Repairing the Ruins

Yes, Virginia, there are live conferences taking place this summer! As proof, I’m in Texas now to speak at the 2021 Repairing the Ruins national conference attended by 1000+ headmasters and teachers belonging to the ACCS (Association of Christian Classical Schools).

It’s glorious to be back together with people, particularly under the much-missed Texas blue skies. These are marvelous people, too, who labor in the challenging field of educational renewal, in this case the Classical revival—an international movement that, especially since the shutdown, has grown to encompass more people than ever imaginable.

The Classical revival was spearheaded by several figures, prime among them Douglas Wilson and the now-iconic book he edited in 1996 entitled Repairing the Ruins. Little could Wilson have imagined from his kitchen table, launching a pilot school, what wonders would unfold, including the impressive ACCS organization with its hundreds of member schools.

Repairing the Ruins was the first set of essays I stumbled upon years ago when I began to hear the intriguing words “revival of Classical education.” I remember wondering if the things described therein were really true? Could they actually be happening?

Indeed they were . . . and are! How pleasant it was to hear Wilson give the opening plenary Wednesday morning. I thought about how often he has expressed these same thoughts across the years, both in educational conferences and from his own pulpit in Moscow, Idaho, for he still is a pastor. But his words rang fresh and new.

Two phrases in his talk particularly struck me. First, he referred to the conflicting emotions people have when returning from intense conferences like this: namely, full of inspiration, yet feeling overwhelmed. After all, Monday mornings always bring Monday-morning problems, no matter what uplifting presentations one has heard the previous week.

Following his reasoning, the coupling of inspiration and the sense of being overwhelmed occurs precisely when and where we do our best work. If the work is noble, we inevitably feel the exhilaration and weight of the cause. As he said, “Baskets of fruit are heavy.”

So, I have a new image for my thoughts: if we engage in planting orchards, we will reap heavy baskets of fruit. We must find a way to tug them out of the orchards and haul them to where they will be best of service.

He offered another agricultural maxim: “If you don’t believe in the harvest, then why bother to do the planting?” That one struck me sharply. Let me tell you why.

Last year, my “shutdown project” was a vegetable garden. I tried to bury my frustrations at losing all of my tour work and conferences by digging holes and sticking in plants. Particularly opulent were my zinnias and milkweed. Accordingly, for the milkweed, I snapped off most of the pods and gathered up a good-sized baggie of filigree-encased seeds for planting in 2021.

This year, as schedules have gotten busier, I have not yet planted these seeds. While there is still time to get them going, what have I been waiting for? Their blossoms are needed now for the butterflies who flourish off them. And yet, the bag of seeds sits on a shelf near my kitchen table.

At least they sat there until Tuesday morning when, in my frenzy of packing, I picked them up thinking they were a baggie of chips I had prepared as a snack on the plane.

Imagine my surprise when I opened my purse, seeking salty crunchies, and found dried-out milkweed seeds instead. It was almost as if the seeds were crying out: “Apparently you forgot about us, so we’re taking this trip to Dallas with you. Please do not let the return of the world’s rush cause you to forget us.”

You may have your own version of these milkweed seeds: an array of things you discovered or recovered during the shutdown that helped pull you through its difficulties. Will the thrill of regular life’s rhythms tempt us to forget these seeds and their fruits? Will we start taking each other for granted again? Will we forget about the magic of our smiles? Will the harvest of our hard-fought experiences get shoved in a bag and set aside?

I hope not. But I know I have some work to do to keep this from happening.