The Question

Often, people ask me, "Where did you go to school?"

My answer?

I was homeschooled.

This is a fact, a scientific building-block of my life. I breathe. I eat. I am a girl. I was homeschooled. I spent the same 12 years in school as everyone else, but I spent them at a kitchen table instead of behind a desk.

And yet, a rich and bountiful world hides behind those three words. This physical fact is a gateway to a whole world of spiritual beauty, a world where life marries learning in a glorious daily ceremony.

Were the fact that I was homeschooled merely a fact, the many responses it receives would seem unwarranted, even exaggerated. Some people raise their eyebrows in a mild questioning scorn. Others pull out a file marked "Proof of Good Parenting" and proceed to walk me through its contents. Some offer pity for my plight; others assume my stupidity. For such a factual answer, their responses aren't very scientific.

Those three words are more than a fact, however. They usher the mind into another world, a world with its own norms, its own customs, and even its own arguments. To hear those words is to stand in the shoes of Columbus, placing one's foot on the sand of a new world.

And, as any student of early colonial history knows, not all explorers know how to approach the unique customs and norms of another culture.

Some see all these new customs as savagery. Swelled with the glory of their own culture, they see all else with eyes of scorn. All is negative. All is regressive. Their own culture has progressed far beyond that of these "savages." There is, indeed, much that could be improved in this new world, but there is also much good, much from which these explorers could learn. But to accept help from the savages is unthinkable to them, so they return to their own world with tales of the savages' incompetence.

Others see the good things in this new world. They observe its ideas and customs with open eyes and see much from which they could benefit. But this good threatens them. Whatever faults it may have, they find their own world sufficient as it is. Yet they are reluctant to admit that they may be accepting less when they could reach for more. So they defend themselves to the inhabitants of the new world. They pull out dozens of proofs for why they are better, why their ways are superior, why they are more intelligent for adopting their own ways. Finally, they return to their own world, pretending to feel a superiority that their own eyes have denied.

A few explorers, however, truly open their eyes and ears to the beauties of this new world. They see the good, the bad, and the ugly, but they also freely admit that their own ways have a good, a bad, and an ugly. And, as always when we see with clear eyes, they are changed.

Some choose to stay. They pull up their roots and become courageous pioneers into new territory. Others leave for home, but they bring valuable lessons and ideas with them.

All are changed for the better by the experience.

It is into this that I usher a person when I answer their question, "Where did you go to school?" The question is quotidian; the answer, a simple fact. Nothing special seems to go on in the physical exchange. But the spiritual world is humming with a whir of activity.

No wonder their responses aren't scientific.