Why I choose a swamp

"Hope and the future for me are not in lawns and cultivated fields, not in towns and cities, but in the impervious and quaking swamps." from Thoreau's Walking

I like things to be neat and ordered. I like to know where I am going, what will happen next, and I like to have each turn planned, written down (in case I forget), and successfully crossed off my list when executed. This pattern of ordered behavior makes me think I am living, but I am not truly living. If only I could detached from outcomes and delight in the mess of the process of life, then, ah, then, I would be free and wild and natural.

These two opposing forces in me--the cultivated and civilized self vs. the free and wild and natural self--are constantly played out each day as a parent. These forces each want to have some say in how I relate to my children, how I create a space for them to learn, how I encourage, how I love, and in how I think about their futures. My journey of home education and parenthood set the stage for these opposing forces to fight it out. Not sure this is a blessing or a curse, but it is the gift these journeys have given me. At least, it is a gift of awareness.

I don't think my children know about the battle that rages on inside of me, although twenty years from now in their mature ages, they might notice it in themselves. I waver between setting the pace for them and letting them set their own pace. I waver between panicking that they might not know certain historical information, math facts, how to write a paragraph, and all the other things that children their age should know vs. knowing that at my ripe age, learning is a life long process. Facts can be learned, skills developed all in time. This is a battle between institution/tradition/civilization and Nature and it is played out in my home, and dare I say, it is played out in yours too.

Being one who desires Nature as her guide means that I choose a swamp, a messy, smelly, impervious, quaking, mucky ground to home myself, even though I live like I want the ordered, planned life. But like Thoreau in his essay on Walking, "you may think me perverse, if it were proposed to me to dwell in the neighborhoods of the most beautiful garden that ever human art contrived, or else a dismal swamp, I should certainly decide for the swamp." Why?

1. I already live in the swamp. So the swamp is just the proper name to claim for my home and what happens around here both in parenting but more so within my internal self. My emotions, my thoughts, some impervious, some quaking here and there, often, and with passion, remind me that I am already in the swamp, I just want to now embrace it. I am already wild and free and natural, I just need to claim it. Gardens are beautiful, and I dream of walking in a cultivated garden like Monet's Giverny, but the real me finds freedom in the swamp. The real me touches the universe in the muck and mud and water and thick sloop it creates. Parenting is a swamp!

2. The swamp has its own order. The muck, its own give and take. The swamp, although appearing dismal, is open and free to the gifts of Nature. Its interconnectedness with its surroundings, its reliance on the elements for life, orders its ecosystem. It is both wild and free. No cultivation from the outside, changes come from within, order comes from its true essence and role in the system. It is not proscribed, not imposed from the outside, it just becomes what it is to become. I would like this for all swamps, all homes, all children, all people. It is the ultimate gift from Nature.

3. The swamp is about wild. Thoreau claims, "in Literature, it is only the wild that attracts us. Dullness is but another name for tameness. It is the uncivilized free and wild thinking in Hamlet and The Iliad, in all the scriptures and mythologies, not learned in schools, that delights us." We are attracted to the wild in life, in literature, in art, in Nature, but how do we see the wild in ourselves? Do we embrace it? Do we try to control it? Suppress it? Do we practice wildness?

Like Thoreau, in our walking, we ground ourselves. In our daily acts, in our spiritual practices, we choose where we will find our grounding. Will it be in the cultivated gardens or in the swamps?

Life's Cairn

Cairns punctuate the Scottish Highlands and other small hills around. They are path markers, navigational tools. They mark the summit. They are mini-monuments.

The first time I encountered a cairn was when I visited Walden Pond. Close to the place where Thoreau's cabin probably stood, a pile of stones mark it as a sacred spot for Thoreau admirers. It also marks a spot in the life journey of all those who visited this place before me. There is an unspoken connection one feels with others when you come upon a cairn. These pile of stones mark the journey walked by others, including Thoreau himself. I remember wondering about those who have walked before me: Did they like Thoreau's writings as much as I do? Which one was their favorite? Did they want to live in a cabin in the woods? I immediately assumed all these stones represented kindred spirits of mine, for certainly they must love nature too. And I did not forget to consider Thoreau himself walking on the edge of the pond like me or swimming in the water like the man I paused to watch.

The cairn is the center point, a meeting place. Like the center of the labrynth, it marks one of those inward places where we move closest to the Divine. The center of the journey is not always easy to locate, but cairns help us mark where we've been, where we are, and they point us toward some future path on life's journey.

I am beginning to see cairns all around me, though not the ones made of stones carried up a hill. These cairns are rather moments in my life that I find myself wanting to place a stone, wanting to mark the space where I feel so close to the Divine. I suppose it is one of those moments I feel I am touching the universe. There is an unspoken connection with life around me.

I know I am at these moments when I feel full inside, emotionally full, and I want to give from my heart. The cup I carry overflows. I know when I am at one of these moments when I find myself asking, "what if this is as good as it gets?" Well, then, life is pretty good.

I have noticed that in these moments when I delight in the present, I want to hold and memorialize the feeling I have deep inside me. I want to recognize the connection I feel with the Divine. Maybe this is why I have so many stones scattered around my house. Stones are the treasures from the earth that help us remember and hold on to the sacred. A physical sign of something mysterious and mystical.

Surprisingly this week has been full of cairn moments. It is strange how these moments have coincided with the return of our weekly home learning rhythm. As we have returned to the path we walk together, my children and I feel more connected. We have our moments of frustration with each other, our moments of wanting to scream if we already haven't done so, but these moments seem to be part of the journey as well. We work out the trail before us and sometimes it comes with loads of complaining about when we will reach the top.

But amidst the complaining, there was silence.

After we visited Iona last year with our children, we decided to use the Iona morning prayer for our prayer time. We all really like the prayers and my two older ones like taking turns leading. We have been doing this for a while now and my oldest son had begun grumbling, expressing a need for change. I wanted a change as well. So, we decided to try sitting in silence for five minutes together instead. How could silence be so magical? How could it work with chidren? I never had considered this more adult form of prayer for children, but it worked this week. I wonder what else I hold back from sharing with my children about the spiritual world because I think they are too young. I have reached a summit, an aha moment.

Sitting with my children in silence for five minutes brings together all that I long for in life: more pauses, more mindfulness, more peace, more connection with those I love. That silent space has no stones, no pebbles, no rocks, but it has an amazingly mystical center. For now, it is my life's cairn.

The Sacred Journey

Thoreau states in Walden: "For many years I was a self-appointed inspector of snow-storms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully: surveyor, if not of highways, then of forest paths and all across-lot routes, keeping them open, and ravines bridged and passable at all seaons."

We are all walkers on this sacred journey of life. And we each play different roles at different times. Like Thoreau, I am a self-appointed inspector of the natural landscape, I inspect rain clouds and raspberry bushes, I watch sunflowers open and slugs crawl up windows, I gather seeds for planting next spring and I notice how some paths are walked more than others, but more specifically I watch my children. Children have this wonderful way of moving us toward the mystical in everyday life. With my children as my spiritual midwives, I find the Divine in the least expected places. And like Thoreau, the surveyor, who kept the bridges maintained for future walkers, I try to keep the bridge open between the physical and spiritual worlds for others to cross. I include on this site essays and ramblings of crossing that open bridge as I walk my midlife journey with my children. A crossing that is surprisingly sacred and curiously full of the material world.