Finally Did It!

Even though we still have about two and a half months left of this year, I will miss 2020 once it is gone, simply because I have made it a point to enjoy this year. I have taken all the negatives this crazy ______ (fill in the blank) year has thrown our way and looked for ways to, as I wrote in an earlier blog, put honey in my lemonade.

Hard times can make a person better and stronger or just the opposite. It all depends on the person and how that person reacts. No, I do not live as though COVID-19 cannot hurt me. Just the opposite, I understand the consequences and dangers of being infected and spreading it to others especially the students and staff entrusted to my care. As Br. John Johnston once told me, "You are at the bottom of the upside-down pyramid and it is your responsibility to care for all those above you." Very true.

My Father, Dr. Rhomes
Aur at St. Jude

Yet, I have decided instead of living in a shell and in fear of what might happen that I would live my life and make things happen; things I've been wanting to accomplish for some time now, but have always found an excuse not to do them. If the lifespan of the Aur male continues as is, I have twenty years left on this earth unless some unforeseen event cuts short the remaining twenty years. My opportunity to finally do the things I want to do is quickly passing me by. I'm not going to spend a year of those twenty in hibernation waiting for all dangers to be bulldozed from my path. I will be cautious, wear a mask, observe social distancing, take my temperature daily, wash my hands 100 times per day, and disinfect things. But, I will continue to live life, cautiously but with zeal and gusto. An oxymoron? Maybe. St. John Baptist de La Salle often used the word "zeal" to describe our work as Christian educators. My father often used the word "gusto" with gusto. My friend Philip Cantrell often enjoyed using "oxymoron" in a sentence.

Below are several things accomplished on my "finally did it" list. 

Since Monday, March 16th, the day St. Ann started virtual learning, I have not been able to focus my brain on reading for pleasure. I started, however could not finish six different books. Those six books are all resting neatly on coffee tables, end tables, and night stands throughout my house.  Those books pretty much ended up where I quit reading them. With all that has been going on in this crazy educational world we are living in, my mind has been much too busy figuring our next-steps, emergency scenarios, what-ifs, and answering devil's advocate questions that I have not been able to relax enough to do something I truly love to do: READ! Read for pleasure that is! Hey, that's an incomplete sentence. That's okay because the sentence before is a run-on sentence. Put them together and they both somehow work; kind-of.

After months of trying to read a book from cover to cover, I "finally did it!" I read a book. No, it was not a comic book (even though that is about all my mind can comprehend at times), children's book (their Lexile levels are too high for me), or professional book on distance/virtual/online learning (God help us!). It was my favorite type of book; non-fiction about real people in real life situations. I read Lake of the Ozarks; My Surreal Summers in a Vanishing America by Bill Geist.

I read this book during the fall break while on the beach in Panama City Beach while hoping Hurricane Delta (sounds like an infantry division or drink on Bourbon Street) would stay well west of the Florida panhandle. It, the book not the hurricane, is about the summers Bill Geist spent working at his aunt and uncle's hotel at the Lake of the Ozarks. The book was hilarious especially since I used to live near there and what he wrote made so much sense. Vacationers sitting near me at the beach must have thought that I had way too many Hurricane Deltas, as I was laughing out loud. It was one of those books you wish would just keep going. Unfortunately, it didn't. Now, I need to find another book that will hold my interest and keep me laughing. Not easy to do at this time. But, I sure did need the laugh.

Here's another I "finally did it." After selling my last bicycle back in 2006 when I moved to Missouri, I finally purchased a bike in late March after the world Coronavirus shutdown. I have always had a bike and used to ride bikes everywhere I went. Few things in life are as satisfying as riding the Wolf River trails. Sad that I stopped riding. Kind of traded my bicycle for a motorcycle. Also very satisfying riding a motorcycle on the country roads of Mid-Missouri.

