Living in Season: Digging up the buried mysticism of childhood

I remember the first time I took my youngest to the beach just after he had learnt to walk. The tide was out, my two older children soared to the water's edge, screaming with joy and excitement. My husband followed them and I stayed back with my son. A new walker means the pace is slower.

But the excitement on his face was just like that of his two older siblings. He kept focused on the sea, pointing with his index finger, walking at a slow pace, and making a sound that was so delightful, "ohhhh, ohhhhh, ohhhhh." He was experiencing a new feet freedom. But he was also experiencing a new landscape. So many treasures surrounded him. The sea, the beach, the patted shells here and there, the mixture of seaweed and muck from the sea, the firm sand to walk upon, the sound of the waves in the distance, and the free sea air.

There is no way for me to know what was going on for him in that moment. Yet, reading his body language suggested sheer delight in his new surroundings, an excitement found in the sound of the waves crashing, and a powerful energy pull from the sea. It was a day of happy choices for his feet.

That one day at the beach, that one moment, was when I knew why I spend my days with children. Children live a life of mysticism. They experience what Dorothee Soelle calls, "highly charged moments that give a deep sense of unity without meditation," and they instinctually know, "God is here." They need no book, no dogma, no priest. They need no training, no workshops, no pattern or checklists, they simply live and experience life's great oneness.

I am grateful for the gift they bestow upon me: with a bucket and shovel, with eyes open, senses engaged, I start digging to find home.

Living in Season: What does it mean?

What does living in season really mean?

For me, it has become a way of life.

It all started ten years when I lived in Egypt. In Cairo, there is a banana season, a tomato season, and an orange season. One knows that at certain times during the year, certain foods locally grown are readily available. If you buy an orange or a tomato out of the local season, you know it is probably imported and imported fruit never tastes as fresh and delicious as local ones. So I learned to go from season to season, marking the times of year by what food was fresh and local. I discovered a simple joy in living this way. Even though I lived in one of the most populated cities in the world, with all the noise pollution and the smell of burning trash, eating locally made me feel like I had stepped into another time, an old time, the time of my ancestors, a time when we lived closer to the patterns and seasons of the earth.

Then, I started having babies and as new patterns of living emerged, living in season started to have new connotations for me. Now living in season means my season of mothering. In some ways it is just like my seasonal Cairo food living. There is an ebb and flow of time, things (breastfeeding, interrupted sleep) circle back around again like the coming and going of spring, summer, autumn and winter. I know that there are stages to my child's life and it means there are stages to my life too. Patterns come and go.

I remind myself that living in season means that sometimes I go without. Going without does not mean I will never have it again, it just means that right now I am in a different time. It is easier to know that in two seasons fresh local bananas will be back again and harder to remind myself that some time soon (I hope), there will be time for long periods of prayer, meditation, and writing.

Living in season is also about letting go. Letting go of what I think my life ought to be or how I see (and imagine) someone else's life to be (and think I need it for me). It is about paying attention to where I am just now and letting go of any attachment to the desired outcomes I hold. Things like time for me will indeed come around again. Letting go of what I had more time for before my children might allow me to see what new things there are now in my life to embrace. I let go of the orange to embrace the tomato and then let go of the tomato to embrace the banana. I let go of all that me time to embrace the us time with my young children.

Living in season is a way of life. It is a life of mindfulness. A mindful living. It is a paying attention to what is here and now.

Seasonal living always comes up for me this time of year. All the images--stars, the Sun, birth, darkness and light--remind me that I am part of a greater season--a spirit season. I still have much to learn about my spirit season and what it looks like to live in this season, but I am learning. I am learning to spot what feeds my spirit (like the fresh banana that feeds my body) and what my spirit finds less than edible and out of season. I am learning to let go and to go without, trusting in the great circle, the great ebb and flow.

Living in my spirit season means taking time over the next 10 days to rest, to play, to journey to far places (if only in my mind's landscape), to allow time to pass freely, to feel bored, to connect deeply with others, to let go of old agreements and make room for new ones, to return to me.

For the night's gone on too long

I've been searching through the darkness
Return to me beloved,
For the night's gone on too long,
Return to me, my love,
I won't rest until I've found you,
Return to me beloved,
And you bring me back the dawn,
Return to me, my love.
(from Circle Round, words written by Susan Falkenrath Wolf)

I love the stories we tell about the earth and her cycles. The seasons turn and each has its own characteristics and personality traits. Each has its own color, element, and energy. Winter has never been my favorite of the four. The lack of light this time of year is never easy. It is a strain on my body, my emotions, my whole self, and especially my soul. And yet, I love the Winter Solstice.

