A conversation with the Wind

The wind is angry tonight. It pounds its fists against the nonchalant concrete of the building and bullies the frail windows till they shudder and start. You can hear its anger as it rips though the prayer flags on the buildings near by and you can see it as it throws masses of dirt and garbage in every direction. It screams its rage and obscures the valley with its fuss.

What are you so angry about, Wind?

Sometimes I wonder if the classroom itself seems grayer because the students are so colorful and dear to me. They have changed a lot in three years, my students, yet somehow, noting their sly way of photographing me with their cell phone cameras, not at all. A recent conversation in which a student reminisced about a lesson on clothing I had taught my first term in Lhasa had me laughing until tears formed in my eyes which stayed there and I had to blink away when I realized that our time together had been memorable for her too.  Maybe they, not really changing at all, have just allowed me to behold their openness... a passerby who only sees a bud would hardly recognize the same petals in full bloom... I rubbed my icy chalk covered hands together, and thought about the best time to dispose of the homemade barley beer candy I'd been given fistfuls of by the same grinning students only moments ago.

From my adoring reverie during the mid class break, I was beckoned out into the familiar dullness of the hallway by the newly returned, bearing gifts of kangaroo printed wallets and kangaroo jerky, Mr. Wu. Your students will not have class for at least one month he intoned and the new teacher will not come until maybe mid April... he handed me a crumpled half sheet of paper... so you will teach her classes, starting next week. I nodded, not even phased by the sheer randomness of life any longer. No problem, I replied, to his visible relief.

But when I returned to the classroom it was with a mixture of deflation and a vague sense of some far greater plan unfolding with the painful slowness of all things oxygen deprived. More time that I had longed to have with these my students had been stolen from me... but it was being given to others. I finished up our week of review, which seemed now like a week made valuable just because I had been among them rather than anything I had taught, and set about planning for totally different classes.

The schedule that now requires my temporary fulfillment has only one class of students that I know, having taught them for the past year, and two classes that are completely unknown to me. Though confused by the presence of more than eighty unfamiliar students in my last semester in Lhasa, gratitude for getting one last chance to be among the other class that I have come to know and love pretty much overwhelmed me.

This afternoon I was met at the gate while the sun hid behind a thick cloak of clouds by a few of those students. Quintessentially Chinese, they asked if I had eaten and offered me their newly purchased bananas which I declined. We chatted for a minute more and I mentioned, with utter sincerity,  how happy I was that I could see them in class tomorrow. One slim girl squinted with effort and asked beseechingly Ms. Kelly, will you now be our teacher forever? Though everything in me wanted to respond affirmatively, I knew I needed to explain the temporary nature of the schedule. After doing which, I couldn't tell if it was the sky or only their faces that darkened.

Wind, maybe I understand your fury. Something, perhaps everything, smacks of injustice so deep that even the snot running down my neighbor's daughter's nose as she merrily draws pictures of me while we sit entertaining each other in my apartment can't help but display it. And, Wind, you can throw tantrums that steal clothes from the backs of beggar children and rip our fingers and faces to cracked shreds, and pound and howl until we wince with your pain, but know this Wind... all your raging will not change it.

There is only One Righteous Judge that I know.

He gives and He takes away. He gives classes and schedules and He takes them away and gives other ones. And everything He gives is good. And everything He takes away is for good.

I understand your anger, Wind, but I needn't join you... I'm a little too caught up in grace.