Ancient stones and an old recipe

I found an old recipe lately when I visited the ancient stones of Orkney with my children. I forgot who originally passed this recipe to me, but it is strange how it comes back without ever having written it down. The body remembers deeply what mind forgets too easily.

I imagine you might be familar with this recipe. You probably have found it whispered in new and old stories, maybe you've heard someone speaking of it, or you might recall how you've savored it. Here are the magical ingredients:

Two healthy legs, two well-protected feet for running, jumping, playing, exploring, stomping in puddles, walking, or for standing still. These pillars are your support, so take good care of them, give them lots of rest when the sun goes down so that they are ready when the sun comes up. It helps to exercise them each day. The sturdier the legs, the better one is able to climb any mountain, high or low. Don't forget the valleys, they are fun to explore too.

A healthy heart. A healthy heart maintains solid breath and strong blood flow. It requires physical movement each day or it might tire out easily. Learn how to read your beat. Fast when running, slower when sitting. Both movements are necessary for a balanced life.

The heart is the source of your life. It is the place of deep connection, compassion, and love. Learn how its rhythm matches your emotions, trace the beat so you can read your body and know how it is working and if any repairs are needed.

If you practice daily attunement, then you might have the added gift of discovering what you really love about life. Savor this, it is treasure of the heart.

An open mind. An open mind leads to open spaces and unexplored lands. An open mind also encourages deep connection with the self and community. It leads to empathy, care, and understanding. It also leads to a place of discernment. Pay attention and care for your mind. Challenge it when it longs to be challenged, show it some grace when you make a mistake, nurture it with what you love to do so that when you are in a space to discern your path, you will recognize the signs of your mind(it is called intuition or instinct). An open mind leads to great freedom and wisdom.

Creative hands. Be sure to wash, dry, and care for your hands. They allow you to touch, hold, create, form, and give expression to what you hold in your heart and mind. They weave you into the great web of creativity. When words fail, your hands speak the language of creative magic and mystery.

Any sacred space. The woods, a tree, a snowflake, sharing a meal, watching the sun rise, playing hide-n-seek at ancient standing stones, these are all sacred spaces. Be sure to practice discovering all the sacred spaces that you come into contact with each day. Look closely, they are everywhere. No need to travel far, you can find them in a smile, a laugh, a tear, a stone, a tree, a hug, the sun, the moon. When you are more aware of finding them, you will discover amazing things about life. If you struggle to discover sacred space, then just remember to follow a child.

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?

Follow your passion

Here is the wisdom gleaned from the empty bowl today: follow your passion.

My 9 year old son spent the entire afternoon working through math puzzles and challenges in a book I recently purchased him called Math for Smarty Pants. This book is the perfect unschooling book as it is not the traditional math text. It is also the perfect book for encouraging and developing critical thinking skills. For years I have wanted to step away from the more traditional forms of education (I am a former teacher so even if this is my intention, the patterns are so deeply imbedded in me that I am not even aware of the subtle and perhaps not so subtle schooling patterns I send to my children). But today, thanks to my son, he showed me what it looks like to step away from an inherited pattern. I know I send him messages that traditional schooling methods are what we adhere to in this house even if I give a great amount of lip service to the idea that all of life is learing, all of life is home education. I know I send him schooling messages beacause all afternoon he kept asking for reassurance: "Mom, are sure it is okay I spend the afternoon doing these problems?" He also periodically apologized for how he spent his time. I reassured him that this is what I have always hoped for, a pattern of learning that looked like this: finding something you are so interested in that you do not want to step away from it. Finding something you love and following its path because it is a passion directed by one's soul and not an external force. The authentic self should be encouraged to flourish and live freely.

I have known for some time that reading and problem solving are two of my son's passions. But he showed me today doing your passion is also a way of being in this world. I used to think of these two words as separate but they are intricately related. Being and doing are perhaps the dance steps of the soul.

Hoping we all are tuned in to our passions. And hoping we all make some time for the soul to dance.

fyi: I have a friend who has lots to say about following one's passions ( http://www.your-passion-coach.com/ ) and finding your life's big rocks. It is worth a look and a listen.

Thinking of a New Name

I am trying to find a name for what we do around here. I have tried them all, homeschooling, home-education, unschooling, skill time, focus time, learning time, work, but I am not satisfied.

We choose to have our children at home with us because we want to offer them a way of being in the world. We want them to have freedom to make choices, to follow their own interests, to find their passions, and we want them to learn how to read, write, and count, with more mindfulness and peace.

I don't know why it is so important for me to find the right name for it. Homeschooling sounds too much like school, unschooling sounds like we are resisting anything of value about school, although I know it implies a different pedagodgy. Home-education is a more fancy name for homeschooling. Skill time sounds like we are training workers. Focus time is a bit better in supporting what we want to offer our children. Learning time makes it seem like we only learn in a certain setting and that learning is not a continuous adventure. Work, well, that just seems a harsh word for what children really do which is play. When people ask where the children go to school, we always say they are home-educated, but I wish for a new name that really captures what we do around here.

Maybe instead of a name I am looking for a description. And in looking for a description I am really looking for some affirmation that I am not alone out there in what I am doing each day with my children. Maybe because this is how I fill my days, I want it named. And I want to like the name, like "stepping into the flow," "watching butterflies," "the ones with painted faces" (from bramble juice), "the gigglers", "the creative ones," "the venus fly trap admirers." These names all fit better but would the world understand? Would they know us by these names?