Conspiracy of Love

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

Sometimes, in the rush and chaos of a major holiday season, we forget the original reason for the season. Being a single mom, going back to school full-time on an overloaded schedule, all led me to an overloaded month of December. Having to write over 300 pages of papers and projects in the three weeks leading up to Xmas is almost cruel and unusual punishment.

Ok, so I chronically overproduce, and maybe it wasn’t necessary to write quite that many pages. But I did have 9 papers or projects, plus a history final to take.

This last week of school, I worked a full day plus two half days. I helped with two class parties. And the girls and I baked and baked and baked, getting cookies ready for their teachers. We made 5 kinds of cookies, went through 5 pounds of butter, I don’t know how much succanat and spelt flour. The cookies were delicious, the teachers grateful, and my girls were happy that they helped make someone else happy. My back was a bit sore, but I was happy because my girls were happy (and had the bonus of eating lots of yummy cookies for the last couple days!)

This year, again, I had the misfortune of dealing with a last minute emergency present substitution. Once again, Magic Cabin ran out of stock, and didn’t bother to inform their customers that they weren’t going to receive their orders. I don’t get it. They’re a toy company. Why do they think customers are ordering from them? How could they ever think that one stupid postcard, mailed who knows when, would be enough notification that a present would not arrive? How could they not understand that when orders are placed online, acknowledgements received online (including everything in stock and on its way acknowledgements), and emails sent advising customers to track their orders online, that customers will GO ONLINE to check the status of their order. And how could they think they could print on the package invoice that other items will ship separately, still have a message online that items will be shipped separately, and not have customers trying to wait patiently for items to arrive?

So, Magic Cabin will never again receive another order from me. Never.

I’ve made this vow before, and it took me about six or seven years to change my mind or relent or whatever I did this year. What a mistake.

In comparison, the two companies I found who helped me replace a Santa present at the last minute made personal phone calls to work with me to ensure delivery on time. So if you like Waldorf-inspired toys, and have girls who adore fairies, I heartily recommend these companies:
http://blueberryforest.com/
http://www.willowtreetoys.com/
http://www.seasonsnaturaltoys.com/

Ooops. Sorry. Little detour into feeling sorry for myself there. Bak to what I started to write about: remembering that conspiracy of love. In the end, the endless round of cookies and the last minute frantic internet searches don’t matter. In the end, the look of wonder on a child’s face as she walks into the room, the look of awe as another opens an unexpected box, the hug from the daughter who received the unexpected, those warm wonderful feelings are why we parents put in the time and effort that we do.

This year, in spite of the frenetic pace leading up to Christmas, was quite peaceful for the last two days. We bought a tree very late – Christmas Eve afternoon. I was grateful to find a tree farm still open. A small place, and a very nice gentleman who was able to accommodate my insane schedule. He helped us find a perfect tree, loaded us up, and we arrived home at 4 pm on Christmas Eve, frantically swept and vacuumed the downstairs, put up the tree, and then relaxed to decorate with a new single mom friend without children that evening. We share a bottle of wine, the girls bickered a bit over which decorations should go where, and we survived the experience, got everyone to bed by midnight, and all got a decent night’s sleep.

On Christmas, we had a leisurely morning opening presents and playing games! It was the kind of Christmas that I love, no needing to run out to grandparents, no frantic rushing to get ready. Instead, we drove 20 minutes to another friend’s house, where we had a simple dinner together, played with her little children, talked and shared more wine, bemoaned the problems of poverty and whether they were solvable or not, ooohed and aaahed over pictures of the cosmos, taken by the Hubble Telescope, and remembered that we are just tiny specks in an enormous universe.

We gave hugs, came home to bed, and slept a long peaceful night. Today, we’ll head over to my mom’s for the Christmas party with my extended family!

Joyous Solstice, everyone!

Semester DONE!

I am finished the semester! In the last four weeks, since Thanksgiving week, I have produced over 300 pages of papers and projects! That doesn't count the duplication or borrowing (with permission) that I did from one unit plan to another!

It feels good to be finished.

What was amazing to me is that I realized, as exhausted as I was, that I was still filled with joy, still full of enthusiasm, still working in bliss.

Does that mean I am where I am meant to be, at least for now? Perhaps Pema Chodron says it best:

If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.
~ Pema Chodron

Art Lessons

My daughter learned a tough life lesson this morning. I suppose, in the overall scheme of life lessons, it could have been a whole lot worse. In retrospect, she’ll understand that it truly was just a little thing.

She didn’t think so this morning.

And as I watched her trudge onto the bus, head hung, posture screaming absolute defeat, my heart broke into a million pieces for her.

Parenting is truly a heartbreaking work of art. We put a gentle touch here, a stronger statement there, a delicate hint another time, and a bold statement that just screams right across the middle as we work longer on the piece of art. You’ve had those screaming bold statements, haven’t you? The ones that we just can’t help … passion overtakes us, and in the end, the bold touch has as dramatic an effect on our children as it does on a Van Gogh painting. Hopefully we don’t lose an ear in the process, although I sometimes wonder, as blistered as my ear feels after some of those bold touches.

This morning, as I watched one of my pieces of art, one of the pieces that grew as if by magic, one of the pieces that just poured through me as a vessel which I had very little control over, my heart was shattered once again. After spending far too many hours helping her prepare a watercolor for an art show ... hours on the phone trying to find a way to cover the artwork in plastic (not framed), a long detour to Lowe’s to find stretch wrap, the best alternative I could come up with after phone calls to every frame shop in two counties, and an early waking this morning to help her cover her piece ... I finally read the rules to make sure she had everything attached properly.

And there, in black and white, right in the requirements for the show, it says, “Maximum size 11x14.” Her painting is 11x18.

She’s devastated. She really wanted to show this painting. It’s good, produced at the end of a summer workshop on watercolors. I’m proud of her work; even better, she’s proud of her work. The contest had a cash prize, and she was hoping to win some cash for her exchange program this summer to Australia and New Zealand. Her last words, as she climbed out of the car to trudge to the bus were, “I had a sketch the right size. I could have entered that instead.”

I’m angry at myself. I should have read the rules at the beginning, too. I would have caught the size requirement. I might have been able to save her some anguish.

On the other hand, she did learn a lesson this morning. It was painful. She won’t ever forget to read all the rules to a contest again, though.

It could have been a whole lot worse, like drugs, or teen pregnancy. For that I can be grateful. One day, she will be able to laugh about this. And in the meanwhile, I will guide with delicate strokes and hints of color here and there, allowing her to make the kind of mistakes that will help her grow into an amazing and awesome work of art. She will become stronger, more vivid, full of the confidence of someone who learns lessons well. And my heart will shatter again and again and again as I watch the struggle of the birth of a full and rich human being.

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse. However, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Information Junkie!

It’s the end of the semester, and I have nine major projects or papers due in the last three weeks of the semester. I can’t remember the last time I slept a full eight hours, and I’m so groggy in the morning that it takes two cups of coffee to get me going, and tea steeped a long time for max caffeine to keep me going all day!

All I begrudge, really, is my sleep. The work is exhilarating, and my head is ready to explode with new ideas, theories, creativity…

I realized at some point last week that I’m an information junkie though. It’s sad, really. Papers that should take me five hours to write end up taking 20 hours instead, because I start researching, and one article leads me to another, which leads to yet another, ad infinitum, and next thing I know, I’m reading about disciplinary literacy instead of multiple intelligence theory, and it’s all so fascinating I can’t stop, but the next project is due on Wednesday and I’m still trying to finish my lesson plans on global warming for the Thursday group project and now I just found another fascinating literacy paper on the Carnegie website. Ack!

So far, the disciplinary literacy paper that I found last week will be used in my global warming project due this week, and the Carnegie paper will help me with my Literacy course unit study. And the fascinating site on mini-offices has visuals that will help me with both the literacy project and the tutoring I’m doing twice a week for IEP students, so it’s all good, but I need to make it stop so I can write!!!

Anyone have any suggestions?

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.
~ Alfred North Whitehead

Global Warming

I just dropped my oldest daughter at the bus stop at the end of our farm lane, along with the garbage and recycling. While driving back, I was reflecting on the fog, and remembered the date. Today is the last day of November. It's 56° already this morning, at 6:30 am. The temperature will be in the 60's again today, as it's been all week.

Who said there's no global warming?

Please watch An Inconvenient Truth. It's out on DVD, and we need to hear the important message over and over again.

Then go to http://www.climatecrisis.net/ and click on Take Action, on the right hand side.

