After glancing back over some of my latest posts, I realized that they are lacking in the good, juicy details of everyday life here in Mexico. I suppose these posts simply reflect the tendency of my thoughts: high, floaty, idealistic, and pondering, not grounded in details whatsoever. So, for the benefit of readers that might be wondering a little more about what life looks, smells, tastes, sounds, and feels like for an English teacher here in Parral, I’ll try to put my observation and writing skills to work and describe it for you in part. Of course, I'll probably tack on some of my floaty ponderingness just to keep things realistic. :)
In case you didn’t know, I live a house with three other twenty-something guys: David, Jorge, and Mica. I’m in the process of writing an entry about the details of my fellowship and interaction with these great fellas, so anticipate more good stuff to come about them later. For right now, just know that they’re incredible brothers, and I love them.
Our house is pretty sweet. We’re still in the midst of trying to acquire more niceties to make our home more homey, but at the moment, we’re quite blessed with everything we could need and then some. Our pastor’s wife gave us a complete living room set to use, along with a hideaway couch, a coffeemaker, a coffee table, an end table, and a lamp. Yeah, she pretty much furnished our whole house. I’m still trying to decide whether I’m more excited about the living room set or the coffeemaker. :)
School is going well right now. I teach 4 classes a day on Monday and Wednesday, and 5 classes on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. I confess that sometimes it’s still difficult to feel excited about teaching English (especially to my nutty 4th graders, chatty 9th graders, and apathetic 10th graders), but let me tell you, I find it hard not to be excited about teaching my 12th grade History class. This fact encourages me that I could still find a career in teaching someday.
We arrive at the school to teach at 7 am, and classes end at 2 pm, although we don’t really leave the school until close to 3, because all the students have to be picked up by the parents before we can leave. Thus, school is a large part of the day. This is my first real full-time job, and I’m finding it interesting how much I am falling into the “Well, this is just my job: I’ll do what I have to do, and then I’m outta here!” mentality. I enjoy coming home and relaxing, and then start dreading having to go teach the next morning. This basically means that I’m “just getting by” for 35-40 hours of the week, waiting until I can go home and not think about school.
Pretty lousy attitude, huh? God is using this mentality to show me how stinkin’ selfish and lazy I am. Towards the end of the school day, all I can think about is how David and I are going to get home (since we don’t have a car, and rely on friends for rides most of the time), and what we are going to eat for lunch. I only do the work that I have to do, I don’t think about how I can improve my teaching techniques, I resent my fellow teachers when I feel like they are “outperforming” me, and I although I teach my classes sufficiently, I usually only do it because I have to, not because I want my students to learn. Ugh. Lousy.
Seeing all this crap in myself makes me come to God feeling guilty, insufficient, and below the standard. So I read the Bible to feel better and try to “gain points” with God. Then I read verses like this:
He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom and our righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Therefore, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
Perfect truth and perfect life. Completely right and sufficient in the sight of God. Being made into the very nature of the holy Father Himself. His blameless life traded in exchange for my rotten core. All in the Son, Jesus Christ.
Paul’s right. That IS something to boast about.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
search for significance
Why do I want to “count” so much?
I was just recently pouring out some frustration to God, lamenting about my desire to be consumed with living for his glory and not my stupid, selfish demands for comfort and a painless existence. I actually thought it was a rather holy lamenting (to be frank) and I figured God would probably like what I was saying, although I think I was saying in sincere humility, not just trying to impress myself with words spoken out loud. At the end of my “holy” complaint, I said, “My life just doesn’t count at all without you, God!”
And then I heard this small little whisper: Why are you so consumed with “counting”?
It suddenly dawned on me that when I think in terms of my life, I think about it “counting” for something. In fact, I think much of my life has been a constant pursuit for significance. Allow me to illustrate using some honest examples.
I think that a subliminal reason for my coming to Mexico was due to the fact that I wanted my life to seem more significant than it seemed when I was at home. In other words, I felt that my going to Mexico would be a way to gain points for “a life well lived”. By “sacrificing” the comforts and conveniences of home and living abroad for a year, I would receive greater kudos from God, my peers, and myself: “Good job, Billy: you sacrificed and did the good Christian thing. Enter into the ‘significant life'".
