I Connick the Terminator

Chapter 31: Understand

This word was presented to a class that was having a hard time listening to their teacher. I notice that people have a certain amount of knowledge and they stand strong on what they know.  

The thing about the quest for wisdom or knowledge is that it takes work. A person has to dig in to what they are searching for. The truth they search for is sometimes under where they stand. This is an example: I was teaching at an alternative school many years ago. A student sneezed in class and another student said "God Bless you". I said to the class, thinking this was a teachable moment; "Why do you say God Bless you?" I was waiting for a student to say what I knew to be true.  I knew that you said "God Bless you ",because your heart supposedly skipped a beat when you sneezed and if it did not start back up, you wanted to make sure the person had a safe passage to heaven. Someone told me this many years ago and it made sense at the time.  I stood strong in my belief and the tradition of why we relayed this mini- blessing  to another human being after they sneezed. The class was coming up with their different answers, until one student said, what I knew to be true; a person's heart supposedly skips a beat when they sneeze, so you want to insure safe passage to heaven if it does not start back up.

When I exclaimed that they got the right answer, a student in the back of the room said " I do not believe in that crap". Another student said in the front of the class, "hey coach how long do you think this has been going on? I said, " I guess since Jesus was around". Another student says " you mean they had the technology to see a heart skip a beat during Jesus' time". Uh oh! I am stuck. So I went to the computer to dig up the answer. (a bit of hypocrisy, I know )

I found out that the reason we say "God bless you" was because of a plague that was killing people many years ago. (490 AD or 560 AD mixed facts during research.) This plague was wiping out everyone, even the Pope. 

The new Pope, Gregory the Great ,assembled a group of monks or priests  and they would travel to the different towns.  As the people of the town would come out to see the procession, they would stand on the side of the road.  If someone would sneeze, one of the monks or priests would say the  prayer " God bless you" in hope that they would not get the plague. It worked and the plague went away. So when we say that small prayer, "God Bless you", we are trying to stop the spread of illness and we are trying to prevent another person from catching something or getting sick. ( Google Brain) Forgive me.  I take back what I said earlier.  I still felt like we earned it at least through spit- balling.