A few months ago as I drove home,I recogised a diminutive figure slowly ambling home at dusk.Isn't it funny how we can also recogise a person's gait after many years,before seeing their features.
It was Father Ralph Cameron the best teacher we ever had back in the 1960's.He was magic!His lessons were never boring.His sermons were equally so.He always found a way of making Christian philosophy relevant to our times.Being a heretic and disbeliever,my connections with the Church have for decades,have been barren.
My sister who was equally impressed by his intellectual and spiritual prowess,said that he should know of our respect and appreciation of what he had accomplished.
Within a few months he was deceased.Opportunity lost.Ralph was rated as the best 4 unit Maths teacher in NSW.Students who were now teaching Maths at University were at his funeral.A couple I'm told,are now professors.
Ralph was more than a Mathematician,he was an articulate communicator who had great insight into the human psyche.Apparently he still cracked jokes until consciousness evaporated.
All those whom he taught,must still feel a bit uplifted by his presence.Fr Ralph Cameron bridged the gap between ignorant Religious pragmatism and our need to aspire to a greater consciousness,no matter what the harsh reality.Fear of god was never his central theme.To me,the existence of god is irrelevant.

Can we ever again,expect to have teachers of this calibre?

Arjay

How lucky you and your sister were to have been influenced by such a person! What a fantastic advantage it gave you in life.

My feeling, which I know is dismissed as airy-fairy, New Age Pollyannerism by many, is that yes, there are still people like that. Every generation brings new ones to replace the old. I've often asked my own students about the person who has influenced them most in their lives. Its hardly ever a famous or public figure. In the stories I have heard from them of the incredible and enlightened people who have influenced them on their paths, more often than not teachers figure prominently.

Reading public outpourings on forums like these can sometimes jaundice one towards teachers per se - whether lay or clerical. But the many people who complain the loudest are usually those who have left their schooldays far behind them. Talking to students themselves I am often struck by how many heroes there are going unnoticed and unheralded by all but the people - the ordinary people - into whose lives they bring the extra-ordinary.

From a personal perspective too, its only ever other people who tell me that I've had it tough at times. In my own mind this fact never really registers because all that shines for me is the wonderful kindness of strangers and the miraculous people I have encountered.

I also sense that you feel regret for never having told Father Ralph how you felt. Don't. Its also my experience that such people never believe they are out of the ordinary anyhow. He probably would never have believed he was doing anything other than his job, and would perhaps never have grasped exactly what kinds of impacts he had had.

I too believe in no God but maybe you had to see him one last time why I will never know.
But each of us has such a story and I hope we do see more teachers like him my story?
On a Sunday right in the deepest bush my 4x4 got bogged, calling on CB radio for help it came via a friendly bloke who really did not have the time but spent 4 hours helping me.
8 years latter I will never know why I went down that track again.
It was far worse unusable in fact I backed out parked the Rocky and walked toward the spot I had been bogged sure no one could ever use the road again.
A motor could be heard coming the other way!
It was the bloke who towed me out!~
We had not seen one another in all those years or revisited that track, we both thought no one had been over it from that day.
maybe we had tapped into one another's thoughts who knows ?
no thanks BD it was not Gods will.

Dear Arjay... in short... 'not without their connection to the Almighty'

It is that divine connection...that conduit to glory, that interfacing with the Creator..which lifts a mans spirit above the mundane...the ordinary.. and places his feet on holy ground.

Its too late to express your feelings to Ralph...but not too late to connect with his Savior.

Dear Arjay,

I too had a wonderful teacher. She was my English Literature teacher at high school. During those years I was constantly picked on in class by my Maths teacher. A woman with a mouth like a cat's bottom, who took a great delight in humiliating me in front of the entire class. I used to loathe her lessons (and have hated Maths ever since).

However my English Lit. teacher always treated me with great affection and respect. As a result I loved her classes and excelled at her subject.

When I left high school and managed to get a scholarship to uni. My English Lit. teacher took me and a few other girls out for lunch.
It was an afternoon that I will always treasure. Here I was, a kid from the Western suburbs of Sydney, from a working-class family, not only finishing high school but getting a scholarship to uni. And going out to lunch with my favourite teacher. It was a "wow!" moment.

Do teachers like that still exist? You betcha! My brother is one such soul. He loves his job and gives his heart and soul to it. From the amount of his own time that he gives the kids, I know that he's appreciated and loved. But it would never occur to him either that he is doing something extraordinary.

Thanks Romany,Belly,David and Foxy for your posts.I've only just found the time to reply.We may all have our differences but seem to all agree on the traits that certain exceptional people exhibit that makes us all want to try a bit harder.

David I may disagree with you about religion but I respect your beliefs.My own children have gone to Catholic schools,but I never tell them what to believe or how to vote.

It does make you wonder where these exceptional people who have intellect,emotional maturity and wisdom come from.It can't just all be the random throw of the genetic dice.I suppose that if we knew for sure,life in many ways,would lose it's edge.Cheers Arjay.

There was a marvellous teacher, Mrs Marshall, in Broome during the war years. Most whites had been evacuated but some were beginning to arrive back and Mrs Marshall was the sole teacher for all the state school. Pupils were every class and every colour, she managed the lot from first Bubs to pre High School correspondence classes. She taught the girls sewing ,the boys'manual'lessons. as well as sports days. She introduced us to literature, the last half hour every Friday was story time when she read to us all. There wouldn't be a sound,we were so enthralled by her voice.
With war's end ,she retired. But always remembered.A one in a million.