Month: August 2017

It’s about You. It’s about the collective Us

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I saw The Last Days of Judas Iscariot and it hit me right where I needed it to. I’m re-reading the play and stumbled upon this gem in the first few pages.

I also think that religion gets a bad rap in this country and that non-maniac-type people who are religious or spiritual have a responsibility to stand up, be counted, and gently encourage others to consider matters of faith and to define for themselves what their responsibilities are and what it means to try to be “good.” It’s not about joining a team or a church or choosing sides or learning a prayer. It’s not about man-made concepts of good and evil. It’s not about doing “enough” or “too little.” It’s not about shame and guilt. It’s about You. It’s about the collective Us. Thomas Merton said, “To be a saint means to be myself.” What if that were true? What is it that we need to overcome in order to truly be “Ourselves”? I won’t pretend at all that this play answers that question, but if it provokes the question in you, then please let it. Ponder it. Because we need you.

—STEPHEN ADLY GUIRGIS NEW YORK CITY, 2005

Guirgis, Stephen Adly. The Last Days of Judas Iscariot: A Play . Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

From Education Week: Honesty In The Fight: What ‘Game of Thrones’ Teaches Us About Education Discussions

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I’ve been thinking a lot about trust, honesty, and transparency lately. Here’s something I put together for EdWeek.

 

There are always three ways to handle a difficult conversation: you can skirt around the issue; hoping someone understands your meaning; you can simply run from it; or you can stand up, look the problem in the eye and tell it like it is.

Jon Snow definitely tells it like it is.

Many people watching the Game of Thrones season 7 finale watched with bated breath as Jon Snow decided whether to lie and gain allyship with an enemy queen or tell the truth. Many yelled at their televisions when the King in the North (the aforementioned Jon, for those of you who don’t watch the show) decided to tell the bold-faced truth and potentially ruin that allyship, frustrating his current allies in the process.

I, too, was struck by Jon’s honesty, and wondered about the need to lie to help the greater good. Then, Jon Snow said something that stuck with me the rest of the night. He looked his frustrated allies in the eye and told them, “We need to be honest with each other if we’re going to fight together.”

I was struck by the simplicity and truth of that line, and how much it applied to so many aspects of our life. If we’re going to be on the same team, we have to trust each other. That means being transparent, up front, and telling our truth even when we think it’s difficult for other people to hear.

The thing is, once that trust is broken, we start playing Littlefinger’s game in our heads. At one point in the finale, Littlefinger, an aid to the Lady of Winterfell, asks her to imagine someone’s worst intentions for doing things, to see if the possible reasoning matches up.

Once we lose trust and faith in the word of those we seek to ally with, it is difficult to trust their intentions. It becomes harder to assume they want the same things we do and for us to grow together as a team. Disagreements and tension can be worked through, but losing trust means losing the ability to be vulnerable and honest with those in the trenches with us. Without trust and transparency, we cannot challenge each other to do better.

How many of us have lost that trust on our school teams, within our community, or with our students? How many of us are unable to trust that we all want to move forward despite disagreements, and thus have been unable to make that progress?

In order for growth to happen, we have to model honesty and trustworthiness by having difficult conversations because we know that they’re important. We have to make the first step to look our problems in the eye and name them so that we can fight together. We have to challenge each other to be better, and we need to disagree sometimes in order to grow everyone’s thinking. Is it scary? Yes. Can it threaten our ability to ally? Sure. But if we all name the real problem, we can all move towards a common good.

And our students deserve that. They need us to be honest and upfront with each other and with them so that we can fight the common enemy of systemic oppression and educational inequity. When done with the right intention, it is the compassionate thing to do. It allows us to demand the best and push each other and allows others to challenge us when our own thinking needs to be changed.

So, we need to trust each other to fight together. Without it, we find ourselves isolated and weakened. We can’t afford that now since we know that the winter of our national discontent is no longer just approaching. It is here, and only our work together can begin to let the light back in.

The Ragged Sweetness of My Own Voice

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“You need to get up now. I need you to get up.”

I am kneeling on a cold floor, sobbing into bedsheets.

“You need to get up now.”

I brace myself against the command, the voice thick with emotion and wet with tears. I grasp tighter at the soft cotton, the smoothness of it against my palm soothing. I shake my head, sobbing harder. My anchor-heavy heart sinks further into the ground, the leaden weight ripping a track down my gut as it goes. I open my mouth, and my sadness begins to tumble out and patter to the ground like broken shells, each one cutting my throat and making a thin, little wail and cough each time they hit the floor. I actively open my jaw wider, as though I could let out all this feeling, all this hurt, all this stuff out with tears and small-hurt-animal-sounds. I shake my head again, so sure I will not be able to get up, sure I will not be able to pick up my keys, sure I will not walk out the door. I am sure I will be anchored forever by the bed, in a broken harbor of my own making.

“You have to go now. You have to do this. I need you to do this.”

Even more strained, the seriousness makes me snap back to myself. I struggle to take a few deep breaths, my own inhalation rushing into me like ice. I blink my eyes a few times. I cough, the last few shards of sadness sputter out again, cracking once they land.

Stop. Breathe. Again. Good. ”

“You know you need to get up now. You know you can do this.”

I nod, recognizing the voice as my own. When panic hits, the separation between the head and the heart becomes so clear, so precise, that it’s jarring when the wall shatters and comes down.

Still, after years of begging others to help me come home, I take a deep breath, and hear my own voice– ragged and strained, but still sweet and drunk on its own agency– bring me back to myself.

“You know you can do this.”

I take a breath again. I see so many faces, people who have wrapped themselves around me like warmth in the storm, nodding as I finally, for the first time, come into myself as master of my own fate.

Today, that fate is merely picking up my keys and being able to leave the house.

I take another shuddered breath. I nod to myself again.

I pick up my anchor-heart. I feel the weight of it in my palms, notice how my arms strain to carry it. I sweep away the bits of my own sadness, mindful not to get cut, not scared if I do. I listen to my own broken voice, a siren’s call, begging me to come home. My throat is ragged with painful truths. I hear the sweetness of its own power. And I leave the house.

Today, that small victory is the flag on top of Everest. It’s the medal at the end of the marathon. It’s the ravaged warrior, finally come home again, not dead as once-believed but scratched, beaten, scarred, and smiling that they came out the other side.

Today, the call was my own voice. Today, I listened and came home.