Thoughts from Dr. Joe: February, a month of love and rebirth

I’m not sure I can describe my freshman English teacher Brother Jean Martel Baptiste. He was a conspicuous personality. That’s the best I can do. The last time I saw him was June 1963, but he’s never left my mind. What did he do to earn a permanent place in my heart? If there was one thing he taught, it was to stop intellectualizing circumstance.

Brother Jean loved February. He called it the month of love, but he appeared concerned as to why it was the shortest month of the calendar. Each day in February he’d wear a red beret and structure his lessons around the myths associated with the month. And, each weekend he orchestrated “Winter Tales,” a time during which he read the earliest love stories: of Layla and Majnun, Psyche and Eros, and Tristan and Iseult.

Brother was a classicist, and everything he taught had a mythological bent. I learned February is believed to have evolved from the word ‘Februa,’ which was another name for the Roman Festival of Purification. In many old cultures, the first day of February was considered to be the advent of spring. A rebirth!

Rebirth is a spiritual alchemy he taught. Philosopher Joseph Campbell called this spirituality “following your bliss.” We might understand that as following your passion.

What fascinated Brother Jean about February was it was laden with mythology. The pagans, Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Native Americans had their versions as to the significance of the month. But why just February? It must be a magical month. These metaphysical adaptations existed long before we knew there was a St. Valentine.

I enjoyed watching the transformation as La Cañada prepared for Valentine’s Day, which was celebrated this past Sunday. Images of Cupid, chocolate, and special coffees at Starbucks culminated in overcrowded restaurants on the big day. It’s the contemporary sentiment. Regardless, love is our most dominant emotion and in a transitory world, the hope of a perpetual feeling is appealing.

Brother Jean never discounted the magic of love, but he taught us an abridged perspective of the season. He introduced us to the Romantics. Romanticism! Of course “romance” would come from the Romans. However, the etymology of the term superseded the connections of lovers.

What was extraordinary about Brother Jean is that he transformed a bunch of hooligans into emerging minds capable of appreciating the splendor of words and ideas. How this French-Canadian fighter could also elicit a tear from reading a passage from Byron to us remains a mystery.

We read the work of Shelly, Keats and Hawthorne. We learned their emphasis on emotion and individualism was foundational to understanding the rapture of life. Brother Jean’s mantra came from the romanticist Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

Through Whitman, Brother taught us to appreciate nature and circumstance. He worshiped at the altar of the aesthetic experience. The sublime! Whitman wrote: “Why who makes much of a miracle? As to me, I see nothing but miracles.”

The best part February 1963 was when Brother Jean told the class, “We are the romantics.” It’s was the same theme that actor Robin Williams, playing teacher John Keating, expressed in the movie, “Dead Poets Society.”

He taught us that life itself has no inherent meaning and that being said, he expressed it is our responsibility to bring meaning to life. It is the quest of the romantics to make our lives extraordinary. Most people have a difficult time with that degree of commitment for they fear the transformation it brings to their lives.

Each February I think of Brother Jean and see him in his red beret. In 1963, he followed his passion and became a missionary in China. He was the true romantic. In my journal, I circled one of his comments. “Go and live your dream. Enough said.”

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JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.