Beauty Intrusions

“Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.” — Saul Bellow

This time each year, I know a few things for sure- I need solitude, I need a good book, and I need to write. Writing is how I process, how I lean in. Joan Didion once said, “I don’t know how I feel about something until I’ve written about it.” I’m with her.

It feels like yesterday and simultaneously 5 years ago that I stood in front of my beloved colleagues at Colerain and told them my time there was ending. I was leaving a job and a community I loved, and I wanted to let them know how much they meant to me. I could barely speak, and perhaps that told the whole story.

I imagined the moment a hundred times before. What do you say to a group of folks you love and admire and have lived life with during pivotal years? I guess the answer is… you say nothing. You just cry and cry and let them love you into being. A friend handed me tissues at one point and whispered to me that it is a great strength to be able to cry in front of a crowd. Well, that strength is built over time I suppose. It was a gift to unravel publicly and be held tightly for a few moments. I can’t explain it, I just know it was an important moment I’ll always cherish.

There’s always more going on, too. This is true all the time. We had endured a pandemic together, navigated losses and changes together time and time again. I had a newborn at home, but I had also just lost a close friend. The degree that loss was (and still is) impacting me is too large for words. I was holding onto a lot, and that moment felt like some sort of release my soul needed. They did what they’d always done over the years- they seamlessly carried it with me.

I often think about how we are all “custodians of an inner world,” as my favorite poet John O’ Donohue powerfully puts it. We are launching our whole bodies and whole past selves into every situation, everywhere we go. “You aren’t just the age you are. You’re all the ages you have ever been!” Kenneth Koch says, which is to say… you are, right now, also every version of your past self since the moment you were born. Everything you’ve experienced and carried still clings on somewhere, whether it is somewhere deep down or right on your sleeve.

To find places where those inner worlds surface and are nurtured time and time again… that’s special. That’s the kind of place Colerain was for me, a place my inner world effortlessly emerged and was loved well during formative years of my life. That takes years of trust and shared experiences, I think, which is what makes a community sacred. Then, thresholds arrive, and we sometimes make difficult decisions to leap. The harder thing is sometimes also the right thing, and I knew crossing this new threshold would be difficult but a crossing I needed to make.

So, I launched into my new world. My role now as an assistant principal is drastically different from my old one. As a teacher, you are in control of, or at least involved, in every step of your day. Planning, preparing, instructing, tweaking, and moving forward. You know where you’re headed and you’re planning on how you’ll get there. You start, you finish. A million variables exist daily, but you at least go in knowing where you’ll physically be all day.

My new job is different. I love being challenged and stretched, but I have also found myself in plenty of situations where I don’t know what to do. Or, there isn’t a clear cut answer on what we should do. I have drawn strength from a text Steven sent a friend that she shared when he died. “I’m sorry you had a rough day. No words of wisdom but I support you forever!” I have the incredible privilege to support teachers and watch them be amazing each day. If there’s one thing I’ve tried to live by so far, it is what Steven said. Even if I don’t always know what to say or do in the moment, I can be a supportive presence. Sometimes, that’s all we need anyway.

So much happens in a day… every spouse of an educator clinks their wine glass and nods their head. I am often responding to something that has happened elsewhere, and trying to help kids navigate difficult situations. I think what I love the most so far is the moments where little discoveries emerge with students, when we dive a little deeper below the surface of what’s really going on in their worlds. Beauty intrusions. The inner worlds bubbling to the surface and offering themselves in moments of vulnerability. It is a beautiful and sacred space to hold.

There was the time a 5th grader experienced a panic attack and later apologized through tears, worried he may have scared us, because he “knows what it feels like to be scared.” Or the time a group of 3rd graders sat intensely as their classmate expressed his concern about being left out, and then all leapt up and hugged him and included him in their game at recess. I would watch this same group dance their hearts out together during a silent DJ party on the last day before winter break.

There was also the time a student was leaving the country for a few months, and his entire class swarmed him with a group hug and tears as he came to gather his stuff. This was a friend we had experienced some difficult moments with, who wrote me a note that hangs above my desk that reads, “Hi Mr. Williams I MISS YOU Mr. Williams. Love :)” I look at it and think about the time he burst into my office wanting to show off his multiplication skills, a 1st grader who had certainly not yet learned them in class. I told him he was a genius. He smiled and wrote, “I’m a gene-yes” in his notebook. Beauty intrusions.

I stand and look out my back window often. Our backyard is a haven for all sorts of animals, and my son loves when they visit. There were two cats that came by the other day and he has been looking for them ever since. “Cat! Cat!”

Whether it’s the backyard or the student sitting in front of me, I am constantly being sustained by the beauty intrusions I encounter. I suppose, as the quote says, this really is what it’s all about. Maybe it’s God’s way of reminding us of the gift of being here, of having your eyes opened a little wider to new possibilities. The reminder that two things can exist and be true at one time- great pain and great beauty. Loss and newness. Light and dark. Goodbyes and hellos. All around us, all the time, if we allow ourselves to look and see. Unexpected intrusions of beauty.

“Grief and gladness, sickness and health, are not separate passages. They’re entwined and grow from and through each other, planting us, if we’ll let them, more profoundly in our bodies in all their flaws and grace.” — Matthew Sanford