Saturday morning brought me some personal news that shook me deeply. Despite the unseasonably warm weather, I worried. To try to get some perspective, I went to the local art museum, which I hoped would uplift or inspire or soothe. But instead, everything from some Picasso drawings of women (with the figures of course looking like they had been through a blender) to seemingly harmless impressionist paintings of women in white 19th-century garb bothered me. Last week was definitely some kind of watershed for me in terms of awareness.
Saturday night, I couldn't sleep to save my life. The brilliant hunter's moon seemed to pierce through my soul, trying to shed light on something that I can't quite put my finger on.
Sunday, I heard some fine church music and yet, as usual, I could not connect to the service itself. I wandered back through the crackling, dead leaves, tried to make up a little sleep, then made my third supper in a row of roasted vegetables and rice. I love roasted vegetables and am grateful that I have them to nourish me, but I made the mistake of turning on the television to eat my meal by, where inevitably I learned that hate had not taken the weekend off.
It took until 8 PM Sunday to finally find something to love, PBS's "The Durrells in Corfu." Love, love, love. I was in Corfu. I was part of an eccentric but loving family. I had four children (a prospect that is about as far from my reality as is humanly possible!) I was in heaven, a huge dilapidated, empty-ish house in pastel colors overlooking the water. I don't remember any movie, book, or TV show drawing me in this completely, ever. For an hour, I was literally "in" love. Escapism? Yes. But absolutely essential right now. I must remember the quality of that love energy, and the factors that made me so happy, fictional though they may have been.
We have been handed the "teaching moment" of a lifetime. If you have never taught, it is that moment in the classroom where something bigger happens than the lesson on the syllabus that you were meant to be teaching -- it can start out awkwardly, even very unpleasantly, or as the result of humor. But there is some kind of epiphany, leading to the entire classroom being taken to a higher level of understanding about life, about being human. It seems to me that if we can see it this way, this national/international teaching moment will bring us higher. Hang in there, everyone.