The shutdown gave me the opportunity to start bike riding again, so I have. Since I started riding again and using the Strava app (app to monitor your running and biking), I have ridden over 1,300 miles on my hybrid bike. My hybrid bike is perfect for me. I'm not going to win any races or break any distance riding on my bike. It is not build for speed or distance, but for comfort and just to enjoy a ride. If you use the Strava app, look me up and follow my rides.

During the fall break, I rode over 100 miles in the PCB area. On Sunday of fall break, I rode 27 miles on the trails of Conservation Park. What an awesome place to ride. So, I'm riding at 7:30 am with no one around. I have never ridden here before, so this was all new to me. One of the reasons I ride is just to help my mind relax. Since my mind was relaxed, maybe that's why I was able to actually finish a book. I also use riding as a time for prayer and to put life's problems aside.

I was doing okay riding the trails at Conservation Park because the first part of the trail was called Osprey. Cool, maybe I'd see one. The second part of the trail was called Kelly. That's good because I married a Kelly. Actually I married a Kelley, but close enough. The third part was called Bear Track. Now, here I am all by myself on a 27 mile trek in a park that advertises they have alligators, wild boars, and eagles and the next trail is called Bear Track. So, I'm looking for bears hoping not to encounter one, but if I did, I was hoping for Smokey or Yogi and not the bear in Revenant. Really did not want a bear tossing me around and standing on my head.  Leonardo DiCaprio survived that bear attack and even managed to kill the bear while winning an Oscar doing it. Don't think that I would accomplish any of those if attacked by a bear. Just sayin'. It helped me pedal a little bit faster to get to the next part of the trail. To face my fears, I rode Bear Track twice. I never saw a bear, but I did see some snakes and an alligator.

Here's another we "finally did it!" When I started at St. Ann, one of the first things I noticed needed to be done was to update and improve our Language Arts and Math curricula. This year, we have! It isn't cheap changing a school's curriculum. We had to purchase brand new books for everyone; everyone in all grades including the teacher materials. I am thrilled that we are finally using the same curriculum throughout the school. We are using Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Journeys for Language Arts and Sadlier Math. Both have online components just in case of a COVID-19 shutdown or the rare snow day. Snow days are now no longer a reason to miss school. Hence, online components. I can hear my teachers' eyes rolling.

Me and My Suzuki Blvd S50

Here is yet another we "finally did it!" We made it through the first quarter! It has taken forever to get here and at the same time the quarter has gone by in a flash. Fall Fest, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are just around the corner. Then, we will be halfway through the 2020-21 school year and we will be done with 2020.

Yes, it has been difficult. Yes, I cannot wait for our brilliant doctors and scientists to come up with a COVID vaccine. Yes, I will celebrate as will the rest of the world.

I'm sorry about the deaths caused by COVID-19. We have all felt the deaths, and have a loved one or acquaintance who has died during this time from COVID related illnesses. Most died alone with no one but hospital personnel around them, and were also buried with only a few close relatives allowed to attend the funeral. Sad. From this sadness, we have to grow strong and do our best to be more humane and compassionate to everyone. We all have to be a reason for hope and not fear for those around us. Let's hope and work for a better tomorrow. It isn't just going to happen if we sit around doing nothing but complain about 2020 and fear living life. We cannot stop living. Let's use the final quarter of 2020 to get ready and make 2021 what we hoped 2020 would have been. But, let's do this together. It works better that way as we at St. Ann have been able to do together.

Support St. Ann

Once that happens, we will all be able to say, we finally did it!

God bless you,

Didier Aur, Principal - St. Ann Catholic School

The Beauty of Broken Mirrors

 

The Beauty of Broken Mirrors

By Anthony Maranise, Obl.S.B.

 

In the hectic bustle and scurrying that can be our lives sometimes, we have the tendency to overlook certain luxuries. Many of us, I would venture to guess, likely take for granted the common mirror. Yes, the mirror is a luxury in that we do not need it to ‘get by’ in this world or this life, though it helps tremendously. Imagine how much more difficult driving would be without that polished reflective glass there to be of assistance. But I digress. Most of us use or rely on mirrors within our homes— whether they be decorative or for personal grooming, dressing, etc. They are a common luxury; this much we know.