Perhaps another example is my need to feel significant is through my interests. Theology, Scripture, philosophy, history, music, and literature are good examples of what I usually think and read about day by day. Most of the reasons why I pursue these things is due to the fact that I think they lead to “the Ultimate”. I have often thought that by pursuing the “higher” disciplines, I would somehow attain to the “secret” of life, and not be bogged down by the stuff that is imbedded in real life. That way, once I understand and attain the “Ultimate secret”, then I’ll be significant, and my life will “count”.
Confusing, huh? I’m surprised I got all that out of my gray matter and into written words. If you understood all that, congratulations. If not, that’s ok. The important thing is, I’m consumed with being significant. I want everything to “count”. Actually, unless I’m way off, I think we all do to some degree.
So what do I do with this? We (or at least I) have a great desire to have significance in our lives. Therefore, we try to create the significance. For me, I study and read the “higher” things, trying to figure it out. Or, I try to seek the significance in relationships and find fulfillment through other people. I really like the good feeling that comes to me when a whole roomful of people laughs at my joke, or pays attention when I talk intelligently about some important matter. I’ve known some guys that found their significance in having the biggest biceps or nicest six-pack, or girls who feel like they “count” when boys turn their heads when they walk past. Or, closer to home, do we find our significance (to borrow my friend Ryan’s expression I just read on his blog) in being the first to top the spiritual mountain of “holiness” (or the appearance thereof)?
And if we do all these things, even if they are good things, is that the true significance that lies ahead of us in the Promised Land of our inheritance in Jesus Christ?
I was just recently pouring out some frustration to God, lamenting about my desire to be consumed with living for his glory and not my stupid, selfish demands for comfort and a painless existence. I actually thought it was a rather holy lamenting (to be frank) and I figured God would probably like what I was saying, although I think I was saying in sincere humility, not just trying to impress myself with words spoken out loud. At the end of my “holy” complaint, I said, “My life just doesn’t count at all without you, God!”
And then I heard this small little whisper: Why are you so consumed with “counting”?
It suddenly dawned on me that when I think in terms of my life, I think about it “counting” for something. In fact, I think much of my life has been a constant pursuit for significance. Allow me to illustrate using some honest examples.
I think that a subliminal reason for my coming to Mexico was due to the fact that I wanted my life to seem more significant than it seemed when I was at home. In other words, I felt that my going to Mexico would be a way to gain points for “a life well lived”. By “sacrificing” the comforts and conveniences of home and living abroad for a year, I would receive greater kudos from God, my peers, and myself: “Good job, Billy: you sacrificed and did the good Christian thing. Enter into the ‘significant life'".
Perhaps another example is my need to feel significant is through my interests. Theology, Scripture, philosophy, history, music, and literature are good examples of what I usually think and read about day by day. Most of the reasons why I pursue these things is due to the fact that I think they lead to “the Ultimate”. I have often thought that by pursuing the “higher” disciplines, I would somehow attain to the “secret” of life, and not be bogged down by the stuff that is imbedded in real life. That way, once I understand and attain the “Ultimate secret”, then I’ll be significant, and my life will “count”.
Confusing, huh? I’m surprised I got all that out of my gray matter and into written words. If you understood all that, congratulations. If not, that’s ok. The important thing is, I’m consumed with being significant. I want everything to “count”. Actually, unless I’m way off, I think we all do to some degree.
So what do I do with this? We (or at least I) have a great desire to have significance in our lives. Therefore, we try to create the significance. For me, I study and read the “higher” things, trying to figure it out. Or, I try to seek the significance in relationships and find fulfillment through other people. I really like the good feeling that comes to me when a whole roomful of people laughs at my joke, or pays attention when I talk intelligently about some important matter. I’ve known some guys that found their significance in having the biggest biceps or nicest six-pack, or girls who feel like they “count” when boys turn their heads when they walk past. Or, closer to home, do we find our significance (to borrow my friend Ryan’s expression I just read on his blog) in being the first to top the spiritual mountain of “holiness” (or the appearance thereof)?
And if we do all these things, even if they are good things, is that the true significance that lies ahead of us in the Promised Land of our inheritance in Jesus Christ?
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
on my worst days
Last Tuesday was pretty terrible. I’m sure I’ve had worse days, like the day I had to put my dog to sleep, but last Tuesday was pretty rough. To begin with, I went to bed late the night before (at midnight) trying to finish some work that needed to be done before the morning, and was awoken by my housemate, David, who knocked on my bedroom door half an hour before we had to leave. Now, some of you might have been able to handle this well, but I don’t like being rushed in the morning. My mother can tell you that in order to be properly civil in the morning, I need to either have a shower, a cup of coffee, or have at least one solid hour elapse since I left the bed.
