Back to School

I just can’t change. 

Ever since I first went to the office supply store with my father to stock up for another school year, there’s always been an excitement that permeates the air when another school year is about to begin. Heat gives way to cool, and idleness turns to routine. I resist the temptation to wear a silly hat and blowing a horn, but Labor Day has always felt like New Year’s Eve to me. No matter how distant the school bell, I can hear it ringing in my soul, and I want to go buy number two pencils and color-coded notebooks. Once a student, always a student, I suppose. 

I just can’t change.

What if we stopped trying to fight it and let ourselves go back to school? I don’t mean the part of school where people get pushed down in the playground or deliberately not invited to sleep-overs, but the part when we enter a classroom, get a syllabus, and learn what we’ll be studying in class. Most people I know wish they could go back and learn what they didn’t, read what was assigned, and be who they weren’t. The grades to which people would return varies, but the hunger to do it again, to do it “right,” is a common desire for many, particularly at this time of year.

Since that’s impossible, I wonder if we can return in some other way. Can Labor Day continue to bring its magic and invite us into a new year? 

·     Can we commit ourselves to learning something new? 

·     Can we pick up a paintbrush or dusty instrument and play as if we were young again? 

·     Can we read one of the books assigned years ago, or return to one that took our breath away when we first read it? 

·     Can we write a Once Upon A Time story, the kind that used to make us sit up and pay close attention?

·     Can we play capture the flag or kick-ball once again?

Nothing’s stopping us - except jobs, kids, aging parents, countless bills, and weary bones - but maybe this Labor Day we can join those who are going back to school in some small way. Maybe we can still go to the office supply store, the art store, or nursery and buy something for the child hidden deep inside..

Who knows, we might find hidden talents, rediscover old passions, and walk through the Fall as if we’re children again. 

Revolving Doors

I don’t remember the first time I saw a revolving door. I’m sure it was in New York City somewhere, but watching the Christmas movie, Elf, a few months ago reminded how much fun they once were. Around and around, they probably felt more like an amusement park ride than a department store or office door. As the movie so wonderfully illustrated, however, you can stay in a revolving door too long and eventually get dizzy and sick.

Over time, revolving doors have lost their attraction, but I recently realized how I still like to go around and around, never entering or exiting the places I’m trying to go or leave. Instead of leaving the rotating doors, I keep going around which causes me to get dizzy and sick.

In my life of sobriety, there’s a new life on the other side of the door, but to get there I have to leave my old life behind. Instead of choosing one over the other, I choose both and it spins me around until I am dizzy and sick.

When I became an ordained priest, I struggled with my new life of ministry and old life. I felt called to one but didn’t want to leave the other behind. Instead of choosing, I tried to live them both which left me (and others) dizzy and sick.

In relationships, I meet people who inspire me and point me in a wonderful new direction, but I do not want to let go of those I have known all my life. Incapable of heading in one direction, I go around and around until I’m dizzy and sick.

Even possessions can be revolving doors. My studio is full of furniture and pictures of my childhood. Placed beside them are mementos from various chapters in my life. In an effort to prepare the space for what lies ahead, I find there’s little room for anything new. Like a revolving door, I spin around between the past and future and stumble with dizziness.

Of course, the answer is to leave the revolving door. The solution is to decide what side of the door I want to be on and exit when I get there. It’s easier said than done, at least for me, because letting go frightens me. If I am completely candid, taking hold of something new is just as frightening. No wonder people like me find themselves going around and around. No wonder we become dizzy and sick. 

I write about it in hopes of encouraging me to get off the amusement park ride, to leave the revolving door, and enter one life or the other. I post what I write to encourage others to join me.

A picture are worth a thousand words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bAfiG7hTvM

The Deal

I once saw a cartoon where the first frame showed a mother and teacher talking. The teacher is explaining how tears are to be expected on the first day of school. The second frame showed the student walking into school as her father, on his knees clinging to his child, is bawling. It was a cartoon shared with me after we sent our son off to kindergarten and I behaved much like the father in the cartoon. Today, we took our youngest to college, and I was surprised to have all those feelings again.

Such moments bring thoughts about the past, present and future together like atoms colliding into an emotional nuclear explosion. 

·      I thought about the day we brought her home from the hospital, the way she and I would play in the car as we waited for the preschool doors to open, nights cuddled on the couch watching Disney movies, watching her on stage in many theater productions, her delivering a sermon in eighth grade, and her many accomplishments in the classroom and on the soccer field and tennis court. 

·     She’s made it to this moment and wants to be a teacher. She has the heart for such a vocation, which is the one thing that can’t be taught, and now has found a place where she can learn the tools she’ll need. Her present is ripe. 

·     But as exciting as her future may be, the fact is she will never live at home full time again. College vacations will usurp family ones, and, yes, there will be a boy in her future who will matter more to her than her father.

Boom!

The thoughts and emotions collided as I drove to the campus. Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, I was lost in the sunrises and sunsets of our life together. Like Steven Curtis Chapman, I longed to dance with Cinderella, holding her tight and never letting her go. 

Then, it was time to leave . . . 

The pain is stirring within me as I write, and I’m reminded of a poignant scene in Shaddowlands when Joy Gresham, the wife of C. S. Lewis who is dying of cancer, looks at her husband after a wonderful walk in the countryside and reminds him that the pain to come is part of the present joy. The two are intertwined like threads and, as hard as we might like to separate them, there’s never one without the other. “That’s the deal,” she says.

Dropping a child off at school, whether at kindergarten or college, is such a moment. There are many others. The joy of such moments is made more pronounced when placed beside the sadness. For a long time, I tried to have one without the other, but it’s impossible. So, holding in my grateful hand all that we’ve had, and celebrating all she’s become, I walked away and offered her to the one I trust with such things, praying I might make it to the car without bawling.

Extra Credit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrWMBC6yoM