As we approach this All Saints celebration weekend, when we typically focus on those who have died since the previous year’s All Saints weekend, sometimes it’s helpful to consider those who have gone even before. To consider the impact still being felt by them, even years and years since their earthly departure. And so, over the years I do my best to keep in mind Mrs. Lee.
I went to an elementary school that was in the boonies, as some would call it. I grew up in a smaller farming town anyway, with only several thousands of people, but since I lived beyond the railroad tracks, I got to take the longer bus ride to a big brick school in a village that if you blinked, you would miss it altogether (as long as your blink took 5-10 seconds, let’s say).
Although the building no longer stands, I can still remember where every room was: the gym that looked like it was put together when James Naismith invented basketball, the principal’s office that I had to visit only a couple times, I think, as well as all the classrooms, even the small library on the third floor that a had a larger space behind it that connected it to the music room with those desks that seemed like they were taken straight from a one-room schoolhouse from even further distant-boonies.
When it came time for the 5th grade, we made an extra trip to that music room once-a-week for Religious Education. Mrs. Lee, with that smile that could light up the whole blink-and-you’ll-miss-it village and all the boonies put together, would lead us through the tiniest book with the brightest orange cover (as if the Gideons knew they had to make them stand out for our misplace-ridden 5th grade minds), which included the New Testament and the Psalms and some Proverbs for good measure. Now, I will admit I don’t remember much of what Mrs. Lee actually taught us. I only looked forward to going to it, because I knew there wasn’t going to be any homework involved, and well…Mrs. Lee was the just kindest and sweetest ‘ole lady around.
In the years of further grasping the impact felt by her, though, I haven’t exactly become a huge proponent of teaching religion in school. It’s not that I don’t want God to be talked about, or minimizing opportunities for people to pray, or not allowing them to read their respective sacred scripture during breaks. It’s just…I don’t trust the kind of religion that may be taught. I don’t want the cliché cookie-cutter refrigerator-magnet Christianity given more prominence in the public sector than it already does. I don’t want the mindset of “as long as you read your Bible, go to church, pray, etc., everything is going to be hunky dory” or the like.
One of the arguments continues to be that “we’ve kicked God out of the schools.” Well, at least the way I understand God (which I don’t completely, mind you), I don’t think humanity has that kind of power anyway. I have this feeling that we can’t kick God out of anywhere. After all, I like to think God loves us far too much to wait around for a certain word to be said, or a specific book to be opened, or an exact prayer position to be engaged. That’s the kind of deep powerful theology we need ample time to dig into, and I don’t want to put that rather complicated responsibility on already overworked school system. To this day, I still believe I learned more about God from Mrs. Lee not based on anything we read through in that incredibly shortened Bible, but through her most awe-inspiring patience and most tenderhearted care for us off-the-wall 5th graders.
That isn’t to say some quality building-blocks of faith formation didn’t happen during those once-a-week sessions in terms of reading through that almost-blinding brightest orange book that I’m just not remembering the specifics all that much right now. That isn’t to say such spiritual development can’t happen in whatever school teaches religious-anything. Nevertheless, I will, also, give plenty of credit for teachers who never mentioned God by name, necessarily, and still inspired me to more deeply dive into the wonder of Creation, the loved-to-the-point-of-death humanity and all the divine mysterious inner-workings of God. So, no, I don’t think God has ever left the children God so tenderly loves. God never will, no matter how much we think so highly of ourselves that we have that kind of power to keep God out of certain sectors of the world.
In the end, I like to think Mrs. Lee was the living embodiment of God’s “steadfast love endures forever” (which came up plenty of times even in that tiny Bible) through her 30-plus years of elementary school teaching before she ventured into Religious Education, not to mention her time as a church organist, junior choir director and Sunday school teacher in one of those churches that was, yes, rather out there in the boonies. Perhaps, another Great News reminder, that no matter how distant you may feel from the world, no matter how separated you may feel from God in your own heart (as if you’re convinced you’re in the spiritual boonies), you don’t have the power to keep God’s love away from you. And not even that, but God may very well shape and mold you just enough to be a God-teacher not just in a public school or Sunday school classroom, but on a living room couch, a grocery store check-out line, the front seat of a car, and on and on we could go; because, well, there are absolutely no limits to where we can dig into this most wonderful God. And for the Mrs. Lee’s and all the saints, past and present, who inspire us to do our part in bringing a glimpse of that Greatest News to life, we most certainly give thanks to God, indeed!
In Christ,
Pastor Brad