Moving Away, Going Toward II

Exactly two years ago I wrote my last full entry here in my blog with this same title. And just like how I described myself before, I feel like I am again "standing in the middle of things." I just started moving my first box-load of books to my next house of residence, the Loyola House of Studies. Yes, I am moving again. I am moving on to the next stage of my formation but now as a Jesuit theology student. Wow! I can't believe I will be hitting the books once again like a full time college student. For the past two years of my regency I have been used to standing there in front of the class as the authority figure. Those days will be gone for now and I will just have to adjust because, surely, the next four years of being glued to my chair inside the classroom will be tough. But I am excited! TO LEARN ANEW. I just experienced being a teacher and I can fully say now how tough it is to become one. I am very thankful to all my teachers in the past for doing a 'divine' job. Literally, one needs divine intervention in order to teach Christian morality to present-day teenagers. I remember waking up each morning asking myself the questions, "What am I going to teach?" "How am I going to teach?" Sure, I have my lesson plan readied a week before but every moment I hit the platform I enter a world different from what I have earlier imagined and planned.

Indeed, that was a humbling experience for me. And it is all the more worth going back to the classroom in order for me to learn. There is a lot to learn still. Like what I often tell my students, "What we know is just a drop in the vast ocean." But it is impossible to know everything. We just have to focus on the 'essentials' and, often, most of it comes from what is self-taught, one's own experience.

Yes, I am standing in the middle of things, a place which I have not planned or imagined before, and for the same reason a place where I can face another direction and continue to learn. A place that I do not control nor fully expect that it will move smoothly, for if it becomes like that then what is there to learn and be excited about. I am grateful to the One who allows me to go through the endless goings toward and movings away.