Got Education?

My brother, who is a dairy farmer, can easily relate to the farmer who said "The problem with cows is that they don't stay milked." The life of a dairy farmer is one of consistency and repetition: twice a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. When you get a day off, it isn't because the cows aren't getting milked, it's because someone else is doing it.

I hesitate to refer to our students as cows, but there is some similarity between cows and milking, and students and educating. I guess you could say, "The problem with students is that they don't stay educated." They forget what they have been taught, or at least "misplace" the wisdom that we have given them over the years. They seem to develop their own ideas of how things should be done, paying little attention to our concerns and advice. It's hard to blame them really; they are young and the world is at their doorstep. They live with gusto and enthusiasm. They sometimes think they know it all, when really they have so much to learn.

"The problem with students is that they don't stay educated." Maybe it's not really a problem after all, at least not entirely. There is, tucked somewhere between the unbridled joy of seeing students learn and the pain of seeing them make poor choices and even fail, a blessing in not staying educated. It causes us to grow and mature, to develop a more reflective perspective on life, and to be constantly reminded of our reliance on God.

When a milk cow stops being milked, her usefulness in life is, for the most part, over. We too become less useful when we stop being educated. So, here's to education, not only in school but also (and especially) in life. May we (students and adults) keep learning and growing so that we can keep loving and serving. After all, I'm not yet ready to be put out to pasture!

Thoughts on an 80 MB Hard Drive

It was the early 1990's, though I don't remember the exact year. I was at a friend's house, and he was telling me about how he had recently upgraded his computer. He had doubled his hard drive space, and now he had 300 MB! Yes, 300 megabytes! My computer was limping along with 80MB, but truthfully, that seemed to be enough. I will never forget my comment to him: "300 MB? What will you ever do with that much storage space?" Talk about a lack of vision!

Today is May 21, 2010. With hindsight I can see how shortsighted my comment was. I focused on what was on my hard drive, not what could be on my hard drive. I focused on the present, with no thought to where I could be in the future. It is almost humorous to think now of how far we have come since the days of 80 MB hard drives. Now we speak in terms of gigabytes and even terabytes. Megabytes have become like pennies; sure, they are still part of the currency, but who really takes the time to count them?

There is always a tension between the reality of the day and our vision for the future. I am a very practical person, and I insist that things work in reality, not just in theory. Yet today I make a plug for vision. Twenty years ago my 80 MB hard drive was working fine, thank you. I didn't need anything bigger. Yet in today's world I would have trouble fitting my vacation photos on the drive, let alone the program needed to view them. At Providence we are often caught between the reality of today and our vision for tomorrow. It is important that we do not neglect one for the other, for they are both critical. As we finish up what has been a challenging yet very good school year, I am compelled to look ahead and dream of where we might be in two years and five years and ten years. And when I do look ahead, I am encouraged, for the same hand of God that has guided for eight years will guide for eighteen and for eighty. We will change, but he will not. And in that reality we begin to understand why we must have vision, for even when the shadows of the day make it difficult to look ahead, we clearly see our God, like the pillar of fire that led the Israelites, in front making all things plain.

Losing a Friend I Never Met

See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.

Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land. (Song of Solomon 2:11-12)

Every spring for what seemed like a hundred years, legendary Tiger broadcaster Ernie Harwell opened the baseball season with those words from the Bible. Ernie, a devout Christian, died this past Tuesday evening, and part of me died too. My childhood and even adult summer memories are filled with his soothing call of a Tiger game, and I actually shed a tear for a man whom I never met, yet who was somehow my friend. As others have recalled their memories of Ernie, they usually have nothing to do with how he called a game, though he did have some well-known lines. Almost always it comes down to who he was, how he cared for others, and his humility. It is the humility part that seems to amaze most observers. How many famous people remain humble? Yet to the last of his 92 years he put God first and others ahead of himself. He said repeatedly that he was ready to meet God; I have a suspicion that God was pleased to welcome Ernie to his new home.

I wonder how I will be remembered. Will others look at my accomplishments or my character? Will people care that I simply gave, or that I gave because I cared? We are blessed at our school by many people who give of time, talents, and resources because they care, not because they are looking for earthly glory or praise. May we all, like Ernie Harwell, serve our community with humility, so that when we are “looooong gone,” others will remember us not for what we did, but for who we were.