Way in the World

Wait.
This blessing does not require that you close your eyes or bow your heads.
I ask that you keep your eyes open, your head up.
Listen.
The finest blessing a meal can have is great companionship.
Look around this room. Take notice of those who sit with you.
Look around you. Look at these men and women.
Consider who they are, what they have done, and what they stand for.
Consider that you are not alone on your Way in the world.
Consider that you have the honor to break bread with such as these.
Look.
And know that this meal and each of us is abundantly blessed.
Amen.
~Robert Fulgham

This weekend, I’ve had a few people call me out of the blue, that I haven’t heard from in many months. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

I realized this morning, as I was meditating over my morning coffee, that I still harbor negative feelings about losing my last job. I just wrote to a friend that I felt as though I left tarred and feathered. I hadn’t understood that feeling until the very moment that the words flowed out of my fingers onto the screen. Now I feel the need to explore those feelings further.

What does it mean, to leave feeling tarred and feathered? Why did I feel that way, and why do those feelings still persist, more than half a year later?

I think, foremost, it was because I left so quickly, so abruptly, that there was no time for closure. I didn’t really have a chance to say goodbye. My goodbye service was also the congregation’s goodbye for the summer service, so everyone had lots more people to acknowledge. And, because it all happened so quickly, it was almost as though I left under a cloud. Did they all wonder why it happened so quickly? Did they wonder if I had done something dishonest and nasty; some secret shameful thing that would necessitate running me out of town that quickly?

It felt to me as though people were afraid to talk to me. So very many people never even said goodbye; I guess I’ll never know why. Were they sorry? Were they angry at me, that I didn’t live up to expectations and ruined all their plans? Were they embarrassed at how everything was handled? Did they just not know what to say to me, and therefore said nothing? I guess I’ll never know.

I also realized this morning that I wasn’t allowed to say goodbye to them. I never had a chance to tell all those amazing people how much they meant to me, how much I enjoyed working with them for those two years, how much I learned from them, how they touched my life in so many wonderful ways. I don’t know why I wasn’t given the chance to speak at the service to say goodbye, and I was still so stunned, so in shock, that I didn’t think to question that decision, didn’t think to ask for some time. Now I’m sorry. I would have liked to have told them how much I loved them, how I valued my time with them, and how sorry I was to be leaving them.

In my quest to live in the present, I ponder how I can release these questions; release the feelings of sorrow and dismay that have bubbled up in me this morning.

Perhaps the writing down of these feelings will do it. Perhaps the tears that have slowly trickled into my coffee have carried the last negative emotions with them, and I can be free finally to just remember with gladness in my heart my time spent there.

I will consider the men and women, boys and girls, with whom I sat in companionship, and be grateful for knowing them. I will think about who they are, what they have done, and what they stand for. I will remember that I am not alone on my Way in the world. I will know that I had the honor to break bread with such as these, and that I was abundantly blessed.

Thank you.

Nightmares

I woke up this morning in a cold sweat, from the worst nightmare I’ve had in more years than I care to remember.

It started with me flunking a test. Yes, that’s right, a glaring big “F” at the top of my test. I burst into tears in my dream, and my professor (who is not an IRL professor) came to ask what happened, that my work was not up to my usual standard of work. I explained that I ran out of time. The dream morphed, as they all do, and I was explaining about test-taking strategies, how I know that I should answer the easiest questions first, but somehow I got caught up in the most difficult question first and that’s why I ended up with so many unanswered questions. I really did know all this material. The professor offered to let me retake the exam orally that afternoon, and I gratefully accepted.

The dream morphed again, and I was sitting in my car in a parking lot, reviewing my notes just prior to taking the oral exam. I looked up and noticed a suspicious-looking person walking through the parking lot with a little girl. The parking lot had morphed from the bucolic parking lot of my IRL University to what looked like an inner-city lot, and I realized that I had the passenger door open and unlocked, as well as my driver side door. I couldn’t reach the door to shut it by leaning across the front seat, so I jumped up and ran around the car to shut the passenger side door, managed to run back around to my seat and leap in, but didn’t get the doors locked.

Much to my horror, the creepy man reached in the back door, and the little girl was magically being shoved in with her booster car seat, next to my own two girls. S. was shoved into the middle, M. on the right side, and this little girl was being shoved into the left side, and the guy was threatening me to let them both in.

The dream morphed again. Somehow the little girl was gone, and I had slammed the car into reverse, trying to back away from this nightmare guy. But he was suddenly keeping pace with me from his car, reaching through the door, trying to rip S. out of the car. Luckily, there were no cars behind us, and we could just fly backwards without anything to crash into. I was screaming at S., “Get your seatbelt on, do you have your seatbelt on? I’m going to slam on my brakes, I don’t want you to fall out!” when I woke up in a cold sweat.

I can’t shake the dread in my heart. Ironically, I spent the evening last night at a friend’s house for Thanksgiving, talking about Theta therapy, past lives, reincarnation, and living in the moment with a very interesting gentleman. The entire conversation was fascinating, and he gave me a good tool for helping me remember to live in the present. He recommended that when I realize that I’m caught up in the worrying and fretting ego mind, that I realize that it is just busy chatter and sit back and consciously observe the chatter in my mind carrying on with itself.

So I am sitting here this morning, trying very hard to observe the nervous chatter. “Worry about finishing the year well. Worry about my children and their safety. Worry, fret, fret, worry.”

Deep breathe. Observe the chatter without reacting. Go ahead and feel the fear; that’s the essential part of myself. Just sit and feel the fear.

Fear is just too damned difficult to feel without reacting to it. So I’m sitting here, writing it all out, hoping that the simple act of writing it all down will allow that dream to release me, or allow me to release the dream and the fear that it induced.

chatter … fret … chatter … worry … chatter …

Holding on to beliefs limits our experience of life. That doesn't mean that beliefs or opinions or ideas are a problem. It's the stubborn attitude of having to have things be a particular way, grasping on to our beliefs and opinions, that causes the problems. Using your belief system this way creates a situation in which you choose to be blind instead of being able to see, to be deaf instead of being able to hear, to be dead rather than alive, asleep rather than awake.

As people who want to live a good, full, unrestricted, adventurous, real kind of life, there is concrete instruction we can follow: see what is. When you catch yourself grasping at beliefs or thoughts, just see what is. Without calling your belief right or wrong, acknowledge it. See it clearly without judgment and let it go. Come back to the present moment. From now until the moment of your death, you could do this.
~ Pema Chodron, Comfortable with Uncertainty, p. 112.

Thinking about Education

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
~ W. B. Yeats

I’m taking a break from researching Language Arts Core Curriculum Content Standards, and thinking about how to make education fun. In today’s schools, the odds are against teachers accomplishing that goal. Instead, they are spending untold hours trying to figure out how to help children learn in spite of looming NCLB high-stakes testing, how to continue to be creative in the face of schools losing funding.

Kindergarten has become a place of high stakes academics. Our poor five year olds can forget about learning how to cooperate, share, take turns, and all the other wonderful concepts we used to be able to teach them that Robert Fulgham wrote about in his book All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. Instead, they are busy memorizing the spelling of 500 sight words. Third graders are learning to cope with mean, median, and mode; concepts I think I learned first in high school.

In my literacy class, I am working on a fun way to introduce a novel to fifth graders in a shared reading class. Not so easy; fifth graders have learned to be rather blasé about fun. It’s not cool any more to have fun, so as a teacher, I’ll need to work extra hard to make it happened for them, to help them retain or regain their love of knowledge.

In my Effective Schools, Effective Teaching class, I am working on an integrated micro-teaching unit and lesson plans with a small team of classmates. This is Junior High level, and we’re choosing to produce a newsletter on “It’s Your Planet!” I’m working as a Language Arts teacher because we didn’t have anyone to take that role. We’re all being certified for different subjects; none for Language Arts. Since reading and writing are both loves of mine, I happily took on the role, and have been having fun working on a plan for this unit lesson.

Much to my surprise, after meeting with my advisor this week, I might qualify for a Language Arts middle school subject area specialization, as well as Social Studies. It all depends on if the state will accept two communications classes. It says on the website that it won’t accept Communications credits or Theater credits, but then later says classes in departments that aren’t English might qualify. So would a course in Folklore qualify? Would a course in Introduction to Speech count? Folklore sure seems to me to be a course in literature, doesn’t it? And why would speech not count? Don’t all students need to be proficient in oral speaking? Well, a bureaucrat will make a decision, and I have no control over that decision, so I’ll register for the Praxis exam, and take the test, and if the state DOE accepts the credits, they do. If they don’t, I guess if I’m offered a position as a middle school English teacher, I’ll have to take two courses lickety split in my first year of work in order to gain the full credentials!

Pondering how I will find my first teaching position reminds me it won’t happen unless I manage to pass all my courses this semester, so I’m headed back to looking at Language Arts Curriculum Standards, and devising lesson plans for interviewing, desktop publishing, and journalism, and global warming. I’m thinking hard about how to make lessons interesting and inspiring for students. I’m thinking hard about how to keep everyone in the class involved, including the at-risk students and the students with IEPs. I’m pondering how our children might be curious enough about global warming to get involved, even as young students, in creating change in our government.

