Small talk, big talk
February 6, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My wife and I are standing outside a set of classrooms in the Engineering department of the University of Virginia. By my count, seven other sets of mothers and fathers wait with us. Outside, a cold rain patters against the windows. In those secret thoughts that every parent has but will never confess, I confess that I’d much rather be in bed on such a Saturday morning. From the looks on the other faces, they’re thinking much the same.
For the past four Saturdays, our kids have enjoyed a bit of extra education known as the Saturday Enrichment Program. Fun stuff (so the kids say). My daughter is taking a creative writing class, my son architecture. And in another secret thought, I pause to consider that this is all so my daughter can write better diary entries that no one will ever see and my son will have more ideas for his Legos.
Other classes are offered as well. Indeed, much of the sprawling campus is a flurry of activity. In our building alone, there are art classes, one for crime scene investigation, and something that has to do with the human brain. The kids go play. The parents…well, the parents are basically stuck with two hours to kill.
The twenty minutes or so before the classes let out are when things get interesting. That’s when all the parents converge on the classrooms and wait. As is usually the case when surrounded by strangers, we are each in our own tiny worlds. There may be nods and smiles, even the occasional hello. Not much more, though. Not at first. Strangely enough, at first we all seem to act like teenagers and constantly check our phones for texts and emails.
But the minutes tick on. The phones go heavy. We begin to notice one another. Nods and smiles and hellos become small talk. Small talk leads to big talk.
I like big talk.
There are the normal things—where do you work and where do you live, how many kids to you have, has it been as hard to get them here for you as it has for us. We’re adults, so we know to keep our conversation in safe areas (sports for the dads, groceries for the moms, raising kids for both) and not to stray into not-so-safe areas (politics and religion). It hasn’t been as easy as it sounds. We’re strangers, after all, and there’s a feeling-out period involved. Not to mention that of the eight couples around us, two are white, three are black, two are Asian, and one couple seems to be an amalgam of them all.
I don’t mind saying it’s kind of uncomfortable, only because that was the unspoken consensus. It is a sad fact that you have to be so careful around people nowadays. One misspoken word, one misunderstood act, and all of a sudden things take a turn for the worse. But as we all stand there waiting and talking, those fences that we all put around ourselves begin to lower. We stop talking and start sharing.
Things like how much more difficult it is to raise kids nowadays. And how the worries and fears have grown so much more over the past few years. How tough it is to be good parents. How kids need not just a good education, but a hunger and a curiosity to learn. We laugh and sigh, we nod and shake our heads, and by the time the classroom doors finally open, I think we all understood one very important thing:
We’re parents. Doesn’t matter what color we are or whether we vote Democrat or Republican. Doesn’t matter whether we worship Jesus or Allah or no one. We were all given the responsibility to raise good children in a bad world and keep our families together in times that seem to be falling apart.
There are waves and see-you-next-weeks as we gather our children and go our separate ways. My wife and I hear all about rhyme schemes and Doric columns. My kids have learned a lot today. That’s good.
And when we get into the truck and head back over the mountains, I’ll tell my kids that I’ve learned a lot today, too.
I’ll tell them that in the end, people really aren’t that different from one another. And I’ll say that what we believe may always divide us, but the challenges we face will always bring us together.
Cleaning up the world
October 5, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
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To work at a college is to have the opportunity to live your life in reverse. To see yourself as the person you used to be. True for me, anyway. I listen to their stories and hear their dreams and realize both sound familiar. They’re much the same as mine were, once upon a time.
There is a sense of determination among them, an anticipation. It’s almost palpable. They’re at that golden age in life when they’re both informed of the happenings of the world and determined to do something about them. And though the thousand or so students here differ in beliefs and opinions, they are united in this one important sense:
They are all convinced the world needs a good cleaning up.
Many more than you might think are here for simply that reason. They’re learning and preparing to go forth into the dark lands outside these ivory walls and do some good. To clean up. They see The Way Things Are and believe theirs is the generation who will put a stop to it all.
But there’s much they can do while they’re here, too. There are clubs and protests and candlelight vigils for everything from tolerance to global warming to ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They write articles for the school newspaper on equality. Each of these activities are undertaken with a sense of excitement and passion you’d expect to find in young adults. They’re fighting the good fight and smiling as they go.
That was me once. I was never one for clubs and protests and candlelight vigils, but I did write articles. And I did believe the world needed a good cleaning up. Believed I was the sort of person to do it, too. I had all the excitement and passion in the world behind me to push me ahead. I promised myself that things would be better one day and that my generation would be the ones to thank for it.
It’s funny what people believe when they’re young. How that excitement and passion is the result of a blind expectation rooted not in reality, but in the idealistic dreams of youth.
