Schools are “taking up” for the fall, 2022. The end of summer signals the beginning of a new
routine of learning and activities. Teachers of all descriptions in all sorts of setting are rising to the honorable task of teaching their students.
A friend who teachers in a local elementary school mentioned “butterflies and excitement” while preparing for a new crop of students. Home school, public school, private school, tech school, nursery school, university – educators at all levels work to share the precious gift of learning. Their mission is to provide understanding and inspire confidence in their students.
The following words were shared by the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.
“Let the reverence for your teacher be like the reverence for Heaven,” said the Sages. In other words: if you want to come close to Heaven, don’t search for kings, priests, saints or even prophets. They may be great, but a fine teacher helps you to become great, and that is a different thing altogether.”-- Avot 4:12
Common-woman leaves this week with the poem “IF” by Rudyard Kipling. It is especially dedicated to a friend who offered this poem with the utmost sincerity to each student. Prayers and good thoughts for all.
If—by Rudyard Kipling
“If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!”
Source: A Choice of Kipling's Verse (1943)
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