Field Work Finished!

I am finished my field work!!!

It feels like a job well done. This afternoon, the children in the class all presented me with pictures and note that they drew and composed themselves, and so many of them told me they would miss me, or they loved me. I had a difficult time not crying; they were so sweet!

Tomorrow, besides getting some work done for my Tuesday night class, I will be TAKING a NAP!!! That will feel so good. For the last three weeks, I essentially had two full-time jobs, plus single-mommyhood. It was an extreme endurance chapter in my life, and I survived, and even had fun!

I will miss those little kiddies. They were all hoping I’d come back to the school to be their teacher. That would be nice, actually. I have to make sure to write a nice thank you note to the principal.

Enter the day invigorated with the essence of possibility, go through it energized with a sense of purpose and joy and end it with the serenity of completion.
~ Darina Stoyanova

Be still!

I’ve just ended week two of my three-week field experience, working with first graders in a public school. It’s a diverse school, I like that. It’s also a school with quite a few at risk children. I’m sad about that.

This week, in practice for my soon-to-be “official lesson taught in front of an official field observer”, I worked with the children for two days on projects for Day of the Dead. On Wednesday, we read a book about how families celebrate Day of the Dead, and sculpted sugar skulls. On Thursday, we had pan de muerto (made by hand by me!) and painted our skulls with colored decorator frosting, and read another book about a little girl who remembers her grandmother during Los Dias de los Muertos.

My own daughters have had their hands in muck since they first started reaching for food. I have lots of photos of mashed potato smeared faces, applesauce covered hair, mushed banana facial masks, and avocado hair treatments. Eventually they graduated to homemade play dough, then sculpting clay, and the occasional mud pie thrown in! They are skilled at wielding tools to help them sculpt, and can roll a wicked mean ball in seconds flat. They still make mud pies and other messy concoctions, too.

The children in my field experience school, on the other hand, were rather helpless about how to proceed with their skulls. I had shown them, modeling the needed motions, how to roll a ball, how to pinch the chin, and how to use a toothpick or fingertip to press in hollows for eyes, nose, and teeth. We had a real human skeleton hanging in the room for a model. After we passed out the materials and I told them to proceed with their edible sugar clay, far too many children in the class begged us to help, to do it for them. Some children didn’t even know how to roll a ball. They denigrated their own work, they cried because they couldn’t make their efforts look like mine or their neighbors, they whined and moaned through the entire project.

The children did all eventually make their skulls. And they were all beautiful, of course! And when they painted the skulls the next day, those were beautiful, too! They all took their skulls home, I hope to proudly show them off to their families before starting to nibble on them! And I was left feeling sad for all the children in the world who haven’t been allowed to mush bananas in their hair as babies, who haven’t been able to use play dough, who haven’t been praised for their art work attempts.

Children are such beautiful innocent creatures. It breaks my heart to see them held back from living out their potential. It makes me grateful that I have chosen a career that will give one small handful of them some hope each year. It makes me grateful to my own parents for giving me such a gentle kind encouraged start to my life. It makes me grateful to be able to provide that kind of support and start for my own daughters.

I sit in the stillness of my house this morning, sinking into the quiet. I sit, thinking of who I was, who I am, who I might be. I sink further into the quiet, to be the unthinkable one I do not know.

May we all become the unthinkable ones we do not know. Especially those children at Merriam Avenue School.

Be still!
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
To speak your
Name.
Listen
To the living walls.
Who are you? Whose
Silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
Are you (as these stones
Are quiet). Do not
Think of what you are
Still less of
What you may one day be.
Rather
Be what you are (but who?) be
The unthinkable one
You do not know.

O be still, while
You are still alive,
And all things live around you
Speaking (I do not hear)
To your own being,
Speaking by the Unknown
That is in you and in themselves.
I will try, like them
To be my own silence:

