To Really See Someone

To 'really see' someone, especially someone who looks up to you, is to give that person an important blessing.  In a gaze of recognition, of understanding, in an appreciative look, there is deep blessing.  Often it is not so important that we say much to those for whom we are significant, but it is very important that we see them.  

Good parent see their kids; good teachers see their students; good coaches see their players; good administrators see their faculty and staff.  We are all blessed by being seen.

Today, the young are not being seen enough in this way.  Our youth are acting out in all kinds of ways as a means of getting our attention.  They want to and need to be seen by us -- parents, adults, teachers, coaches, administrators.  They need our blessing.  They need to see right in our eyes, the radical unconditional acceptance of their reality.  Young people need our appreciative gaze; most simply they need our gaze - period.

One of the deepest hungers inside young people is the hunger for adult connection, the desire to be recognized, seen, by a significant adult.  They desperately need, and badly want, the blessing that comes from our gaze and presence.  They need for us to see them.  In the end, more than they want our words, they want our gaze ...

-- Ron Rohlheiser, OMI

Stillpoint | 06.22.18

Stillpoint is the mini-retreat time that our president Mike Anderer has designated to take an intentional break from the business and the busyness of the day-to-day operations of the school.  During Stillpoint, we gather in council and sit in a circle.  The guidelines of the council are simply to speak from the heart, to be lean of expression (which is another way of speaking our own truth and story and not the truth or story of others), and to be present. 

After recalling that we're in God's holy presence, and dedicating our council, we begin with a reading. This was our reading for today:

Beginnings, Community, and Seeing Reality

"It is quite easy to found a community.  There are always plenty of courageous people who want to be heroes, are ready to sleep on the ground, to work hard hours each day, to live in dilapidated houses.  It's not hard to camp -- anyone can rough it for a time.  So the problem is not getting the community started -- there's always enough energy for take-off.  The problem comes when we are in orbit and going round and round the circuit.  The problem is in living with brothers and sisters whom we have not chosen but who have been given to us, and in working ever more truthfully towards the goals of the community. ... True community implies a way of living and seeing reality; it implies above all fidelity in the daily round.  And this is made up of simple things -- getting meals, using and washing dishes and using them again, going to meetings -- as well as gifts, joy, and celebration.

Community is only being created when its members accept that they are not going to achieve great things, that they are not going to be heroes, but simply live each day with hope like children, in wonderment as the sun rises and in thanksgiving as it sets.  Community is only being created when they have recognized that human greatness is to accept our insignificance, our human condition, and our earth, and to thank God for having put in a finite body the seeds of eternity which are visible in small daily gestures of love and forgiveness.  The beauty of humanity is in the fidelity to the wonder of each day." -- Jean Vanier from Community and Growth

We then sat in stillness for a few minutes and we began with a brief check-in consisting of three words describing our current state.  We then practiced gratitude by declaring what we are or have been grateful for.  Finally, we glanced again at the reading and picked several words or a phrase which had particular meaning for us at that moment in time.

For me, the words were "courageous people."  I shared with the circle that I see before me a group of courageous people.  And the word courage etymologically refers to the heart.  The references to heart like seeing with the eyes of heart, or listening with the heart, or hearing with the heart is a reminder to get us out of our heads and into a different space.  Our role as courageous people is to give heart, or to encourage, especially those students who will be entrusted to our care so that they can, in turn, become people of heart for the people in their own communities and for our world, which in such desperate needs of heart-filled people.