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Sermon Index

THE TEACHER'S DREAM

by the Reverend John Parker Manwell
at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore
on the 3rd of June 2001

Reading

Rosemary Bray, a graduate of Yale, came to our ministry recently after making her mark at the New York Times Review of Books.

She grew up in southside Chicago with a violent and alcoholic father and a fiercely strong mother, who held her family together on welfare and menial work. Despite her mother's third-grade education, Rosemary says she learned to read "at her mother's knee." Books became her shelter and escape. Teachers in her parochial school, St. Ambrose, encouraged her, and in time, found a place for her at Parker, a liberal private school on the north side where no one had warned her that all her classmates would be white and well-off.

She felt alone. She endured daily torment from her classmates. However, she recalls one teacher who made all the difference. His name was Delafield Griffith. He believed in her. He orchestrated a faculty plot to cast Rosemary as the lead in a school play, the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland. Who could imagine Alice as black? She'll have to wear a blonde wig, one student said. "No," said Griffith, "she'll be herself." He told Rosemary's mother, "They don't know what kind of person she is, but they will." And they did.

Looking back, Bray reflects that "Mr. Griffith did a lot more than show them what kind of person I was. He showed me what kind of person I was. Until then, I had remained ashamed of who I was and all I could do was turn that shame into anger and silence Mr. Griffith helped me find my voice, glimpse my real self without shame The entire experience made me wonder what else I might be good at, and eager to find out."

Bray didn't learn of the faculty plot until many years later. But Mr. Griffith also told her something directly. She writes:

I had always had teachers who were interested in my scholastic abilities, especially at St. Ambrose. But Mr. Griffith's attitude ... was completely different [H]e spoke to me with utter straightforwardness, and always with a warm look in his eyes. As he taught us about China, he answered my questions about the Ming dynasty with unfailing respect, even telling me about books I could read if I wanted to. Of course I read them, which only increased my classmates' exasperation, but I didn't care. It was enough to see the slight smile on his face when I wanted to talk about something I'd read, or the way he listened to my theory about something even if I was wrong. I was still pretty quiet with most other people at the school, but in class with Mr. Griffith, I was vocal, energized, animated. He was my first real crush.
It's not hard to understand why. Mr. Griffith was as different from my father as he could be. He was kind. He never once yelled at me. He always paid attention to me. And he was the first man I ever knew who praised me. I can remember it so clearly. I was talking to Mr. Griffith in the lunchroom; we were sitting by the windows facing the courtyard. The sun was everywhere, and it felt like spring.
He asked me which subjects I liked best. I confessed to loving reading, of course, and told him how whenever I read, all the people came to life inside my head. "It's like having a movie screen inside my forehead," I told him. And then he looked at me, straight into my eyes.
"Do you know you're the kind of student that a teacher waits his whole life to teach?"
Nothing could have induced me to leave Parker after that; nothing my classmates could say would matter again. Mr. Griffith saw me, knew me for who I was and who I might be. It was enough.

Sermon

Rosemary Bray was a teacher's dream. She was curious. She wanted to learn. She loved to read, and her head was filled with lively ideas. And, of course, she was intelligent. But this morning, I want to talk not so much about Rosemary Bray as about your children, and mine, here in this religious community. No, not many of them are actually yours, or mine. Ours are grown, or we are single or childless. But we share responsibility for some 25 children, more or less, in our church community, a dozen of whom may be here on any given Sunday morning. These few are just as important to us as were the hundreds who flocked here in the heyday of our Sunday School forty years ago, whose counterparts today have left the city.

We think it's important to include them in the first part of our service. It gives them a feeling for the adult church, and it reminds us that children are part of our community.

But what do we offer them, after they have gone to their classes?

Parents know, intuitively, that they want something for their children. A great many of us who were active in the Sunday Schools and youth movements of our early years, dropped away completely in our twenties. When did we come back? A happy few, as 20- and 30-something singles, but more of us came back only after we became parents. Somehow, we sensed that we needed something for our childrensomething that some of us had in childhood, or perhaps something we wish we'd had.

But what was this something? We find it hard to explain. But when we try, it comes out something like this: they need to know how to think about God. They need to know the stories of their cultureBible stories, the life and teachings of Jesus. They need to know about the Moses and Buddha and Mohammed, about other religious traditions. They need to know something about our own UU tradition. We want them to learn to use their minds in pursuing religious questions. We want to instill values, want them to learn how to make hard ethical choices, maybe even to learn how to lead a good life.

These are the things we want for them. What do they get? Only the years will tellbut I've been talking with our teachers this week, and I want to tell you, I'm impressed. I'm a product myself of a Unitarian Sunday school and of our youth movement. My mother was a pioneer religious educator, who worked with Sophia Lyon Fahs, our legendary prophet of liberal religious education. I know how hard this stuff isand I know for a fact that I could not do it myself. When I was "shanghai'd" as a teacher, as a newcomer 40 years ago to All Souls Church in Washington, I quickly discovered that teaching talent is not hereditarythat through some quirk my brother and not I got all the teaching genes. I went to my mother for advice. I tried hard. But in my class of 6th-grade boys, I failed to stir any interest at all in our assigned subject Did you ever know any 6th-grade boys with a great curiosity about the Bible? But they had immense curiosity about discovering, each week, new ways of tipping over the table.