And this is difficult. The whole
World is secretly on fire. The stones
Burn, even the stones
They burn me. How can a man be still or
Listen to all things burning?
How can he dare
To sit with them when
All their silence
Is on fire?

~~~Thomas Merton
The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton, 1977, New York: New Directions, p. 281

Bliss!

Any world is a valid world if it's alive. The thing to do is to bring life to it, and the only way to do that is to find in your own case where the life is and become alive yourself.

--Campbell, The Power of Myth, p. 183-184

Bliss has been on my mind quite a bit for the last few weeks. Primarily because my covenant group is discussing bliss as defined by Joseph Campbell, and also because I spent the last three weeks in a classroom, observing and working with first-graders, as part of my field experience for grad school.

Bliss is a funny idea to think about.

"Our bliss is the what, where, and when that we feel most authentic, most ourselves. What is your bliss? It is what you are doing when time drops away and you reside in an eternal now."

according to an essay by Bodhi Bliss.

Have you ever been in that zone? That timeless and perfect endless instant when all is right? It is such an amazing place to be, and until recently, I considered myself fortunate to find that moment, in rare and precious instances. They felt few and far between.

The idea that we can actively pursue those moments by finding our bliss is a new idea for me. How amazing that I have managed to live my life that way, anyway. I have always sought to live life in a way that feels positive, feels right. It’s a way of choosing authenticity, and the older I grow, the less patient I am with people who choose to live inauthentically, dishonest to themselves and everyone around them.

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi says,

“What is common to such moments is that consciousness is full of experiences, and these experiences are in harmony with each other. Contrary to what happens all too often in everyday life, in moments such as these, what we feel, what we wish, and what we think are in harmony.”

Ironically, losing a job, a position that I loved in the beginning that became sheer torture by the end, was my first step into what I hope and believe is a new place of bliss for me.

Last night, in my class on Effective Teaching, Effective Schools, we did mini group presentations on the theories of assessment. By the luck of the draw, literally because I was in the right seat in a count to go the right group, I was in the small group that presented a section on student-led assessments. And I’m the only person in class who has been able to experience student-led assessments in real life, at my children’s school, with assessments led by my own children. I could show a real example, bring the concept home to the other students, and make an idea live and exciting for them. Perhaps this class will go out to teaching jobs convinced of at least one new idea that they will try to implement that will make education better for small groups of students, a little at a time.

After the class, a fellow classmate walked up to thank me for everything I shared in class that day. He surprised me; I hadn’t done that much sharing, I try to not speak too much in that class in order to allow everyone a chance to participate. So I wait, and only participate when I see that no one else is ready, or when I have something to share that I am so overwhelmingly passionate about that I cannot in good conscience stay silent. I find myself challenging assumptions a lot in this class, and I worry that I am offending people, making them angry, or shutting them down in defensiveness so that they can’t hear another idea, another way, another alternative.

It was with a great sense of gratitude that I heard this gentleman from class thank me for my participation in class, and observe casually that some school would be lucky to have me as a teacher. It’s the third time someone from that class has made that observation, and each time it blows me away, because I’m not expecting it. I’m often leaving shaking my head, wondering if I’ll survive this grand educational experiment, if I’ll survive in the world of education, if there’s any way I can make a difference in the face of bureaucracy and ill-informed laws on education that hamper schools and teachers from really doing their job of educating children.

Following bliss … that timeless moment when we are not aware of the passage of time, when we enter that zone of perfect wonder and rightness. It feels so good to be there, and the further I go in my education, in my goal to become a teacher, the more I find myself in bliss.

I am grateful that I have had a path open for me that allows me to take those steps into bliss. I am grateful that I have been given another opportunity to follow a dream and make it reality. I am grateful to have the support of friends and family along the way, cheering me on, sympathizing with my frustrations, congratulating me on my successes.

Learning to drive!

Let us remember all children and commit ourselves to their growth and safety, their health and education, their uniqueness and their unfolding beauty.
~ Connie Sternberg

Today, on the way home from a parent/teacher conference, my 15-year-old daughter asked if she could drive up the farm lane. She’s only half a year away from her learner’s permit (eek!) and hadn’t been behind the wheel of anything.

More than 20 years ago, I had the pleasure of teaching my youngest brother, twelve years younger than me, how to drive a stick shift. It is a funny story, and it starts all the way back to when I was learning how to drive a stick in my early 20’s. I borrowed (with permission) another brother’s car to drive into town. I’d been riding dirt bikes for years, and understood the concept of shifting, but hadn’t had much practice in cars. My youngest brother was along for the ride, plus my sister, who also didn’t know how to drive stick.

We got to the light in town, and I slipped the clutch a bit too fast. Didn’t know what I’d done, and as we jerked up Main Street, my sister and I laughing hysterically because we had no idea why the car was behaving so bizarrely or what to do to correct it, my brother dove to the floor of the car. This was before seat belts. He shrieked at the top of his lungs, “This is so embarrassing! I’ll never be able to come into town again! Get me out of here!” cowering on the floor.

My sister and I laughed all the harder, which only made him shriek louder, and the circus bucked its way down Main Street until I finally realized I should be shifting into second gear, and the ride magically smoothed out.

When we got home, my brother crawled out of the car, kissed the ground, and vowed never to ride in a car again with me. I was about 24, he was about 12.

Fast forward another four or five years, and he’s driving, and now guess who has the only manual transmission in the family? That’s right, the sister who humiliated him so badly he couldn’t go back into town ever again. He humbly came to me one day, and begged me to let him learn to drive stick in my car. I smirked, and agreed.

My parents lived on the side of a mountain. They lived on a nice back road, the equivalent of the farm lane I live on now, complete with stop signs, curves, and steep hills, all at once, and every 100 yards or so. That long ago trip around the block at the top of that mountain is almost indescribable. If I wasn’t shrieking not to hit the tree, I was cracking up because the car had stalled yet again, or even funnier, was strangely jerking its way up the hill. Sometimes two events at once.

Eventually that afternoon, my brother humbly apologized for that day in town when he dove to the floor and vowed to never ride with me again. He eventually became a skilled driver, unlike my ex who set the parking brake and climbed out of a car rather than risk sliding backward into the car behind him at his first intersection on a hill.

Fast forward another 20 or so years, to this afternoon on my farm lane. This time, it was a minivan, automatic, power brakes, steep hills, sharp curves. No trees, thank goodness. The seatbelt, which I’d wisely put back on after we switched sides, saved me several times from slamming my head into the dashboard or flying through the windshield. Power brakes and panicked 15 year olds are not a healthy mix for passengers, even when they are only going 4 mph! Especially when the handyman roars up the hill in his mud-covered and rather large SUV, laughing like a hyena when he sees who’s behind the wheel in the minivan pulled 15 feet into the field to allow him to pass. Thank goodness they’d just done haying a couple weeks ago. We might have gotten lost in the field…

The “hairpin” 90º curves were a bit hairy, especially because there was one lone tree we had to maneuver around. Accelerating down the steep hill to 8 miles an hour was another occasion to bless my foresight in re-buckling my seatbelt. The cat, calmly watching from across the field was another reason to bless the seatbelts. Thank goodness she hadn’t moved; I might have needed surgery to remove the embedded seatbelt from my belly!

We navigated our way down the 3/10ths of a mile farm lane safe and sound, with only a few thousand miles of life gone from my brake pads, and a dozen or so new grey hairs for mom. My daughter was quite proud that she’d made it without a mishap, and excitedly asked when she could try it next. I took a few deep breaths, and with only a minor quiver in my voice, replied, “Soon, dear. Soon.”

Moonswept

a soft caress across my cheek
rousing me at 3 am
the house asleep
I hear the whisper of your sigh
as you fade back into my dreams
at the last
soft curling fingers
gently brushing my cheek
your luminous eyes
touching my soul
moonswept

~ Robin Slaw

Thunderstorm Haiku

Thunder crashing down
Lightning flickering brightly
Computer off now!

Watching the Blossoming

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.
~ Gilda Radner

I have a friend who is blossoming after a very long dry spell with no love in her life. It’s an amazing process unfolding, like watching a rose bloom in slow motion photography. To hear the joy as she describes a new relationship makes room in my own soul for joy and hope for our world.

This morning, I caught up on the news from Lancaster, the incredibly sad story of the young girls who were shot by a man ravaged by his past, in senseless brutality. I cried as I read the names and ages of the girls, and saw that sisters had died. I cried for the lost innocence of a people who try to inure themselves from the violence and waste in our society, choosing to live in simplicity and community. It’s a place where the people don’t feel the need to lock their doors. It’s a place we all wish we could have in our lives.

I mourn my own loss of yet more naiveté. There is no rhyme or reason to when or how violence can enter our lives. My children attend the equivalent of a one-room school house. It has a few more rooms than one, but there aren’t metal detectors at the doors, there are no police or security guards on campus. Nor do I want that for my children. I want my children to live their lives free of fear for a little while longer.

I noticed the difference when I went to an observation at another local elementary school. The front doors were locked; I had to buzz the office to be admitted. What does that do to the soul of a child to have to ask permission to enter your school? What does it do to the soul of a teen to have to pass through a metal detector to enter your school? I am not ready for my children to fall into distrust of the world. I want them to continue to believe that if they work hard enough, they can make a difference; make the world a better place.

I want to retain that innocence myself. I’m not ready to admit defeat; I’m not ready to admit that the world is inherently evil and a bad place. I’m not ready to give in to fear. I refuse to allow myself to believe the worst of people. I still insist that there is an essential goodness that we can build in people with kindness, caring, acceptance, and love. We can still choose to live in joy rather than fear.

So I continue to read the news from my friend who is living in pure joy in her new relationship. It’s wonderful to watch her unfolding, watch her learn to trust again, watch her blossom into her beautiful whole self. It brings me hope, because I can still see joy in the world.

My school is still not locked, and the children run out at the end of the day, still joyful because they took a walk or saw a new bug or planted their seeds for the coldframe or greenhouse.

