Quarterly Review 2

On the wall near the spirituality space on the second floor of our home is a post it with a quote from Pedro Arrupe, SJ ( former Superior General of the Society of Jesus). It reads “una experiencia no reflexionada es una experiencia no vivida” - “an experience that is not reflected upon is an experience that is not lived.” Part of my nightly prayer involves review and reflection on the day, but a broader perspective can reveal themes that are missed. Sometimes we need to step back from examining the trees that make up the days and take in the forest of our lives. So every three months I'm stepping back, looking back, and mulling it all over.

This quarterly review is over a month late, but it's here. Last week I completed 7 months in Peru. A year ago today I was in Scranton at Orientation for JVC. Here's the wide view of the second quarter (March-June) of my 1st year in JVC.

Boom. Six months have passed since I left the States. Already I've completed one quarter of my JV experience. Where do things stand? What are the themes of the last three months?

•         Learning to Teach

•         Simple Living and Accepting Generosity

Learning to Teach

The big new thing this quarter (March 5-June 4) has been work. I'm three months into my tenure as an elementary school religion school teacher and let me tell you, teaching 1^st graders about Jesus is not my life calling. It's a good time now, but it's not what where I want to be on the very long-term.

How's work going? Well, it's hard. No matter how many reforms states try to impose on curricula and teaching methods, the fact of the matter is that teaching is a skilled profession. And while I am a very skilled person, I'm not a highly skilled teacher. That's because of two things – one, I haven't been trained to teach; and two, I haven't had very much practice.

I'm slowly making my way through The Skillful Teacher, the book that my mother said I should study if I wanted to be a teacher. That's about all the formal training I'll get while here with JVC. But I'm getting tons of practice, because I have to teach kids 5 days a week. I've learned some fundamentals in these three months. The first is that discipline is really really, really difficult. Sometimes you just have to accept that all 32 6-year-olds aren't hanging onto your every word. You can catch all of the students all of the time, and some of the students all of the time, but you can't catch all of the students all of the time. My classroom management skills have improved, and I don't feel like I'm the angry shouty teacher anymore.  Another big lesson I've learned is that being a teacher is much harder than being a student. If I learned anything in highschool, it was how to achieve maximal outcome with minimal input.* This skill is what got me through college.** But you can't BS teaching.*** If I don't have a lesson plan, the day is a hundred times more difficult. It's so worth it to take the extra time out of my weekend to come up with a plan for my classes and prepare handouts or other materials. My days go better and the students learn more.

But even after reading half of The Skillful Teacher and 3 months of baptism by fire practice in the classroom, teaching is still difficult. Fortunately, there's some key signs of hope. Just last week Hermana Rosario sat down with me to see how I was doing at Fe y Alegría. She opened the conversation by telling me that she'd talked with some of the other profes (“uh-oh,” I thought), and they all said they were contentos (which denotes “content,” but doesn't connote the same indifference that it does in English) with me. It was a a powerfully strong affirmation that I was doing ok. More importantly, even though this work is difficult, it's the right kind of difficult. It feels kind of like running. There's moments where I'm exhausted and just want to stop, but I know that if I keep pushing I'll break through that wall. Far from pushing me away from teaching, the last three months at Fe y Alegría have strongly reinforced the dream that teaching may be my vocation. I still think I'd prefer high school students, and a different subject, but I'm contento with the practice I'm getting in the classroom this year.

Simple Living and Accepting Generosity

The second big theme is poverty of spirit. This obviously connects to our value of Simple Living, and the fact that I just don't have much money. I've never been so limited by financial means in my life. I've always been frugal, but I've always had enough to buy the things I strongly wanted. In college I was often the friend with the most disposable income because I spent 24 hours a week working at the bakery. That's not the case anymore. Where once I earned $60 in 5 hours of work, not I'm earning $60 in a month. The money goes a lot father in Peru than it would in the US, but it's still a step into downward mobility.

The JVC commitment to the value of Simple Living is based on the Jesuit vow of poverty. As Fr. James Martin writes in The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything (LINK), “not being controlled by possessions is a step to spiritual freedom.” Having less stuff means that the stuff you have takes up less of your attention. The commitment I made to Simple Living is a commitment to freedom. It's a chance to be more open and accepting of what comes at me in life. Just the other day I was walking up and down the street trying to buy spinach and none of the stores had any. Two women who were sitting on the street corner (they sit there and sell cuy food) asked me what I was doing. 

“I'm looking for spinach but none of the stores have any.” I said. “How much spinach do you want?” asked one woman. “Just this much” I answered holding my hands up. “I have some spinach in my huerto (vegetable patch),” the first woman said. “Wait here. I'll be right back.” She darted around the corner and came back a few minutes later with a few stems of spinach in her hand and a smile on her face. “Here you go.” “Wow, thanks. How much is it?” I reached into my bag to pull out some money. “It's free. I'm giving it too you.”
“Oh but I should pay you.” At this point the second woman stepped in. “She's giving you spinach. Just take it!” I bowed to the extreme pressure of generosity. “Thanks so much. Next time I need spinach I'll come buy some from you.” We chuckled and smiled and said our goodbyes.

That's just one example of the way generosity works here. People are happy to give, sure that the good vibes will come back around. It's taught me to be more generous, which I've talked about before. But it's taught me to be more accepting. I've been learning to accept what is offered without attaching strings of reciprocity to myself. The flipside of “hay que compartir lo que hay” (you have to share what you have) is hay que recibir lo que está ofrecido (you have to receive what is offered). I can't always be the one sharing from my abundance. If I want people to accept what I share, I have to accept the abundance that they share with equal joy and humility.

*the technical term for this is bullshitting.

**Sorry to any professors reading this. But the truth is the truth.

***You can try. But your students won't learn.