My Holiday Plan

Its a busy time. The holidays evoke in me many feelings of nostalgia, joy, sadness, nervousness among others. Its also flu season and children and adults get sick and they pass it along. As an educator, I need to be wise, keep watch and stick to things that help me stay happy and healthy. 

Here is my holiday plan:

Mangu (Dominican breakfast)

1. Listen to my body. If I am hungry I will eat. If I am tired, I rest. If I am sick, I will take the day off to recover.  If I need to move, I will dance and/or exercise.  I must take care of myself so I can be effective everyday. 

2. Watch what I watch. Along with "fake" news and silly distractions on social media, I need to be wise to monitor where and how I spend my time. With so many demands, I can't participate in every chat or click on every app and connect. I will make the time when I can but I watch what I watch. I am better because of it. 

Looking up from my school.

3. Stay there. If someone or something inspires me to create or make something better, I will stay there. "Staying there" means doing that one thing to make me better before I move on. Too many times I race to do and then rush to tell everyone what I did. I've discovered that I miss the benefits of enjoying what I did if I rush. I have to stay there.  

Paper cups

4. Look for opportunities to just be. A student in my school was carried out of his classroom by security and brought to my office. He was upset. I distracted him and invited him to share what he had in his hands. He had paper cups. I asked him to show me how to make paper cups. We spent the entire afternoon talking and I learned something new. I entered "his" world and learned. Students have lots of knowledge and skills. Sometimes schools force lectures, books and classwork on kids and they respond by acting up. Sometimes they protest in many ways. Other times they protest and need to be carried out like this boy. I took this opportunity to listen and just be with this boy. I didn't judge him.  I am better for it and now he sees me as an ally to share and create things with. 

Candy Cane House 

5. Take notice. There are lots of great things that happen in my school (I bet in yours too). Despite the negativity and criticism out there, every school has great teachers doing their jobs to help students learn. I take notice of these positive incidents and learnings in my school on a daily basis in three ways:

1. I walk my school everyday.  I want to know what is happening so I walk into every classroom at least once a day. Everyday.

2. I talk with students and teachers and take pictures of these moments.  

3. Then, I write about it (not as often as I wish).  I don't publish a lot but I do tweet via my twiitter account or my school Grieco School. 

Finally, I met with a teacher earlier in December to discuss her formal observation. As we finished, she shared how she got together with teachers from her grade during lunch to discuss specific needs and goals they had. My interest peaked and was almost jealous I wasn't invited. I told her to write about how that meeting was initiated.  She told me it grew out of an email between her and another member of the grade level. I pushed her to write about it because it was a moment of importance for that teacher and team.  I took note to listen for this moment and compelled one teacher to take note also.  

The holidays are a great time to stop and reflect on what we do and how we do it.  Our lives, family, and schools will be better when we do so.

How do you keep happy and healthy during the holidays while staying focused on your work?  

Share your comments!  I am interested in learning from you.

The Gift of Tears

Boys don’t cry. I was raised with this mindset. As a young boy, I always heard my mother tell a story of how my older brother was bullied in the third grade. She saw him cry and forced him to go back to the school and fight the bully. He did and he won. I never saw my brother cry while I was a kid or as a young man. By the way, my father wasn’t around long enough for me to see much of anything let alone him show this kind of emotion.  The only time I saw my brother cry was when I entered the Jesuit novitiate in 1998.

Having made the decision to discern God’s calling, men who identify with the charism of St. Ignatius of Loyola, apply and get accepted into a two year, let’s call it, training period. Here they live, pray and serve while they see how God’s graces develop in their lives. Men enter a novitiate to see if this new lifestyle of serving God and others and living in community is for them. Men focus on things that bring them closer to God and  detach from worldly things.

Hearing that we would not be able to see one another until Christmas my family grew sad. But it was my brother’s reaction that surprised us all. He cried.

My brother David and I.

My brother was the father figure of the family and my role model, this was a big deal that he cried. My mother and sister were shocked. I too was surprised but I knew something greater was at work here and I was at peace because of it.

My three sons: Matthew, Elijah and Jacob.

Boys don’t have to see men in their lives cry to cry. They don’t have to see crying to feel or be sympathetic. They do need to know that feeling sadness, remorse may produce tears.  What boys need to know is that showing these feelings is normal and healthy. Having an adult help them through these emotions is what is most important.

Since we never had that kind of support growing up, my brother took one road and I took another. You already know his. Mine was different. It was in prayer that I discovered it was perfectly normal to shed tears. Having a lot of anger and resentment, I had a lot to work through. Yet, it was in spiritual direction that I discovered that the gift of tears is a way that God heals. It is a way that God helps a person deepen the relationship with Him and others.

Why tears?  Not only is it a result of feelings but it provides a comfort of whatever pain or healing that needs to be experienced.  There is also an awe and wonder aspect of deep and intimate prayer. A new awareness or a deeper awareness of oneself may result. The recognition of that awareness may also produce tears.

Biking is a new form of prayer experience for me.

That’s the gift. The gift to see yourself in a new light, in a new way, different than before. That gift is what keeps one going back, back to that special place where you can be with God.

Saint Teresa of Avila was noted to have said that more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones. During prayer, I don’t wish to produce tears. It happens when it happens. I know it’s real because I enter prayer for different reasons. Desiring to cry is certainly not one of them.  I just wish to encounter God. Period. That encounter involves many things like ideas, images, emotions and sometimes … tears.

I thank God for my brother David Alarcon.

I thank God for my spiritual director, Claudio Burgaleta, SJ.

I thank God for answered prayers.

I thank God for the gift of tears.

Amen.