I meant to share a link in my last blog post about alternative schooling methods which is a blog of one of the veteran homeschooling mamas of the local book group I’ve been mentioning. She recently moved to live near her daughter who’ll be teaching Eurythmy at a Waldorf school in another state, but I had the pleasure of hearing just a bit about her story and meeting her daughter during our book group before they moved.

I found her insights into utilizing both Steiner and Holt (waldorf and unschooling) really insightful, inspiring, and quite a relief, and for those interested in trying to accomodate both of these methods into their homeschooling, you might too!

Here’s the link again.

Also, there is a series on Waldorf and Unschooling at The Parenting Passageway that I go back to again and again:
Waldorf and Unschooling
Waldorf and Unschooling – teacher/student relationship – birth – age 7
Waldorf and Unschooling – teacher/student relationship – the grades

Herein chronicles some rather unorganized, but no less sincere, and hopefully at least readable, thoughts I have about home schooling… at the moment.

As many of you know, my kids have never been to a day of “school”, and only just now, as Ethan has turned 6 last week, are we getting the question of “Oh what GRADE is he in?” or “What school are you going to in the Fall?”. I find myself having to begin knowing the most gracious and concise way to answer the questions, particularly an answer that satisfies and reflects who Ethan is, an answer he feels proud to use when questioned himself, so I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this lately (as if I don’t give it a lot of thought already, I know, I know).

(Our answer to “what grade are you in?” is made perhaps even more unconventional because in the Waldorf pedagogy, children at the age of 6 are in the crucial “Seven Year Change” and need to stay in Kindergarten through this year. Signs of readiness have begun, and will continue over the course of the year, but adequate time is to be given to the 6 year old to build up their “forces” so they are truly hungry and ready for the types of “main lessons” that will be introduced in the Waldorf First Grade year, after they have turned 7, rather than the mainstream age of 6 being that of the First Year grade).

In order to give myself less pressure this year, I am enlisting the support of the local waldorf-inspired kindergarten coop 3 mornings a week for Ethan. My goal is that I can focus on my own inner work, reflect on the direction I want to take in the coming year, and also strengthen my primary role as mama; getting more established in our family’s daily, weekly, and seasonal rhythms and connecting with the community and it’s resources so I am not “going it alone”, so to speak.

I hope I am not being overly optimistic here, but I have a sincere “gut” feeling that this year will prove to be a very successful one overall. I sense that I am where I am supposed to be, and that come what may, my experience here will produce tremendous opportunities, especially with regards to my direction with the children.

Contrastingly, I have had one really rough year prior; I have had tremendous doubts and confusion, about parenting issues and about educational options, and never quite felt like I found the answers I was looking for. I did feel alone in my pursuits while in Fayetteville, and exhausted by the feeling of going constantly upstream, against the current of mainstream educational philosophy. I also lacked the resources, like a car during the day, to connect regularly with some of the other parents in the community who might have had really like-minded beliefs and provided more support to me during that time. I had times of utter despair, even in the early phase of our landing here in Columbia, where I felt no other option was available to me but to put Ethan in public school as soon as possible, which was definitely for me a “last resort”. It was about that very time, when I felt I was at my wit’s end, that I finally got my “break” and met the local Waldorf-ish reading group, and from there things have taken such a different turn in so many ways I wouldn’t even know where to begin, but I think I’ve conveyed many of them here in other recent posts.

This has played a huge role in my determination to persevere with home schooling, and I suspect that without some sort of community-based support group, the experience of having a healthy, functioning home school (or unschool!) family would be incredibly taxing – if not impossible—and with ultimate burn-out. If I have any wisdom thus far in my very early journey, it is that finding a few strong fellow travelers who have been down the road further than you is absolutely crucial.

In any case, alternative education is rarely NOT on my mind, not only as a mother determined to provide my children with an experience outside of what the State is designed to provide, but also as a person who has always been interested in being an educator of some sort, but through beginning that collegiate training could not stomach the status quo and current state of the educational offerings available to the most of the public (government institutions, public schools namely).

I want to stress something here. It is not that I am anti-school, or anti-public school. In fact I would call myself a supporter of public school children/parents and any educator within the system that is dedicated to their classroom of children (God bless ‘em – I couldn’t do it!!!). I once read a remark in “And the Skylark Sings with Me” that resonated with some reasons I had personally considered for opting out of public education for my kids:

“In challenging public education’s mission, at least for our children, we implicitly call into question the entire administrative structure of school buildings, scheduled school days and hours and vacation, age-bound grade bands, classrooms with a prescribed number of children assigned, predetermined curricula, and arbitrary though strictly defined schedules for testing and evaluation. Taken together, these serve as the bureaucratic engine by which “adequate” educations are more or less produced; our experience indicates they have next to nothing to do with how children, how humans, optimally learn.” (italics mine)

For me, it was precisely the administrative “system” into which I would have to succumb to be a public school teacher that made me change my major. Regardless of how vastly different schools are from district to district and state to state, and how many amazing initiatives are happening in some public schools, for me the idea that my children would spend the majority of their time each day in that type of classroom environment, flooded with fake lighting and most always learning via bland, regurgitated, censored information in the form of textbooks was major turn-off. It was pretty much a non-negotiable for me that they need a much more invigorating, yet gentle and natural environment than that, and much more time spent at home, with family, and in their own pursuits.

