So it’s week 11 in my return to high school teaching. To date, I have taught my Sophomores the 1700 year old wisdom of Lectio Divina, with Latin names removed and a different title. I call it Biblical Exploration. Next, I have given them a helicopter tour of the high points of Holy Scripture. We flew over the mountain tops of Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, first and second Samuel, the books of Kings, the books of Tobit, Maccabees (two Catholic books) and Job, culminating, as of this writing, in the book of Psalms.
The Psalms – that flower bed, as Athanasius has called them – where the blooms of every other book of the Bible are culled and gathered and set forth in song. In song for the soul to sing in faith and love to a God who is hidden but mysteriously present. We paused deeply in the psalms. We let David teach us – without teaching – how to pray. We observed how he remembers what God has done; by stating it; by holding it in the heart; and then – the truth of metaphysical things now injected into his spiritual veins – by turning to God and praying from that enlightened state. From that state of true seeing. That state of spiritual seeing.
This we learned from the psalms. That was the third phase of the semester.
Today, we launch the 4th phase, which is to teach the children the Jesus Prayer. Only that’s not how I pitch it to them. I say: today we are going to do Theology Lab; we are going to DO Theology. We are going to take Scripture, put it into practice and see what kind of reaction results.
What do I mean? Well, the Jesus Prayer was first formulated and prayed around 500 AD. At that time, the global Christian Church was united. This unifying prayer is a concentrated dose of Scripture. It is nothing but Scripture. It is a combination of two verses: Mt. 16:16 and Luke 18:13. These verses – prayed from a heart that is poor, from a heart that seeks God – shoot from soul to heaven, from deep to deep so to speak, effecting in the process the very purpose of the Word of God: which is to elicit a response of love and faith from the heart of man.
We are going to learn this prayer today, I tell the class, and then we are going to do it. I proceed to give them a brief history of this 1500-year-old prayer. I run through the tragedy of Church divisions (the Great Schism, the Protestant Reformation) in a neat 95 seconds and then explain how the Jesus prayer can uniquely unite all the divided strands of Christendom. Because it is nothing more and nothing less than the cry of a poor soul to Christ Himself, rightly named and rightly understood. It is a cry for mercy to the heart of the merciful Christ:
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”
And if it is prayed faithfully, it has a transforming effect on the psyche and the soul. Of this I can personally attest.
How would this class and prayer lab go?
Well, I have 5 classes: 2 small; 1 medium; 2 large. For these classes, for this Lab, I decide to add a twist to my typical teaching approach. In contrast to my normal practice, I will require that no notes be taken. I will just present a string of stories to animate the history, purpose and practice of this prayer. And then we will pray it together. Both the learning and the lab will unfold in freedom.
Here’s a quick rundown of what happened.
Bell 1, my first class, goes great. It’s a small class; kids are glued to the story. I paint a picture of early Christianity and Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, where he calls early Christians to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). I explain that many early Christians wondered whether he was serious about this injunction. How was it be possible to pray without ceasing? I would get so bored! So distracted! Why would God even want that? I have so many things to do! Many read this letter and dismiss the idea as exaggerated and impractical. I level with the kids: these are reasonable objections.
But the monastic tradition takes up Paul’s concept and decides: no, he is serious. The monks figure maybe there is a way to deal with distractions in prayer; maybe there is a way to align prayer of the heart with a regular human life of action and labor and laughter and fun. These monks do a deep dive into Scripture and spotlight the attitude of soul of the Tax Collector in Lk 18:13. They note his deep humility before God, the beautiful posture of heart that Jesus praises in this man as he prays, head bowed before heaven: “God have mercy on me.”
Then they turn to Jesus’ daunting question to the disciples, on top of the mountain: “But who do you say that I am?” to which Peter bravely responds, as though reading a text message from heaven: “You are the Christ, the son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16). This spiritual insight, Jesus tells Simon, could have only come from the Father. So the monks take Peter’s phrase, this insight from heaven, and add it to the tax collector’s plea. The result of these two phrases, clicked together, is the Jesus Prayer, the perfect expression of the soul before God:
“Lord Jesus Christ, son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.“
I tell the kids this genius phrase, distilled like pure mountain water from the alpine heights of the Word of God, is a prayer that can unite all Christendom. It is a prayer that can be prayed by a desert monk, translucent in holiness, just as surely as by a 15 year old high school student, with his myriad of pursuits, friendships, classes, part time jobs, sports teams and social media. It’s a prayer that can be prayed once a day or 200 times a day.
The kids take all this in. And then I say, it’s time: it’s time to practice this prayer. I write the prayer on the board, invite those who are comfortable doing so to please pray it, in succession, after me. One child after another, like beads upon a rosary. I show them a white woolen prayer rope (pictured here), given me by a desert monk for the purpose of counting out these prayers. I pray first, then place the prayer rope in the first child’s hands and wait to see what kind of reaction will ensue in this most unique of Theology Labs.
