This is Zaymar, inside the Mascot costume. He’s one of my students at Purcell Marian High School. A Sophomore, he plays basketball and is otherwise known for his cool dread locks. He and I clashed in one of my early classes because I called him out on something. Can’t remember what it was. I just remember the look he shot me. It was intense. I wasn’t sure I would ever recover in my relationship with him. But I guess kids give new teachers grace; grace once you demonstrate, over time, consistency, fairness, firmness, kindness, passion and competence. In any event, I have reached a place with grace with Zaymar.
Thursday night I stop by his basketball practice during a break from grading papers. It was the first time I’d seen him play. He’s intense. He’s a skilled player. I got a different look into his personality. I admire him.
Today, I show up at the football game. I buy a piece of pizza for one of his teammates. From within his suit, Zaymar sees me and signals to me. Raises a single finger and points to his chest. He’s not allowed to talk from within the suit; gotta stay in character.
“You wanna piece too?” I ask.
The mascot head nods.
I give a thumbs up and Zaymar follows me back to the concession stand. I buy another slice of pizza and Zaymar steps behind the counter, out of sight from the crowd. Up goes the mask; down goes the pizza slice. He looks happy. As for me: I’ve never seen a child eat a slice of pizza with a mascot face tilted backwards, on his forehead, like a flipped back baseball cap. First time for everything.
Later Zaymar passes me in the crowd. A colleague snaps this photo, along the western edge of Staubach Field at Purcell Marian – a field named in honor of Purcell’s famous grad Roger Staubach (Star QB and 2x Super Bowl Champ with the Cowboys). St. Francis de Sales Church is in the background. This was my family’s Church when I was growing up. I sat in her pews as a mere child, wondering about the haunting stain glass window that showed Abraham and Isaac living through the sternest of spiritual tests; wondering too whether there was something outside the ordinary happening each Sunday on the Church’s white stone altar. That was then. Now this Church looms above our football stadium and rises like a skyscraper outside my classroom window. It feels like I’ve come full circle.
It’s been a good week. I’m beginning to hit my stride as a teacher of Scripture to Sophomores. Today and yesterday, I find that sweet middle ground: where discipline, structure and depth of content meet flexibility, humor, friendship, and curiosity. For some time, I have imagined this sort of day. A day where an atmosphere exists in which the holy exchange of teaching and learning can happen. This mysterious exchange in which the contents of my soul can be passed to the souls of 100 new kids I already love.
I figured it would take 6 months. And it probably will before it becomes a fixed pattern. But today I catch a whiff of it. In my bell 5 class, Zakeem asks me a question that prompts me to respond:
“Well, what do you think the purpose of our existence is?”
“To get to heaven,” he replies.
“Perhaps,” I say. “But what if I told you God wanted that to happen tonight?”
“Die? Tonight?” He replies, incredulous.
“No. Live on earth in the same manner that God calls us to live in heaven,” I shoot back.
A look of stupefaction falls over Zakeem’s face.
“Look. Remember what we saw Jesus say last class. If you love him, you will hold his word in your heart. And such a one, the Father will love. And together Father and Son will come (and if they come, so too will the Holy Spirit come); they will come and make their dwelling place in you.” (This is a paraphrase of John 14:23)
“Zakeem, if the Trinity dwells in you, in what respect will your life in heaven be different than your life on earth?”
Silence. No reply. Stillness settles upon his face, a stillness that, in a high school student, is the equivalent of wonder. I feel as if the Holy Spirit has just fluttered past, like a butterfly with wings iridescent, lit up by some hidden glow. This moment comes and goes in a flash. I will never know the depths to which it struck him. But to me it was something: some kind of foundational stake in the earth.
In Bell 6, 3 kids share in the reading (as is custom) of Moses’s final address to the Israelites. I am struck by their reverence and by the respect with which their classmates listen (it took work to get to this point!). I blurt out to the class: “Hey, I’m curious: Do you think this class is lower, equal to, or higher in importance to what happens in Church?” I want them to know that our holy labor is of deep significance, not just a trivial Religion Class.
Without a pause, Samaya (a State Champion basketball player) raises her hand. She raises it above her head, palm flat, facing down, signaling a level, a high level:
“Higher,” she says, “we’re more engaged here.”
“Well, let’s say it’s equal,” I rejoin. “The work we do outside Church is equal to the work we do in it. I just want you guys to know that. You’re doing great work.”
A few minutes later, Brooke raises her hand: “Why did you leave medical school to go to the monastery?” she asks. Innocence in her eyes. Earnestness. Her question disarms me. I don’t think I have been asked that question more than 2-3 times with such directness. It pushes me off a cliff of thought and awareness into a kind of epiphany.
“Well, I discovered in the monastery something greater than healing the human body,” I say. “Something I wanted to research, to learn and bring to the world. So I went to study it. And ever since then I have been trying to bring what I learned to the world.”
“Dr. Tew,” she replies, with a smile.
I’m not quite sure what she meant by that. A calling I missed? A thought about what might have been?
Or was she saying something else?
Anyway, for me, in that simple instant, in that gaze of affection between student and teacher, I suddenly felt I had truly come full circle.
Here, in these walls, I work and teach and try to love, right in the shadow of the Church where, as I child, I first heard the message of the Gospel. Here I labor to heal and strengthen the human soul, in the same way a doctor labors to care for the body. It’s good to be here.
