Amazing Grace

Exams are now underway which effectively marks the end of the first semester. It cannot be possible that it has been four months that I’ve been here already, nor can it be possible that I have survived half a year as a teacher!!!!! Mmm don’t be fooled – I hope that you are not as gullible as my students!

This past Friday I was reviewing for exams with my freshman class. The bulk of the exam was essays on themes we had covered in the novels that we read, in addition to one of my own personal favorites – ah you know me to well!! Of course I’ve found a way to sneak Living with Passion into the curriculum, and in reviewing I find myself in up on my soapbox going off on this tirade trying to impress upon them the importance of living their lives as a gift to God, and using every ounce of this opportunity that they have to be here at Xavier……so I finally finish my diatribe and it was the sweetest thing – too cute not to share….but so there’s dead silence right? not the blank stare – I have no idea what you’re talking about silence…. but the kind where it takes a minute to sit and absorb before the formation of verbal acknowledgement is possible….. and somewhere in between the seconds it took for me to identify the type of silence, and for them to process….from the back of the classroom comes a lone applause that infectiously sweeps through the room, and the whole class erupts…..ha ha – it was absolutely adorable. Now I have yet to look over the exams to determine whether it was a confirmation of comprehension, or just a seized opportunity to get rowdy, but it was an unforgettable moment nonetheless.

The latter could have been a very reasonable explanation as this past weekend was spent celebrating the Xavier Day festivities, so the last thing the students wanted to focus on was exams. Every year around this time the school celebrates the feast day of St. Francis Xavier with alumni, food and heated competitions. 2005-2006 gives special cause for celebration as it is a year of the Jesuit Jubilee – the 500 anniversary of the birth of Blessed Pierre Favre and St. Francis Xavier, and the 450 anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius Loyola. Now to try and explain this day to you would do a great disservice to the energy, the spirit and simply indescribable beauty. The best I can do is to steal the image depicted by Dwyer – my community mate. He said that the feeling that he got from this Saturday was such that if you looked at the world from outer space, Xavier High School, Chuuk, Micronesia, Mabuchi hill could have been spotted. It was radiating so much light, so much fire – that the iridescence would have been very obviously visible, even from that far away. The Kingdom of God was here.

Impossible? Not if you were here. You start the day with mass – in which students transform a dusty, dimly lit rec house into a glorious dwelling place of the Lord. From there you watch all the teams, (My sophomore Orionz class and the Junior class teamed up (team Loyola), and the Senior & Freshman classes team up (Xavier) – and for the first time, the faculty jumped in as team Faber) parade onto the field. Now let me preface this next part by saying that you were woken up earlier today around 6 in the morning by the sound of students chopping down the bamboo just behind your house, and suddenly in this moment as the swarm settles into teams of red, white and Carolina blue you realize why. As three Palauan students step up the mic and begin singing the national anthem of their island nation, the tip of the bamboo stick slowly reveals a Palauan flag being draped from the roof of the building overlooking those gathered for the opening ceremony. As you realize what is going on, you identify the flag bearer, and the senior Palauan assumes his position on the roof securing the lone flag. Next the Marshallese step up and sing their national anthem as their senior Marshallese rep brings his flag forward. Lastly reps from each of the four federated states sing of their allegiance and five other flag bearers step forward, all shirtless with Xavier being spelled out across their chests. You can feel the chills cascade down your back as the poignancy of this image settles in.

The moment escapes you just as quickly as it entered your consciousness, and with that, the games begin. Hours of intense rivalry, trash-talking, faculty humiliation and serious intra-scholastic competition fill the better part of the morning and afternoon. Though you are in your glory with the quasi-track meet type atmosphere, you are equally enthralled by the hot-ramen eating contest, palm leaf basket-weaving contest and dizzy race that provides levity amidst the tension of sparring sides. Even more humorous, but in the cutest way possible is the fact that the faculty, maintenance & repair, and the cooks still don’t number more than 25 – thus relying on the alumni & fans that have come to watch makes for some of the most adorable relay races you’ve ever seen - Older ladies in a dress down past their knees shuffling around the field to pass the stick off to the anchor leg - an older gentleman whose tucked in shirt accentuates his protruding beer belly, but whose smile indicates that he is not phased by the sizable margin he needs to make up to place second to last. You try as best you can to look and act normal, but you can not suppress the pulsating feeling of being very consciously aware of the fact that you are ALIVE –a feeling that spills out through the expression on your face and makes it appear as though you are walking around with a hanger in your mouth! But as you scan the crowd - as you step back for a minute to absorb the glory of the moment, you draw two possible conclusions: either someone is supplying hangers, or the water has been spiked.

As the final events are completed and points tallied, the day closes much the same way it opened – with a crowd gathering around the “podium.” But this time there is no segregation by color. As excited as your Orionz are to have defeated the seniors, it seems inconsequential to the more important ritual underway. If you listen close enough, you can hear bricks caving in, mortar melting, and the fragments crumbling underfoot even as “The World’s Greatest” streams from the speakers.

You know how after a basketball game, two teams of about 12 players each line up for a congratulatory handshake? Ok so instead of a line it’s an enormous mass of people, and instead of twenty four athletes, it’s 150, and instead of a handshake, it’s hugs and tears. For the first time since you’ve been here you are given this outlet for expressing how much these students and these co-workers have affected your life and so you seize the opportunity and follow their lead. It was almost as if you spoke volumes within a span of 7 minutes. To make eye contact with someone, to see the look on their face reciprocating your sentiments, to invite them in by stretching out your arms, and then in a moment of vulnerability collapse into an endless narrative of how beautiful they are by smothering with a very simple, and speechless gesture. There is no need to question motives, not even the slightest motion to second-guess – absolutely nothing inappropriate but the amount of time allotted to “congratulate” an inordinate number of people.

Sitting down does nothing to settle the rush and the words coming from the mic are nothing more than distracting noises in your serene moment. You look at the faces - some of the eyes red from tears. You can relate to the emotion. You wonder what they are thinking. Are they savoring it? Are they trying their best to hold on to what the ephemeral nature of moments this powerful try to steal away. Do they know? How much do they understand? What will they do with it? Where will it take them? Look how gorgeous they are….
The closing speech ends, and as the SBA president gives the instructions, a circle begins to form that spans the entire field. Then in a moment of weakness, you feel the tears start to flood your eyes but you cannot wipe them off your face because your hands are tightly grasped by the two students on either side of you. You recognize the first notes of Amazing Grace and consider chiming in. However, arrested by the pure glimpse of heaven before you resolve to listen, and take it all in.