The priest’s homily last Sunday was about being a good shepherd, mostly addressing the parent-parishioners. The spinster-parishioner, that’s me, felt a bit left-out because the monsignor offered no fat to chew on for my tribe.
It’s a grisly challenge for these so-called men of God, I surmise. In the pulpit, in front of a motley crowd, who do they speak to? Who do they choose as an audience?
But I am unfazed. If some priests inadvertently exclude my kind and refuse to communicate to me, there is ga-glug!! – self-reflection.
It’s quite a labor, really. But when life tosses a chance to replace slacker ennui with scary silent moments for big-time introspection, you just have to take them. Gives you more reason not to kill yourself.
So I talk to my alter-ego – how’s your good shepherding?
Well, mostly I am in the company of wolves so I don’t do much shepherding. My younger brother grew up with our grandparents. My youngest sister raised herself on her own devices. In short, they have become decent human beings because I was not their shepherd.
The closest I got to shepherding was when I tried my hands at teaching. I am far from a roaring success. In fact, I need to apologize to my students whose lives I wasn’t able to change for the better. I will always be proud of their achievements but the credit is entirely theirs.
I only learned about J.M Coetzee’s existence after I left teaching. His remarkable lesson “those who come to teach learn nothing” gains more meaning as I seek reaffirmation through my reflection.
I insisted not to be called “Ma’am” and I addressed my students as “classmates” because in essence, I, too, was a student like them, who had plenty of room to learn as I kept cheering that learning is not supposed to be an ordeal but fun.
Making efforts to repudiate the “banking concept of education,” the dichotomy of teacher-student became blurred. With the teacher’s table demystified, I only wish true learning was ushered in. It’s not for me to say how much or little my classmates learned from me but I definitely learned a lot from them.
If they hated being in my class, it does not diminish my victory because I learned something. I learned something because I made a decision to learn something, no matter what. What I store in my “baul” of learning cannot be taken away from me.
Just as the good Lord gave us the greatest gift of “free will,” I tried to be a good shepherd by giving my classmates freedom to think and learn. Of course, they were very much aware of my politics. I owed them that honesty, where I was coming from but I say this without blushing, no one can accuse me of tyrannically imposing my will on them. Besides, if I had to impose my will on anyone, it would have to be on Marcelo Rios or Jose Maurinho or those beautiful men in the “Tudors” or those vampires in “True Blood’.
My victory as a good shepherd wasn’t to create robots or mini-me’s. Whether those kids decided on becoming sheep or lambs or wolves, that’s out of my hands. What is important is they make informed choices. They may think of the world antithetically from mine or have a strong opposing opinion, it's less important. What matters is they have an opinion.
Apathy is the worst outcome of any form of shepherding. Love and moral courage and integrity, they are its best.
Belated Happy Mother’s Day to the best shepherd in the whole wide world – mothers!! Our own, our friends’, our phantom mothers, and the mothers in our fantasies.
It’s a grisly challenge for these so-called men of God, I surmise. In the pulpit, in front of a motley crowd, who do they speak to? Who do they choose as an audience?
But I am unfazed. If some priests inadvertently exclude my kind and refuse to communicate to me, there is ga-glug!! – self-reflection.
It’s quite a labor, really. But when life tosses a chance to replace slacker ennui with scary silent moments for big-time introspection, you just have to take them. Gives you more reason not to kill yourself.
So I talk to my alter-ego – how’s your good shepherding?
Well, mostly I am in the company of wolves so I don’t do much shepherding. My younger brother grew up with our grandparents. My youngest sister raised herself on her own devices. In short, they have become decent human beings because I was not their shepherd.
The closest I got to shepherding was when I tried my hands at teaching. I am far from a roaring success. In fact, I need to apologize to my students whose lives I wasn’t able to change for the better. I will always be proud of their achievements but the credit is entirely theirs.
I only learned about J.M Coetzee’s existence after I left teaching. His remarkable lesson “those who come to teach learn nothing” gains more meaning as I seek reaffirmation through my reflection.
