[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/39439897 w=400&h=300]
I have never felt that his was my story to tell. I had the privilege of being his teacher for only a few short months, you see, and that is nowhere near long enough to discover anyone, let alone this bright-eyed boy, this sometimes seven-year-old-wonder in a fourteen-year-old body. Like anyone else, he was not expendable, and in a thousand years of knowing, of finding him faithfully attending my class, pouring himself into essays (sweat of his brow and mind), I would not have come to know the fractaled beauty of his limitless imagination, let alone him, himself (each of us inimitable, irreplaceable, priceless).
I almost never, anyway, came to know my freshmen until the second semester (hiding as they are within the remnants of their eighth-grade selves), and this one wasn’t one to push himself forward, wasn’t one to make himself known through either boisterous engagement or distraction. It was, instead, reputation (said Lauren in 9th, 10th, 12th grade: “my little brother is so cute!) and side-line observation (Oh! he’s that little one! (he was so small)) that arrived ahead of him in room 214, that stood him out (he would not stand out himself). And then that day, working on projects, and he walked past my desk and made those sounds– whirring whistle whatwasit?– that was my beginning of Blake.
And how did I know him after that but in those thoughtful essays that were really so much better than he’d hoped, and in the way he made his classmates laugh, and in the way he talked to everybody, and in the way he listened. I knew him in the way he was so slow (So Slow! So Hurry Up, Blake!) and the way he would not let me squeeze his cheeks (And who would? Only his sister had told me to try it). I knew him squeezing under desks to sit on the floor in the discussion circle. I knew him pondering what to do with squashed banana. I knew him peripherally, in the way of the classroom, in the way that I was there for all of them in only the ways they needed me and nothing more– and Blake didn’t need me so much. Which was, of course, Just Fine.
In October, he took home the lesson of the ziggurat. I could see it in his face, in those bright brown eyes. I could see it in the way all teachers can see (sometimes) the lesson go home. That the ziggurat was the way of pleading with the gods, of trying to please them and then getting from them what they wanted. But the God we know and serve isn’t like those gods. Not at all.
I watched those words go home for Blake, just quietly behind his brown eyes.
And on the last day (We didn’t know it was the last day. Who would have guessed? Still we are surprised by it. Still. A year later and we are still surprised), I watched him struggle with newborn understanding, watched him try to press a verbal foot through the door of avid discussion, all of them hot on the trail of what it might mean to live under tyranny, what might be the consequence of real and unlimited power. The bell was about to ring and they were jotting down final notes on their notecards and Blake (hurry!) was the last one (of course!) to leave. He handed me his card (he wrote on it, front and back, trying to shape thought into words), and standing at my desk he explained himself (marvelous mind!): That legislated morality is impossible; that legislated morality Isn’t Morality At All.
I sat still after he left, holding for a moment his notecard and thinking that in a thousand years of teaching, in hundreds of years of well-planned readings and open discussion and opportunity for students to draw their own conclusions, moments like this one would still be (so rich, so thoughtful, so wise his conclusion) So Rare.
And he, too, was so rare. Each of us is so rare that our going (like Blake’s the next day– unforeseen, unimaginable) will leave a void unfillable and dark.
An empty desk, an empty locker, an empty space shaped like Blake (he was so small, but growing taller; his face so perfect, eyes so bright). It’s enough to make you want to do over that January day, that innocent play, that adventurousness that wasn’t at all the dare-devil. They were only playing. He was just a boy– inimitable, irreplaceable, priceless. His loss is enough to make you want to build a ziggurat so you could call the gods down: “you get down here and fix it!”
But Blake knew better than that.
“I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 8: 38-39
He has already come down, and He has fixed it.
The rest is waiting and living in hope and loving the inimitable, the irreplaceable, the priceless that is everywhere (everyone) all around us.
Blake knew that, too.
