That's not a secret!

Every Wednesday, I have the privilege of volunteering with a program called Volunteers Engaging Neighborhoods, or VEN, for short.  My work entails helping students who have a lower proficiency in English with their homework.  What it boils down to is that I help Alejandro, a sixth grader, learn the meaning of "complete sentence."  I am determined that he will know what one is and be able to write one by the time he enters seventh grade, which I think is reasonable.  However, any sort of my own judgement of what is "reasonable" is completely thrown out the window here, usually.  And that just means I need to grow.  A lot.  And so it goes.

My growth also includes my continued misadventures as I learn Spanish.  I told someone a few weeks ago that my "aniversario" was February 11th, which does not mean birthday, like I thought, but wedding anniversary.  "Cumpleaños" is the word for birthday.

So, yesterday I was in helping Alejandro, and my housemate, Alex, was helping Maria and Alma, two third grade girls.  Alex had to step out for a moment, so I was supervising the girls a little (probably distracting them more than anything else).  I tried to say something to them in Spanish, that, of course, did not make any sense.

"We don't understand you," remarked Alma.  I squatted down next to them, as they were sitting in their desks.

"Let me tell you guys a secret," I whispered loudly.  "I don't know how to speak Spanish."

"That's not a secret!" exclaimed Maria.  "You're telling everybody!"

Leave it to third graders to tell it like it is.

And as for growth, two things that I constantly remind myself:

The first is from my Jesuit Education, Teilhard de Chardin:


Patient Trust
By Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God

We are quite naturally impatient in everything
      to reach the end withour delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
      unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of progress
      that it is made by passing through
      some states of instability ---
      and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
      Your ideas mature gradually --- let them grow,
      let them shape themselves, without undue haste.

Don't try to force them on,
      as though you could be today what time
      (that is to say, grace and cirsumstances
      acting on your own good will)
      will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
      gradually forming within you will be.
Give Our Lord the benefit of believing
      that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
      in suspense and incomplete.



And the second, which I saw on a sign on the side of the road earlier in my year of service:

Don't be afraid of growing slowly.  Be only afraid of standing still.

Peace and all good,
Rachel