Pomodoro, Jesus, and Rocky

 

How on earth could a timer that looks like a tomato, Jesus Christ, and the fictional southpaw boxer from Philadelphia named Rocky Balboa find their way into the same blog post?  A recent professional development session at my school had me pondering this very thing.

The Pomodoro Technique

The Pomodoro Technique is a strategy for time management that has been around since the 1980s.  The basic idea is that you set a timer, which may or may not be in the shape of a pomodoro (Italian for "tomato"), work on your task for that amount of time, take a break, and then set the timer again for your next task.

This is a great strategy and one that the learning coach at our school, Jeff Buckner, presented to us during one of our faculty Teaching & Learning sessions.  Many of our students struggle with time management, and this is an easy strategy for them to implement.  Of course, this isn't just for students, and as I began thinking about how this could play out in my own life, my thoughts turned to Jesus and Rocky Balboa.

Our Favorite Characters

Ezra Pound recalled the following anecdote, apparently a favorite of William Butler Yeats.

"A plain sailor man took a notion to study Latin, and his teacher tried him with Virgil; after many leassons he asked him something about the hero.

"Said the sailor:  'What hero?'

"Said the teacher:  'What hero, why, Aeneas, the hero.'

"Said the sailor:  'Ach, a hero, him a hero?  Bigob, I t'ought he was a priest.'"  (Homer:  A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. George Steiner and Robert Fagles, 1962, pp. 17-18)

This anecdote well expresses the reaction many people have had to the characters of Achilles in the Iliad and Aeneas in the Aeneid.  If you prefer your heroes to be sword-wielding, spear-throwing warriors, the kind that yell out that their commander is a "bloated drunk with a dog's eyes and a rabbit's heart" and fight a river...yes, a river...then Achilles is your guy.  If, on the other hand, you want your hero to be the kind of person who suppresses his own feelings of pain as he inspires his troops and will do whatever it takes to fulfill his duty to gods, country, and family, then you want Aeneas.

For years, I was an Achilles kind of guy, and for that reason I did not enjoy all that much teaching Vergil's Aeneid.  At some point that changed, but I still gravitate to characters that leave it all out on the field, even if doing so does not lead to victory.  In addition to Achilles, I absolute love Diomedes in Book 5 of the Iliad.

Thus toiled the chiefs, in different parts engaged,
In every quarter fierce Tydides raged,
Amid the Greek, amid the Trojan train,
Rapt through the ranks, he thunders o'er the plain;
Now here, now there, he darts from place to place,
Pours on the rear, or lightens in their face.
Thus from high hills the torrents swift and strong
Deluge whole fields, and sweep the trees along;
Through ruined moles the rushing wave resounds,
O'erwhelms the bridge, and bursts the lofty bounds;
The yellow harvests of the ripened year,

And flatted vineyards, one sad waste appear,

While Jove descends in sluicy sheets of rain,
And all the labours of mankind are vain.
⁠So raged Tydides, boundless in his ire,
Drove armies back, and made all Troy retire.  (Iliad 5.110-125, Alexander Pope translation)

I love Rocky Balboa, giving it all, even when he loses to Apollo Creed in the first movie, and my favorite opponent of his is probably Clubber Lang, whose grit and determination, even though he loses, are simply brutal.  Yet I sometimes wonder.  Are these the models that should inspire me the most?

Front-running

Prefontaine and Bowerman

In the 1998 film Without Limits, University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman (Donald Sutherland) is having a planning session with long-distance phenom Steve Prefontaine (Billy Crudup), who does not agree with his coach's philosophy of running.  After stating flatly that running any other way than all out and leading for the entire race is little more than the excrement of chickens, Pre explains.

Pre:  What else do you call laying back for two and a half miles then stealing a race in the last two hundred yards?

Bowerman:  Winning!

There is a great part of me that thinks as Steve Prefontaine did.  I am a highly driven person, and like Achilles or Diomedes or Rocky or Pre, I want to hit hard and give it my all.  And then there's Jesus.

Pomodoro Paul?

