Biography of Grace (Origin stories part 1)

Great apologies

 I have not been so diligent in getting out my blog posts and podcast episodes in a timely manner and I want that to change. If I'm really going to put focused, continual effort into this work, I think it's only right to walk in a state of discipline. This is an area of weakness that I have when it requires work that appears to only effect myself. Like many teachers, a strong motivation to do work comes from those it will effect, in my case the small children in my care. But when it comes to myself,  I have great difficulty staying motivated. But this is why we continue to grow, right?

This blog/podcast is meant to be an intersection of Race, Christianity, and Montessori pedagogy. I'm often thinking about all of these things throughout the day and how they effect one another. But today I want to get a little personal and talk about how I began my journey of walking the path of the Christian. My hope in sharing this is to bring to light the work that God is doing in the world even in the midst of the many difficulties and confusions that we may be facing on a day-to-day basis.

Becoming a Christian

When I was seven years old I'd just come home from school with my sister. Jessica and Jasmine, young siblings who also went to my same neighborhood school and were friends of the family, came across the street to my home where they had a grand announcement that seemed almost mystical: "We're saved!!! We're saved!!!!", they cried. I was excited for them, though I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Saved? From what? Are we in danger? My mother had used this terminology too, as I would later recall. While her upbringing was not particularly religious, she had an early affinity for witchcraft (levitation, fortune telling, etc). She later met my Dad, who was a Christian--one who was "saved"--and she became one later on in the marriage. The excitement of the sisters got me excited too. I was a boy who did not have many friends and was very out of sync with the other children in my school and neighborhood. I learned to imagine and play on my own, but I also lacked the practice of interaction with others outside my family. I was teased relentlessly and longed for a place to just belong. This "saved" business seemed like an opportunity to finally be in on something.

Later that even my mother explained. Being saved meant recognizing the need for eternal salvation, which is only found in Jesus Christ. The need for salvation is due to the reality that our natural inclination is to rebel against everything that God has commanded (Romans 3:23). This rebellion is called sin. Since God is the source of all life, our rebellion against Him causes a separation and places us in line to receive His just condemnation of us. But Jesus, who is God, lived the perfect life of obedience that we were called to live and died anyway as a means of sacrifice. So the wrath that God justly has towards those who rebel has been placed on Jesus and Jesus' righteousness has been placed on us. We receive this gift only if we believe that Jesus actually accomplished all this through His death, burial and resurrection from the dead (Romans 10:9). Now, did my mom explain all those things to me that evening? Probably, but definitely not in those words. At any rate I accepted what she said...she was my mom after all. Would she lie to me? But I also investigated this for myself through reading the Bible. And I've been doing that ever since. About 26 years.

What is most Central

Why do I mention all this? Because Christ is at the center of all that I do.That means I am first a Christian man, not a Black man. I am first a follower of God, not a follower of Montessori pedagogy. The Bible informs what I think about my ethnicity and what I think about various educational philosophies. Honestly, because I don't hold my Blackness or my Montessorian ideals as the central tenets of my identity, I believe that I can live into those identities far better, as well as be a far freer human. 

So grace and courtesy has a dual meaning. Grace is the unmerited favor given to all people. Just the reality that we are alive is a gift that we don't deserve. But there is a specific grace of the good news (gospel) of Jesus Christ, which, though offered to all is not received by all. I mention the many facets of grace in a previous post. It also speaks of an elegance of movement or an extending of good will. I do hope, in this increasingly polarized world, that we might be willing to extend more grace to one another, particularly to our children. By doing so, we extend grace to the generations that come after us, perhaps moving us closer to peace in our world.