Infinite Space

 

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space...."  Hamlet, II.ii

The picture above is from my new classroom at Guerin Catholic High School, where I will begin my thirty-first year of teaching this fall.  This room is significantly smaller than the one I inhabited for the past seventeen years or the one six before that at the public high school where I taught for the most recent 23 years of my three-decade career.  In fact, it is so small that I will only teach there the IB students, the smallest of my classes, teaching all the rest in other rooms.  Yes, for the first time in my career, I will be a traveling teacher.  When I first learned of this arrangement, the line from Hamlet above blazed through my mind, for this is no way a downgrade, but rather the most blessed of opportunities.

I had felt the call to be a teacher, which basically meant following in the family business, long before the day during my junior year at New Albany High School when Latin teacher Miss Alice Ranck made the offhand comment that Antioch was the first place where people were called Christians.  Without citing chapter and verse, she was referencing Acts 11:26, and I heard Jesus say as if He were sitting next to me, "You can teach this subject and be a Christian presence in public schools."  And so I did for thirty years.  In a middle school in Kansas City, Missouri; at a high school, community college, and university in Austin, Texas; and at a high school and university in Indianapolis, Indiana, I have taught Latin and Classics for three decades.

Eric Leveque and I after our Latin II classes lost in a war with the French classes

After retiring from public education in May of 2021, I now find myself employed once again, but in an openly Christian environment, replacing one of my former student teachers, Eric Leveque, who left his teaching position to pursue a law degree.  There are perhaps those who would question a move from a large, flourishing program in a building with space to hold a personal library of thousands of books, and so would I, although I suspect my question arises from a different motivation.  My question is simply, "Why, O Lord, would You allow me the privilege of teaching in a place where Your name is glorified?"

Why does that matter?  Isn't the teaching of Latin or any other subject merely the transmission of knowledge from someone who knows it to someone who does not?  This view of education, narrow to the point of inaccuracy, unfortunately holds sway in too much of our society, from the common conception of what a school should be to departments of education in our universities, yet those who follow Jesus Christ, Who claimed to be truth itself, know that there is much more to education.  John 1:3 observes, "All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made."  In ways we may not fully understand, all truth, all goodness, all beauty have their foundation in Jesus, and so it can only be in a Christian context that anything approaching the full knowledge of math or history or literature or art or any other subject can be approached.

Years ago Isaiah 50:4 struck me profoundly.  The Latin text of the Vulgate translation reads, "Dominus dedit mihi linguam eruditam ut sciam sustentare eum qui lassus est verbo.  Erigit mane, mane erigit mihi aurem, ut audiam quasi magistrum."  A literal rendering into English would be, "The Lord has given me an educated tongue so that I may know how to sustain with a word the one who is weary.  He rouses early, early he rouses my ear, so that I may listen as if to a teacher."  Nothing could better capture what I have always tried to live out in answer to the calling I heard in my own Latin classroom so many years ago.  

God has shown me much over the past few months, drawing me ever closer to Him and guiding me as I empty myself so that there is ever that much more space in me in which He may dwell.  To that I end, the following verses of Scripture, slightly modified in places to reflect a first person perspective, give shape and structure to this next stage in my service to Jesus through teaching.

In ipso condita sunt universa in caelis et in terra.  Omnia per ipsum et in ipsum creata sunt, et ipse est ante omnia, et omnia in ipso constant, in quo sunt omnes thesauri sapientiae et scientiae absconditi.  Deus Pater eripuit nos de potestate tenebrarum et transtulit in regnum Filii dilectionis suae, in quo habemus redemptionem, remissionem peccatorum, quia in ipso complacuit omnem plenitudinem inhabitare et per eum reconciliare omnia in ipsum, pacificans per sanguinem crucis eius, sive quae in terris sive quae in caelis sunt.  Ergo doceo omnem hominem in omni sapientia, ut exhibeam omnem hominem perfectum in Christo, in quo et laboro certando secundum operationem eius, quae operatur in me in virtute, permanens in fide fundatus et stabilis et immobilis a spe evangelii.

In Him all things in the heavens and on earth have been established.  All things have been created through Him and for Him, and He Himself is before all things, and all things hold together in Him, in Whom all the storehouses of wisdom and knowledge have been hidden.  God the Father snatched us from the power of darkness and bore us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in Whom we have redemption, the remission of sins, because it pleased God for all His fullness to dwell in Him and through Him to reconcile all things, whatever is on earth or in the heavens, to Himself, making peace through the blood of His cross.  Therefore I teach every person in all wisdom, so that I may present every person complete in Christ, for which I also labor by struggling according to the work which is at work in me in power, remaining rooted and established in faith and unmovable from the hope of the good news.

In ipso...constant/In Him...hold together in Him Colossians 1:16-17

in quo...absconditi/in whom...hidden Colossians 2:3

eripuit...peccatorum/snatched...sins Colossians 1:13-14

quia...sunt/because...cross Colossians 1:19-20

omnem...virtute/every...power Colossians 1:28-29

in fide...evangelii/remaining...news Colossians 1:23