Getting to volunteer at my kids’ school has been a gift of this year. I lovingly joke that I have one kid who is mad if I don’t wave at him when I’m there, and one who is mad if I do.
Last week I helped with a pizza party for select kids who met a fundraising goal. I volunteered to pluck certain kids from their class line outside the cafeteria and escort them across to the church atrium where the pizza party was. To do this we needed to cross the empty church sanctuary.
The first time I walked across the wide room I was reminded of the uniqueness of an empty quiet church. Years of worship leaves a place with a crowded silence and stillness. Whispers of sacraments and prayers and songs marked by old wooden pews and the faint vestiges of thousands of lit and extinguished candles.
Even for my own family, the room held a decade of memories. sitting in the “crying” room with our new daughter as sun slanted through warm stained glass. Holding back tears as the congregation applauded on Mother’s Day; the amount of swollen bellies and brand new bundles in abundance around the room mocking our emptiness. And I may never forget climbing across an entire row of kneeling school children, in heels, to catch my altar-bound toddler one particular Ash Wednesday.
The church is friends and family, baptisms and makeshift folding chairs on Christmas Eve. Holding space and welcome and unspoken love, and it is home.
As I escorted a group of first graders, one commented incredulously, “The church looks WEIRD all quiet”. And I smiled.
When I think of certain places I’ve been in my life, whether well-worn or a singular visit, I am reminded that wherever else I may be, it still exists without me. The patch of woods between my grandparents house and the cemetery is still subsisting, perhaps another five-year-old has found respite among the sumac bushes. The outcropping of rocks in Cinque Terre, Italy is still there, providing the perfect picnic area as it did twenty-some years ago for college students contemplating the transition into the ”real world”.
And we forget the power of place for the children in our lives, but it is there. As they form the fragile memories of every moment the where is the unconscious backbone to their experience.
I read last week that we should include environment when we write IEP’s (Individualized Education Program) for our kids. We need to adapt for the classroom next to the cafeteria and the desk next to the window. To teach strategies when the floor echoes too loudly and the fluorescent lights are too bright.
As for my own children, I am inspired to introduce the awe that place holds; the ceiling at the Basilica in Minneapolis, the habitat and history on the banks of the Minnesota River, an old stone fireplace to gather with friends, and the stable comfort of the yellow maple outside the safety of our kitchen window.
*** This week I read The Element by Ken Robinson. This one has been on my recommended list forever. I’d suggest it for anyone still trying to figure out what to “be when they grow up”…at any age. Lots of famous examples of people who found the cross section between natural ability and what you love to do.
Teaching the Good Stuff 