The room in summer

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God." — Colossians 3:16

I stopped in the doorway of the Sunday school room yesterday. I had gone to Trinity to drop off tomatoes for the church pantry, and on my way out I turned the wrong direction in the hall, which is to say I turned the direction I always turn on Sunday mornings, and there it was.

The room is different in summer. The chairs are pushed against the wall. Someone has stacked the felt-board pieces in a box on the bookshelf and the box is not quite closed, so I can see the edge of a blue felt fish and what I think is one of the loaves. The crayons are in the coffee can on the table where I leave them, and the coffee can has a ring on the table underneath it from all the mornings the children have moved it and put it back not quite in the same place.

I stood there for a minute. Maybe two. It is a small room. Eight chairs fit in a circle and nine is crowded and ten means someone is sitting on the floor, which the children do not mind and which I pretend to mind but do not. The carpet is the color it was when they put it in, which was beige, but it has taken on the particular shade of beige that means it has been walked on by forty years of small shoes. I know this carpet. I have sat on this carpet. I have picked crayon pieces out of this carpet.

August means the children come back in six weeks. Five, if you count the Sunday before Labor Day, which I do, because I need to be ready by then and ready takes planning. I will pull the curriculum folder out of the filing cabinet in the church office sometime in the middle of the month and I will sit at this table and I will read through it the way I read through it every year, which is carefully, with a pencil, making notes in the margins about what will work and what will not.

What nearly fifty years of teaching has taught me is that patience is not a feeling. It is a practice. You sit with the child who does not understand and you wait. You do not hurry the understanding. You do not explain louder. You sit, and you wait, and you say it again a different way, and you wait again, and eventually the child's face changes. Not always. But often enough that you keep sitting.

The room will be full again soon. The chairs will be in a circle. The crayon can will be in a different spot every Sunday. I closed the door behind me and went to deliver the tomatoes.

Lord, fill the room again when it is time.

Ruby keeps a collection of prayers at her kitchen table. You can find them here.