To understand what we offer today, you first have to understand that times have changed. It's not just that we have fewer kids, so we have fewer classes and a broader age-range in each. It's not just that we have more theological diversity in our congregations and less consensus about a curriculum. It's that no curriculum at all is practical these days, because today's young parents are too busy to bring their children to church with any regularity. So there can be a different group of children in class each week, and there's no way to establish continuity. Each lesson must be self-contained.

This is ironic. The continuity problem first arose with teachers. Even when kids can come regularly, their volunteer teachers don't want to miss church all year. So, most of our churches nowadays rely on rotating teams of teachers. But we at First Unitarian are blessed to have a complete team who are here on a regular basis.

I will not dwell on those who care for the youngest, for whom we try simply to provide a warm and safe environment and activities to occupy their interest and engage their energy.

But beginning with 5-year-olds, we have a team of dedicated volunteers, Betsy Mackey and Tim Gardnerboth parents, both much loved. And for the 8-year-olds and up, we have Ann Margaret Russ, our first paid teacher, who brought to us not only a love of children but professional skills in art and teaching. Ann Margaret has since become a member of the church. She is here, faithfully, all through the year. Right now, we have no youth group.

The necessity of planning a self-contained unit each Sunday must be daunting for our teachers, but can also be a blessing. The teacher can't look to decisions made by others and built into a curriculum. She must ask herself each week, what do these children need? And, how do these separate units fit together?

I spoke with Betsy and Ann Margaret about how they decide. Their answers moved me deeply. Would that we as adults were as intentional in planning our own religious journeys.

They take our UU principles seriously. They want the children not only to understand them, but be able to apply them in daily life. Take our first principle, which emphasizes the inherent worth and dignity of every person. How can it guide us in relation to people who seem differentmaybe minorities, those in wheelchairs, or those who children are tempted to put down because they are not "cool," or "in." Can we learn to treat people with respect, even if we don't like them? Conversely, when we are on the receiving end of taunts and put-downs, how can we protect our sense of selfhood and remember that no matter what others say, each child is in fact a lovable and capable person?

A public school teacher might raise these same questionsbut our teachers go further. They ask what higher standard we must set ourselves just because we are a church.

There is more, especially with the older children. There are habits to form that will add to the depth dimension of our lives in years to come: How to enjoy our own company when we are alone, without the crutch of television, radio, the Internet, or music of any kind; how to enjoy the world of nature; how to look critically at our own work and behavior; how to take the long view of life, deferring gratification and enjoying work; how to get out of ourselves and put a value on serving others; how to develop a special respect for the needs of others who may be weak or vulnerable?

How, also, to value a healthy diet and lifestyle? How to accept the ambiguity of life, finding beauty in it and in all living things? Hardest of all, our teachers try to remember that what they do has a far greater influence on children than what they say. These goals could just as well govern your life or mine. They are not unique to children. We would do well to take them to heart as goals for our own spiritual growth, here in the church.

Rosemary Bray found recognition, in spite of being poor and black, because one teacher could see that she was, in fact, so capable and so intelligent, and very much wanted to learn. She could have been any teacher's dreambut first you would have to see past your stereotypes of her as poor and black and therefore stupid.

The world is filled with children who are not in any teacher's dream, sometimes not even in any parent's dream. Children who don't seem capable and smart, who do not read, who resist every effort to arouse their interest, who act out in the classroom. Children no one believes in. Children without a future.

Yet it is our faith that there is moral worth and dignity in everyone. A seed of the divine, awaiting the warm rain and sunshine of human love. Our teachers look for that seed in every child, here in our church. Is it not our task, as adults, to do the same with each other, and with all whom we meet on the path of life? It is not so much that we wait all our lives to find that seed of the divine in one, exceptional person. It is that we cultivate the habit of looking all our lives to find that seed of the divine in everyone we meet.

It isn't easy. Often, we'll fail. Many days, I am accosted by people looking for money. I grow cynical about their storiesand even when I believe them, will a few dollars help or hurt? Other days, I am frustrated by difficult people, people who seem neither to care about others or even to listen. What would it mean to believe in them? Many days, I feel trapped by people who feel trapped by life, who can no longer see themselves as anything but victims. How can I awaken hope in their lives when it has dried up?

And yet and yet Just as any one of us could be a teacher's dream, is it not true as well that within every one of us there sleeps a dream that someone, sometime will know and love us, and believe in us? That is both life's tragedy and its hope. So many dreams that finally shrivel and die. But the hope, always, that it will be different. And the knowledge that it can be different, that our lives can change.

We come through these doors in pursuit of our dream of being known. We bring our children, who are our dream, and hope that here they will be known, will come to life in someone else's dream as well as ours. Or we come alone, or with each other, longing to find some way to release the love we long to give.

There is an ancient eastern greeting, "Namaste!" Roughly, it means, "The divine in me greets the divine in you." In this beloved community of worship and learning and service, may our hopes blossom, for ourselves and for our children. May our dreams come true. Namaste!

Source:

Rosemary L. Bray. Unafraid of the Dark. New York: Random House, 1998.