What follows, to my émerveillement, is the formation of a kind of squadron of spiritual soldiers in their first week of boot camp: they raise, in respectful sequence, a battle cry of mercy to the King of heaven. It is something marvelous. Something you might expect to see along the shores of Galilee.
Next class comes in. It’s one of my large ones. O boy, are they ready for this adventure. Seems they have caught wind something different was afoot today. Their resistance is coiled like a spring; they are like a snake, ready to hiss. And hiss they do, led by two strong athletes, seated next to each other, in the middle of the room. Following their promptings, the class is distracted. Cannot settle. They love the no notes concept – it’s a free for all! No guardrails!
And so, led by their center and power forward of disruption, they lob up constant disruptions, jokes, banter. It’s a total mess. It is, for me, a deep disappointment, all the more so because it is in stark contrast to the prior class. I realize that what I’m seeing is a living version of the power of mental distraction, the power of psychic gusts of wind to blow away the feather of the spirit as it descends upon the still waters of the human soul.
As my gentleness has failed to rally the class, I move to plan B: how to deal with the demon of distraction? I cast it out. I separate the ring leaders; move one of them to an opposite corner of the room, while K, the main agitator, I move outside, in the hall. “He’s in time out!” the kids squeal. I express my strong displeasure at the inappropriate behavior in the class. I show a little intentional fire. I call them back in line.
And then a marvel happens.
They fall in line, as though by a touch of magic. The class now is ready to proceed. Now the story of the Jesus Prayer comes to lightly grip their hearts, insofar as mercurial 15-year-old hearts allow themselves to be gripped. At the end, we pray the prayer together, with the same marvelous budding sincerity I saw in Bell 1.
So now the test with my first large class is a success. I’m beginning to think I’m a good teacher.
Next class rolls in, Bell 5, my third and final class of the day (two more tomorrow). They dive into the Jesus Prayer like a fish into water. My teacher’s ego grows accordingly. We break for lunch then re-convene. Now, suddenly, food and sweet stuff in the veins, they are rambunctious, distracted; their attention spans are splintered, fractured. The contrast grates on me. Internally, I grow frustrated. Then comes a moment when this spiritual cacophony reaches its crescendo.
Over our 25-minute lunch break, I usually brew a cup of much needed coffee in my room. Today’s cup is full, cooling down, placed purposefully on the table next to the podium from which I lecture. There I also place tissues for the kids’ runny noses. At one point, 12 minutes into the second half of class, B, a female student, gets up to grab a tissue. I am presenting class material from the podium; kids are distracted; she walks to the side table, next to my podium, reaches out to grab some tissue. Next thing I know I hear this horrible sound of a metallic coffee cup, top off so it can cool down, pinging against hard wood, its piping hot contents glub glubbing out everywhere, on papers, on the floor, on my fragile spirit.
And there’s B saying “O, oops, Mr. Tew, I didn’t mean to do that!”
My inner temperature spikes to 112 degrees. The class, from so lofty a height, has spiraled into sheer distraction; my ambitions of being an accomplished spiritual teacher are dashed; and now I have a hot mess on my hands. A child has stepped into my “teacher space” and spilled my precious coffee which I won’t have time to re-brew before I have to sub for a colleague in the next bell.
O the things I could have said, the things I thought about saying! The things, thankfully, I did not say! My face goes expressionless, which is my social front for trying to keep my emotions in check. I ask B to sit down. I grab some paper towels and start cleaning up while the class happily spirals into more unruly chatter. It is, as teaching moments go, pretty much a disaster. So it seemed in the instant. A wrenching of what ‘til then had been a nearly perfect experiment in spiritual education.
I finish cleaning up. I turn toward the screen where my notes are displayed. I have not said a word in about 90 seconds. We had been talking about Psalm 83 at the moment of the spill; the Jesus Prayer lecture was already complete. This was our last Psalm lecture before we turn to Proverbs. The verse on the screen was “Those who walk through the valley of thorns will make it a place of springs.” I read it: my face expressionless.
“Ooh, he mad,” Zakeem shouts out, from the front row, in the delightful dialect of my African American students. He is a good natured, if slightly mischievous student; he means well. He’s just observing the obvious, with a degree of curiosity.
“It’s a test,” I muster, stoically: “Let’s see if a blessing comes out of it.”
I am referring to a theme we have much explored over the past several weeks and which is poetically expressed in this inspired line of David. The concept is that God, like a good coach, sends tests in order to strengthen us and bless us. I know this to be true but don’t feel it at the time!
Fast forward. The rest of class goes tolerably well. I have time to acclimate to my frustrations that the day was not perfect; that my kids were, well, kids; and that they could only sustain their spiritual attention for a certain amount of time. The day ends. After the final bell, coffee-spilling B stops by my class to pick up something she left. I take the opportunity to tell her I am not mad; that I was just frustrated; that I really was just hoping to have that coffee for the next bell. She says she is sorry for spilling it; I say I completely understand it was an accident.
It’s a sweet moment, the sweetest I have yet had with this young student. It’s a little blessing of connection.