The story of the earth's hibernation, bare and cold on the outside, but alive and full of fire on the inside, really speaks to me this year. The earth's hibernation mirrors my soul's spiritual hibernation. Perhaps the real truth is that I have never permitted myself to enter the pattern of the earth's darkness. I know how to dive deep into my self, but there are so many layers and old agreements to shed, that my lack of courage inhibits me from fully connecting with the pattern of the sleeping earth. I don't really want to embrace the darkness in myself let alone the darkness of the earth!

The darkness this year seems to be more alive for me. While the earth sleeps, I am awake, wide awake at early hours in the morning, pondering, dreaming, hoping that the pain of broken relationships will heal, full of the longing to connect with family and friends, praying for more patience with my children, struggling to hear and notice and believe my inner voice. This is essentially my darkness. There is so much more, I know. So much more I struggle to name, but I feel it all just right under the surface. For the first time in my life I have felt what it really feels like to live in the season of darkness. And there are many times when I have felt that the night has gone on for far too long.

And yet, the great story of our earth is that while the Sun is born again, the earth comes into more light. So, tomorrow, when I awake, I know that the hope of the light will carry me out of the darkness like it gives new life to the trees, the grass, the ponds, the hills, the flowers. It is a slow process, but I know how to recognize her signs. My story is bound to her story. I see that now as I can see the slow process of rebirth written on my soul.

Tonight, as I walk into our favorite woods, the place that holds so much meaning and memories for our family, as we carry our lanterns made from jam and olive jars and tied leather string, and as I carry our Solstice candle that will burn through the night and into the light of a new day and a new season, as we find our way through the darkness to our fairy tree, and as we sing 'Return to me, my love' to the Sun, I will wish for the practice of release. Release the darkness, release the old agreements, release my resistance to fully embrace who I truly am. I will send my wishes to the light for courage, wisdom, cheer, and sound sleep, for the earth must know that I need it.

For now, I wait. New light and new life is coming.

Tomorrow, I know the coming of the light will shine on me.

Happy Solstice, happy Sun, happy, happy light!

Walking Worship, Walking Prayer

It was Tuesday. Jack Frost visited over night, finally, and it was just the incentive my oldest needed to get him out of the house for an early morning walk. The sun was coming up, it was 8:20am, and the air cool and crisp. The orange glow in the air whispered change. This morning setting became the space of our worship, where we walked our prayer, and it was so natural and so beautiful, so unscripted.

"Oh, wow! Look at that Mama," was our first song. The hill behind us, the one that faced the coming sun, was unusually orange. The light hitting it just so invited us to pause and watch.

The instruments we carried were our cold toes, our feet crunching and popping the ice out of the tire tracks left in a plowed field. Some puddles were deep, some shallow. Wondering what sounds each will make and how long it will hold our weight became our dancing prayer. Crunch. Pop. Crunch. Pop. Crunch. Crunch. Pop. Splash. Mud blessed our trousers and as it landed on my knitted scarf, I practiced letting go of order.

We passed dogs and their walkers. Greetings of peace exchanged. Admiration for this beautiful morning shared.

And when the path got slippery, the four of us walked with joined hands. If one slipped, we could catch each other. The small trees, our brothers and sisters, flanked us, encouraged us along. Their firm foundation provided security and community. Their branches showed us the way.

Like all good prayer and worship there is a moment when we are aware of holy presence. It could be an 'aha' moment or a small epiphany or some small action when we know we have touched the Divine. As our walk was coming to an end, the houses in sight, the gate at the end of the field near, we spotted a small pond with several rings of circles. It was as if our entire walk, our entire purpose was to stand on the edges of this pond and wonder and ask and smile.

A new song now replaced the old. There were several verses to this one: "it looks like a spiral," "I wonder how it got this way," "is it deep?" Admist the verses vocalized was a song of silence. We knelt down to touch the frozen rings, to admire their presence. We knew without speaking that this pond was not a pond for crunching or popping. We left it as it was for the next walker to see, to experience, to sing.

Our walk was a prayer of wonder and creation. It was our dancing joy. And like all good worship and prayer, it changed us, forever.

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?

Meditating with Monet

One of the benefits of home education is that I get to revisit old subjects. The past few weeks I have been looking again at Monet and other Impressionist painters with my daughter. Impressionism as a whole art movement, but Monet and Mary Cassatt particularly, have inspired me to ponder the relationship between creativity and spirituality.


Here is what I glean from Monet's life and creative practice. It tells me a lot about the spiritual life. I would love to hear what you think and if you want to hear more about this topic.


1. Practice outside. This has two meanings really. One, Monet was a non-conformist. He never really liked school, avoided formal art training, and was not interested in the accepted tradition that focused on the artists of the past. Monet stood on the outside of society and culture. A real artist, a real mystic.


