today in class

me: Corey did you see Harry Potter last nght?
Corey: Nah I don't watch Harry Potter.
Me: Well you should. Harry Potter's awesome.
Corey: Isn't he a wizard thing?
Zivana (from the other side of the room): Who's a lizard?


hehehe

remember

Have just come back from our Remembrance Day assembly. It was really beautifully done, and good to see all of the kids in our school standing quietly and respectfully (despite heat and discomfort). I would have to say that this has been the first time I have seen the whole school body brought together in unity and respect for something, teachers and students, and with hardly any coersion at all.


As the last post played and we entered our minute's silence I thought about the different world that seems to have existed at the time of WWI. A world where young men and women would offer themselves to fight because someone required it of them. A world where the tragedy of millions of lives lost could happen.

Our modern world has grown out of that. Individuals would not be willing to fight and die in those massive numbers nowadays. And that is a good thing isn't it? Our society wouldn't be caught dead on a killing field at the hands of the authorities? No way.

And then the minute's silence ended and the reveille began. And as my heart quickened, I remembered another thing our society has 'grown out of'-

the hope of ressurrection.

from little things

I am thinking about this song right now. My Year Ten History class have been listening to it as a way of remembering the names and story of the Wave Hill protest and it's making me remember some other stories. Like Jesus' ones about the mustard seed and the yeast. From little things big things grow.

It's the way the world works and it's direct evidence that goodness is much bigger and quieter than noisy, ineffectual evil and destruction. And yet my mind insists on defaulting back to the assumption that I need to see or do this or that RIGHT NOW, witness immediate effects, and if I don't then I'm doing something wrong.

Two minutes ago I saw evidence of that big, quiet goodness residing in and working away through a Year Ten boy whom I have despaired over many times this year. What does it mean God? Are you bigger (and quieter) than the sadness and waste I'm confronted with in these teenagers' lives? Are you still present and working away? Can goodness work away right next to evil?

And am I so lucky, have I become so used to a glut of goodness in the people around me that I am unable to see it quietly working in my kids?

It makes me want to stop. And breathe. And rest in the small acts (very small) towards goodness that I am able to do.

And you can take those small acts, watered with the kind of despair that chooses to trust something bigger than itself anyway. And if we wait...