Are these questions you would like to ask Jesus?

Pessimisms

Never face facts: if you do you’ll never get up in the morning.   Marlo Thomas

Today’s Quote 6/9/09

Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so you apologize for truth. — Benjamin Disraeli

Don’t kid yourself- it’s about the numbers

Here’s the cartoon from the Naked Pastor that gives the truth.

At one church I served in the past, the leadership would beat the path to the attendance keeping book after each service to see how many showed up that Sunday. I could see them making their way. Interestingly enough, they were the same ones who were against any kind of evangelistic outreach. They wanted the church to grow, but the kind of growth they wanted was stealing the best sheep from other churches. The messiness of discipling new converts was not their deal. I still remember the conversation about the wrong kind of people getting converted. My ears are still ringing.

My wife should make $125,000 a year as a teacher!!!

The New York Times has an article on an eight-teacher dream team, lured to an innovative charter school that will open in Washington Heights in September with salaries that would make most teachers drop their chalk and swoon; $125,000 is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, and about two and a half times as much as the national average for teacher salaries. They also will be eligible for bonuses, based on schoolwide performance, of up to $25,000 in the second year. The school, called the Equity Project, is premised on the theory that excellent teachers — and not revolutionary technology, talented principals or small class size — are the critical ingredient for success. Experts hope it could offer a window into some of the most pressing and elusive questions in education: Is a collection of superb teachers enough to make a great school? Are six-figure salaries the way to get them? And just what makes a teacher great?

My wife’s classroom is a place you like to drop by and see what’s going on. The place is alive. Walls, ceilings, desks, floors and even storage bins scream the fun of learning. The kids are happy, the conversation buzzing, and the attitude positive. When I peer into other classrooms on the way to hers, there is a “locked in” feeling. But Mrs. Bryant’s class is like the Discovery Channel.

But mostly kids get loved. And nervous, frightened little kids become dynamos of self-confidence when the air they breathe is the love and tender caring of a competent teacher who has the energy to pay attention and the patience to give over and over again.

So if this charter school recruiter had happened by Mrs. Bryant’s class, cha-ching!!! Jackpot. I think mostly what’s wrong with the world is that she is not everybody’s first grade teacher.

There are just some people you need to make short work of

“By The Babe Unborn” – GK Chesterton’s poem

The world with all of its suffering yet remains a fairyland, a place filled with the miraculous presence of God. Everywhere we turn we hear rumors of His existence and behold things that are but could not have been. We live a life of surprises and wonders. And yet we take away this wonder from one and a half million babies in the womb each year. We must be a very bored people who have come to believe that not to be is greater than being itself. Bored people are dangerous people.

By The Babe Unborn

If trees were tall and grasses short,
As in some crazy tale,
If here and there a sea were blue
Beyond the breaking pale,

If a fixed fire hung in the air
To warm me one day through,
If deep green hair grew on great hills,
I know what I should do.

In dark I lie; dreaming that there
Are great eyes cold or kind,
And twisted streets and silent doors,
And living men behind.

Let storm clouds come: better an hour,
And leave to weep and fight,
Than all the ages I have ruled
The empires of the night.

I think that if they gave me leave
Within the world to stand,
I would be good through all the day
I spent in fairyland.

They should not hear a word from me
Of selfishness or scorn,
If only I could find the door,
If only I were born.