Teacher: Ode to My African Students

I believe that Shalom has been broken and continues to be broken between us, God, and other human beings. If that is the case, then our calling is to bring about Shalom insofar as we can with each encounter, conversation, post, therapy session, or meeting.  We have just returned from a three week trip to Swaziland in which I had the amazing opportunity to teach principles and practices of medical family therapy to undergraduate students at African Christian College. We attempted to establish on the first day of class a theology that informs work as a therapist.  That begins and ends with Shalom and with work as a spiritual enterprise as Christians are designed to be bi-vocational. As we do that, we are bringing about justice or righteousness into this world and into those encounters.

The next few posts will attempt to honor those students and that setting in Swaziland as these students attempt to bring about Shalom, righteousness, and justice in their lives and work.

 

Teacher: Ode to My African Students

Waymon Hinson

August 23, 2017

 

Teacher
            of pupils
            over many years, decades, even centuries

            perturbing minds

                        challenging ways

                        encouraging perspective changes

Teaching

            ideas and principles

            mountains and valleys

            peaks and hilltops

            of engagement and resistance

 

Teaching

            toward change

            distressing stability

            mounting with persistence

            the drip of boredom and sameness

 

Teaching

            across three states

            students domestic and international

            languages dialects and idioms

            pronunciations and quiet and bold

 

Teaching

            in Africa

            Swaziland six countries ten students

            shaping them

            or are they shaping me

 

Teaching being taught