The teacher and the student

Two very different types of classes have been a surprising blessing to me in 2024.

This is about gratitude. But before I get to the gratitude, I have to explain what I’m grateful for.

The past couple of years were discouraging to me in some ways. I turned 60 in 2022, and in 2022 I and others in my family watched a beloved family member fall deeper and deeper into Alzheimer’s Disease. We struggled to make sure that he was properly cared for. The knowledge that there are sometimes genetic components to dementia made me worry about my own future.

I worry about my finances.

I feel more alone now than I’ve ever felt. Now, if I have to go to a medical procedure that involves sedation — say, a colonoscopy, or the two kidney stone procedures I’ve had in the past three months — I have to try to find someone willing to drive me and wait to bring me home. Don’t get me wrong — there are plenty of people willing to do this, in my church, and in my family. Each time I’ve asked for help, I’ve gotten it. But it still makes me feel alone, and kind of like a failure.

But I’ve received two gifts lately. Both started from seeds planted in 2023, but both have come to fruition in 2024.

A few years ago, after a lifetime of doodling, I started drawing a little more seriously, and in 2021 and 2023 I even entered my drawings in the local county fair, winning ribbons. In 2023, while in line to enter my drawings, I saw a woman holding a gorgeous painted portrait of a young man (her son, I would later find out) playing the guitar. That woman was Clover Honey, and a week later, when picking up my entries, I got the chance to meet her, which led to me taking an oil painting class from her in November of this year.

I immediately fell in love with oil painting. I love mixing the colors to try to find just the right shade. I’ve got a long way to go in my painting journey, with a lot to learn, but I fell in love with the process right away.

In December, I took my second class. At both classes, Clover provided us a reference photo to work from, and at the second class, she actually made a sketch on each canvas to guide us. At the class in December, there were two options of what to paint. The women in the class all chose a vase of flowers; I, the only man in the class, chose a scene of books on a shelf with two alarm clocks. (Yes, I am a stereotype.)

After the class, Clover posted photos of all of the various students’ artwork to Facebook. Clover’s friend — and mine — Margaret Britton “Maggi” Vaughn of Bell Buckle, the Poet Laureate of Tennessee, saw her post and immediately inquired about buying the painting with the books and the clocks, which tied in with the title of a book she is writing.

That’s right; I sold my second-ever oil painting, to my state’s poet laureate. I have actually known Maggi for many years, since before she held that honor, but she had no idea it was my painting when she saw it in Clover Honey’s Facebook post.

Meanwhile, I started buying supplies (and also got some as Christmas gifts) so that I could start playing around in between classes. I am actually kind of proud of the painting of my home church which you can see at the top of this post. Again, I’ve got a long way to go, but I think I will enjoy getting there. I’m going to keep taking classes with Clover, as schedule and finances permit, and keep playing around and doing my own research in between.

Meanwhile, Lt. Chris Cook leads the Moral Reconation Therapy (MRT) program at Bedford County Jail. It’s an outstanding program that helps inmates take a look at their own decision-making in hopes that they will make better choices going forward. Chris does a great job with the program.

Bedford County currently has two competing newspapers. The Shelbyville Times-Gazette, where I worked for 35 years, was shut down by its then-owner in the summer of 2023, and soon thereafter, a company which runs newspapers in several nearby communities hired key members of the T-G staff and launched a new paper, the Bedford County Post. But then, a bank contracted with an experienced newspaper executive to relaunch the Times-Gazette, in hopes of recouping some of its losses and placating people whose subscriptions had been unfulfilled when the T-G shut down. They hired a recent T-G editor who had left the paper a few months before the shutdown. I have former co-workers at both papers.

Editor Zoe Watkins of the Post had done stories about the MRT program. Chris approached her about the possibility of teaching a writing class for some of the female inmates involved in the program. Zoe didn’t feel like she could take it on at the time, but she stopped by my office one day to tell me about the situation and see if I would be interested.

For a number of years, I was active in a ministry called Mountain T.O.P. which serves people from economically-challenged areas on the Cumberland Plateau. I frequently attended week-long Adults In Ministry camps over the summer, and at many of those camps I taught a creative writing class to teenagers as part of Summer Plus, a sort of day camp for teens from the mountain area.

Those workshops had run hot and cold. Summer Plus would have a morning workshop and an afternoon workshop. Teens would always get their first choice for one of the two workshops, but sometimes, just to fill out the workshops and make the numbers work, they would be put in a workshop that they hadn’t signed up for in the other half of the day.

When I had interested, motivated students, the Summer Plus creative writing workshop could be a delight. But when I had mostly teenagers who hadn’t asked to be there, a creative writing workshop felt, to them, an awful lot like school. And I’m not a trained educator, so my bag of tricks for holding their attention was limited. I worried about whether I would be able to turn my limited workshop for teenagers into a longer one for adults, and I wondered whether the adults would be interested.

Chris invited me to sit in on one of his MRT sessions back in December, and at the end of the session he introduced me and I talked a little bit about what I might cover in a writing workshop. The response was immediate and positive. These women, from a variety of backgrounds and education levels, were all interested.

So I started teaching the workshop after the first of the year. I’ve had to miss two sessions, one due to winter weather and one due to my ongoing kidney stone drama. But the workshop has become a highlight of my week. The women are great. I intentionally don’t pry too much into their specific backgrounds or situations, but the fact that they’re participating in MRT indicates that in general, they’re in jail not because they’re bad people, but because they’ve made bad decisions, perhaps about who they associate with, or drug or alcohol use or what have you.

They love reading, and they love writing. They actually ask for homework! My content has worked out well; I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to fill my allotted time, or that I’d bore them to death with my rambling, but it’s worked out pretty well so far. Chris wants me to have each student prepare something that they can read at the MRT graduation.

I got to thinking about the fact that these two blessings, one in which I am a student and the other in which I am (nominally, at least) a teacher, arrived in my life at this time. I’m reluctant to ascribe every little thing that happens to divine intervention. We live in a fallen world, waiting for ultimate redemption. But this really seems like a God thing.

As a Christian, I have to remind myself that my worth is not defined by any specific job or task or career or avocation, but by God’s love for me. But the one-two gift of learning and teaching feels a little bit like God telling me that I do have a purpose, that the back end of my life doesn’t have to be about loneliness and decline. It’s a little gift of joy at a time when joy was what I needed.