someone to sit across the table in the coffee shop and listen to me ramble for two hours. On the other hand, I have heard lots of people recently talk about how blogs are evidence of how self-centered we are; suddenly, my own thoughts and doubts and dreams and neuroses are important enough that I don't just record them in a journal, I publish them for other people to read and feed my own sense that the world really does revolve around me. This is troubling, and I don't feel strongly convicted either way, except I'm definitely convinced that this whole endeavor could be pretty self-centered. Or it could have tempting elements, but also be occasionally useful. We'll see. Maybe I'll call you and we'll talk for two hours in the coffee shop about it. ;)