My Day

It’s soon to be Halloween. Doors are being decorated in the middle school, costumes planned, skits created, gooey brains flung onto the ceiling.

Yes.

Gooey brains.

Created out of some sort of slime putty designed to please children and peeve adults.

On the ceiling.

On the sixteen-eighteen foot ceiling.

Flung there by a holiday-thrilled eleven year old who just haaaaadddd to see if it would stick.

It did.

Who knew goo possessed quite that extreme an adhesive quality?

Helping get that down with the assistance of two yardsticks lashed together with booktape with a bent wire coat hanger taped to the end was how the day began.

From there I moved into a lesson on the proper use of semi-colons.

Then research techniques and properly citing an article from an online database using MLA formatting.

After this, a class with seventh grade on the connections between the corporal works of mercy, the basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching, and the moral vision we are called to as people of faith. One kid said, “But it’s just a vision. It may or may not happen…depending on our choices…and it won’t happen without us taking action… If we want it, we need to be the ones to do it...it isn’t enough to just want it.” Amen.

From brains on the ceiling to working with kids toward the realization of the glory of God where, as my students distilled it, “everyone has enough, everyone is safe, and everyone knows themselves as loved.”

My days

are never

ever

dull.