I Missed Socrates Again!

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I hear that Socrates visited the fifth grade this week.  I missed him again this year.  I need to work with the fifth grade teachers to get this on my calendar—I can’t believe I didn’t get to hear him. 

I asked the teachers what he talked about, and they said he wandered into class looking for a friend and ended up staying for about 45 minutes to talk to the students.  They have studied him in their history class—they knew a lot about his life, his ideas, his trial, and death.  Seems that they had done a mock trial not long ago.   So they were full of questions, I hear.

I hear Socrates was full of his own, too.  Not surprising. 

They called him wise and he pressed them to say what wisdom was.  I hear this led to a fascinating exchange with Leah about a man who knew the truth and the good and always did it.  Socrates had never heard of this Jesus, but I’m told he was riveted. 

He left the class with two Greek phrases to ponder:

ούκ οίδα, which means “I don’t know.”  Not sure where this conversation went, but I think it had something to do with a horsefly.

The other thing I heard the students muttering when I saw them afterwards was γνῶθι σεαυτόν.  They said it had something to do with the hardest thing in the universe to understand.  I wonder what that is.

As Trinity gets bigger, it’s impossible to make it to every event, but I’m going to make a point of seeing the sage next year if he returns.

Someone captured a brief exchange on a video.  Check it out.