It’s those fast-growing feet — clad in fresh sneakers, laced carefully and still scuff-free — dashing down the sidewalks, pitter-patter, pitter-patter, dodging soccer balls and dancing across artistic renderings done up in sidewalk chalk because if you’re not first in the school bus line you might as well be last…
Pitter-patter, pitter-patter — and Holy Wisdom awakens.
It’s the earliest of morning sign-ons, the slow, clamoring up those old yellow bus stairs, the creaks and the sighs and that growing edge of excitement that the faithful driver lets show — just a tiny upturn of the lips — and the bus switches into gear, rumble, rumble, cough, and the journey begins…
Ruble, rumble, cough — and Holy Wisdom stirs.
It’s the careful placement of new supplies upon old desks and the hanging of colorful posters upon vacant walls and the turning of keys into locked doors and the sloshing of mops upon quiet floors and the stacking of books and the writing of notes and the dusting off of old syllabi and the crackle of the intercom and the clearing of throats and…
Slosh, crackle, click — and Holy Wisdom smiles, nods.
Because though Holy Wisdom was never truly asleep — our God is never any further from us than the whisper of our own breath — there is something quite remarkable about the start of a new school year: eyes full of wonder and tears and nostalgia, eager and apprehensive and ready to drink in something new, something old of God’s creation, of our shared world.
And what will we learn this year? What will we learn this semester? What will we learn this day?
And who — the bus driver, the campus minister, the janitor, the professor, the assistant principal, the administrator, the teacher, the neighbor, the parent — who will teach it to us? And will we be available, open, willing to learn?
Because we who stand in the wide lane of the Ignatian legacy have among us a saint who was never too old to begin again, to learn something new. A teacher who humbly returned to elementary school in his 30s, who counted among his peers children as well as scholars, whose own legacy is one of towering universities and humble schoolyards, of academic success and failures — most important of all, failure, I think.
Because as we begin a new school year, as we look for Holy Wisdom stirring in our own hearts, our own minds, and those of all we meet, let us embrace our inevitable failures as the necessary impetus to return to Holy Wisdom.
Because if we were perfect — if we had nothing more to learn, if we had no one to seek out as teacher, mentor, companion, if we had no promise of failure — we would have no chance to grow in wisdom.
And so, amidst the many sounds of the new academic year — pitter-patter, rumble, cough, slosh, crackle, click — lean in to hear Holy Wisdom’s quiet whisper: There is more to learn. There is more to teach. There is more of God here at work than you have dared imagine.
And so, and now, and here, let us begin again.
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