Jesus took time away from the demands of ministry to pray.  He got up early and separated Himself from the hustle and bustle of life to spend time with His Father.  He was never in a hurry and even stopped to address the needs of an unknown woman who had suffered from bleeding for twelve years while on His way to heal the son of the synagogue leader.  He famously taught His friend Martha not to be stressed out over things of lesser importance and to focus on what truly mattered.  And despite His seemingly slow and deliberate pace, He accomplished all He was sent to do.

What, then, is my takeaway from the Teaching and Learning session at our school?  I know myself well enough to acknowledge that I am wired for action.  I will probably still declare those lines about Diomedes translated by Pope when I am in my golden years and with as much thrill and excitement as I read them today.  Yet I want to reach that time and fulfill all that God has called me to do, and therefore it's not so much the action-adventure heroes that are my models for how to live, however much I may enjoy reading and watching their exploits, but Paul.  Paul was a hard-driven sort of person, shown first in his zeal for his faith searching out Christians to have them punished.  Yet once his life was transformed by his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, he approached life a bit differently.  Still passionate, although for a different mission, he would say go on to say, "I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 3:14, ESV)

Passion and drive are good, but they must be balanced with rest and restoration.  Fulfilling the call of God is more important than the thrill of any high adventure moment along the way.  I imagine that if tomato-shaped timers had existed in his day, Paul might have found value in the Pomodoro Technique.

Count No Man Blessed Until...

It is easy to look at someone and say, "Wow!  She really has everything together!  What a great life!"  It is easy as well to see another and say, "Ah, that poor wretch.  What a miserable life he has."  Yet a bit of ancient wisdom reminds us that we should not be hasty in making such pronouncements until we have seen the full span of a person's life.

Recalling Herodotus

Herodotus, 484-425 B.C.

I was in the drive-thru lane of a local restaurant with my daughter when I received the call that my Uncle Bob had passed away, and my immediate thought was of my mom.  She and her brother had always been close, but recently they had been talking by phone every day, and I knew she would take the loss hard.  My daughter and I immediately drove to her home to give her the news.

We sat around her kitchen table and, after the initial tears, began talking about Uncle Bob's life.  She recalled endless stories of how supportive he had always been, the father he was to his three children, and how he always had a book with him and was leading a book club right up to the time of his passing.  We talked of his faith in Jesus and that someone from his church had been coming to take him from his assisted living home for worship each Sunday.  Just before my daughter and I left, my mom said, "Bob was a good man."  I agreed and shared with her a famous bit from Herodotus.

Herodotus, known as the father of history, wrote his Histories in the 5th century B.C.  In Book 1 he tells of a discussion between Croesus, the king of Lydia and the richest man in the world, and the Athenian statesman Solon about what it means to be ὄλβιος, or happy/blessed.  Solon ends with a famous statement.

εἰ δὲ πρὸς τούτοισι ἔτι τελευτήσῃ τὸν βίον εὖ, οὗτος ἐκεῖνος τὸν σὺ ζητέεις, ὁ ὄβιος κεκλῆσθαι ἄξιος ἐστί: πρὶν δ᾽ ἂν τελευτήσῃ, ἐπισχεῖν, μηδὲ καλέειν κω ὄβιον ἀλλ᾽ εὐτυχέα.

If, in addition to these things, he still ends his life well, this is that man whom you seek, the one who is worthy to be called happy/blessed:  before he ends his life, refrain from calling him happy/blessed, but lucky.  (Histories 1.32.7)

Pressing On Toward The Mark

It is right that young people be told to think about and honor the dearly departed, but it is also right they give little thought to death itself.  Youth is the time of exuberance and perceived immortality.  This is as it should be, for the springtime of life in its physical, mental, and emotional aspects is one of daring creativity, of adventure, and even of risk.  One can hardly be a dreamer or swashbuckling adventurer while fixated by a morbid fascination with death.  The proper role of those in the middle to later years of life is, however, to ponder such things, to put life and death in their proper perspective, and having endeavored with the help of poetry and art and wisdom and faith to understand it all as best as possible, and to present that understanding to those who follow for consideration when their own time of pondering comes.

Solon was right.  Pronouncement about the happiness, which in its true sense means the blessedness, of a person's life can only be made after the race has been run.  Was the person "great out of the gate," so to speak, but not much for stamina?  The tortoise and hare come to mind here, as does what Paul wrote to the Philippians.

Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith -- that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.  Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Jesus has made me his own.  Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.  But one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  (Philippians 3:8-14, ESV)

Looking back at the evidence, I can say that my Uncle Bob's was a life well lived, and I think Solon would be inclined to pronounce it as olbios.  I know that Uncle Bob would say it was blessed because of the work of Jesus Christ, whom, like Paul, he acknowledged as Lord.  One of the blessings of death for those who are alive is that it presents us with an occasion to do a bit of the pondering that is necessary to keeping our lives on track.  Are we headed toward a good end?  If so, how will we keep our endurance to finish well?  If not, what changes must we make?  Who are those who have finished well who can serve as models and standards by which to measure our progress?  When once we have completed such pondering, we must return to the business of living, for no race can be finished well or poorly that is not run at all.

Robert E. "Bob" Carlile
1934-2022

A Lucullan Feast

A warm breeze ruffled his hair as he walked through the hotel patio.  A quick glance at palm trees waving in the Arizona sun brought a smile of recognition that he was indeed far from his frozen Midwest home.  As he pushed through the glass doors of the hotel lobby, carrying his monogrammed black briefcase, he stepped into the retro '60s chic of the Hotel Valley Ho and felt not a little like Connery Bond.  Striding across another patio, he was greeted by the smiles and welcomes of newly familiar faces and took his seat at nothing short of a Lucullan feast for the body, the mind, and the soul.

There was, of course, the food, actual food.  Five star offerings at breakfast, lunch, and dinner formed a savory backdrop for even more delicious conversation.  No rubber chicken dinner, this.  Gourmet offerings of meats and vegetables and soups served with china and linen strengthened body and spirit and allowed the mind to begin to imagine once again.

The mind, thus refreshed with physical sustenance, then partook of an intelligent, meaningful, useful buffet of workshops that combined the best instruction with ample opportunity for reflection and practice.  Technology training, policy discussion, communication techniques and avenues were all a part of the magnificent spread.  Talks, activities, and opportunities to process were arranged in seamless orchestration to produce an abundant flow of nourishment to minds remembering what it means to think and dream and live.

Yet it was the banquet for the soul that made the week complete.  A delicate combination of semi-structured and free opportunities for intelligent, educated adults to gather led to a soulful rejuvenation.  Beneath the cloudless blue of the Arizona sky, a truth was recovered.  Anything is indeed possible.

I am, of course, talking about the 2014 National Teacher of the Year Program Conference hosted recently in Scottsdale by the Council of Chief State School Officers, ING, the National Teacher of the Year Program, and People to People.  Some may think my phrase "of course" a bit misplaced.  After all, isn't it rare for teachers to have an experience like this?  Yes, it is rare, but it should not be.  It should be as expected as and more acceptable than the amenities-laden trips and conferences enjoyed by other professionals in our society.

"Ah, there you teachers go, asking for more things.  Why can't you accept your role as martyr-saints, put on your hair shirts, and be content with your locusts and honey?  We always knew you were just in it for the money and material goods."

The apostle Paul and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., both did great work from prisons.  It is possible, but it should not be the norm.  When the Roman emperor Augustus, after bringing peace to the Mediterranean world, turned his attention to domestic affairs in Rome, he wanted to bring about a flowering of the arts.  He did not attempt this by locking poets in a dungeon and ordering them to write with their own blood.  He instructed his friend Maecenas, a wealthy citizen, to provide for their needs.  The result was nothing less than the polymetric masterpieces of Horace and the Aeneid of Vergil, that magnum opus that has delighted and inspired generations for two thousand years.

Make no mistake, teaching is both a science and an art.  The scientific side receives much attention, but less so the artistic.  Not every teaching conference or professional development can feature all the components of the NTOY Program Conference.  Every teaching conference and professional development can, however, come close.  They can be guided by the spirit that acknowledges the humanity of this enterprise called education.  This is not about providing a soft life for teachers.  It is about creating the environments in which their bodies, minds, and souls can flourish, where they can dream, and where they can be inspired yet again as they lead our children on the shared journey of discovery.  As I rediscovered in Arizona, anything is possible.