Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.
In every fleeting moment on every obscure day.
Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray.
Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.
It began with a cup of tea. Which is at once the most ridiculous way to begin anything and the same way I start nearly every morning. The steam rising from the cup made my nose run even harder and faster than it had been all night. I drained the cup, wiped my nose, went to class.
Class ended with an earthquake drill. Planned down to the minute complete with a two step process of at the first sound of trouble get under the desks at the second sound run outside. Trouble being the music department beating the mess out of some tin drums in the square near our building. I walked lazily through the chaos back to the apartment.
Tea began with two cups and a student ever bursting at the seams to speak and yet somehow unable to say all he wants. He handed me an eleven page essay on his experiences practice teaching. He beamed. What all I want to say is you can find in this one teacher. I flipped through the pages covered with hand writing.
Tea was put on hold when the beggar children crossed the busy street to the tea house where we sat. Like familiar guests they squeezed onto the bench, put their ripped plastic bags down, and made a show of everything that was in their pockets: a stick of gum, a coin, a broken USB, the days treasures. One girl, with pain in her black eyes, reached her hand up to display a palm that was sliced open and oozing with puss and blood. She picked up a wrong bottle. We took her to the kitchen to wash out the wound.
Dumpling making at the nunnery teahouse began with a quick rinse of my hands in warm water poured by my nun friend. She took off her apron and sleeve guards and I put them on. Back in the corner, a dim grimy hole barely large enough for the three of us, we rolled out the flour, stuffed them, pinched them shut, stacked them in rows in the steamer, chatted, drank tea, amused customers, until the meat and all of my language ability ran out.
Visiting ended with a kilo of sunflower seeds in hand and a quick hug good-bye to my dear sweet nun friend who never fails to share her life, her work, her language, her apron, her friends, all her things with me. Humbled already I trudged back down the street.
The evening was punctuated by a text message: You are my teacher. If you are ill, we won't have your class. Classmates like to listen to your class. From a shy, bumbling student in a rowdy, obnoxious class at a moment when I least expected it, having not told them that I was sick, nor made any mention of canceling class... nor ever dreamed that any of them cared one way or the other. Confusion born of a show of love so closely resembling a command to get healthy.
It ended with a cup of tea, mint something warm, before an already dozy girl drifted off to sleep. Dreams of a Way where the lame can leap, the crippled are healed, the rough places made smooth, the earth doesn't quake and noses don't run, beggars are cared for, students are encouraged, nuns are acknowledged, messages are received, and endless cups of tea are drunk...
Find me in the Way, oh just find me in the Way.
In every fleeting moment on every obscure day.
Keep me at Your rugged cross, firm throughout the fray.
Bind me there, hold me close, and then let come what may.
