Pigs at Bay

Just in case any of you were wondering - I don't have Swine Flu. Not yet, at least. Just a throat infection. A primary infection - easily treated.

Some of my colleagues seem quite keen to get the new, cool Flu of the year, though. I wonder what that says about the state that most teachers are in at this time of year - that the prospect of a week's quarantine is the only way they can countenance surviving the next few weeks.

Certainly, it's tough at the moment. We're all at our least resilient. A cranky e-mail from a moderately demanding parent last night had far more impact on me than it warranted. In fact, by about 8pm yesterday I was just about ready to pack it all in (teaching, that is - not life!) - e-mails about staff needing to do more to combat graffiti in our classrooms, whinging from stressed Year 12s, Year 8 girls implicating me in why they are being badly behaved in their Maths class (no, I don't teach them for Maths) - it does make it all feel a little bit like too much hard work.

So what better antidote, I say, than to read the poetry of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Not an obvious response, you might think, and no, it's not, but it often helps to remember that there's someone worse off than yourself - better still to see someone worse off than yourself who maintains a strange kind of grace under pressure: not because he pretended to be okay, but because he admitted to God that he wasn't.

If I look to others for confirmation that I'm doing okay, I'll be just another nervous wreck. Everyone's stressed. Everyone's tired - students, teachers, parents. Everyone. It's that time of year. No-one's really in any position to help anyone else out - not while they're doing their level best to stay afloat.

But there is one place I can go to for complete security, complete stability, complete bouyancy. Bonhoeffer, facing death, knew that only too well. I'm just facing a bad throat infection, and a few cranky kids and parents. If God could give Bonhoeffer the strength to handle what he faced, I suspect that same strength can help me out.

I might give it a try.