If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats.
But if you take no risks, you win no victories.
Richard M. Nixon
(a picture I’d taped to my classroom door of Mikhail Gobachev being driven through East Berlin)
As I continue to clean out what was my former life…out of the myriad of boxes and bins
buried in our basement, boxes from my life of teaching, I found a box of things
I’d pulled off my classroom door when I was cleaning out my classroom upon retirement.
I also had this picture of Mother Teresa’s feet…
I’d placed the photo on my door, backing it with a simple black sheet of mat board.
I had written on the mat “these feet never complained—they just kept moving in the name of Love”
Many of the kids commented that they thought the picture was “gross”.
Such comments afforded me the opportunity to explain to them as to why someone would allow their
feet to get in such a sad state of affairs.
I wanted to challenge my kids, as well all the other kids who would pass by my door,
with such issues of truth, life, sacrifice, love, conviction, bravery and the notion
of looking beyond self to things that were much greater…
My prayer is that we continue to seek that which is greater than ourselves.
If we do so, we might just erase the current senseless violence besieging our cities.
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