Secular School Holy

It was all over the news.
The students had pulled the fire alarm, 
Waiting for everyone to exit the building,
And then started shooting.

The very next morning
My school had an unannounced fire drill.
The shrieking, electric alarm blared in our ears.
My students looked at me,
Eyes wide with fear.
Eyes that said, "Do we really have to go out there?"
I was scared too. 
I told them so.
But we went
Out of the class,
Out the double doors,
To the grassy area 
Where we might be sitting ducks.
I told them all to be ready to...duck.

But nothing happened.

When there's a school shooting,
Online postings flood the computer screen with laments:
That shooting happened, 
Those children died,
Because we have chased God out of the schools.

I've pondered how to respond to those postings--
To nostalgia for a supposedly simpler time
Masquerading as theology.
Very simple theology.
But there is nothing to say.
And too much to say. 
And so I say nothing.

They think that God is found in compulsory, 
Generic prayers said out of habit.
The kids don't even think about what the pledge means.
They think this would be any different?

They think that by chasing out the prayers, 
They chased out God.

So God is either powerless or pouty?

Perhaps God is there,
But not in the places 
People think to look for holiness.

In the beginning was the word...

It is the gospel of the power of words I preach. 
My students are full of words.
They talk and they talk and they talk.
They overflow words.
Spew words all over each other. 

But when I ask them to write about the right words at the right time,
Or about a book that changed their lives,
Or about a deeply held belief,
They give me blanks stares, 
And apparently blank minds. 
The thought had never occurred to them that words 
Might be more than recreational.

Many of them go to church
But claim no words touch them,
No beliefs define them. 
Many of them don't go anywhere 
Where big ideas get discussed, 
Where the power of words
Has any power.

My ministry is to baptize them into the power of words,
Secularly speaking, of course. 
Baptism by immersion.
We dive into stories, 
Essays,
Memoirs,
Novels.
We read, discuss,
Write, share,
And repeat. 
Until they know the power of them,
Until an astonishing detail from writing shared aloud
Can make the whole class gasp.
A kind of Amen.

And it is holy.

For a time I taught my daughter:
Raised Presbyterian, 
Attending Youth on Wednesday night.
And she was friends with a Jewish girl
And a Muslim girl.
One day I saw them, 
Christian, Jewish, Muslim,
Walking in a line, 
Laughing together in the hall outside my classroom door,
Heading for my class.

And I thought, watching them, 
That in a world where suicide bombers 
Can kill people over lunch,
In a world where kids pull fire alarms 
And shoot their classmates,
That the sight before me-- 
Made possible by this secular setting--
Three people bound not by fear or hatred, 
But by laughter...
I thought, watching them,
That this is an absolute Good.
This is holy.
And if God is anywhere,
He is here. 

But his ways are not our ways.