Waking to the sound of rain...
it's often hard to get motivated! But... as I pondered today's bow tie selection, I became nostalgic of last summer's trip out to Virginia where my daughter and son-in-law now live. It was last there that I have a vivid recollection of what it means to be sitting outside and just listening to the rain.
There is an oxymoronic quality to rain for me; it's a fresh drink of water for the earth, but it also makes me consider just how fragile and fleeting true goodness is. I like rain (especially accompanied with thunder, long and rolling and tremulous) because it brings me perspective. It helps me focus.
While family settled in during that week last summer, I walked alone among the William and Lee University and Virginia Military Institute campuses (a mere change in brick color in the pathway separates the two!) and visited the George Marshall Museum. I was the sole visitor in a small, but well-thought out space of what is the front of the library. Marshall's contribution to the second half of last century was truly inspiring not in terms of the politics, but of the way in which he went about helping grow the peace which had been so sorely missing in the world up to that time. (It's also the closest I'll ever be to a Nobel Peace medal!)
Leaving the museum, within a mere half-mile walk, is Lee's Chapel. Here both Lee and his equine companion, Traveller, are buried. Most memorable for me is the lower level room in which visitors can see Lee's office (left as was/is) and in which Lee met with each new student and presented the challenge: "We have but one rule here, and it is that every student be a gentleman."
As I help a student group at the college I call "mine" develop an honor code, I can't help but be, not skeptical, curious as to how Lee felt each time he said that to a student who had just left his office. Was it a hopefulness that he had helped bring a little moisture to a seed which lay dormant in each of us which could now sprout and grow? It is a hopeful notion I have that students are renewing a spirit of character and integrity to, perhaps in words only, govern outcome.
Perhaps a little rain will help us all.
