A Roman Devotional

Sometimes, one is driven by the exigencies of service to speak about things that come abruptly to one's sparsely prepared mind. The response is difficult, the pressure is dire, the words seem too small to convey and contain what is too large. And thus it came to me while in the shower today, that the Romans have a lot to answer for, and have a lot of answers for which there are no questions.

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Here is the Roman meditation that I am about to say something about. It comes from the letter to the Romans, chapter 12, verses 1-6a.

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgement, in accordance with the measure of faith God has given you. Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given us.

What is clear is that we are all gifted. And the tragedy on display is that this is masked, defeated, debilitated. By conforming to the statistical, logical, socially-constructed patterns of this world, we ensure that the laws of 'normal distribution' require us to describe each one of us as 'above the mean', 'below the mean' or 'within n standard deviations of the mean' – as if these mean something. The truth is simple: we are multifactorial, talented in a myriad ways. To put ourselves into any of the world's reific and disintegrative ways is to deny an holistic truth and to make atoms out of whole people. It is the Bertrand Russell way, but it is not the way of God.

For we are all, once we subject ourselves to sober judgement, gifted to an exact degree which only God knows – but the assurance of faith is that we ARE gifted. In fact, we are gifted so much that we need not think of ourselves too highly, or too lowly; to do either would be to spurn the gracious power that has been given to us for a lie of our own device. We must renew our minds, banish all thoughts of numerical ratings, and be transformed.

At this point, everyone will rise up and condemn what seems to be my misplaced idealism. Well, I don't think that God calls for a lower standard, and I am not saying that. I believe that numerical ratings cannot capture the excellence that comes with being your best. It is not possible that your best is worse than any grade the world can give you. If you are an IB student capable (as far as God knows) of scoring 44 points at best, then 44 points is honourable, distinguished, powerful; the same goes if your God-given limit is 34, though – then 34 would be excellent. With this reasoning, I hold all my students to a higher standard than I can possibly demand on my own: can you be the best that you can be? Can you see yourself as being licensed to touch the face of God and be a finger of His hand in this world?

But how would we know what our best is? There are two things to ponder. The eagle is a symbol of Roman might; the prophet Isaiah also used it in his inspirational message: "You will soar on wings like eagles." Note: you will not soar on eagles' wings, but on wings like eagles. It is the difference between the numerical grades of this world (mere wings) and the excellence of God (something like wings, but better). It is only on the wings of the spirit and of the Spirit, that you can reach above the surly bonds of earth. You were all made for better things; the best is yet to be. You were all made gifted and talented; why should you despise yourself? And lastly, there is nothing normal about your distribution.

Forget the patterns of this world. Transcend them. Think of the box, because you are constrained to; think beyond the box into the vault of the heavens, because you are more than atoms. You are what you are, and that is no mean thing at all.

Daylight 04

I've spent more than a decade at my current workplace. It's a somewhat more permanent temporary home than most. Much of that is due to the people – colleagues, adjunct staff, other adults; most of all, the students who pass through the millrace. Some people treat the job as just a job; this is to be expected, because to some people, it really is. Some people draw a solid line between professional and personal lives, which is ethically ideal to them.

I think that's not possible. It is unethical to have teacher-student relationships which do not partake of the personal. There. I've said it. This is because the profession and calling of the teacher are inextricable from the ministry of caring. Teaching, the art of shaping a contrary mind, is by nature intensely personal. It isn't like engineering, in which no person-person interface needs to be deployed, and in which humans need not communicate directly.

That's not to say that a teacher cannot keep a professional distance or make professional decisions. But it is true, by the nature of things, that these actions must be explained in professional terms with full awareness of the personal considerations which might develop from them or which are intrinsic to them. And so I have to say that I cannot be a friend to my students until they graduate, while being friendly and encouraging and knowing that I have invested emotionally in them. I am de facto a friend, but I cannot advertise it or even demonstrate it at times. That will have to wait.

It is sad to be unable to return what I have so often been granted by the grace of my students. But I try to compensate for it, and I hope that sometimes it comes close.

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Here is my fourth decade, which has just passed on.

I became a head very much against my own will at the end of 1996. 1997 then, for me, was traumatic and vastly irritating. I attempted to climb down at the end of the year and was told that I shouldn't, as I was doing a good job. It is interesting to see what that translates to in the minds of men. It was in that year that I was told to keep a professional distance from my colleagues, to spend time with the 'right people', and to increase my exposure in the 'right ways'. I felt that these were some sort of pseudo-Confucian-Buddhist instructions and ignored them.

My personal ethics, of course, made things awkward. I never took any of the staff I appraised out for a meal, whether singly or in groups. I gave them all presents, each and every one, every year. I pushed for bonuses and rewards whenever they deserved it. I ran the largest department in the country, doing all the paperwork and writing endless position papers. And I hated every minute of it. It was all about administration, you see, and that's not my gift. And so, a quick digression.

The gift of administration is the talent for instinctively seeking and finding the best possible way to simplify the job for other people. An excellent administrator makes life easier while achieving or surpassing the required objectives. An effective administrator achieves or surpasses the objectives, but might not make life easier. An exacting administrator makes life hard enough so that the objectives will be achieved at the very least. And an egregious administrator makes the work harder than it has to be and is unclear about exactly what the objectives are. I was effective, but not better than that. I don't have much of the gift, if at all.

I earned my Master's degree in 1999 and did lots of amazing and wonderful things (well, looking back , I can see how they weren't really that great, but they seemed that way to me) for the next five years. At the end of 2004, my time was up. I returned to the ranks of the teachers, no longer a head of the game. 2005 was the happiest year of my life in the school.

For two years now, I have been largely policy-free, largely administration-free. I have worked with true gems of colleagues, brilliant diamonds and resilient sapphires, tough jades and lustrous pearls. I caught up with my professional life, while (I hope) remaining an asset to the place in which I live and work and have my being.

Most importantly, I continue to find more time for students. My brain is at their service while it still contains enough connections to be of use. Of course, I will continue to infuriate people. I cannot help it; we are enjoined not to conform to the pattern of this world. And perhaps, those of you who read this will see me with kinder eyes, understanding that the pattern can indeed be broken, and I have done that in at least one way through the gifts I've been given.

You who have your own gifts, your vast and unexplored worlds of talent, break the pattern in your own way. And someday if you should be in a tavern in Marrakesh or Dublin, lift a glass to my memory – if that memory was kind to you.

Hashish Speaks

It never mattered whether the Old Man of the Mountains was sane or not. The Assassins would carry out his mandate ruthlessly, even if not quite as efficiently as the true professionals. And in the end, history decided that they were all a footnote, albeit a quirky and interesting one. The world is full of such stories, and some are actually part of history; some are actual parts of history, and some have parted with history.

I have always been intensely curious about the patterns that appear to repeat themselves. But like the curling surface films found on an ancient keris, that wavy-edged sword of this region, repetition is an illusion - only similarity and parallelism remain. And those themselves are often illusions of elision, illusions of allusion. Games, every one of them, with players long gone and some imaginary.

The knives are out again. May the right birds be plucked and skinned, may the right feathering be done. Patterns repeat.

Ideology

what the old soothsayer said
julius ignored the fix was in
a long march that blossomed red
a storm of daggers thrust within

now here we are in winter
beware the ides of december
the gun assails the sprinter
two years past can you remember

we live and die by fractions
each half month brings its quota by
salary saving actions
salutary salvations sigh

the ballad too unsubtle here
a broken sonnet shall appear