Somebody Taught Me
Even the wise men in one's life can be wrong. Gerry makes his sixty-some years of life experience available to me in this role. He spent days considering a query I sent out to connect with my readership. If pitching advice given to a Braves hurler by an opposing minor-league coach can continue to have a dramatic secondary impact on people not involved in the initial conversation, what advice have you gotten that has made the biggest difference? Gerry had no specific answer and concluded that he is a better giver of advice than implementer of it. I was suspicious.
A few days later I met Elizabeth, and my suspicions squawked. Elizabeth is a pharmacist by training, but she spends her days guiding first graders as a teaching assistant. This is not a trajectory of experience one encounters every day, so I asked, what has been the biggest surprise you encountered in the first-grade classroom? What has been the biggest difference between this learning environment and the ones to which you grew accustomed in the technical complexities of drug interactions? Said she, intrigued both by the question and the process she described, somebody had to teach me. I was far enough removed, she admitted, from learning how to write that I forgot somebody had to teach me how to do that.
Somebody taught Gerry. Somebody taught you, and taught me, the very processes by which we have operated so automatically as adults on this April Monday. I combine the functions of scribe and scold fairly often, but my intention in this space is not to weigh us down with remorse because we can't name the moment at which we learned to write, or work hard, or say thank you, and the person who taught us to do each one. Delightful as ready access to that information would seem, my RAM is too limited. My thinking and actions would clog up as quickly as my straining OneNote app does if I tried to keep every detail of life's growth experiences. To remember that somebody taught me, and to remember, for a while, that Elizabeth reminded me somebody taught me, is reason enough for humble gratitude.
This realization can be more than pleasant, anonymous Muzak in the unobtrusive, impactless background of daily life. Just as the griots of gravitas like Gerry can occasionally be wrong, and still instructive, we can remember that we travel among first-graders. For most of us, our work, or school, or ministry environments don't include the hum contagious enthusiasm which signals the presence of six-year-olds, but, wait. Those we look to for wisdom and expertise in some areas are beginners in other areas, though typically lacking in the wide-eyed resilience of that age. They are still learning what we can readily assume, and proclaim, we have always known. Somebody taught Elizabeth. Somebody taught Gerry. Somebody taught me this week, and will teach me next week perspectives, which become assumptions, which become the subliminal underpinning of everything I think everyone else should automatically know. Remembering that my growth in grace is a haphazard thing watered by patiently particular encounters with other people deepens my roots in the fertilizer of gratitude.
Let's try again, readers. What reminder have you gotten recently that you didn't ALWAYS know what you take for granted now?
A few days later I met Elizabeth, and my suspicions squawked. Elizabeth is a pharmacist by training, but she spends her days guiding first graders as a teaching assistant. This is not a trajectory of experience one encounters every day, so I asked, what has been the biggest surprise you encountered in the first-grade classroom? What has been the biggest difference between this learning environment and the ones to which you grew accustomed in the technical complexities of drug interactions? Said she, intrigued both by the question and the process she described, somebody had to teach me. I was far enough removed, she admitted, from learning how to write that I forgot somebody had to teach me how to do that.
Somebody taught Gerry. Somebody taught you, and taught me, the very processes by which we have operated so automatically as adults on this April Monday. I combine the functions of scribe and scold fairly often, but my intention in this space is not to weigh us down with remorse because we can't name the moment at which we learned to write, or work hard, or say thank you, and the person who taught us to do each one. Delightful as ready access to that information would seem, my RAM is too limited. My thinking and actions would clog up as quickly as my straining OneNote app does if I tried to keep every detail of life's growth experiences. To remember that somebody taught me, and to remember, for a while, that Elizabeth reminded me somebody taught me, is reason enough for humble gratitude.
This realization can be more than pleasant, anonymous Muzak in the unobtrusive, impactless background of daily life. Just as the griots of gravitas like Gerry can occasionally be wrong, and still instructive, we can remember that we travel among first-graders. For most of us, our work, or school, or ministry environments don't include the hum contagious enthusiasm which signals the presence of six-year-olds, but, wait. Those we look to for wisdom and expertise in some areas are beginners in other areas, though typically lacking in the wide-eyed resilience of that age. They are still learning what we can readily assume, and proclaim, we have always known. Somebody taught Elizabeth. Somebody taught Gerry. Somebody taught me this week, and will teach me next week perspectives, which become assumptions, which become the subliminal underpinning of everything I think everyone else should automatically know. Remembering that my growth in grace is a haphazard thing watered by patiently particular encounters with other people deepens my roots in the fertilizer of gratitude.
Let's try again, readers. What reminder have you gotten recently that you didn't ALWAYS know what you take for granted now?
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