Sarah Golsby-Smith
When I was a child, I remember my mother dressing me in white crepe paper, with wire coat hangers providing the skeleton for what would become angels’ wings, so that I could partake in our school’s nativity play. I remember standing on top of the stairs, in the blinding heat of an Australian summer, watching a sweaty Joseph and Mary, the centre of all our attention, holding a bundle wrapped in a towel. The adults were fanning themselves, dressed in anything that wouldn’t stick to the skin.
I remember it rained during our performance, coming as it was on the skirts of a southerly buster, the drops of water on my white crepe paper spoiling the effect but providing welcome relief from the blistering heat. All of this, of course, was set against strings of paper snowflakes, festooning the classrooms and handrails.
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For Australians, December means three things: summer, the end of school and Christmas. Those three things are inextricably linked. For my Canadian relatives, that chord of events seems discordant. There are predictable cries that protest the logic of Christmas in the heat, let alone Christmas after finishing a school year. And so sometimes it can seem as if Australians and our Christmas celebrations are somehow off kilter, not right, awkward.
And yet, there is something about the Australian rhythm of the year that enriches both Christmas and the meaning of school and the children in them. Yes, both Christmas and schools have a child at the centre of the story, but this doesn’t really approach the mystery of it. Advent is the moment when I am reminded of exactly what we are doing in schools.
One of my favourite books is called The Supper of the Lamb, by Robert Farrar Capon. In it, he surprises the modern mind by making a connection between the quotidian act of cooking with the holy moment of sacrament. What we do every day is holy, he writes. One line in particular sticks with me, in a chapter which celebrates wine. After furiously raging against grape juice — which requires modern processes to dumb down what will always happen when grapes become juice, which is to say, wine — Capon offers a few observations:
God makes wine … notice the tense: He makes, not made … He did not create once upon a time, only to find himself saddled now with the unavoidable and embarrassing result of that first rash decision … It was St. Thomas, I think, who pointed out long ago that if God wanted to get rid of the universe, He would not have to do anything: He would have to stop doing something … Do you see what that means? In a general way we conceded that God made the world out of joy: He didn’t need it; He just thought it was a good thing … The bloom of yeast lies upon the grape skins year after year because He likes it; … every September, He says, That was nice; do it again.
The extraordinary gift of being a teacher is that I am allowed to witness so many moments where God “does it again”, and announces that “it was good”. I get to witness the “joy” of the created human being, brand new, sustained by God’s joy. Each one is different from the other. Some of them are a bit mischievous, or very mischievous. Some are suffering. Some are deeply intellectual. Some belong in their bodies and nowhere else. Some are neurodiverse. Some are good at school. Some find it not their natural home. Over all of them, I hear the voice of God: “That was nice; do it again.”
Each teacher at a different moment in a child’s development will tell you about the miracle of growth; just as Capon tells us about the extraordinary chemical process – over which we do not preside so much as witness – we are able to tell you about the miracle of human growth. For me, I am a teacher of adolescents. I love it. I get to witness the moment that the pituitary gland speaks to the brain, which speaks to the body, and announces: “This child is growing to become an adult. This adult will be like no other. She will be herself. That was nice; do it again”.
Being a teacher does not only mean that I am a blank witness, or a scientist that collects data on these growing people in the way of that phrase I have begun to detest, “evidence-based practice”. No. To see the breathtaking createdness of each child means to acknowledge my own createdness. And that means I must see the way God’s love, joy, and grace sustain my own being, every day and every moment I draw breath.
One of the things that I have loved over my whole life is the way light dances on water at particular times of the day. There is no need to buy diamonds. One simply needs to stand in front of a body of water, and watch the way the light turns prismatically to throw shards of bright whites and yellows — no camera ever does it justice. Every time I do this, I note that the shards form a triangle, with its point at my feet. The light dances broadly on the horizon, and narrows in its trajectory until it arrives at my feet. It can feel simultaneously like I am the centre of the universe, and like I am the smallest thing in the world.
That triangle of light is not created by light and water. That triangle of light is created by an interaction between light, water and my apprehension of it. My eyes, the light and the water form a perfect triangle. So, not only has God sustained life so that light dances on water, but he has sustained my life so that I can participate in it, so that I can offer a witness and say “that was nice, please do it again”.
The morning sun reflecting on the surface of the water. (Vlad Georgescu / Moment / Getty Images)
Now, while water and light are, of course, alive, and those moments are extraordinary because of that, I will say that working with young humans is infinitely more prismatic, breathtaking, unnecessarily beautiful than any sunrise over any body of water. Why? Because children are sentient. They apprehend us, while we apprehend them, apprehending.
Teaching children is a holy interaction between God’s ongoing commitment to flesh, to the unmatchable beauty of human beings. Every new one, every single baby born when she draws her first breath, is greater even than the yeast on the vines, greater than light dancing on water. Not only is that new human being beautiful in their own right, but children also apprehend and see just as we apprehend and see.
Teachers do not only stand witness to the newness of creation in these new human beings. They also stand witness to the subject matter they are teaching, which is in and of itself a miracle, either of God’s created world or of a representation or interaction with it.
If I am teaching Drama, or Visual Art, or English, then I am dealing with humans and the way they have interacted with what they see — then I am dealing with the moment a human being sees light on water. If I am teaching Science or Social Science, then I am dealing with a way that human beings have sought to understand the phenomenon of light on water. If I am teaching Mathematics, then I am dealing with the complex and extraordinary patterns that make up the created order I live in and constitute.
So, when I take all of this in, I am left with this: teachers teach children how to apprehend creation, and then to become aware of the astonishing feat of that apprehension. If that is not shepherds gathered around the Holy Family, then I do not know what is.
Christmas ornament depicting the nativity. (Liliboas / E+ / Getty Images)
And so, I have finally decided that Australian teachers are the closest to the miracle. We are the ones who celebrate a year’s worth of watching children grow — and yes, I’m tired — at the same time as we celebrate the moment that God did not dispense with fleshed creatures, but doubled down on it. At a time when empire grew, infanticide was de rigeur and internecine politics fanned out over the ancient world, God decided not to withdraw his presence and so force it not to be. Instead, God took on flesh — and not just flesh, but the flesh of a child. “That was nice; let’s do it again”. That was nice, let’s do it once and for all.
In December, I celebrate our Creator, in whom “we live and move and have our being”. Praise be to God.
Sarah Golsby-Smith is an English teacher, and the Head of Learning and Teaching at PLC Sydney. She has worked in boys, girls, co-ed, public and private schools. She has published on the Australian poet Gwen Harwood and has a PhD on how conversations in classrooms generate meaning.
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