Life goes on. We can still choose joy.

The Worst Fear Ever

Last night, I received the kind of phone call that wrenches your gut, spins your mind into a maelstrom of what if’s, and breaks your heart into a million pieces. A friend called to see if we’d seen her 13-year-old daughter, she wasn’t home. It was past midnight.

We live on property that abuts their property. The daughter, J., used to walk over to see my daughter A. when they were in girl scouts together. The state police and the father and older brother were out searching; the mother was calling everyone she could think of who might have seen J.

As a mother of three daughters, I know that fear. It’s a heart-stopping surreal fear for someone you love more than life itself, and when you don’t know where they are, or what’s happening to them, life as we know it goes into something resembling an Escher painting more than life as before.

This is the kind of situation that challenges us to our very highest self. How do we continue to function without dissolving into constant puddles of tears? How do we not let our fears take over our mind, filling it with negativity and drawing to us the worst of our fears? How can we continue to picture a child returning healthy and safe, when we don’t know where she is, what’s happening to her?

Please join me in envisioning J. safe at home, surrounded by a loving family. And go find your children, hug them, tell them you love them, and surround yourself and your family with visions of safety and joy.

God, make me brave for life: oh, braver than this.
Let me straighten after pain, as a tree straightens after the rain,
Shining and lovely again.
God, make me brave for life; much braver than this.
As the blown grass lifts, let me rise
From sorrow with quiet eyes,
Knowing Thy way is wise.
God, make me brave, life brings
Such blinding things.
Help me to keep my sight;
Help me to see aright
That out of dark comes light.
~ Author Unknown

Gratitude Journals

If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is “thank you,” it will be enough.
~ Meister Eckhart

This month, my covenant group is working on the subject of gratitude. One of the suggestions in our topic outline is to maintain a gratitude journal. Studies have shown that people who maintain a gratitude journal, who take the time each day to think about how they are grateful, live happier, healthier, more productive lives.

I think I’ll start writing down ways I have been grateful each day. It’s part of my journey to live in joy rather than fear.

Today, I am grateful for my children getting up early enough to make sure we could get to church on time. I wanted to hear a specific minister.

Today I am grateful for the grill my sister-in-law helped us buy, that cooked the wonderful steak we ate for dinner.

Today I am grateful for the wonderful afternoon I had with my girls, going to the movies. I’m grateful that someone opened the Washington Theater, so we could go to $5/person movies.

Today I am grateful for the geese who flew overhead as I was cooking dinner. I’m also grateful they didn’t opt to do target practice on me or on dinner as they flew overhead.

Today I am grateful for the rain which watered my plants.

Thank you, life.

The Sky is Falling

What are you worried about? Why do you think that the sky may be about to fall? Have you never encountered negativity before? It is amazing how quickly we forget the way in which fear exerts a hold over us. Perhaps it is just as well that our memory is so short, or we might all lead dull, flat lives with no drama and no tension. Here comes a little excitement, that's all. What's happening now is challenging. You can be forgiven for imagining that some of it is problematic. But it isn't.
~ Jonathan Cainer, Capricorn forecast for Friday, 29 Sept 2006 http://www.cainer.com/

Why is it that a setback does immediately set me to thinking the sky is falling? How appropriate yesterday’s astrological forecast was for me. Good thing I read it after the fact, so I could and did acknowledge that help will always arrive.

It was a long week. A paper was late (with permission) because I couldn’t find a cooperative school to allow a classroom observation. I was trying desperately to finish the paper anyway, with the knowledge that any delay would only have a ripple effect into the work due later this week and next. So I was trying to survive on four or five hours sleep a night.

I should know better. Sleep deprivation always makes every pebble in my path look like a boulder too high to pass. That’s pretty much what happened this week.

First, I received a phone call from the principal of the school where I was scheduled to do two field placements. That’s where we go into a class all day, for five days in a row, and observe and work with the children, and at the end of the second week, actually teach a lesson and have an observation by an experienced educator/field observer. The principal was calling to tell me that he would accept me into one field experience (good), but that he felt it was important for me to have a second experience with another school district, so he would only allow me the one field placement (bad).

When I called the gentleman in charge of field placements, Mr. M., he informed me that he had many FDU students who had no field placements, others in the same boat as me, and he would place me next semester. That would be fine except that I’m enrolled in this program at FDU where I’m to push through 22 graduate credits in two semesters, so that I can have my NJ Teaching Cert by May, and I need to do my Apprenticeship Teaching (Student Teaching) in spring semester, and must complete both field experiences before the Apprenticeship. eek. As a single mom, with a singular opportunity to finish this program in one year and no financing beyond May, this was it, the do or die moment. (More bad.)

Mr. M. suggested I send an email to the professor who admitted me to the program, to see if she had any additional suggestions to help. I got the feeling I was in the middle of a political maelstrom around the concept of rolling admissions, with some faculty supporting it, others dead set against it. And me in the middle, not for the first time.

The second challenge for my week was a phone call on Thursday afternoon from my girl friend, letting me know that our daughters, best friends for the last two years, did a BIG BAD THING. These are two girls who are sensitive good girls, who wouldn’t intentionally hurt a flea, let alone another person. Well, they screwed up big time. They spray painted “D & D must die” on the fort the friend’s brother and next door neighbor will building. They didn’t get caught, but finally admitted what they’d done when the friend heard that the parents were getting ready to call the police.

My middle daughter spent a night crying herself to sleep. She’s learning a difficult lesson on how to think about what you are doing, what your friends are doing, and how to stop something you know is wrong, even when your friends won’t listen, not just go along. I’m sorry the lesson was so painful for her, and glad that it was something rather innocuous that can easily be fixed.

The third challenge was attending the orientation sessions for my field 1 & 2 placements, and understanding the scope of what’s expected of me, on top of the regular courses I’m taking. eek. I’m a little worried that I won’t make it.

My friends laugh gently at me, and remind me to take one step at a time, and I’ll come out the other end not quite sure how I managed it all. They all have confidence in me and tell me so. My professors have confidence in me, and tell me so. I’m glad to have some people in my life reminding me that I am a wonderful person who can accomplish amazing things.

This morning, I woke up and started planning my weekend. I have a lot to accomplish, and didn’t need to spend the day helping a daughter repaint a fort. But there it is, life presenting me with another FGO (fucking growth opportunity). I fretted, then suddenly understood that there might be a benefit to my field experiences being split up and one possibly being late. It will give me breathing time. It will give me time to learn more about lesson planning before I actually have to produce one in practice. I will have time to breathe inbetween two intense weeks. That’s a good thing.

One of these days, I will learn to take the pebbles in my path in stride. I won’t turn them into boulders, I will just breathe through the moment, and trust that there is always a solution, one that might even be better than if I hadn’t been required to make a sidestep around a pebble, or even sidle around a large boulder in my path.

I will spend a morning helping two lovely young girls understand that they must always think about how their actions affect others.

And I will spend a day outside, living in the moment, even if it means some intense writing later on tonight or tomorrow. My mind will be fresher and clearer because of it.

Gratitude

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more.
It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a
home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace
for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.
~ Melodie Beatie

Today, in the midst of a house that looks like four separate hurricanes blew through, as I work on two small freelance jobs, two papers for school, back to school night, and the finalization of my divorce this week, I am still grateful. Oh, yeah, and paying bills, feeding the girls, trying to catch up on laundry, and making sure we all bathe on a semi-regular basis, in spite of all of that, or maybe because of all of that, I am still grateful.

I have the money to pay my bills. I have food to feed my girls, I have hot water for showers. I have a house to live in, on a beautiful farm that we all love. I have schools that are wonderful for my girls, in spite of one daughter’s teacher quitting in the second week of school. I am in school, with funding to be able to make it through the year, and I’m enjoying my classes even more than I hoped! I have some work to enhance my meager income. I have my three fireballs of energy and wonder who, yes, wreak havoc through the house and are still learning to help keep it in order, make my life joyous day after day after day. And I have a life full of friends and full living, after years of quiet misery.

There is indeed much to be grateful for this morning. The singing of the birds outside my office as the sun rises. The pride of my eldest daughter as she reports that she successfully rappelled on her challenge course yesterday (the same daughter who has a crippling fear of heights – or used to, anyway!) The majestic beauty of the geese as they rise to wing their way south. The warmth of the cat laying in my lap, warming me on a brisk fall morning. The love of friends who give me essential oil treatments when I’m sick and give me work when I need it. The love of other friends who support me when I am sad, sending me virtual hugs and love and btdt survival strategies.

I am indeed grateful this morning.

A hand reaches out

A hand reaches out in love,
to save, to offer sanctuary.

A hand draws back in fear,
containment, survival.

Can we bridge the gap
between fearing for survival
and living lives fully?

Can we walk out under the stars
and understand our puniness
our insignificance
in the glory of the universe?

Can we rest in the peace of the night
knowing we are a part of the whole
nurturing the dust from a faraway star
carried from the beginning of time
held safe within us for a life
passed on to the next creation
when we are through?

Made of stardust,
eternal, glorious, part of an
unspeakable
indescribable
universe.

Hands reach out in love
offering sanctuary.

From fear, we extend our hands,
welcoming the love,
accepting the fear,
living the glory.

~ Robin Slaw

© 2006

The Field

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
~ Jelaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

To love someone, with all your heart and soul, free from the constraints of society, free from fear, free from judgment, free from pain, free from misunderstanding. We all strain toward that, don’t we?

In learning to live again after divorce, messages to my soul have been arriving one after another after another. Some of them are difficult, challenging, make me weep in anguish or frustration. Some sooth my soul like balm on a fiery burn. Some make me go still and quiet and begin to listen with the quiet core of my soul.

