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| IT'S BIZARRO TO THINK WHISPERS CAN BE HEARD IN THIS WORLD'S NOISE, RIGHT JORDAN? |
If you want to be heard in this screaming, noisy world, lower your voice and whisper grace.
I'm not sure if this is good pedagogy, but I have used it on many occasions in the teaching arena.
When the room begins to buzz with scattered corner conversations, focus becomes blurred, bodies turn to nearest neighbors, collective voice decibels quickly rise as in released excitement, and the energy somehow swirls like a tornado, a good teacher realizes that if she wants instruction to continue, it just might be time to gain control before the class is swirl-swept down the drain.
It always happens this way eventually. Some attentive student first notices that the teacher's lips are heading south into a possible frustrated frown while her eyes are intently scanning the crowd for the chaos infiltrators.
And the weighted-worry of wondering grabs one student by the throat who silences another with dagger eyes and a finger lip hushed-weapon. And depending on the noise and chaos swirling in this student's body and mind, two more eyes might choose to join this early movement back to sanity, but usually they choose to remain reveling with the boundary breakers for any remaining moments before these break-away freedoms are taken into custody.
Continued chaos eventually captures even the tenacious talkers tender attention as their eyes raise to beg "why this allowance?"
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| GRACE GIVERS: MAGALY ROGERS, ME, LINDA HARRIS |
And everyone knows the sense of slowed-time when we have waited for chaos to be reigned in. These moments seem like hours of sweating, nervous expectation.
And don't we all know how we really beg for life's noise and chaos to be controlled? And sometimes, we get it right and slow the moments to settle our hearts and minds. And sometimes we continue to swim in the current of the chaotic winds.
Seconds seem like hours and the heart flutters and the head questions if hoping for alternatives to this masquerade of order, of normalcy for life, is futile. Are we drinking buckets of water through a thin coffee straw?The longer the waiting through the screeching noise, the harder the swim-search for hope.
Students begin to hush other students into submission. The ember hush begins to rekindle the extinguished quiet, but a shake of my head douses their hush efforts.
And in a simple whisper voice, my words continue teaching...no hushing...no loud voice...no announcements of punishment for now or next time...no lecture. And the grace offered slowly infiltrates the students and is received with no outward acknowledgment, just relieved hearts.
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| KAYLA HUBBARD: A LOVELY HEART CAPTURED BY HIS GRACE. |
Our tenacious tender hearts are apprehended by the chaos and clutter of our days; our hearts and minds swirl with the weight of daily expectations. And grace is there; it whisper calls through the conforming, competing, comparing, controlling, confusing, commuting, and reconnects us to the Teacher's conversing.
If you want to be heard in this screaming, noisy world, lower your voice and whisper grace.
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