You, dear reader, know this. I’m sure of it. Because like me, you likely once thought much the same. But the big dreams we sometimes have tend to shrink as time wears on. Where they once lifted us up in possibility, they soon begin to weigh us down in doubt. We may know of the world at twenty, but we cannot fathom it. Not yet. That comes later, when job and family and responsibility appear. When getting ahead is narrowed into getting by. And we see then for the first time this horrible truth—things are too big for us. We are not the stalwart captains of hope and change we once believed we were; our determination instead resides in surviving this day to face the next.
We no longer wish to change the world. All we want is to make sure the world doesn’t change us. That would be enough. We don’t like thinking we’ll lose in this life, even if winning seems unfeasible. Fighting to a draw, then, is the best we think we can do.
That’s what I think about when I see these students every day. About how their passion will be tempered against the hardness of a world they can only flirt with and not yet love. I wonder how kind the coming years will be to them, what they will lose and then gain from the loss.
And through it all they will be nagged by the very notion that still nags you and me, the notion that the world does indeed need a good cleaning up. We’re all right in believing that. Where they’re wrong now and I was wrong once is believing that cleaning should begin at the upper reaches of our society and drip down onto everyone else. I don’t believe that to be true. Not anymore.
Because now I know better. Now I know that if I ever want to help clean up the world, I have to start by cleaning up myself.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Healing, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.
Leaving Faith
May 14, 2009 by Billy Coffey · 50 Comments
At seventeen and already a rising junior, she is a credit to her parents, who raised her to believe in God and love Jesus and work hard for the betterment of the world. And even more credit goes to her parents for her previous twelve years of education. She was homeschooled.
(A note to all of those parents out there who are homeschooling their children: keep it up. Because many of the top students here never went to public school. Never went to private school, either. Their school was the kitchen table or an upstairs study.)
All that said, college life has had its share of surprises. It’s hard work and long nights and very strange people, many of whom have no use for all things religious. Ironically, the biggest surprise thus far has come by way of her religion classes.
Christian Scripture (New Testament) 102 appeared to be an easy A for her and a class that would require little in the way of studying. She had, after all, spent most of her life reading the Bible and acquainting herself with the doctrines and theology of the Christian faith. I did warn her to be wary of what she was getting herself into. “A college class about the New Testament isn’t going to be what you think it is,” I said.
She listened and nodded and smiled, and then ignored my advice. Much like my children.
In she stormed after the first day of class, throwing her books onto the table by the door and kicking a chair for good measure.
“Problems?” I asked.
“That class sucks,” she said. “S-U-C-K-S.”
Told ya, I thought, but said nothing. I merely nodded sympathetically and sat down beside her instead. Because young people do not want to hear the words “Told ya” by someone older. It makes them feel bad. Still…
“Told ya,” I said.
“If you were going to take a class about the New Testament,” she asked, “what would you expect the professor to cover?”
“—Yes!” she shouted. “Jesus. You know, CHRIST!”
“I’ve heard of Him,” I offered.
“Well, not to the stupid professor!” she huffed. “Look.”
She handed me her class syllabus. Early church? Check. Paul? Check. Apostles? Check. Jesus?
Jesus?
“I don’t see Jesus,” I said.
“She doesn’t see Jesus, either. Can you believe that? An entire semester about the New Testament, and she’s not going to mention Jesus at all!”
“Did you ask her why?” She shot me a look for an answer. “What’d she say?”
“She said, ‘Jesus wasn’t integral to the New Testament, and I’ve found Him to be a divisive figure in the classroom.’”
“Jesus wasn’t integral to the New Testament?” I asked.
Another look.
“Divisive, huh?”
“Divisive,” she said. “And you know what’s worse? She’s not just a professor. She’s the college chaplain.”
I nodded. That sounded about right.
The worst thing, she said, was that the class was strictly lecture-oriented. No discussion. And the prospect of sitting in that classroom having to keep her mouth shut was more than she could bear. She was dropping the class, she said. But she was adding a class about faith in life, taught by the same professor.
“This one is all discussion,” she beamed. “I don’t have to keep quiet.”
And she hasn’t. Not for the entire semester.
Things reached the boiling point last week, when the professor professed that she hadn’t quite reached the point in her life where she fully accepted the existence of God. She still has many questions, she said.
“So the chaplain of the college isn’t sure if she believes in God or not?” I asked.
“Nope,” my employee said. “And she’s more than the chaplain. She pastors a church in town, too.”
So we have a college chaplain, who also happens to be the pastor of a church, telling her students that Jesus isn’t really important to the overall meaning of the New Testament and that she doesn’t know if God is real or not. Higher education. Can’t beat it.
For a final exam, the class has to make what is called an “ethical will.” Instead of possessions, the students are supposed to write about what traits they would leave behind to friends and loved ones.
I just read my employee’s will. She left her love to her mother, her strength to her father, her hope to her brother, and her kindness to her sister.
And she left her faith to her professor.
She’s a little nervous about what grade she’ll get. I’m not. Because whatever her professor gives her, God gave her an A.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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