Happy Frigid Friday Du Bois Families,
This morning I spent about 45 minutes talking with our 5th grade about how we can get along better and all be better neighbors in our Du Bois Community. If you are someone with a 5th grader at home, please know they were a remarkable audience. Attentive and attuned, they asked the right questions and made the right comments. Their patience and grace in listening to a 45-minute friendly lecture were impressive and inspiring.
As we approach holidays with their pressure on our time, our energy, and our finances, it strikes me that Patience and Grace are two words that really have to drive our work as parents, guardians, caretakers, and educators. "Patience" we all understand–even if we struggle with its practice.
Grace can be a trickier concept to grasp. As I often do, I look to literature to help me unwrap, rewrap, and make my own the things I struggle to understand. I hope the poem “Grace” by Orlando Ricardo Menes can serve this purpose for you as it does for me, and I hope you have a safe and peaceful weekend.
Be well and stay warm,
Jake M.
Grace
By Orlando Ricardo Menes from his 2022 collection of poems, The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds
We cannot buy it in bulk at Trader Joe's,
Swap it for gold, or hoard shares of Grace, Inc.,
To hedge against bad luck. We acquire it
Without contract, promissory notes, or IOUs,
Neither codicils nor fine print. We gather
Grace safe from litigation or severance,
And though we might breach the strictures of creed,
It cannot be forfeited or suspended. Rather,
Grace is asymmetric, parabolic, skewed to love,
Immanent and absolute, but also unpredictable
As quantum particles, both here and there,
Both full and empty, so it might arrive
Inopportunely and thus slip under hope,
Upsetting the earnest prayer, teasing our faith,
Like some rain bands, copious cumuli,
That appear astray, unbidden, in stagnant skies
To drench at last the drought-scourged earth.
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