Transitions

   Life is full of transitions.  Some we expect and some we are thrown into. It's funny how they work- one moment you are here and the next you are suddenly moving to there. There, and the journey to that destination, can be clearly defined and planned for. Other times, it's one unknown step-into-the- dark at a time. Any number of emotions can accompany such times, but one thing is certain. It is at such junctures that the faith we ascribe to, talk about, proclaim, and even teach, takes center stage. Like Job, we are faced with the challenge of learning that what we had heard before must now become what we see (Job 42:5).
   Sometimes the transitions come in a start-and-stop way, kicking us out of what "was", but leaving us dangling before the "what will be".  I've heard this place referred to as a threshold, which I find so fitting. The place between rooms where you have stepped out of the one, but not yet entered the next. The in between, the place of waiting, a place not always enjoyable to be in, but always God's purposeful place of work. Undoing, repair, preparation, and even rest.  Trusting God to know what He's doing, what we need, how to get us there, and that this good God really is good and full of love for us.  
   Oswald Chambers describes this kind of faith perfectly, in his commentary on Abraham's "going out, not knowing where he was going" (Heb 11:8). "Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading. It is a life of faith, not of intellect and reason, but a life of knowing Who makes us “go.” When my focus is there, not on the circumstances around me, or the transition, where I've been or where I'm headed, but on the One who is in control (and has been all along), it is then I know His rest.

 

Reflections on literacy

   Literacy has always been a word that triggers thoughts of libraries, books, and people learning to read. And rightly so...in the world I grew up in. But things have changed, and today literacy has taken on an entirely new meaning, a whole world of meaning, in fact. Literacy encompasses discovery, learning, and proficiency in countless genres.  From print to audio to any number of visual images, literacy could be defined as "the communicated word in any area of life". "Being literate" involves our understanding and mastering any of these various forms of communication, and thereby being able to speak that genre's "language". Looking at literacy through this lens makes life suddenly full of stories and messages and thoughts, coming from every direction and at any minute, waiting to be heard, discovered, and understood by us.
   The thrill of this "new literacy" is that it opens up a conversation between us and the world around us.  It also frees us to communicate in the ways that most speak to us, and challenges us to attempt those that don't.  It encourages us to be adventurous, even daring, and allows us to explore undiscovered areas of creativity.  I have found this metamorphosis in my own view of literacy this semester to be almost exhilarating, like discovering an old box of forgotten childhood treasures.  This literacy goes far beyond taking a book to the doctor's office waiting room, or even a tablet with a Kindle app on an airplane.  It urges me to look everywhere to see what is being communicated to me, and then to look again, deeper.  It invites me to consider how I will then respond, and how I can share this with others. It declares my competence to be literate, in ways I never considered before, giving me new confidence.
   It is this view of literacy that I take with me into the secondary classroom, and want to teach to my students.  Particularly as a middle school ELA teacher, I want my students to discover, as I have, that being literate means far more than what is contained in the middle school ELA TEKS. I want to help them see that literacy is learning to have that conversation with their world, and then sharing that with others.