Enough

Enough is such a fascinating little word. In its adjective and adverb forms, it describes an amount or action that is adequate to satisfy a desire or need. As in: I bought five pounds of red, seedless grapes at the store today because one 2-lb. bag has not been enough. (True story, and I've eaten at least a pound of them since getting back from the store.) As an interjection, enough denotes impatience or exasperation. As in: "Enough of this talk about renewing the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life!" Both usages of the word are remarkably subjective. What is enough? When have you had enough and in what situations would you shout 'enough!' to bring an end to whatever was going on?

I've had a lot of encounters with the concept of enough recently, and not just in the produce aisle. In fact, in my professional life, enough is not a measure of mere adequacy but a constant clamor of competing agendas all looking to be satisfied. Because urban education is all about trying to bridge the gap between not enough and enough. We teachers deal with enough on a daily basis: how much teaching is enough? How much writing? How much homework? How much reading? How much test-prep? To fall short of enough is to keep my students from achieving parity with their more privileged peers. Anything less is not good enough. It can't be. There is too much at stake, starting with the 105 students in my class this year and extending out to the big, abiding, complex questions of justice, equality and the value of a child's mind, regardless of their background or circumstance. It's enough to make my head explode, but not enough to stop thinking about for very long.

And then these questions bump up against the other enoughs. Enough time. Enough balance. Enough support. Enough encouragement. When everything you give still doesn't feel like enough. I have had conversations with three different friends this week about when to say 'enough!' and how to carve a space away from the din of enough-issues at school. I spent two years in the desert trying to figure this out, and I feel better about it than I ever have before. The only real 'answer' I have doesn't silence the clamor, though. It simply allows me to hear it in a different way.

Which brings me to church. Not to religious faith in general, which is all fine and good, but to church today in Austin. Because what I heard today made me think even more about enough, and the way I'm trying to deal with it.

The New Testament reading was from 1 Timothy, chapter 6, the Bible at its social justice best. It's the passage about money being the root of all kinds of evil (see reference to renewing the tax cuts above), but there's more to it than that.

"But as for you, man [or woman] of God, shun all this [wealth]; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. ¹²Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called..."

This is a rallying cry if I've ever heard one. And at first glance it might sound as though a person should throw themselves into whatever they are doing, consequences be damned. Fight the good fight--and don't whine about it! Pursue righteousness--cause evil don't take a holiday! But sitting in the pew this morning, I felt the peace of these words in the phrase "take hold of eternal life." And that, of course, is what you do to save yourself from enough while still hearing its call. You take hold of life. You recognize the need of those you serve, and you find a way to build a wall with a gate that opens both ways. And you make a plan to put yourself on the far side of that gate on a regular basis. Believe me, it does take planning. It takes setting very concrete goals and then working as hard to reach them as you do with everything else. You don't wait until you're not needed. You will be waiting forever. You don't hope that someone will drag you away from the clamor, or build your wall for you, or design a cute gate with flexible hinges and give you permission to open it. You take hold of life, to which you were called.

For me, I have committed to going to Bikram yoga four days a week. I also have an advisee this year who doesn't do his homework pretty much ever. I keep him after school twice a week. I go to yoga twice a week (and twice on the weekend). The old me would have kept him after every day. The new me might have, too, except I already had this commitment in place, and, well, that commitment built my wall. The knowledge of what will happen to me if I ignore the wall is what built my gate. The reading from 1 Timothy reminded me today of why it makes sense. Even 2,000 years ago, they knew.

Fight the good fight and take hold of life. Anything less just won't be enough.