I suspect it’s those messages that I should most pay attention to – the messages that slide deep into my quiet inner core. The ones that make me go still, and sink deeply into myself. The ones that help me lose all sense of self while contemplating an essential truth, a truth about myself, a truth about the world. Those messages hold my soul in thrall with the essential rightness that I need for learning at that moment.

I also have friends that take me to that field where ideas and language don’t make sense. They are the friends who see clearly in the world, who can say words to me that cause me to stop, take stock, and give my soul another eternal moment of pause to be, to grow, to acknowledge my essential self. Friends like that are rare; I cherish them beyond words, and find myself grateful every day of my life to have found them.

To my friends who are there, meeting me in that field beyond ideas, language, or even each other, namaste.

May you join me in the field often.

Unlived Lives

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived lives of the parents.
~ Carl Gustav Jung

Last night was perhaps the best and worst of possible nights. I spent the evening trying to sleep in the parking lot of my daughter’s high school, while she attended a dance.

Earlier that week, I’d had a party planned. I was supposed to be divorced this week, and was looking forward to a night spent celebrating my new life with some good friends. Instead, the divorce was postponed, the party cancelled, and a quiet evening spent with a girlfriend whose husband was away traveling replaced my original plan. It still would have been a nice evening.

Friday afternoon, while attending a volunteer training at the charter school where my younger two daughters attend, I received a phone call from my oldest daughter. There was a dance at the high school, and she wanted to go. This is the high school, mind you, that is a good 45 minute drive for us, because she attends the county tech school’s theater academy.

Her first dance as a high school freshman, how could I say no? I’m so proud of my blossoming daughter. I rushed home to make sure she ate something, and she apologized for screwing up my evening. It was ok, I reassured her. Dances are fun, I was glad she was going. I noticed her outfit, and in one of those bizarre brainless moments of parenting that you curse yourself for later, I ignored it. I choose my battles wisely, or at least I try to, and it really wasn’t that important what she chose to wear to the dance. It was nothing bad, just dressier than I would have chosen myself for a dance in high school.

So, into the car we went, and we had a nice discussion on the way down about how she was feeling about her new school. We haven’t had a lot of time to talk in the first week. I started school, and A. goes to sleep early because she leaves for school at 6:30 am, so her little sisters are still awake when she goes to bed. I was valuing my parenting time, enjoying our conversation.

When we arrived at the high school and A. realized how everyone was dressed, she panicked. She had on a funky skirt and top with sandals, exactly the kind of outfit that I wear to parties and camp dances, she was using my example as a choice for her outfit, and much to her dismay, her mom is just plain weird and follows her own unique path. Certainly she doesn’t follow a high school teen’s path…

“Please, Mom, take me home. I’m so sorry I made you drive me all the way down here. Please take me home, I can’t go in there dressed like this.”

I tried brainstorming … do you have any clothes in the car, do I have any clothes in the car, is there anything else you can put on? Do you have anything in your locker? You’re not that dressy, maybe the other theater people will be dressed like you, let’s wait and see. (It was only 7 pm, and I knew others would still be arriving.)

“Mom, please take me home,” she begged, with a rising note of panic and desperation in her voice.

My mind was now racing at top speed. She was looking forward to her first dance, this was a *huge* step for her socially, and I was so proud that she’d made the decision to go. How could we set this right??? I know, I know, let’s find somewhere to buy a pair of jeans. There must be somewhere we can go.

At that point, I would have paid designer prices for something for her to wear. This was my daughter, trying to blossom, and I was worried that a failure tonight would set her back months or years in self-confidence!

We live far from the school, so I didn’t know the neighborhood at all. I hadn’t noticed any stores that would sell clothing, but Wal-Marts and K-Marts are endemic – surely there must be somewhere that we could go for an emergency replacement. I was racking my brains to think who I might know that lived locally to the school, and A. finally remembered that she had a friend from the charter school who lived nearby.

We called, got directions to the closest Wal-Mart, and found a pair of jeans for only $18. Can you hear my sigh of relief from here? Back to the dance we went, with Alanna happily waltzing into the building to find her new friends.

Meanwhile, I’m looking at the clock in the car, realizing that it’s now 8 pm, the dance is over at 10 pm, and I have at least a 45 minute drive each way. No sense driving home now. Can’t have my nice quiet evening that my friend and I had planned, drinking wine and commiserating over the newest changes at school. Now what???

The best I could come up with was to lower my seat back, and take a nap. I was far too sleep-deprived to even think about reading a textbook. I was so sleep-deprived I couldn’t even think about trying to find a movie theater or somewhere else to spend time. I was cursing myself for not thinking to bring my laptop – I would have paid to buy a dvd at that same Wal-mart, only 7 minutes away.

So, an uncomfortable hour and a half later, complete with stiff neck, I woke from drowsing, drove down to the Dunkin Donuts (the only thing I could find open) to use the restroom and buy myself a bagel, since I hadn’t had dinner, and sat waiting the last 10 minutes for the dance to end so I could drive A. and I home.

She had fun. I didn’t, but I had a proud mommie moment. It’s almost impossible to describe the feelings of pride that we experience as we watch our daughters stretch and blossom, grow into young womanhood. My daughter took a deep breathe that night, and threw herself headlong into life.

Maybe the divorce was worth it. I chose to live my life fully, to reach out and grasp happiness when I could no longer find it in my marriage. I’ve worried that I might have done damage to my children by thinking about myself, in spite of reassurances from my therapist that I wasn’t helping them by modeling self-sacrifice for their sakes.

Last night I watched, and helped my daughter realize, that it’s better to live life fully, and not retreat to an unlived life. Last night my daughter made a choice to help herself choose to live fully, eagerly, with passion.

I am content. Even with a stiff neck.

The Death of Love

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing.
~ Anais Nin

Today was supposed to be the day my divorce went through. There was a last minute delay of two weeks, I’m not sure why. The paperwork was not quite ready, perhaps. The dissolution of my marriage has me thinking about love today, and how and why it disappeared from my marriage.

As I ponder the ending, I’m led to sadness. I didn’t start my marriage expecting it to have a finite life. It didn’t come with an expiration date that would mean automatic disposal by a certain time. I never expected to end up divorced, a single mom with still-young children. I would have never chosen this route had I felt there was any other option left to me.

I struggle sometimes with bitterness. In the end, in order to survive, I chose flight. I was dying a slow lonely death in my marriage, loveless, ignored, hurting, so painfully lonely, alone. I begged for help, it was ignored. I’m left wondering why our marriage was so unimportant to my partner that he could choose ending it over working to save it.

Of course, he would probably say that he didn’t choose ending it, because when I finally left, he woke up and realized that he was losing his family. My mom tells me he was, and still is, devastated. She wishes that we would get back together.

I wonder how my own mother could wish for me to go back into misery and loss of self. In the end, as I asked for help, as I asked him to go to therapy and he would walk out of the room without even answering, I was left with the choice between survival and leaving, or staying and dying a slow death of my essential self. I chose flight, in that eternal decision of fight or flight for survival. The fighting hadn’t worked.

I flew for myself. I flew for survival. I flew for joy. I flew for life.

I am reaching, arms and soul wide open, for a life of vulnerability, happiness, friendship, and love.

Following Your Life Path

We learn to live consciously through becoming aware of inner and outer events as they are happening. Building a conscious self means becoming increasingly aware of inner events, bodily events and interpersonal events. A conscious self is able to experience in full awareness all the distinctly different components of the self, including feelings, needs, drives and values. A conscious self lives consciously.
~ Gershen Kaufman/Lev Raphael, The Dynamics of Power

In my journaling book, the one on using journal writing as a spiritual quest, I was asked to write about my life path. What do I know about where I am coming from and where I am going?

What a question to ask someone in the middle of all the life turmoil that I am experiencing. I’m not sure I can even bring myself to answer those questions, let alone do it objectively, without whining or feeling sorry for myself.

On the other hand, I had too many errands to run and not enough time this afternoon to finish them, so I find myself with a fuller day tomorrow than expected, and an emptier day today than expected, in order to not waste too much gas driving to the same town twice in two days. So I might as well try.

My life path has certainly taken some unexpected twists and turns, lately. Yesterday the mail brought my PRAXIS exam scores. You could have knocked me over with a feather, as I anxiously stood at the mailbox, ripping open the envelope and frantically scanning the results. The scores were important – without passing scores, I can’t get approval from the state to teach in New Jersey. I was pretty sure I had passed the Elementary level basic knowledge exam. I was also quite certain I’d not passed the Middle School Social Studies test. It was a stunning surprise to find that not only had I passed both tests, I’d done exceedingly well on both of them.

That was a good twist in my path, another good twist, one that’s brought me even further out into a bright sunlit path full of trust that the future will be better, along with the last minute twist of funding for school. I think my life these past few months might be a testimony to never giving up in despair, that a window will finally open somewhere, even after you think that every last door, every last window, every last chink in the wall has slammed shut for you.

I have been pleasantly surprised by my MAT courses, too. I was afraid that I would be enduring many of them, putting in time and work playing to a party line that would make me acceptable to the state, but not trusting that educational theory would have caught up to practical application at university level coursework. Silly me, I forgot that out of academia come many of our brilliant discoveries. It’s been a truly gratifying experience to hear a professor explain that pop quizzes really aren’t a good way to assess a student’s grasp of subject matter. It’s been even more amazing to hear a teacher explain that she still calls each parent of her kindergarten students every week, to touch base with the parents and let them know how their children are doing in school.

I was a bit envious at that piece of information. My own children’s teachers were quite lacking in that effort last year, never asking us to volunteer in class, and getting only four formal progress reports and very little or no feedback in between. To be fair, it was really only one teacher who never communicated. One was very good at sending home notes each week, and another good at giving me in person updates on progress.

I find myself making mental notes about ideas that sound good to me. Ideas like calling my parents each week. I’m thinking that I might need to start a teacher’s book of good ideas, because I may not remember all these little hints and ideas next year when I start teaching for real.

