by Anne Marie Miller
When we visited relatives last Christmas, I thought about how good it is to be with others, even if we aren’t constantly doing an activity together. There’s something reassuring and comforting about curling up on a couch with a book and seeing a couple other people playing a game nearby or watching a show together. Just being around other people, in community, is a beautiful and consoling thing. Around that time, I also read Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling, by John Taylor Gatto. One of Gatto’s marvelous observations jumped out at me:
“It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety; indeed, it cuts you off from your own past and future…” (page 23)
Gatto put a deep desire of mine into words. I want my children to receive an education that offers them the diversity and beauty of life, and the immensity of God’s wondrous works. Yet, while our family’s homeschooling and slow pace of life provides time to spend with elderly neighbors or people of varying ages in our community–at daily Mass, museum excursions, or walks to the park–neighbors’ schedules didn’t always mesh with ours, and the weather doesn’t always cooperate for outings. Plus, I had an inkling that we were called to reach out to others in a new way–I just didn’t know what that looked like.
Here, in the chapel after daily Mass, God offered my kids and I an opportunity.
My children and I could simply do life in a home for those who are near death. We could bring our mess and chaos and learning and laughter into a place where residents are preparing for their final journey to God.