Therefore, low on sleep and in the confused haze of not feeling prepared for much of anything (let alone teaching classes to 4th graders that don't speak English), I arrived at school overwhelmed with being behind on a ton of work and upset that I didn’t have time to write a meaningful email to my dad on his birthday. I hastily began preparing for my classes, trying to figure out what to do with my 10th graders, most of whom had just failed the test I gave them the week before.
After my first set of classes, I returned to the office, where I hastily began to down a granola bar and some yogurt while simultaneously trying to put together a decent lecture for my history class. Then one of the teachers told me that I couldn’t eat in the office. Now, there was a simple reason for this request: some important people were in the office, talking to the Directors, and apparently my eating granola and yogurt in the office didn’t look professional. However, my reaction was far from this calm consideration: WHAT?! I can TOO eat in the office—I’ve been eating in this office for the first day I got here! What are you talking about?! It’s my right, this isn’t fair, I’mgonnaRRGH,BRYK,ACMSHNACKUM… and there I went off in my mind, just like Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny makes him blow his top. I managed to stay calm on the outside, grabbing my granola bar and yogurt and walking out of the office with a thunderstorm furiously raging inside my head.
Now, things began to get a little better after I cooled off and got out of the office. I began to think about what made me react so violently to a simple request. I realized that I desired my right to eat in the office (which is only a selfishly perceived “right”, at that) to be upheld more than I desired the cares of my fellow teachers to have a school that presented itself well.
Then a more profound thought entered my head (by the grace of God, from whence I’m convinced all profound thoughts originate): I follow Jesus the Christ, who gave up every right he had (all of which were TRUE rights, being the Creator of all existence) to come to dirty, rebellious human beings and bleed, suffer, and die on a Roman Cross so that nasty, self-consumed people like me could be saved from the wrath to come and be brought into the Kingdom of Light (see Philippians 2).
So, Jesus hung on a Cross so that selfish little fools like me who prize their “rights” so dearly could be shown that there’s something far greater to live for than my desire to eat my breakfast wherever I want. Ouch.
Therefore, low on sleep and in the confused haze of not feeling prepared for much of anything (let alone teaching classes to 4th graders that don't speak English), I arrived at school overwhelmed with being behind on a ton of work and upset that I didn’t have time to write a meaningful email to my dad on his birthday. I hastily began preparing for my classes, trying to figure out what to do with my 10th graders, most of whom had just failed the test I gave them the week before.
After my first set of classes, I returned to the office, where I hastily began to down a granola bar and some yogurt while simultaneously trying to put together a decent lecture for my history class. Then one of the teachers told me that I couldn’t eat in the office. Now, there was a simple reason for this request: some important people were in the office, talking to the Directors, and apparently my eating granola and yogurt in the office didn’t look professional. However, my reaction was far from this calm consideration: WHAT?! I can TOO eat in the office—I’ve been eating in this office for the first day I got here! What are you talking about?! It’s my right, this isn’t fair, I’mgonnaRRGH,BRYK,ACMSHNACKUM… and there I went off in my mind, just like Yosemite Sam when Bugs Bunny makes him blow his top. I managed to stay calm on the outside, grabbing my granola bar and yogurt and walking out of the office with a thunderstorm furiously raging inside my head.
Now, things began to get a little better after I cooled off and got out of the office. I began to think about what made me react so violently to a simple request. I realized that I desired my right to eat in the office (which is only a selfishly perceived “right”, at that) to be upheld more than I desired the cares of my fellow teachers to have a school that presented itself well.
Then a more profound thought entered my head (by the grace of God, from whence I’m convinced all profound thoughts originate): I follow Jesus the Christ, who gave up every right he had (all of which were TRUE rights, being the Creator of all existence) to come to dirty, rebellious human beings and bleed, suffer, and die on a Roman Cross so that nasty, self-consumed people like me could be saved from the wrath to come and be brought into the Kingdom of Light (see Philippians 2).
So, Jesus hung on a Cross so that selfish little fools like me who prize their “rights” so dearly could be shown that there’s something far greater to live for than my desire to eat my breakfast wherever I want. Ouch.
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