For whatever reason, a lot of the people I know have been blogging about religion lately. I’m not sure why, but it reminded me of my third-grade teacher. I don’t remember much about the third grade. I don’t even remember my teacher’s name. But what I do remember is that we had "quiet moments."

My teacher explained this to us a couple of times. I think she gave us a speech at the beginning of both semesters. She said that while she couldn’t give students time that they could use to pray in the morning, nothing in any rule book or law book forbade her from setting aside "quiet moment time" that we did not have to use for prayer, but if we found the time convenient for prayer, that would be okay and she wouldn’t stop us. Not that she was suggesting we pray. Oh, no. Perish the thought. I remember she made a very big deal about explicity stating several times that she was not telling us to pray. But if we did, and if mandating a time when we had to keep quiet and bow our heads down made that convenient, well then that would be all right.

At the time, it made no sense to me or anybody else in the class. I’ll be honest; our teacher told us to do a lot of things that seemed odd. In general we just shrugged and did what we were told. It was less trouble that way all around. So if she said, "Memorize these names and dates! You’ll need to know this!" then we did it. And if she said, "Cut these shapes out of construction paper!" then we did it. And if she said, "Bow your heads down and keep quiet–and pray if you want to, not that I’m suggesting that you should!" then we did that, too.

I remember thinking that it was strange that our teacher would make such a big deal about not telling us to pray, but I didn’t care enough to say or do anything. I wonder if I should have. Maybe, or maybe not. It probably would have gotten her into big trouble. Maybe me, too!

The strangest part about it all is that though I’ve read numerous articles about school prayer and bringing Jesus into the classroom in the newspaper and online news sources over the years, I never once thought about my experience in the third grade. I’m not even sure what made me think of it today. But it’s a little weird to look back and say, "Hey, wait a minute…"