NEEDTOBREATHE

Some months ago, a loved one (who most unfortunately has ‘fallen away’) and I were discussing our mutual enjoyment of the contemporary rock and Christian music group known as ‘NeedToBreathe’. One of their newer songs is entitled, “Banks”, and has a beautiful lyrical verse within it. Truth be told, this verse alone inspired the composition of this article with a bit of prayerful reflection with the song itself. The verse intones, “If you ever feel like you’re not enough, I’m going to break all your mirrors.”

Now, “why”, I thought, “would someone break another’s mirrors because they felt like they weren’t (good) enough?” I stayed with this thought for a while not primarily because of the question it evoked within me, but instead because of how the verse resonated with my own soul and ‘interior disposition.’ I often feel like I am not (good) enough – whether that be for my colleagues, my principal, my doctoral studies professors, my friends, my parents, my girlfriends over the years, and most importantly of all, for God Himself. While I would like to believe I am not alone in feeling this way, I wonder if perhaps I do not, for some reason, feel this inadequacy more often than others. Alas, that is something I will take with me into further spiritual direction.

 

During the recitation of the Chaplet of Divine Mercy one afternoon, accompanied in prayer by my seventh-grade scholars, the answer to the question finally ‘dawned’ on me. Why would someone break another’s mirrors because they felt like they weren’t (good) enough?

 

Because mirrors show us only our external reflections. Designed to provide a clear and full reflection, they can, at best, only ever accomplish half their intended purpose. Mirrors cannot show us the most authentic, real, affirming, and beautiful reflection of all, namely, the ways in which we reflect the imago Dei in which we have been created (cf. Genesis 1:27)!

 

Thus, if we stare into our external reflections alone and for long enough, we will begin to believe what we see in those reflections. We might, for example, see one whose hair has begun to grey; one whose face is distorted by stress wrinkles; whose torso bears the marks of surgeries, injuries, or even ‘stretch-marks’ from weight gain. If we focus too intently on our external appearances, we run two risks of excess: (1) either we begin to see ourselves as inadequate and grotesque or (2) we begin to see ourselves in a rather narcissistically positive lens, forgetting that though we are created in the image and likeness of God, we are still sinners “in need of God’s mercy in which we ought never lose hope” (Rule of Saint Benedict, 4.74).

I might content that insofar as mirrors only show us ‘the lesser half’ of our true selves (the external), they are all somewhat ‘broken.’ Yet, here is the beauty of it all (and the simultaneous beauty of these ‘broken’ mirrors):

We were and are, moment-by-moment, loved into existence by the One who, at our creation, looked at us and proclaimed what we will hope to hear again as we enter into ‘eternal Easter’, namely, these phrases: “Very good!” (Genesis 1:31) and “It is I who have fearfully and wonderfully made you!” (Psalms 139:14).

Therefore, next time you gaze into your reflection in a mirror, I encourage you to remember these three things: (1) You are using a ‘broken’ instrument to provide you with a less than full reflection of who you truly are, (2) Who you truly are is God’s child and as such you are created in His own dazzling image and likeness, and (3) As a result of that creation alone, you are more than (good) enough!

 

About the Author

 

Anthony Maranise, Obl.S.B. is the middle school religion instructor at St. Ann Catholic School of Bartlett (TN) and is a doctoral scholar in the Ed.D. program for interdisciplinary leadership at Creighton University (Omaha, NE). Apart from these roles, Anthony is the author of five books, a New Memphis Institute research and leadership fellow, a certified chaplain, and an oblate of the Order of Saint Benedict associated with St. Bernard Abbey (Cullman, AL). You may learn more about him by visiting his personal website at: amaranis.wix.com/amjm or by visiting his LinkedIn profile at: www.linkedin.com/in/anthony-maranise.