kadang nangis..kadang optimis..susah deh

alkisah..moo-moo si sapi gelisah melulu tentang pendidikan..aneh banget sapi pemerhati pendidikan!kadang belajar menjadi guru itu susah banget!apalagi moo-moo sapi yang suka berpuas diri..harus hati-hati banget biar gak salah arah..hiks..hiks..

Dear Heavenly Father, (7th of August 2006)

I come to You with a thankful heart. I thank you for comfort, for Your words and Your scripture. I thank You for kind advice and examples from those who care. I thank You for people who've been through bitterness and disappointment, those who understand Your Grace in most horrific circumstances that You have sent my way these weeks. My mind understand what You have said, and my flaming anger and bitterness slowly change to embers. Father, trying to understand that things does not change sometimes. trying hard to understand that changes comes slowly, or sometimes not at all. I understand that changes comes through pain, and fight for truth requires tears and sacrifice. Father I am weary. Sometimes I want to be free from constant ache of caring and anger for wrongdoings. I want to be able to stop thinking of what went wrong, taking myself out of all of this. I want to be 'normal', jealous with those who build protected ignorance around themselves, those who seems have no problem with their conscience, no discomfort of observing injustice.

Father forgive me! how can I yearn for apathy, detachment and uncaring attitude? Going about my life drugged with self security and selfishness? how can I call You Father if I still want those things? Have I not seen Your Grace, Your sacrifice in Christ? Have I not seen the countless numbers of people who suffered for understanding Your standards for us? Let me see the weariness as a gift, the heartaches and headaches as evidence of Your Love. A privilege to care, a privilege to suffer.

Father,want to shout like Your prophet long before. At the top of my lungs saying: how long must we wait? How long must we watch compromises and perversion labeled as truth? How long must we watch and waited for someone to take issues of quality and integrity seriously? Will it be just a privilege to care, a privilege to suffer?

Father forgive me, for I am desperate for my students. Father, am I wrong? am I wrong thinking that education is every single lesson taught, every single teaching carefully planned, every rule and decisions we made, all is intricately woven together in what we called education? I rejects the notion that education is just a formal institution going about their way. Every single lesson is intricately connected to each other. Every single educators are part of the puzzle. Every example of character inside and outside the classroom is equally important with the facts that we teach. Father, educators must be living examples, an open book for others to see. Father, what is education nowadays? we teach but we do not practice. We prepared our lessons, but we do not care what others teach. We prefer to be popular, not willing to be unpopular for the sake of enforcing discipline and quality. We regarded education as profit making industry, not a character making institution. Father, what kind of person will my student be? Since the very beginning life is easy and anything goes. Father, I cherish them. As an educator I have a debt to pay. A debt of all the lessons in life You have given. A debt of examples from educators that You used to influence my thoughts, my principles, my character. Father I remember, my kindergarten teacher, who patiently deal with my arrogance. I remember, my fourth grade elementary teacher, whose words extract a promise from me, a promise never to bodily strike others again. A promise that I kept to this day. Father I remember, my six grade elementary teacher, who punished me, forcing me to take additional lessons after school. No payment for him, no reward, just a strong hope for me to succeed. Father I remember, my junior high teacher, who terrifies all of us. Whose class seems to be a nightmare, who said in one unguarded moments, that he can except all the hatred as long as all of us become much smarter than he is. Father I remember, my lecturer, the one who had million things to do, who had every academic achievement I can only dream about. The one who spent his time till late evening, waiting for even a single student who need a simple advice. The one who sacrificed his lunch breaks just to be able to listen to a student's confusing logic, genuinely excited about it and showing the way. The one who took every unremarkable student ideas, and seriously helping them to flourish. The one who asked me to promised him, to be an educator who cares, not just teach.

Father, I have a debt to pay. You have given me these people to shape my life, it is now my turn to continue their legacy. To be there in a moment in time, where our lives meet. Am I an educator? or am I just a professional machinery working inside a heartless system? Educating people involves a heart, not just a mind. Educating people involves pain, because you care more than you should. Educating people involves thinking in long term, thinking desperately to make everything fits for the benefit of your students, not taking the easy way for the sake of superficial image, politics and profit. Educating people is not about making it always easy and pleasing, but also making it hard lessons even if everyone misunderstood. Educating people is about trials, errors, failures, tragedy and how to overcome it, not a smooth highway of success, where risks are avoided, and errors and wrongdoings are dismissed. A life long education is about consequences for every action, for no consequences for wrongdoings nourished the sociopath monster of the future. Freedom from standards, rules, and consequences is not absolute, absolute freedom is not freedom at all, but a different kind of chains of livelong self-righteous view of the world.

Father I pray for this institution, I pray with mixed feelings. I pray with bitterness but hope, I pray with painful observation but expectation for change. I pray for strength to carry on but also with frustration. Father, am I wrong? wrong to reject every instruction that proclaimed us as Christians and Christian institution? Wrong to reject more and more Christian prayers in the classroom? wrong to reject putting so called Christianity touch in every label, every building, every publication? Father, we are so far from acting according to Your scriptures, are we actually mocking You? are we actually so blinded with self righteous awe to realize that? Do our student recognize us as Christians through our lives? or do they have to learn about Christianity from the stark contradiction we practice? Father, my heart cries every time I read Your word displayed. Cries for mockery and hypocrisy that seems so fitting. Educating is living by example, an example of humility, not an in-your-face- example. Christianity is more about humility and less about public boasting. Father thank You, for letting me see others who suffered more deeply than just from depraved standards of principles and hypocrisy, those who suffered and lost everything, those who keep their faith and conviction even in death. It really gives me a context to fight for each day. To wait for Your time. Father, allowed me to see some change. Please Father, we need to see some change. A smallest change for comfort, a slightest change and effort to help us to survive in the midst of painful observations each day. Father, take my cries and examine my heart. Examine my motivations, cleansed me and mold me each day, to be a teacher that pleases You. To see through my Father's Eyes, to appreciate each student You have given me. Father purifies our anger and sorrow, let it be alive always but pure. Let it be alive for any single mockery of what Christian education should be. Never let it be for the sake of pride and individual gains, not for the personal feeling of being wronged. Let my voice and my writings burns bright with wrongdoings, but be silenced for selfish complaints. Thank You Father for us so few, for all of us who still cares. Thank You so much Father, strengthen us every hour, waiting for the time when changes come. Father, strengthen us so we may fight with everything You have given us, never stop working for change, never stop questioning, never stop pushing and exposing what is wrong. Never except hypocrisy as something to be tolerated. Never stop working on our salvation, living our lives, and our profession, as You want.