Slope lessons

And, what a gift is granted when you can laugh with your students even when you teach them that life isn't fair; nature doesn't care; God only intervenes at will (and their opposites).

But, there is a joy when we hit the slopes. When we release and fly toward God, when we navigate over or through the moguls, when we know life is coming. When in the classroom, we consider the hard with the solution --  the difficult with the sublime; the speed with the arrival.

However, let's be honest. My students are worried about life ahead. They don't necessarily fly with joy and skim happily away. It's serious business. Worry is real. Life and family strains are happening. Others are pulling them away from perceived truth. Other things are beckoning them to bound gratefully away from God and his pressures in cahorts with parents.  Life is happening to them. They need to find their own identities; their own faith; their own path wrought by problems, pleas, responses.

But, for the minute, today, they were my slope companions. And, seriousness and silliness knew no distinction. I felt like a conductor during a mountain festival; a gate releaser; a clown in the trees; a warm cup of cocoa at the end of a bitter wind.

Teaching can be invigorating. Smiles, laughs, and deep ponderings from my students can be the powder which softens any falls and makes a blissful spray along the way.

Selah. Amen. Merci. Word. Life. Graciousness divine.