{"id":7237,"date":"2013-11-02T18:40:13","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T22:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beginnersheart\/?p=7237"},"modified":"2013-11-02T18:40:13","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T22:40:13","slug":"the-candle-and-the-mirror","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beginnersheart\/2013\/11\/the-candle-and-the-mirror.html","title":{"rendered":"the candle and the mirror"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"candle<\/a>
There are two ways of spreading light:
to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.
Edith Wharton<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When I was young, and my dreams as new-bright as clean copper, I believed I would set the world on fire. Somehow I would change what was wrong — poverty, ignorance, social injustice. There were, after all, so many of us who thought that. Surely we couldn’t fail.<\/p>\n

So the fire of the candle — its yellow-white & blue light — lit those dreams brightly. Truth and justice would fill me, I was certain, and I would burn a path of justice through my time.<\/p>\n

It hasn’t worked like that. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Teachers — and writers, really — aren’t candles. Sometimes we’re not even very good mirrors. But at our best (& luckiest), we reflect brightly the flames within our students. Our friends. Our readers. These days, I am trying every day to be a mirror.<\/p>\n

There is little as satisfying as showing someone s\/he can write. That within them are the words to tell an important, dearly cherished story. Often someone arrives in a class of mine — and this has happened as far back as my first teaching, more than 30 years ago — convinced they can do nothing well. Certainly not write. From pre-schoolers who can’t string macaroni to 94-year-old women who worry that their poetry is boring, fear of failure knows no age. And yet I’ve never met anyone who wants to learn — who wants to write — who can’t. It’s just a matter of desire, practice, and reflection.<\/p>\n

You do need a mirror, however. To show you how brightly the flame you carry inside can burn. How brightly all<\/em> our candles burn. And I’m here for that. Perfectly happy, these days, not to have blazed a flaming path. Perfectly happy to be just a mirror, spreading light.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was young, and my dreams as new-bright as clean copper, I believed I would set the world on fire. Somehow I would change what was wrong — poverty, ignorance, social injustice. There were, after all, so many of us who thought that. Surely we couldn’t fail. 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