In my teaching I do want my students to gain skills that will help them get jobs and earn a living. But those are things that are generally easy to learn anywhere. Much more than that, I want them to gain what will help them to flourish. I want them to develop practices of contemplation. To learn to have sustained and thoughtful and convivial conversation. To write not just as an efficient practice but as a means of thinking with pen and paper, and of creating a record for themselves and for others to remember.

I want them to consider the stars slowly. To see the stars twinkle. To see the Milky Way turn overhead.

I want them to know that scorpions fluoresce, and to wonder why, and to let that wonder be the nursery of new questions.

I want them to know the bees that are so small they would not cover the whole eye of a bumblebee, and to ask what else they have not yet known about the myriad small lives that fill every space. I want them to know nothing is empty.

I want them to believe that when they look a friend in the eye, when they listen to a mourning stranger, when they hold the hand of a child, when they dance in celebration, when they engage in acts of humble devotion to the highest good their mortal hearts can imagine, they do something that approaches holiness.

My morning thoughts as I pray for my students and prepare to read with them once more, with attention to what ancient authors might have meant for us to hear.