Let me tell you a story. Only, it isn’t a story. Let me tell you the truth.
At 8:30 this morning, I engage a distraught first grader; spinning on the floor, raging, yelling in the corner, throwing trash on the floor. I hold him, talk to him, stroke his head and ask if he won’t try to be good for me; just for a while. He nods and explodes again as I leave.
At 9:00, an unpredictable, wild fourth grader I know, bounds through the doors, gives me a huge hug saying, ‘Oh, you’re working on main idea, details…right?’ He leaps and spins away and I call after him, ‘You’re looking as handsome as ever!’ ‘Thanks!’ he yells and disappears down the empty hallway.
Minutes later he is racing around, tipping over garbage, shrieking. At 9:40 I have a rather disconnected conversation with another fourth grader; a silent and strange boy. ‘I’ve been out because I have a new dog’, he offers. I know this is not true. I smile. He looks up. ‘Do you know that there is a red planet?’ ‘Mars?’ I respond. ‘No’. He shakes his head. He is silent. He looks at me. ‘Like the future when cars can fly?’ He stares at me. I say, ‘Maybe. I don’t know’. He looks away. After awhile he says quietly, ‘I wish that were now’.
This is a small corner of my day in my school. This is our city and her streets. This is a snapshot of our nation. We are suffering moral and societal and spiritual bankruptcy. For God’s love we don’t need more laws. We need healing of the highest order.
690 Saint Paul 