Kindergarten - The Anchor Holds

Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding. - Proverbs 4:7

Recently, I was at West Huntsville Baptist Church talking to the pastor, who has been a friend of mine since I was 13 years old. We were in his office when he asked whether I had gone to Kindergarten at West Huntsville. I said yes, but thought it was an unusual question. I don't often get asked about my Kindergarten credentials. He pointed behind me. I turned around; and there was a very old sign for West Huntsville Baptist Kindergarten, hanging on the wall. I looked around the office and realized that, due to the vagaries of remodeling over the intervening 46 years, I was standing in the very room where I attended Kindergarten.

Years don't slip away in life like they do in novels; but my eyes briefly stopped seeing things as they were in 2014. The well-decorated office slipped away and the walls moved to their proper places. I looked out the window and a house with a giant shade tree replaced the parking lot. The walls were industrial green cinderblock again, and the floors were green-flecked asbestos tile. I couldn't feel 1967, but I could see it clearly enough. This was the room that had begun what was to be over 20 years of education in elementary schools, high school, and a variety of universities. My church introduced me to school, as it introduced me to almost everything else of value in life. If everyone had an introduction like mine, education would be a lot more popular.

I didn't know I was being introduced to Education (Capital E). I went to Kindergarten on Monday in the room that, on Sunday, was my Sunday School room. I didn't know I was Being Educated, because I couldn't separate what I learned during the week from all of my other education in that room on Sunday mornings and evenings. Adults that I loved, and that loved me, taught me to see God, the world, and others with an appreciative eye. There was much to learn from the world, much to learn from books, and much to learn about one another. Language was particularly important to me, because it held subtleties that weren't always obvious. One of the things that I remember learning in Kindergarten is how the words “nephew” and “niece” work. It turns out that they are governed by one's own gender, not by the gender of one's parent's siblings. Ergo, I am my aunt's nephew, not her niece. This was amazing.

Did I receive a religious education in my Baptist Kindergarten? No. I had already learned by the time I was 5 that there was no such thing as “religious” education and “secular” education. Whenever I learned about God, I was enabled to see His creation in a new way through the lens of my new knowledge. Whenever I learned about the world, or the people in it, I was able to understand Him better by understanding the new information that I had gained. As a result, I have always approached academic pursuits as attempts to understand both God and His creation. Some of my most significant spiritual realizations were made much later in the Physics department as I studied quantum mechanics and relativity.

With an anchor in education that digs as deep and holds as fast as that, it's little wonder that I have never stopped learning.