My goal has suddenly been thrust into a much more viable possibility. I am in school, learning how to be a teacher. I am getting back test scores that indicate I might be quite good at my job. I already know that I have the communication skills to succeed, from previous work and volunteer experience. Now I’m building up the paper qualifications.<

My path is clearer and brighter. I can see ahead to a future that I might actually enjoy. There are people out there bucking the federal (ridiculous) requirements of NCLB, doing the kind of work that I dream teachers should do. Maybe I’ll be able to be that kind of inspiring teacher, too.

Bittersweet

We cannot hold a torch to light another's path without brightening our own.
~ Ben Sweetland

This time of year is bittersweet to me. My children are hard at work repacking their backpacks for school, making lists for the local office superstore, so we can make the last minute purchases necessary to start off the year properly.

My teenager needs pens, the middle child needs marbled composition books, and the youngest needs a new clipboard as hers cracked over the summer. I need binders. We need to reschedule beginning of the week trips to the grocery store for lunch materials. And this year, I’m in school myself, so the need for organization is even more paramount to our survival!

In the midst of the mad scramble to get ready, I wanted to take a few moments to mourn, and another few minutes to express gratitude to the universe for the gifts we have received. Three years ago, we were happily homeschooling. I miss those days. I miss the leisure to take our time on a project, I miss the slow-paced days, I miss the company of my girls. I’m mourning that time all over again, because I was able to be home with the girls for part of the summer, even though our time was disjointed because of visitation with their father and weekends away from them.

It was not all paradise, though, that precious time of homeschooling. I found myself unable to live an unfulfilled life any more. The girls alone weren’t able to enrich my life the way I needed, and my partner had quit interacting with all of us. I was incredibly, desperately lonely.

Opportunities presented themselves. An amazing charter school was ready to open at the same time as a full-time position in my chosen career opened. The girls were accepted at the charter school, I was offered the job, and our lives changed. We weren’t together all the time any more. That was sad, that was good. My girls were closer to friends, learned how to gain in peer leadership skills. They had fun at an experiential school that had them outside all kinds of weather, every day. My middle child discovered a passion for gardening!

I relearned how to live with passion and intensity. I remembered how much fun it was to be in engaged conversation with other passionate people who cared to make positive changes in the world. I threw myself into a rewarding career. Happier mommy meant happier children.

More changes – my partner sunk so far away from us that it was no longer tenable for me to live with him, so I made the decision to move out with the girls. We moved three miles from school, into our community. Then I lost my job, which required a career change because there were no open positions within commuting distance of our home. I gained an opportunity to go back to school for the classes necessary to get a teaching certificate in New Jersey.

It’s been a whirlwind of changes for the last year. It’s been frightening, joyous, overwhelming, ecstatic, sad, lonely, happy, amazing. My head still spins to think about what the girls and I have been through in the last year. We have survived, we will continue to survive, we will thrive in spite of the curve balls thrown to us. We are strong; we have deep strong roots from being able to count on each other. We are flexible, like the saplings, able to endure strong gales by bending with the winds of change that blow over us. We are alive; engaged with each other, engaged with the world, engaged with life, like the geese who now fly over us every day, headed bravely toward their goal, helping each other take turns at the lead, breaking the way for others who are tired, continuing on no matter what the weather.

So this day, the last before school starts, is bittersweet. Full of promise, full of sadness. We are excited for the new possibilities, mourning the older, more comfortable way. We are starting anew. We are ready!

Seasons of Change

It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
~ Alan Cohen

This morning, I woke up to Canadian Geese taking off on their flight south. They were the first geese this season, at least that I’ve consciously noted. The sound was a vivid and poignant reminder that our lives are moving on; it’s another season of change.

Geese live their lives in a normal state of flux. Twice a year, they uproot themselves from everything they know, fly over all kinds of dangerous and unknown territory, and arrive in a new (and yet familiar) home. The geese remind me of how important it is to remain alive and vibrant by embracing change in my own life.

This morning, in one of those strange synoptic hiccups that brings together two seemingly unrelated trivial facts, I started to think about changes in my life, and how we weather those changes. Somehow, in that weird and wonderful synoptic path that I created in my mysterious brain, I related it to our hunter-gatherer ancient ancestors. We all had them, no matter how ancient a culture we hail from. Somewhere, far back in time, we all were hunter-gatherers. Which means that in our cells somewhere is the ancient knowledge of how to live life in a constant state of change.

We humans even thrived in a constant state of change, as sociological studies of most recent hunter gatherer societies have shown. Hunter gatherer societies have more time for play, spend less time working, and have more carefree and joyous lives. (The Other Side of Eden, Hugh Brody)

What happened to us human beings? How did we become so afraid of change? Why is it so difficult for us to embrace new ideas, new situations, think about change? When did that happen to us as a society?

I have been struggling with those questions for the past few months, as I learned to deal simultaneously with divorce, job loss, career change, and identity crisis. At times, it seemed it would be much easier to issue a blanket apology to everyone in my life and go back to the old and familiar, no matter how miserable I was. That security blanket of the known would sometimes looked so irresistibly safe and warm and comfortable that I would almost long for life to go back to the way it was.

And then I would remember how sad and lonely and miserable I was, before.

I learned to breathe through the discomfort of change. I learned to embrace the changes that did arrive in my life, because they were always a positive step forward. I became vibrantly alive because of the changes that entered my life, looked for or not. I woke up!

My journey of the past few years has been agonizingly painful at times. Other times, it has been joyful, alive, powerful, transformative. On the whole, I have learned to prefer the change, for with the change comes power in the form of emotions, trust, engagement, and feeling more alive than I have in years.

Hearing the geese this morning has reminded me of how far I’ve traveled in this thrilling journey of life. They reminded me of my patient friends along the way, who simply sat with me while I agonized, gave me or sent me hugs and a shoulder to cry on when I needed it, always responded with love and caring. The geese reminded me to be thankful for what I have ever present in my life – three loving and lovely daughters, excited to be on this grand new adventure with me, throwing themselves wholeheartedly into the adventure of living with very limited resources while I go back to school. I am grateful to have found a way to go back to school, one stepping stone into a new career that I hope will be enriching and rewarding.

As we begin our journey into autumn, listening to the sounds of our itinerant friends, the Canadian Geese, remember to be thankful for the changes in our lives. Embrace change with your whole heart. Live wild and free and joyfully.

School starts!

Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.
~ Buddha


School started tonight. I forgot how much fun it is to go to university!

Finding Clarity

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

From the utter chaos into which my life has devolved, I must inject some clarity of thought.

I found out late last night that the money I need to attend school is available. By the end of this weekend, I need to make a decision about whether to take out a massive student loan or not.

It’s a dream finally come true, and the scariest thing I’ve ever done, because I’ll be dragging my girls along this new path.

It feels right, and yet, I still worry about whether I’m making the best decision for my girls as well as myself. It would be a no-brainer, if it was just me. Of course, I wouldn’t be jobless if it weren’t for wanting to keep my girls in their amazing and wonderful school, and therefore not being able to relocate.

The longer I sit in silence, quieting my brain from its fussing and worrying, the more I believe that school is the right choice for me right now.

Finding clarity in the midst of chaos. Not such an easy thing to do.

Re-learning to Believe in Myself

When you clearly envision the outcome of victory, engrave it upon your heart, and are firmly convinced that you will attain it, your brain makes every effort to realize the mental image you have created. And then, through your unceasing efforts, that victory is finally made a reality.

-- Daisaku Ikeda

Yesterday was a day of ups and downs. I woke up early, to do some research into a non-profit. I’d submitted a resume for a job that sounded intriguing, they were calling for an initial phone interview, and I wanted to know more about this non-profit before I spoke to them.

The organization sounded good, the job sounded interesting and rewarding, I began to feel some excitement about a possibility that might open in my life. When we actually spoke, I found out the job would require almost constant overnight travel and lots of evening work, none of which would work with my life as a single mom.

The interviewer, upon hearing that I wouldn’t be interested in further pursuing this particular position, asked if he could forward my resume and information to others in the organization, in case there were positions that didn’t require quite so much travel. I told him yes, and scratched another possibility off my list. It’s nice that a 20-something year old can appreciate that I have valuable skills, now I just need a position to open up that will use those skills in a meaningful way.

Then I received a phone call from the University of Phoenix, with information about their online course of study, for a Masters of Art in Teaching program. It sounds intriguing, and is cheaper than Fairleigh Dickinson, where I have already been accepted, but it’s studying alone at home, no chance to interact in real life with people. I already feel isolated; I’m not sure that would be a good decision for me. The possibility remains, and I won’t throw it away.

A little while later, I picked up the mail, and found the financial aid letter from FDU. Almost no money offered. I was only going to qualify for loans, and was already agonizing over whether I should throw myself into that much debt at 49 years old. But now it seems pretty nearly impossible to make this dream happen. I have no income, I’m a single mom with three dependents, how could they offer me less than half the tuition needs for a semester? Where do they possibly think I can get this tuition money? Alchemy from my blood?

I was looking into scholarship and grant money when I ran into U of Phoenix. It seems that summer is not a great time to look for grants, when you are expecting to start school in the fall. One more possibility scratched off my list. I could possibly qualify for awards for next fall, in case I don’t manage school this year, so I won’t delete all the information that came up while I was browsing websites that help find scholarships, but the likelihood of school is looking less and less possible.

While running errands this morning, I finally heard back from the Creative Group placement people about the possibility of finding some writing or editing work. They would like to see some of my writing, and will make an appointment for an intake interview, so they can decide whether to represent me or not. I can look for freelance and permanent work. Another possibility opening for me?

