Embedded in the bricks above the entrance to the school where I’ve served as counselor for the past 24 years, there’s a bronze plaque so small most people who enter never see it.
I am still learning,–Michelangelo.
The quote may be legendary, but it’s said that the Renaissance master who carved The David and the Pietà and painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling was asked to give a lecture when he was 87 years old. He titled it “I Am Still Learning.”
The master Michelangelo challenged his own artistic growth throughout his life; he developed many ways of pushing through ruts, growing his vision and craft even into old age.
Marsh School is a primary building. Children in preschool through first grade begin their formal education here. When the building was remodeled about 15 years back, the placement of that plaque was our principal’s idea. A lifelong learner herself, Kristin wanted everyone on her staff to model the joy of learning to every child we would serve.
Schools, at their best, open students to pathways of knowledge, but learning doesn’t end there; it is a way of life.
I’ve walked beneath that plaque hundreds of times, usually too much in a hurry to ponder those words. But every once in a while, while moving among scurrying children wearing backpacks almost as big as they are, I’ve looked up to remember that just like them, I am still learning.
Kristin and I still keep in touch. Love of learning, food and good conversation among are the ties that make it easy to pick up wherever our last conversation left off, even if it’s been a long stretch of time. The last time we spoke, she told me a little about the novel Theo of Golden, her most recent read. So when my sweet daughter-in-law Kate told me that she and her parents, also reading it, thought it was the kind of book I would like (and the Audible algorithm concurred, I cringe to add), I paused my other reading to see what Theo of Golden was all about.
The timing was perfect for a lifelong learner on the verge of retirement.
Theo, a cultured Portuguese man, 87 years old, arrives in the southern city of Golden and begins a mysterious habit of buying the portraits on display in a coffeeshop called The Chalice. He learns the subjects’ names from the barista and invites them, little by little, to meet him so he may give them their portrait.
He tells each person what he sees in their faces. Theo helps them see their true dignity, and the stories of a handful of Golden’s residents are slowly revealed in the process.
Theo of Golden is an elegant blend of art and architecture, music and books, transcendent mysteries and heart wounding tragedy. And just when I thought it couldn’t be more full of things I love, I discovered wonderful pages about birds and others on the delights of children’s books, including The Chronicles of Narnia and Andrew Peterson’s The Wingfeather Saga.
Theo of Golden is also about aging gracefully and about remaining always a learner.
In one delightful passage, Theo is invited by Ellen, a flamboyant resident of the local homeless shelter, to go on a bicycle ride. Though he assures her that he grew up riding bicycles, Ellen has been misunderstood all her life and is understandably fearful Theo may fall, inviting accusations she doesn’t need. Ellen seeks the support of Jason, owner of the RiverRide Bikeshop who has been kindly airing her bicycle tires each week. Jason outfits Theo’s loaner bike with a “STUDENT DRIVER” sign for added caution.
Theo can’t help but chuckle when he sees it, but Ellen retorts, “Well you are a student, aren’t you?” to which Theo replies,
I am always a student, dear girl.
Still learning.
Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount by pronouncing his blessing on those who are “poor in spirit.” Perhaps one of the multi-layered meanings in that first beatitude is conveyed in Theo of Golden and in Michelangelo’s phrase.
Christ calls us to be his disciples (students, learners). He blesses those who are poor in spirit, who, however much they may already know, understand that they are still learning. Calling little children to his side, Christ reminded his disciples that “the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”
I must admit that, bookish since childhood, learning in the academic sense has been a source of great delight in my life. Parting with books I no longer have room to shelve has always pained me, and in recent years the deaths of my parents and brother brought even more books into my possession and more decisions about what to keep and what to pass along.
But the pitfall of that kind of learning is its great temptation to pride.
I have learned that by painful examination of conscience. The really difficult thing, I have learned, is humility, and it is the task of a lifetime: continually learning to love as Jesus did. That kind of love is revealed in the story of Theo of Golden, a reason far beyond its wonderful cultured details, that I did indeed like the book, as my friends suspected I would.
That most important theme in Theo of Golden put me in mind of Saul of Tarsus, self-identified as one who studied at the feet of the great rabbi Gamaliel and became murderously certain that the Christian message about Christ’s resurrection was a blasphemous danger. Saul was humbled to the core on the road to Damascus when he personally encountered Christ, who mercifully reversed all his certainties and even gave him a new name.
After that, in many variations of the same truth, Paul never stopped reminding the early Church that agape, the love that comes from God through Jesus Christ, is higher than speaking in the tongues of men and of angels, higher than understanding all mysteries, giving away all one’s possessions, and higher even than being burned at the stake.
“Knowledge, puffs up,” he reminds his readers, but love builds up” (1 Cor. 8:12).
Centuries later, remaining poor in spirit became the secret of St. Thérèse of Lisieux’s Little Way. “The greatest saint of modern times” saw herself as a child, raising her arms to Jesus rather than relying on her own strength to love as he did, even as she struggled to offer, with great love, every small thing to Christ.
I am still learning.
It is said that Michelangelo’s skill grew through his love of beauty and his faith in God. In both pursuits he remained a learner, combining those passions in creative work of theological and artistic excellence.
Thérèse, an unknown nun at the time of her death at age 24, remained a learner by consciously taking the lowest place and offering her smiles, gestures of patient friendship and the minutiae of her daily work to Christ.
I would tell you how Theo of Golden acquired his humble spirit, but that would spoil a truly special story.
I don’t know what retirement holds for me, but I do I hope it contains many of the things Theo loved. I’d like to remain always a student as he did and even more to live in the hope that St. Paul described in the 13th chapter of his letter to the Corinthians:
Now we see through a glass darkly, but then we will see God face to face.
There will come a day, the great saint added, when we will know even as we are known. That is a hope worth both living and dying for.
For now, we’re all still learning.
P.S. It turns out that Theo of Golden‘s author, Allen Levi, wrote the book after a decades that include being a lawyer, judge, writer and singer-songwriter. Theo is his debut novel, and he hopes to be an artist someday. Still learning.
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Happy Mother’s Day! In honor of the special women who inspired me in a life of learning, here are two past Sparrowfare posts, Booklist Builders for a Still-Incomplete Education (a tribute to my Grandma Ted) and My Mother’s Finest Moment, first published in The Denver Post.
“I never finished school. Love, Mom.” I highly recommend “All Things New (Rev. 21:5),” a short story by Michele Cohen, published in the current issue of the Word on Fire Writer Showcase. Perfect for Mother’s Day, this little gem really got my heart. Worth sharing with the mothers you know!
Photo by Sean Robertson on Unsplash.
