First Day of School

My hands fidgeted on the seat in front of me as I waited for the other students to get on the bus. With crispy pants, stiff new shoes, and backpack on its maiden voyage, I looked out the window wondering what the new school year would bring. Who would be my teachers? What would my schedule be like? What would I learn? What would I achieve? The questions of August were always the same.

Although, for me, school bus rides are a thing of the past, the excitement of this time of year remains. When I think about my life in education, I know one of the reasons I loved it so was because each year you got to start over. Whether as a student or teacher, you always get a chance to sharpen your pencils, arrange your desk, and start over. A new year offers the chance to build on what had gone well the year before and correct the things that didn’t.

If only life was the same.

Maybe it can be.

Maybe we, like the students who begin school this week, can approach our lives – our jobs, relationships, health, and spiritual lives - as if they begin anew today. Just thinking about it makes my heart beat quickly, and dreams start percolating. This could be a great new year. There are things to learn, friends to meet, and accomplishments to strive for. It’s time to climb on the bus. The lights are flashing!

Water in the Valleys

Give me views!” I said to the wrangle who would be our guide on the morning horseback ride. It was the same thing I’d said at the start of every ride during our trip to the dude ranch. From the top of the hills, you could see for miles. On our last ride, I noticed a cluster of green trees which stood in sharp contrast to the brown landscape everywhere else. The trees were not up high like where we were riding, but nestled in a valley. Clearly, there was water there. As “Bubba,” my horse, meandered his way down the hill toward the corral, I stared at the cluster of trees in the valley and thought about the balance I need to strike as I “ride” through life.

You see, I still LOVE views. I always have. They cause me to take deep breaths and be grateful for life. What I often forget is the need to return to the valleys. Valleys aren’t as open, nor are they as inspirational (maybe). But there’s water in the valleys. To go there is to go get a drink for your soul. It’s darker in the valleys, but you often find other folks there, many like-minded, or like-needed, souls dying of thirst. Just ask the mothers who have lost children. They meet each week in a parish library. Ask the three husbands struggling with their recent divorces, one cup of coffee at a time, at a local coffee shop. Or ask the girls huddled together in a bedroom on the Saturday night the “cool” classmates are having a sleep over to which they were not invited.

There are all kinds of valleys, and it takes work to enter them. The pristine hilltops, with their pink clouds above, are tempting, but the water’s found lower. After seventeen years of not drinking, I have chosen a new sponsor who is making me work the twelve-steps again. It’s not easy work, but when we met the other morning, I thought about the trees on the ride. Together we sat, talking about hard things, but I left as if I’d had a cool drink of water.

There’s water in the valleys. I need to drink it .

Progress Not Perfection

I recently visited my daughter and was touched to see one of my paintings on the wall of her apartment. I was embarrassed, too. It was painted a long time ago. I paint better than that now, I said to myself. As I drove home, I realized I needed to look at the painting in a different way. At the time, it was how I painted. Yes, I’ve made progress, but I should honor the earlier effort. If nothing else, it reminds me I’ve made progress.

The lesson is one I need to practice in other areas of my life. When I recall a moment from my past, I need to resist the temptation to judge such a “work of art.” Maybe I would write it better now, handle a situation at work differently, or be a husband or father in a new way if it happened today. The key is to be compassionate to the way I “painted” back then. If I’ve made progress, then that’s something to celebrate, too.

As people, we are works in progress. If  only we could believe that - not only with our lips but in the way we look at our lives - we would find a new freedom and a new happiness, the kind that surpasses all human understanding.

“I’m not who I want to be, I’m not who I’m going to be, but, thank God, I’m not who I used to be.”

An old AA Saying