A Gift

 Inspiration comes at all hours of the day or night, from many different triggers. I went to bed and read a book which featured the verse on which this devotional thought is based.  After finishing the book and turning out the light I found these thoughts running through my mind and so got up and wrote them down, even if it was 2 o'clock in the morning!

Come to me all you who are wearied and burdened, and I will give you rest.   Matthew 11:28

Rest, sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  No one likes being wearied and burdened, but we are.  Burdened with worry; burdened with guilt; burdened with illness; burdened with responsibility. We all know about being burdened – and burdens are like packages, big packages, that are often more than we can handle.

 Packages that trying to carry makes us weary.... weary, tired, lacking energy and umph. We all know what that is like, being too tired to make a meal, to go to a meeting or out to visit someone. It seems to me at the longer I live the more there is to do; you’d think that it should be possible to cross things off a list and not have something else move in to take it’s place.

 There are so many of us who LIKE our feelings of weariness and being burdened; well don’t we?  They can be an excuse to hibernate, or to stop working with a group, or quit a committee. “No, I don’t think that I will go out today; they can get along without me.”

 You know, it is so easy to concentrate on the description of the first YOU in this passage, and forget the “I” and “Me”. But in this passage, which addressed to all of us, Christ is speaking to each one of us directly: “Come to ME and I will give ...”

 Action is needed on our part; we can be weary, we can be burdened; but that is not to stop us from making the first move . COME to me. And if we do, what do we get? We get the Gift of Rest.   Do we ... do you ... do I ... have enough trust that I will go to the One who spoke these words and accept His gift? Or do I go to Christ,  take His gift, and keep right on being weary and burdened, because I don’t want to leave it all up to Him? I pray that you do better than I when it comes to accepting God’s Gift of Rest.

 This is when I feel the need to pray .... I come Lord with my weariness and burdens.  Help me to leave them with you and to accept the gift you offer... Rest.  Help me to relax and enjoy my life and not be running off in my mind to the next item on my agenda. Thank you for  time spent with friends.  Thank you for that Gift of Rest.  Amen

LIFE

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is a beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it!  - Mother Teresa

Life ... has recently brought me a game leg ... and the past week has been most interesting...

I fell last Thursday, and according to the specialist I saw last weekend, partially tore the quad ligament in my right thigh, resulting in a brace that will not stay put, to be worn day and night, less the 10 minutes spent in the shower.

The world has rallied, and the door revolves as people come and go ... the list grows of people wanting to do something when there is little to ask of them to do ... there is only so much garbage to go out, letters to mail, etc. This has certainly made me realize how many people are connected to me in positive ways ... are my friends!

I sit and visit as the room fills and another tea party is in progress ... or a pie party, or a luncheon [when someone asks if they can bring lunch, I say ‘only if yours comes too, and we can eat together’] .... yes ... Life.

One never knows what Life will bring, nor how what is brought will be accepted ... but it is wonderful to know that through it all God is with me and caring for me, through Life ... through Friends.

Education Changes

With a granddaughter taking a B.Ed. and needing data for a "Family Tree Education Snapshot", lots of memories came back as I wrote this for her. The request came to me in the form of questions to be answered.  The questions are in bold below.

  "Family Tree Education Snapshot"

A bit of background so you can understand some of the other influences in my education, and education choices. As you know, both my parents were born in England, where those of middle class and higher sent their children to a private school [actually called public school], partly as a symbol of status, and partly because, in general, it was thought that the teaching and so education was better. These schools, of course, were for either boys or girls, not mixed.

Charles and Norah Wayman, my parents

My father came from a large family where children left home about the age of 12 to take up jobs ... housework for the girls, apprenticeships for the boys. My mother had come to the USA about the age of 7, the youngest of three girls. Her parents had sent her to a Catholic School, rather than the local school, because of the segregation, I am sure, rather than the religious aspect, as neither grandparent was Catholic.

Thus when it was time to educate their daughters in Toronto, my parents were quite agreed on private school education from KINDERGARTEN up ...prior to this we had attended the Mothercraft nursery school and the pre-kindergarten at Mrs Taylor’s home on the corner. Unusual as it was in those days, I had a working mother, and this allowed her to work while we were cared for.