This aspect of Monet intrigues me. What sort of implications does this have for the spiritual life? It makes me think of my own training. The training that teaches one to search for the answers in books, in elders, and in the tradition. But, I wonder what would happen if I set aside the books and the institution? What would surface? What if I left my spiritual life, its training and practice, in the hands of experience? Experience matters, right? But how much do we really value experience? How much do we really practice a spirituality based on experience? This question makes me want to take a pause from not only the institution but also the books. Books tell me so much about the world, the shared journey, and about God, but perhaps it is time to really dig in and experience what I am reading about. Put someone else's words away for a while.


Two, practice outside is literally a call to nature. Monet's studio was outside in the natural world. He loved painting nature and he loved being outside. He was exposed to snow, rain, wind, the incoming tide, and light while trying to capture a moment, a color, a reflection of light, a feeling, an impression. Being outside forced him to work with nature. He relied on the elements--fire, air, water, earth--to help him paint his experience.


2. Work with nature. Monet was a master of working with light. He watched the sun, the seasons, and the time of day in order to capture light in a certain way. He used water for its reflection of life and light. What would the spiritual life look like if we worked with nature? What if we worked with the light? What if we worked with water? Nature and her elements seem like an obvious subject to invoke. Nature is the purest way to touch the Divine.


"Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature," writes Jack in the beloved children's Magic Tree House series. This simple chant I hear echoing in Monet's paintings. Use nature. Be nature. Follow nature. What does this simple chant mean for the spiritual journey? Look outside. Be outside. Experience outside.


3. Experience matters. Monet clearly values experience. In this way, I link him with the aspect of mysticism that values experience more than the institution and the intellect. The mystic knows that it is in the experience, through intuition, through introspection, that the knowledge of God surfaces. I am not dismissing the importance of the intellect and the institution in our lives, they have a place, but I am interested in contemplating how we might find a more healthy balance. How might we all find and experience the Divine in the daily living? And how would our experience, our impressions of the Divine contribute to the shared spiritual journey?


4. Include the mundane. Monet and Renoir argued over Monet's inclusion of the mundane in his paintings. It was not the tradition to paint everyday life as well as unpleasant objects such as chimneys billowing smoke. But Monet painted the cityscape. He painted the mundane. And he painted slices of modern life.


I am not sure what this says about the spiritual life other than the sacred is found in the mundane. My experience of living in one of the most overpopulated and polluted cities taught me how one can actually experience the Divine in a smelly city, in stopped traffic, and in the smoky fog that rises from the Nile. It is hard to put words to what it is like to find the Divine in this way. It is more of an experience that is indescribable, but I am sure most of us have had moments in our lives when we've connected to the Holy in a surprising and unexpected setting.


5. Depth over breadth. In the later part of his life, Monet went for depth. He painted water lilies for 20 years! My favorite series of paintings is the haystack series in which he visits the same field season after season, capturing the light, the experience, the change, the impression. He was after depth not breadth. I don't know about you, but I would much rather know a lot about one thing than know a little about many things. Monet knew water lilies. It makes me question about the depth in my own life. What do I know? Or what do I long to know deeply? The spiritual implications for this question are great. Journey for depth not breadth.

Gatherers

My oldest son had declared that today was a pajama day. The sky was full of rain clouds so I understood his desire for a not-go-anywhere day. Today is a perfect day to read a book. But it being mid-August, I knew there was not much time left to pick raspberries. I piled my other two young children in the car, and as my son stood at the door in his fleece pajamas, waving goodbye to us, he quickly changed his mind. He wanted to come afterall. Throwing on clothes as fast as he could, searching for a book to bring with him (not sure where he thought he might read), he fumbled into the car.

When we arrived at the farm two miles down the road, my chilren bounced out of the car. Their eagerness to pick raspberries surprised me. It had been two years since we have gone to pick berries and I was happy to see they still carried some excitement.

We were all at home in the patch that morning. While my older two were way ahead of me and my 3 year old, I could hear their calls to each other: "oh, there are so many over here," or "look at this!" and "look what I found, look at all of these berries." I would spot them moving in and out between rows, managing to fit their small bodies under a supporting fence so they could catch the berries on the other side of the bush. I too had my responses: "there is a red one," or "look how many there are over there," and I would permit myself to taste one.

There is something magical about berry picking. Even though these bushes are cultivated, there is still a sense of the wild among the bushes. Something about this act of collecting a treasure from the earth and being able to place it in your mouth and taste its amazingly ripe flavour transports us to another time. A time when we were hunters and gatherers and lived off of what nature provided. We did not farm. We did not grow. We just collected the treasures to sustain us.

Usually my children and I collect raspberries for jam. This year, we each had our container to collect to eat. They taste different this year. Maybe this is the way they are to be eaten. Right from the bush, our small harvest in our hands, with smiles on our faces.