The image came to mind, in part, because I was trying to describe to her why I recently decided to stop attending and observing an amazing professor teach a second semester anatomy and physiology class. Maria was the one who encouraged me to be in touch with this professor if I was interested in teaching some day, perhaps at the college level. After meeting with him, he presented me with various opportunities to observe/potentially help TA a biology-related class. I chose the only option in Burley, 2nd semester A&P.
At the get-go I was behind, partly because I went harvesting in Colorado with work and while I did take my book and study some, I was either too tired or too focused on spending time with my coworkers. Coming back I worked to catch up. It was a learning experience in and of itself to realize the level of commitment/dedication one needs to take a class and work, particularly a job with sometimes long and/or unpredictable hours.
The professor was brilliant. In one class, I remember him picking up some red rags he used to clean the whiteboard, folding and twisting them carefully into a moebius strip, and showing us how the heart beats. Focused on creating a learning environment where students didn't feel overly pressured to memorize trivial details for a brief time, but to get a sense of the 'big picture' of A & P, and to be able to "tell a story" with the information they had learned. To connect things from molecule to the organism level in different body systems and give a sense of how each organ system helped the body maintain homeostasis (or dynamic equilibrium, that is, the process of maintaining a "healthy average" i.e. within healthy ranges of temperature/heartbeat/blood sugar/etc.).
If the experience was so great, why did I leave? I left because my life was tipping off balance and I had trimmed my sails to point me in a direction different from where I have been heading. Is it wrong to change your charted course? No. Is it wrong to just sail willy-nilly through the ocean with no sense of the kind of destination you seek? Yes, in fact, that can be downright dangerous.
I felt I was sacrificing too much time to something that was not bringing me closer to using a more complete set of my passions, but rather felt like I was pigeon-holing myself into a role I neither felt prepared nor called to at this time, after observing.
Do I still want to teach someday? Of course! Those have been the moments I have felt most alive, when I am able to teach. Do I feel called to be in a classroom? Ayyyy, I don't know. I think however I teach, it must be in a more active environment--where a lot of hands-on/practical/experiential learning takes place.
So what's with the rooms? Well, as I was describing this whole decision to Maria, I realized that I am at a time and a place in my life where I have the opportunity to explore different rooms in this hallway. There are good groups of people in all of them, passionate about their room, the good that they do there and ever-welcoming newcomers.
Am I called to spend most of my time in a few of those rooms for this season of my life? Yes, I think so. Which ones are most life-giving for me at this point? My job, planning adventures with friends, young adult ministry, connecting with my family, making music.
The challenge, I think, is to walk into a room, explore and learn what you can from the people there, and then say: "thank you so much, but I must be going." It's hard because the people there start to include you in their dreams for the future: "Well next semester there would be some opportunities for you to teach A & P...." You may even start to dream of what your future would hold in that room "Well, maybe if I was in some remote village, it would be helpful for me to have some general sense of human A & P--it'd be useful like knowing first aid..."
"It is good to be needed and wanted," my friend Amy reminded me as I shared my dilemma of having to "say goodbye" to this teaching observational period. And indeed, it is. But similarly to when a person realizes a relationship is not bringing them in the right direction, it's time to break up--and breaking up is not easy.
But, with every room I explore, I also find myself growing in humility--in honesty with my-true-self, my gifts, my limitations.
I begin to close with some excerpts from a book I was reading this evening by an amazing teacher, Fulton Sheen. It's titled: Way to Inner Peace.
We are all bent on attaining the new, but not sufficiently concerned with utilizing what we already possess. Everyone boasts that he loves to knock at the door of truth, but the sad fact is that if the door opened, many would die of the shock. (pg 17)
...
Knowing many things is different from knowing truth, just as a crazy quilt is different from a blueprint. Ten thousand isolated bits of knowledge do not make for understanding, any more than the mixture of all the bottles on the shelves of a druggist makes for health. A corpse has chemical elements as well as a live body, but a corpse lacks unity which only the soul can supply. What the soul is to the body, that truth is to knowledge; what the architect and his plan are to a building, that truth is to an education. (pg 17)
...
Education is presently directed to help students answer the question: "What can I do?" If a pencil were endowed with consciousness, it would not first ask itself: "What can I do?" but rather: "What am I?" "What is my purpose?" Once that was established, then the pencil would be prepared for writing. When our youth has discovered the Truth about life, two conclusions will follow: courage to be oneself, and humility to recognize his creatureliness: that being a product, a result, a creature of the Power that made him, he will seek with the help of that Power to be a man--aye, more than a man--a child of God! (pg 19)
And from later in my prayer tonight:
"For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them." -- Ephesians 2:10
"The Lord made us, we belong to him." --Psalm 100:3B
And so I hope and pray, that I may always remember WHOSE I am, and celebrate it, remembering that when I am in touch with that root of my being, my branches will grow sturdy and strong.
"All things must come to the soul from its roots, from where it is planted." --St Teresa of Avila
And a final story, as I was singing to open my time of prayer and reflection this evening, I couldn't quite settle on the right note by just hearing my guitar chords. I tried to sing the song anyways, thinking I may just settle in the right key eventually. Well, one verse in, that didn't happen, and singing was just weird and I had to stop, pluck out the right notes of the melody, hum, and find the right key.
The experience reminded me of what I have noticed--living without or with minimal prayer is kind of like singing a song you know in the wrong key and being constantly frustrated because you are off. And you can't get back in sync until you take the time to work through the basic notes slowly, and then take off from there. A jazz musician cannot improvise well without knowing the chords and tune to the melody.
Reminds me of another excerpt from Fulton Sheen's Way to Inner Peace:
"On the other hand, because a man knows the truth, his conduct will not necessarily be good. But at any rate, he had a map: he knows where he ought to go. If he gets off the road he will not blame his ductless glands or his grandmother. Even though he is off the road, he knows there is a right road."
May we all seek and find the truth, living it in the freedom of God's children!
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