Substitute Blessings

Today I was a substitute teacher in Language Arts at the high school.  I had senior and junior classes.  This morning I got to read Tolstoy's, The Long Exile as snow fell quietly outside our classroom window.  This afternoon we're reading Ambrose Bierce's, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. 


They actually pay me to do this!


Every time I substitute I learn something new.  Prior to the start of my first period class I  googled Tolstoy so I knew more detail about his background.  I never knew that he was influential in the development  of the pacifist doctrine of non-resistance.  He was obsessed with the Sermon on the Mount and saw the command to "turn the other cheek" as justification for nonviolence and nonresistance.  He wrote The Kingdom of God Is Within You (1893), titled after Luke’s Gospel in the New Testament. Tolstoy's writings were influential to both Gandhi and Martin Luther King.  Who knew?


I hadn't known that Ambrose Bierce disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Mexico.  The mystery was never solved.


I'm pretty lucky to learn something new every day and get paid for it! 


Life is good!