This week in one of the academies I was very pleasantly surprised by God via my students. I co-teach a Discipleship of the Artist class, which really means that the teacher who REALLY knows what to do teaches, and I am the surly enforcer of proper student behavior. The main teacher is a film-maker who has been doing a remarkable job getting the kids to REALLY look at the songs they listen to, the movies or TV shows they watch, or the art they look at. Throughout the first semester, she would send the kids home with an assignment and she would collect the papers, not saying what her purpose was. The first paper had a question: What movie, or song or piece of art moves you to anger? I did the exercises as well, and my answer to this one was the scene in the movie Forrest Gump where kids from his school are chasing him on their bicycles and throwing rocks at him. Further on into the semester, the teacher asked us to select a movie , song or piece of art that "got it right". My choice here was the scottish runner in the movie "Chariots of Fire" who told his sister (who could not understand why he wanted to run in the Olympics) that "God made me to run fast, and when I run, I feel His pleasure." The last paper she assigned was to pick a song, movie or piece of art that moved us to action, to want to change something about ourself. My selection here was Handel's Messiah, primarily because Handel was opposed for taking sacred Biblical texts and placing them in secular environs. He did not waver and he stayed the course that he felt God had called him to.
Alrighty then - this teacher brings back these papers and then looks at me and tells me to be quiet (pretty hard to do for me), and then reads my responses to the class and asks them what is the thread that connects the things I had written about. One child said -
"It goes beyond Mr G hating bullies. It's more like Mr G hates it when people won't let other people be who they really are. Forrest Gump was different. The runner was different. Handel was different."
Wow - to be nailed to the wall by a 13 year old student. I had never connected the dots like that before.But the student was right - I DO hate it when the world around us won't let us be who and what we want to be - or are called to be. I was that weird little kid that other folks felt awkward around sometimes. Not much has changed - I am just a larger version of that weird little kid. But now I am hanging with folks who let me be who and what I am. I love to teach... because I learn so much. What a racket - they actually pay me so I can go to school and learn from my students.Mr G
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