What was important to teach at the time?
I am really not sure what you mean by this, but the three Rs were definitely the top of the heap. We did the ‘Dick and Jane’ books which would have been sight-reading, memorized times tables and poetry, had spelling and arithmetic ‘bees’.

School was started each morning by gathering in the gym for ‘Prayers’ ... which consisted of singing a hymn, a scripture reading, and reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Then there were announcements, and sometimes these might be in the form of a skit. Occasionally there would be someone playing a piano solo or singing.


What influenced school attendance?
As I was driven to school every day by my father until I was in Grade 7 or 8, shall I answer "my parents!" There really was no option or choice ... everyone went to school.

How accessible schooling was when you were younger?
Very ... all the kids in my city neighbourhood went to the local schools.

What were the goals of schooling?
To get an education, and so a good job.

How important was post-elementary and post secondary schooling?
Very ... There was no question of not going to High School, whether it was at the Collegiate or the Technical school, or the Commercial School. I had friends at all ... Collegiate, of course gave you entrance to university, while the Technical school was more likely to fit you for a trade, and the High School of Commerce taught bookkeeping, shorthand, etc. There were few schools like Sheridan and Seneca to go to after High School. If you wanted to be a nurse, you went to a hospital to train; if you wanted to be a teacher, you went to Normal School or Teachers’ College to train. To be an X-ray technician like Aunt Lois, you went to a hospital x-ray department [she was at Sick Kids’ Hospital in Toronto]. For office workers, there was a stream in the Collegiates where you could take commercial courses in addition to, or in lieu of the regular courses. I went to East York Collegiate after I completed my Grade 13 to take a one year Special Commercial Course as my parents deemed I was too young to go to Teachers’ College at 17.

What role did finances, class, gender and other determining factors play in terms of who attended school?
I would say that I came from an upper middle class family ... money was not a real worry until my father took sick and the business he owned and operated was sold to someone who bought it to run it to bankruptcy, and not fulfill the orders on the books ... and possibly not cover all the payments. This was about the time I was in Teachers’ College. Most of the girls I had gone to school with went on to university, nursing or teaching. By the 1960s it seemed that more and more young people were being told that University was the way to go. There was still an expectation that girls would marry young, but not as much that they would not be able to work after they were married, which was more the case 20 years before me. Your great-grandmother Susan [Pike] Burkholder was also a teacher and she had to stop teaching when she married gr-grpa Cliff Burkholder. She was 29 when she was married.

I was also just wondering what it was like growing up learning in a private school as well as the difference in getting your B.Ed?
Remember, I cannot tell you what it was like NOT to learn in a private school ... I spent only one year, at the end of my schooling, and then Teachers’ College in a school other than a private school. It was school ... we had friends, cliques, fights, fun like there is with any group of students. There, of course, was not sexual rivalry ... boys against girls, I mean. But, I also did not learn how to behave around, or interact with the opposite sex ... they were really outside my life until Youth Group at church when I was about 15.

You also asked about getting my B.Ed. I don’t have a Bachelor of Education ... I never did go to University. With Grade 13 and a one year course at Toronto Teachers’ College, I was let loose on those unsuspecting students of SS#12 Whitchurch ... all 45 of them, and I was 19 years old, the only teacher in the school. There was an inspector from the department of Education who came around occasionally, there was a minister who came in to teach Religion and me to teach EVERYTHING else, as well as supervise recesses and lunch hours, organize a Christmas Concert and so on. This was 1962. When school started again in January1963, we had two teachers ... I had the upper grades and was the principal. The school board for this school had determined that it was too much work for a single person and hired an experienced teacher for the lower grades. I was only there one year, and then I taught in Scarborough for a year and married your grandfather.

With three children and a new house in the Caledon East area, I started volunteering in the Special Education class, and also did lunch supervision/hall/schoolyard duty at the school where your father, aunt and uncle attended. I later started to do supply teaching there and continued that for about 7 years until we moved to Stouffville.