Other Experiences of an English Language Teacher

  Prayer? Talking to and with God, like a child with his dad, with a wonderful love of dad and mom? It is wonderful, prayer is so. Because I can tell him my stuff, my things, and my dear ones’ as well, and he responds, of course he does! In some way or other. At our interior, in my heart.  Prayer? Basically it’s a gift from and by God, it’s to try to reach him too, and he does not conceal from you – the little we seek him, he is easy to find. Well, you will probably not see him, anyway he is more present than me myself.  André Frossard, the famous French journalist, used to say – and I’ve heard say the same to other people – that Saint John Paul II was like a block of prayer. And I guess many of us can recall when he was on this world, well, he was such a block of prayer, absolutely embodied in prayer, but not indifferent to other people and their needs; even more, that prayer made him accessible to any person, and he perfectly realized about others’ needs, and had some p...

  I think that the verb trust is transitive, I mean, you may trust someone , right?  And also I think with Jutta Burggraf that who trusts God, eventually can trust people, persons I mean. And that person gives another one like a second chance.  For example a teacher. He or she can have a transcendent view of life, and can trust God. After that he or she will be able to trust their students, although these ones can provoke some distress to that teacher quite often.  And when reprimanding a disruptive kid aside, not in public, that teacher will likely give the kid a second chance: the teacher by no means will toss or disqualify the kid. It’s so because that professional trusts God and subsequently trusts men and women.  He loves God and he loves his students. He believes in men and women. He is not nihilist at all.  I have seen this in education, and you may have some similar experience of things. The true teacher does not throw out anybody – nobody is to be...

  You want to be happy and make others be happy too, perhaps your family?  I’ve lately read and thought a bit more on happiness, and now I’m trying to give you some tips that might hopefully help you.  The first premise, and according to Spanish psychiatrist Marian Rojas Estapé, happiness doesn’t depend on what occurs to you, but the perception you have about what happens to you.  If you try and have a positive view of what occurs in your life, well then you may start to move on happiness road.  Happiness is not what happens to me, but how I interpret those things that happen to me. That’s on page 115 in her book Cómo hacer que te pasen cosas buenas (2018, and there’re quite many editions of that bestseller). It’s up to you. You decide between being happy or … not, and I presume you want to.  I know some people who are just positive about their lives. And those same people might have chosen to interpret life things in a negative and pessimistic way. You de...

  As you have already seen, in this blog I write also about our father God, who has dad and mom’s love to us. To each one of us.  And for me – and many people alike – his existence is almost evident, for we firmly believe in him and talk to him – and with him – at any moment.  It’s so also when you think that he exists, because somebody must have made all this, this wonderful world, and each person. And the universe, which is unfolding itself on NASA’s last discoveries.  Also because we may have seen John Ford’s The Searchers (1956) and there ensues the idea of one God, after each person’s thirst for plenitude and happiness, and family.  When you admit his existence, even more, when you treat him personally, well, then, everything makes sense, and you may feel satisfied. As well life’s pains and sorrows have sense.  Otherwise if we suppress God, as Paul Sartre did, then all ends up without meaning.  Well, faith is a gift. A gift by him, but one every...

  Everybody knows that in modern urban life in our Western countries a lot of people go along life in a hectic and stressed out way – it seems we don’t have time for anything.  Where are we going to?  It also seems we don’t have time to muse, meditate, reflect, consider, contemplate life and beauty. To enroll in a spiritual retreat for a long weekend? No way, man, impossible. But, Are you sure you can’t attend one?  It seems we don’t have time to cultivate our interior, and how are we going along life? What are our life goals? We must break this up. No way, we can’t keep going like that.  Besides many people kind of they don’t like to face themselves. It’s like they don’t like their lives, the way they are living. Do you have a chance to stop to face yourself? Where are you going?  Also it looks like quite many people can’t stand silence. Music and music, and a crazy chattering. But let’s listen to silence. Let’s listen to ourselves. Let’s take off the head...