Then I pack up and head to my car. And who do I happen to pass as I step into the parking lot? It’s K, the power forward of classroom distraction, the boy I had temporarily banished to the hallway for a few minutes in Bell 3. This K is a special young man and I like him a lot but he tends to challenge the boundaries. I walk over to him, tell him, hey, no hard feelings about sending you out into the hall for a few minutes. He says no problem. He understands. You sometimes get out of hand I tell him (he agrees) and today’s class was so important (he understands). We clasp hands warmly and I drive home: all the day’s loose ends reconciled. I’m feeling like I have found the blessing after the day’s testings and I smile.
But, if you can believe it, this was all just prelude. Friday comes and that means my other two classes await their turn for class. It’s Bell 4 (a mid-size class) and Bell 6 (a large class I described previously in ‘The Uncreated Wind’). These are both challenging classes. Would they have heard about my experiment with no notes? Would they concoct schemes of distraction given the day’s loosened guardrails? I wondered. . .
The day begins with a wink from heaven. I lead a men’s Bible study on Fridays at 6:30 am. We do not choose our readings; our pattern is to cycle through the set readings of the Sunday Mass. On this day, it just so happens that the Gospel reading is one of the passages from which the Jesus Prayer is drawn. I feel likes it’s a memo from heaven, echoing my work at school. I carry that memo in my heart as I walk the halls, praying silently, before the kids arrive. I come to the hallway outside my room. Shiny linoleum floors reflect the phosphorescent lights above. Beige metal lockers line the halls. An arched window opens unto light down at the end. I look outside the window, past the rustic wooden cross hanging in the center of the arch. And I spy a billowing pillow of rose-soaked morning clouds hanging in the sky. The clouds are like visual birdsong announcing the loveliness of dawn. I am moved; and then move to tackle the tasks of the day.
A few moments later Bell 4 comes in. This is a class that contains the 3 Maestros of Mischief I have previously described in ‘Mist in the Classroom.’ But today they seem to carry harps with them, so docile are they to the message; so angelic they seem to me. They drink in the stories, the experience of communal prayer. It’s a class in-flow and I marvel at it. This is the warm up.
With just a three-minute pause to catch one’s breath, Bell 6 rolls in. This is a class so large (26 students) it bursts the seams of my little classroom. Every seat is filled. How will this go, will it be like my other large class yesterday?
Quite the contrary. What unfolds is a large room of 15-year-olds settled, it seems, in one of Israel’s encampments, the glory cloud resting softly above this tent of encounter. There are no chains on their desks. I have mandated no notes. I have issued no threats. I have only given them an invitation to learn a prayer forged in faith 1500 years ago, lifted since to heaven by billions: by desert monks, nuns, pastors, priests, bishops, moms, dads, farmers, lawyers, doctors, peasants, secretaries, students and athletes. And their response?
O the marvel of 26 sets of eyes and ears looking at you, taking in this spiritual gift, in a manner I can only describe as quiet, respectful, thirsty. I could also add: in an atmosphere of love and faith. It is a feeling I never expected to have this year and which moved me in a way, changed me in a way, that I have only otherwise experienced in certain moments of fathering my own children. It was a moment that fathered me. It was something extraordinary.
But not so extraordinary as the moment when the stories stopped and we turned to pray. Mind you: I did not force the kids to pray. I did not reprimand or reprove. I explained the prayer, pointed to its words, written in caligraphy on the board, showed them the prayer rope I had been given by a holy desert monk, raised first my own prayer to Jesus, who was imaged by the icon and crucifix on my wall, and then invited them to join.
And then it happens. Like a choir of infant angels. Like a symphony of nascent souls whose music bubbles forth gently in strings and pipes running in waves, vertically, from earth to heaven. Like pearls being formed by some strange cluster of oysters in the air, one beat of an oyster heart after another, pulsing upward in jeweled balls of tentative, delicate life.
I have read, in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that the task of the evangelist is serve as a liturgist outside the Church walls, a liturgist in life. To labor as a lay priest to the nations so that the lifting up of new souls to God might be agreeable to Him, sanctified in the Holy Spirit (Rom 15:15-16). This text suggests that the Body of Christ is not just consecrated bread and wine; it is men and women drawn into communion with the living body of Christ Himself, who draws all men and women, including all 15-year-olds, to Himself.
I saw this happen today. And it took my breath away.
When the last child – dear, quiet and strong Deon – finishes his prayer and rises to hand me the prayer rope, I take it and lift up my closing prayer to Jesus. And I know: He is standing there, right there in our midst, as ever He said He would. I thank Him, out loud, before the kids, for this prayer, for this grace. For helping us to know Him. I pray for each child in the room, their families, their friends, their teams, our school. And I nearly weep out of tenderness, a tenderness some other lung has breathed in my heart. I pause and gather myself, not thinking it wise to show this level of emotion. I give the kids a break before the 2nd half of class and use the time to collect myself.
I will have to re-acclimate to this teaching life – now that I see the kind of stirrings, just beneath the surface, that I used to think only happened with the disciples in the Upper Room.