In the afternoon, the girls and I went shopping for some school clothing. Salvation Army was a great hit, especially when the girls realized that the blue tags were at 50% sale on the already wonderful prices. I could even afford to buy Sarah an exquisite black velvet dress, which she can use for winter holidays and a school dance, when they have one this year. eek. Is my middle daughter really old enough to start going to school dances???!!!???

Alanna is happy. She found lots of clothing for very little money, and other than having to try it all on behind a sheet that Sarah and I held up for her in a corner (they tore down the fitting rooms because people were stealing too much), found the experience fun and rewarding. Shopping is usually torturous with her. And Marlena and Sarah were each able to stretch their $20 they were allowed to spend quite far. (They already have plenty of hand-me-downs, so spending was just for the fun of something new.)

The day ended on a positive note, with my three girls and I sorting through our purchases and trying everything on again. I am grateful for finding a way to bring some joy into our lives, and proud that my girls not only aren’t embarrassed to buy in Salvation Army, but consider it the right thing to do, in living their sustainable lifestyles. And I’m happy to make less expensive purchases for better quality clothing than I could afford on my unemployment benefits. Ann Taylor beats Walmart any day of the week.

I’m pondering this morning what yesterday’s multiple messages mean for my life. I found some nice clothing for little money for the girls, and knew I could do it, knew where to do it, knew how to do it. I believed in the possibility, and found a way to make it happen.

I did not find a way to work yet, did not find a way to go to school yet. In fact, the possibility of school seems even more remote, in spite of searching even further afield to find ways to make this dream happen. Is that because I don’t believe hard enough yet? Have I not firmly convinced myself that this is the right thing to do? Do I have a niggling doubt that I will enjoy and succeed at teaching? Are my doubts and my fears still getting in the way of making this dream a reality?

Will I believe strongly enough in the possibility of finding writing work to make that a possibility?

How does one engrave a dream upon one’s heart? Can it happen by simply living in the joy of the moment, whenever and wherever we can find it?

Karmic Opening

People get into a heavy-duty sin and guilt trip, feeling that if things are going wrong, that means that they did something bad and they are being punished. That’s not the idea at all. The idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings that you need to open your heart. To the degree that you didn’t understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you’re given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further.
-- Pema Chodron

In the current session of my covenant group, we are talking about being at home with ourselves. The opening reading, by Mary Feagan, is a poem about how we can embrace our whole selves, be at home with our essential nature.

I’m finding this session particularly challenging, because I’m not at home with myself right now. It’s all part of a big package of transitions: transitions in marriage, transitions in career, transitions in lifestyle, transitions in identity.

Pema Chodron’s quote about karma is perhaps what I need to hear. Is my life lesson that I need to open fully and completely? Is that fact that I’m being thrown challenge after challenge, to the point where I’m brought to my knees, because I am not fully open?

Something to ponder.

Living with Nature

Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.
-- Albert Einstein

This morning, I came down to the kitchen to be greeted with the sight of a brand new bag of cat food, chewed open; a brand new bunch of organic bananas, dragged into a corner and chewed and shredded and demolished; a tray of croissants, opened and chewed; and papers from my kitchen island strewn across the room. And a cat inside who hadn’t been in when I went to bed last night.

It was a little freaky, to say the least.

I finally found a kitchen window with part of the screen ripped off. I think that was the access point. We have raccoons that visit, and steal our cat food from the porch. We feed the cats outside, to minimize the possibility of mice, since we live in a big crooked old farmhouse. And this spring, a momma raccoon and her six babies found our supply of cat food and are now regular visitors, even though we bring the cat food in every afternoon, in a vain attempt to discourage them from visiting every night.

The babies are grown now, so we have seven very large and plump raccoons that stop by on a regular basis. They don’t worry about timing too much, and visit late in the morning, and late in the afternoon, not just at night, so our window for feeding the cats grows smaller and smaller. And they startle my daughters all the time; the girls are now afraid to run out to the car once it’s twilight, even though the car’s only 10 feet from the side door.

We’ve taken to making a great racket with pots and lids, clanging like crazy in another vain attempt to scare them off. It works for bears … why not for raccoons. They ran away the first time. The second time they scurried a bit slower. The third and fourth time, only about half ran away; the other half only went a few feet and squatted to watch and see what we’d do next. Only when I ran out in bare feet and my nightie, still clanging pot and lid, chasing them back down the hill into the woods, did they finally run.

Now they just go under the car and laugh at me, running around like a crazy woman in my nightie and bare feet, making noise and shrieking like a banshee, in case that helps. My eleven-year-old is brave enough to run out with me, and has a much better shrill banshee scream, and the other two shriek from the kitchen door. The raccoons still laugh at us. And now, evidently, they feel they can visit our kitchen and eat our food with impunity.

We’re learning to live with bats in the attic, house flies that won’t quit and laugh at the fly paper hanging all over the house, spiders galore, and a major infestation of sugar ants who laugh at the ant traps I put out. I’m headed to the store to buy borax today, to make some better homemade time-tested ant traps. The bats do keep away the mosquitoes, though, and look beautiful flying around outside in the evening. And so far, none have found their way downstairs into the house, so I don’t mind the bats.

So our challenge this summer has been to live with a new face of nature that we didn’t need to endure in our last house, which was newer, more air tight, less crooked, and crevice- and crack-free. It’s been a challenge, especially waking up to a raccoon mess in my kitchen this morning. That window is now permanently shut, and I’m thinking maybe a dog wouldn’t be a bad idea after all…

Albert Einstein probably didn’t have to live with pests.


Here's a link for good homemade ant traps:
http://www.grinningplanet.com/2004/04-27/ant-control-ant-killer-article.htm

Blossoming

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. ~ Anais Nin

I think about blossoming all the time, because I am the mother of three daughters. I have one in the middle of adolescence, one just ready to start, and one watching her older sisters very carefully, pushing the boundaries for what I consider appropriate behavior for an eight-year-old.

They are all blossoming. It is an amazing and beautiful thing to watch your daughters blossom. I ache for them, I am their best cheerleader, I watch over them, I support them, I love them. They blossom in spite of anything I do. They blossom at their own time, in their own way. And it is an amazing process to watch.

I find myself in forced blossoming right now, kind of like a hothouse flower, or a bulb that we force in midwinter, after keeping it in the cold and dark for a while to allow it to regenerate. savvygardener.com says, “The term forcing refers to inducing a plant to produce its shoot, leaf, and flower ahead of its natural schedule and out of its natural environment.” That would be my life, right now – out of schedule and natural environment.

Blossoming.

Merriam Webster online tells me that to blossom is to come into one’s own. Is that what the universe wants me to hear, by placing me, some with my permission and active encouragement, some without warning and very little volition on my part, in so many situations at once that have caused me to lose my equilibrium? Divorce, job loss, identity crisis, loss of calling: all happening at once. Is it time to come into my own?

For far too many years, I lived without a lover. That was a sad and lonely time in my life. That was the cold winter of my love, the time for my essential core to build its roots. When you force bulbs, the cold period is the period that allows the bulbs to develop their root system. Without that time, the bloom will come up short and distorted. Perhaps that’s why it took me so long to initiate a divorce – I was building up my root system, developing a support system of friends to see me through into my new life. My blossoming.

Job loss.

That was a shock to my system. Perhaps I need to move over to Monarch butterflies for the metaphor that makes sense in my life. Monarchs start life as eggs, and the eggs hatch into pupa. Pupa shed their skins four times over their larval stage. Am I shedding another skin? Was my first career back in the work force a job that I needed for my growth as a human?

I went through four separate and distinct stages as a religious educator. First, walking into a church for the first time in over 20 years, and finding a place that could be a religious and spiritual home. I hadn’t thought that was possible. That must have been my hatching from the egg stage, finding myself on this miraculous milkweed-like place where I could feed myself, even gorge myself on the kind of spiritual growth that I hadn’t found in my entire lifetime.

Second, working for a tiny congregation, where I learned what it meant to be a religious educator. Third, working as a youth advisor at camp, where I learned just how much growth is possible in a human in a short amount of time (for the youth and for me). Fourth, working for a larger congregation, where I learned how it might be possible to fly, where I made the contacts that are in my life right now who are helping me survive, grow and thrive. That was also the first job that gave me the financial freedom to think about leaving my marriage.

And now, this last change I’m in the middle of? I think maybe I’m in my chrysalis stage. Butterflies shed not only their skin a fifth and final time during the chrysalis stage, they kick the entire caterpillar body off (head, eyes, antennae, stripes and legs). That’s about how I feel right now. Blind, not able to hear or see what’s coming next, wondering how I will move on in life with my legs pulled out from under me, my insides a complete mush from all that’s happened to me. Chrysalis soup, from which a miracle can climb.

The final stage of a Monarch is the butterfly stage. She climbs out wet, with wrinkled wings, and slowly fans them until they are pumped full of blood and she can fly off into her new and exciting life, totally transformed.

I’m listening to Meg Barnhouse’s song Chrysalis right now, thinking about breaking out of my chrysalis. Maybe it’s time to break through my walls. Maybe the falling apart is really just an unfurling of my wings.

I've got to tell you something important you need to know.
You're going to be fine.
They said the walls were there for protection. That used to be true.
It's time to break through.
Butterfly, you can try your bright wings. Let your colors fly.
A chrysalis really is a fine thing -- 'til it's time to take the sky.
It feels like it's all falling apart. What's happening is an unfurling.
Where do you migrate? How do you get there?
When it's time to go, you'll know.
Butterfly, you can try your bright wings. Let your colors fly.
A chrysalis really is a fine thing -- 'til it's time to take the sky.
Wishing you honey, wishing you sunlight; a little rain -- not too much pain.
And in the end, your body may break, but your spirit's due to surprise you.
Butterfly, you can try your bright wings. Let your spirit fly.
A chrysalis really is a fine thing -- 'til it's time to take the sky.
--Meg Barnhouse, Chrysalis, Mango Thoughts in a Meatloaf Town