I insisted not to be called “Ma’am” and I addressed my students as “classmates” because in essence, I, too, was a student like them, who had plenty of room to learn as I kept cheering that learning is not supposed to be an ordeal but fun.
Making efforts to repudiate the “banking concept of education,” the dichotomy of teacher-student became blurred. With the teacher’s table demystified, I only wish true learning was ushered in. It’s not for me to say how much or little my classmates learned from me but I definitely learned a lot from them.
If they hated being in my class, it does not diminish my victory because I learned something. I learned something because I made a decision to learn something, no matter what. What I store in my “baul” of learning cannot be taken away from me.
Just as the good Lord gave us the greatest gift of “free will,” I tried to be a good shepherd by giving my classmates freedom to think and learn. Of course, they were very much aware of my politics. I owed them that honesty, where I was coming from but I say this without blushing, no one can accuse me of tyrannically imposing my will on them. Besides, if I had to impose my will on anyone, it would have to be on Marcelo Rios or Jose Maurinho or those beautiful men in the “Tudors” or those vampires in “True Blood’.
My victory as a good shepherd wasn’t to create robots or mini-me’s. Whether those kids decided on becoming sheep or lambs or wolves, that’s out of my hands. What is important is they make informed choices. They may think of the world antithetically from mine or have a strong opposing opinion, it's less important. What matters is they have an opinion.
Apathy is the worst outcome of any form of shepherding. Love and moral courage and integrity, they are its best.
Belated Happy Mother’s Day to the best shepherd in the whole wide world – mothers!! Our own, our friends’, our phantom mothers, and the mothers in our fantasies.
6 comments:
Ate Dyn!!! Just passing by your blog and writing my first ever comment on your new site. i have a blogspot too, by the way! bingthegreat.blogspot.com - i had this before friendster...anyhoooo, i mean to tell you i feel the same way about my previous teaching stint. i miss it so!!! like you, i feel the need to apologize to those students i was not able to impart anything positive. they got a raw deal out of me - a teacher fresh out of college, more than a few of them were actually my classmates from elective or GE classes. sana, sana i get the opportunity to teach again and become a more dependable shepherd.
I am raising my hand as a not-so-docile member of your flock, shepherd girl. The wisdom and insight i get from your blogs and from our many many conversations have steered me to a certain direction. I will have to borrow the phrase you decided to label me with - you are the honest to goodness unbiological mother of all mothers. hehehe.
balit, jetsu. Ikaw ang inahan sa kanunay panabang. kadamo it anak-anakan, purbida. Pagprinaktis gud maging nanay, bangin la matuod, haha.
the non-biological/unbiological mother of all mothers - that’s you. No one else but you.
BING-o!!!Thanks for dropping by. Hope you do it more often, i know you're kinda tied up.
I shall hook your blogspot to mine once I figure how to. Techno-saviness does not run in my family, so bear with me, k?
About teaching - some are born natural teachers, I guess. Don't fret too much about your own performance. What is important is you gave it your best shot. I am sure your students enjoyed being in your class. Ikaw pa.
Ako pa lugod. I got into teaching by accident. Unthinkable ngani kun huhuna-hunaon. Amo, I always apologize to my "classmates" every time I have an opportunity to do so if I screwed them up one way or another.
Dyn, nagkikita ka hin trueblood? how do you find it? have you read all the books? were you able to watch all the episodes on cinemax?
you're the first person in leyte to have mentioned the show. I am so bursting at the seams (literallY) with facts from the show and the books and have no one to discuss it with. In all honesty, no one has watched the show ha leyte ada (none that i know of). yehey! dri na ako nag uusaan.
MK, I have not read the books, i am not even aware that there's a book-series.
Nagkikita la ako hito because I like the idea of vampires sneering at humans as lower lifeforms, hehe. Tapos, the show's creator, Alan Ball, was also responsible for "6 Feet Under," which I sort of followed.
A friend has a DVD of True Blood, hope I can borrow so I could watch it again.
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