Yesterday I did something strange. I attended the 50th Anniversary celebration for the middle school I attended between the years of 1988-1991. Big things happened in those years: the Berlin Wall fell, Spike Lee released "Do the Right Thing", our soldiers fought in the First Gulf War. I have specific memories of these events--very specific, actually: my father transfixed by the television screen, saying to me, "I didn't think I'd see this happen. Sis, the Cold War. It's over," and later on that same old boob tube the apocalyptic fuzziness of bombs and tanks in night raids, our first televised war. But these paled in comparison to the big things happening in my personal life. After all, I was pubescent, hormonal, and still very, very sweet. I felt everything a lot.
Most people hated middle school. Not me, despite some real sorrows and struggles. I went to a special school with special children. What do I mean by special?
The philosophy that guided and still guides my middle school, a public school, is the belief that a common space shared between "gifted and talented" kids culled from a diverse spectrum of Houston neighborhoods and kids who suffer various physical and mental impairments will produce wholehearted young adults. Perhaps the creators of the school thought if we get them at their most impressionable.... I don't know. I do know my brother can still perform "We Are the World" in sign language, for whatever that's worth.
Yesterday, as I gushed about writing to my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Duhon, who I'd bet good money had no idea who I was, watched as current students sang and signed the school's fight song, nodded at the teenage brother rolling his sister's wheelchair up the ramp to the cafeteria where I once kissed a boy, and later as I walked through the upstairs of the school with my brother, my future sister-in-law, and an old friend from 7th grade, each of us reeling from a tidal wave of exhumed memories and images, the same word rose up like a whisper into my consciousness again and again.
Soulful. This is a soulful place, I thought.
My father often speaks of what he calls "Catholic" places. He does not mean churches. The Catholic Church, to my unending despair, has not lived up lately to its name in the way he means. He means to refer to a kind of spirituality, yes, but he refers also to the original definition of the word catholic: universal, all-embracing. Soulful.
The soul is made up of light and dark, messy at its core. Soulful people and soulful places welcome shadows and sun. They smile, open wide their arms or doors and say "Come as you are," as in the words of the old hymn, Come all ye who are weary, come home. They do not thrive on perfection or strive toward mere prosperity. Soulful places are common places with real people, purpose made flesh, therefore, poetic, therefore, holy. Even in the secular world, these places honor the Jewish concept of Hachnasat Orchim, the virtue of welcoming the stranger, an idea extended by Jesus to include not only the stranger but the strange--the outcast, the lowly, the downtrodden.
In my life, I name these places as soulful: Antidote Coffee Shop, Alabama Ice House, Christ Church Cathedral, Casa Juan Diego, The Cozy Corner, The Silver Slipper, any well-run YMCA, the Greyhound Station, and the T.H. Rogers School, among others.
We were messy little things, me and my middle school companions. Still are, many of us. Many of us have crossed paths as adults, and in each of these encounters, I find myself reminded how wounded even the "gifted" can be, how vulnerable, how strange, how luminous. How lucky we were, strange creatures, to have our own soulful spot inside the chaotic universe of adolescence.
Amen.
Most people hated middle school. Not me, despite some real sorrows and struggles. I went to a special school with special children. What do I mean by special?
The philosophy that guided and still guides my middle school, a public school, is the belief that a common space shared between "gifted and talented" kids culled from a diverse spectrum of Houston neighborhoods and kids who suffer various physical and mental impairments will produce wholehearted young adults. Perhaps the creators of the school thought if we get them at their most impressionable.... I don't know. I do know my brother can still perform "We Are the World" in sign language, for whatever that's worth.
Yesterday, as I gushed about writing to my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Duhon, who I'd bet good money had no idea who I was, watched as current students sang and signed the school's fight song, nodded at the teenage brother rolling his sister's wheelchair up the ramp to the cafeteria where I once kissed a boy, and later as I walked through the upstairs of the school with my brother, my future sister-in-law, and an old friend from 7th grade, each of us reeling from a tidal wave of exhumed memories and images, the same word rose up like a whisper into my consciousness again and again.
Soulful. This is a soulful place, I thought.
My father often speaks of what he calls "Catholic" places. He does not mean churches. The Catholic Church, to my unending despair, has not lived up lately to its name in the way he means. He means to refer to a kind of spirituality, yes, but he refers also to the original definition of the word catholic: universal, all-embracing. Soulful.
The soul is made up of light and dark, messy at its core. Soulful people and soulful places welcome shadows and sun. They smile, open wide their arms or doors and say "Come as you are," as in the words of the old hymn, Come all ye who are weary, come home. They do not thrive on perfection or strive toward mere prosperity. Soulful places are common places with real people, purpose made flesh, therefore, poetic, therefore, holy. Even in the secular world, these places honor the Jewish concept of Hachnasat Orchim, the virtue of welcoming the stranger, an idea extended by Jesus to include not only the stranger but the strange--the outcast, the lowly, the downtrodden.
In my life, I name these places as soulful: Antidote Coffee Shop, Alabama Ice House, Christ Church Cathedral, Casa Juan Diego, The Cozy Corner, The Silver Slipper, any well-run YMCA, the Greyhound Station, and the T.H. Rogers School, among others.
We were messy little things, me and my middle school companions. Still are, many of us. Many of us have crossed paths as adults, and in each of these encounters, I find myself reminded how wounded even the "gifted" can be, how vulnerable, how strange, how luminous. How lucky we were, strange creatures, to have our own soulful spot inside the chaotic universe of adolescence.
Amen.
We are always amazed at the impact thatsweet, soulful school had on both of you. I guess the educational research is right after all, smaller IS better. Just as Cheers was right, it's good to go "where everybody knows your name". Mama
ReplyDeleteBeautiful stuff, Casey, as per usual. It reminded me of a book I'm reading, Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama. He talks a lot about soulful places.
ReplyDelete