As a teacher one hopes to create that one iconic moment for students where academia becomes magic. My moment as a student happened when my ethereal English teacher, Moira Lovell, began reading 'To Kill A Mockingbird' to our Grade 10 class. If one is familiar with the book one knows that the opening pages are somewhat long in the tooth. Lots of sociopolitical context. The introduction is one which will make a 16 year old fresh from having eaten lunch a little heavy lidded. Enter Scout. The moment Mrs Lovell changed her perfect elocution and adult tone to the gritty, fiesty accent of a little girl from Maycomb County, Alabama I believed that anything was possible in a classroom. The entire class was transfixed. Similar to how I'm sure the generation of radio listeners felt at the lead up to the next Goon Show, or War of the Worlds, our English lessons became much anticipated events. We would sit enraptured for an entire lesson as the voice of Moira Lovell, an English teach...
Inspired by various families I have witnessed while on holiday... The family chat group that Kevin begrudgingly belonges to exploded sometime in February when one of his in-laws suggested that they all celebrate the coming Christmas together at a hotel. It would coincide perfectly with his mother in law's 70th birthday. Everyone on the chat group, apart from Kevin, agreed that they could think of no better way to get into the Christmas spirit than to spend seven solid days in each other's company, including nine children all under the age of 10. Since then the chat group has been riddled with extreme holiday expectations and awkward reminders to pay for accommodation. Kevin spent the next 9 and a half months in mild therapy with his padel partner, Brian. Their final post game beer, sometime at the beginning of December, ended in a bracing hug with Brian reminding Kevin that he is only a phone call away if things get too much. It is now two days into the seven day Christmas ext...
The night before Jesus died He washed the feet of his disciples. At the time this action was seen as a hugely humbling gesture. Feet are intimate, they are sweaty, dusty, our very human connection to the earth upon which we walk. Knowing what we know now about feet and their connection to the rest of our bodies, and our souls, I feel this humble act that Jesus performed for his beloved friends must have been a far more intense spiritual experience than we initially make it out to be. He wasn't just cleaning the dusty roads off their feet, he was cleaning their souls. Jesus would have connected to his disciples in a way that would have told him everything he needed to know about them, of this I am certain. He would have known who was tired, overwhelmed, battling with digestion, anxious, who had betrayed him. The stories of his friends would have been written on their soles, and souls. I suspect that Jesus would have gone to the part of the foot connected to the solar p...
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