teaching/friendship

my brother the bishop has a thread about who teachers should teach to -- the "get it"s or the swine. i think if the choice is to be made (?) the swine have it in the Kingdom of Heaven....

but i've been thinking a lot recently about some of the costs of teaching -- but its really not just about teaching -- its more about mentorship / discipleship / person-development. whatever...

that process of investing yourself into someone who you have hope for.

so i've just been reviewing some of the complications of that paradigm for living. implications that maybe i couldn't see while i was still living like a gypsy -- but feel more and more valid the longer i live as a farmer:

1. when you invest in relationship -- you end up caring about that person in ways that are not always shared.

this tension is particularly keen if the mentee / student/ disciple sees your relationship more as a process of the institution / body / community that you've been formally matched by.

2. when you've become friends inside the institution -- staying friends outside of the insitution demands a different set of expectations.

this is almost the flipside. some of my most rewarding relationships with students from malone are those with alumni. however -- as soon as the person leaves the context that's afforded us the opportunity to develop relationship -- our continuing relationship has to fit into the fabric of my "non-work" life.

3. when you choose to go about your teaching / discipling / mentoring with the people you work with -- those relationships end up spilling over into your "non-work" life.

so that the concrete choices that you make about each day / each hour -- end up affecting your family, your "non-work" friends (as if it were possible to have those!), and then all the other family and friend relationships you have far away.

am i complaining? no! clearly, a profession that allows me to be relational in meaningful ways is one of the luckiest gifts in the universe --

but feeling the strain of these tensions lately has alerted me to this (newly discovered by me) domain of institution / identity strain.

the rigidity of institutional life is much to blame here. people's default assumptions about time and relationship are structured not only on genuine need and desire , but also based on the structures of time and space that the institutional clock provides. its this clash that makes for a tension between the-way-it-is and the-way-it-ought-to-be....

hope your day is filled with flashes of the-way-it-ought-to-be....

peace~