When I thought about how I learn, and how I think all human beings optimally learn (and by learn I mean grasping ideas and concepts deeply into ones consciousness, not just rote memory), I came to the conclusions that: I learn at my own pace, in my own way, and perhaps most importantly – prompted by intrinsic motivation. Indeed, the fact that motivation is provided to public school students (and many other types of students, I might add, including the “school at home” brand of homeschooling) via grades assessments and rewards is a large pill to swallow for me; I believe it fundamentally alters the natural curiosity and desire to learn new things that children are born with, in a sense dumbing them down and utilizing behavioral motivation techniques useful for dogs and rats, but when it comes to the whole child well-being is simply NOT the best answer to the developing mind/body/soul.

(Yes, if you know me at all, you know that I do believe a child needs their “will” pushed along at times… I see a tremendous need for that in our current child-centered culture in fact. I admit I don’t exclusively trust in “intrinsic motivation” in each and every circumstance – which is where I differ from die-hard unschoolers, and where I find some aspects of Waldorf education a satisfying companion to my homeschooling ideals.)

My general thoughts about why I am opting out of public education is that I believe we can do better, and as parents/educators, we should feel called to do better (wherever we are placed, and especially those placed in the current educational system). Whatever schooling chosen for our varied reasons we weigh, not in the least of which comes down at times to simple economics at times – believe me, I know!, we simply must strive to give our children the types of learning experiences that enrich them to their core, at whatever opportunities we can find to do so, (and I have known some extremely awesome public schooled folks whose parents took this to heart and did a stand-up job supplementing them with deeper learning experiences in their hours at home, by the way!)

As for me, I recall too many days sitting in a classroom, listening to a lecture that was flat out uninspired and often not even all that educated, either reading my own material under the desk or writing poems or looking out the window at a lake nearby and wishing I could be out in the sun, feeling the wind on my face. Any real “learning” I have so far achieved, (and this sentiment seems to be shared by many parents who have decided to homeschool) has taken place outside a classroom setting.

I also began to realize these last few years that few (but important!) things are needed for the attainment of knowledge, and I don’t mean just book smarts but overall mind and life “learning” and preparation. Practical things, really. In no particular order, they would be: 1.) a community (this would include folks to live and learn alongside you, as well as cultural resources and mentor/teacher relationships, and finally service opportunities — and optimally community worship opportunities that provide the family with spiritual nourishment); 2.) a library/ or similar large catalog of resources; plenty of time outdoors in natural environments, having sensory experiences with things being studied; and perhaps idealistically I add, 3.) a rhythmic, nurturing home life (it doesn’t have to be perfect… but striving towards good rhythms, boundaries, and nurturing is definitely important!) I really believe these few things provide all one needs to obtain whatever level of knowledge they desire, and if given these, an unencumbered human will learn, all the time, for a lifetime.

Notice what is not on my list. Not special toys, educational or otherwise. Not expensive text books and curriculum. Not high tech gadgets, (I recently saw an ad for a school in which the students were all supplied with iPADS, which would be the learning tool they would utilize to the exclusion of all else — even proudly marketing that the students dissect a “digital” frog in biology! This is the exact route I am … pretty much vehemently against. I am not against technology by any means, but this is unnatural! How can one truly interact on a deeper level with the experience of viewing the inner physiology of a frog if they can’t access the specimen with any senses but their eyes?! I would argue that a good space to interact with wildlife –a state park creek is a fine example — is infinitely more valuable than a digital frog to dissect and label the parts! But I digress… few things annoy me more than expensive electronics labeled “educational”…)

Furthermore, history, if nothing else, has already done a great job in proving that brilliant thinkers, prodigies, and folks of various genius, (some in fields of science, politics, arts and humanities, and many just as adept at lesser-recognized but no less noble “fields” of child-rearing, homemaking, and community activism!) have not attained their means of knowledge via the government run educational system. There really isn’t, as far as I am concerned, any reason to speculate that it is the ultimate and optimal form of education – in fact I would say its not only unnecessary for the attainment of knowledge, but often the very system that hinders would-be brilliant thinkers. With this reason alone in mind, (though there are more), I never really see the point in the many questions that one inevitably gets once their decision to opt out of state run schooling is made known, questions such as “what if they don’t get properly socialized” or “are you really qualified to educate your children?” or, my favorite, “how will you ensure they are learning?” (as if they are EVER not learning, for one thing, and for another, I have many more doubts about their ability to learn in the public school environment than in their ability to learn outside of it!)

Rudolf Steiner, who began the first Waldorf School and which its subsequent pedagogy is aimed at mimicking, presented one alternative approach to the schooling of children:

“Steiner believed that conventional education stifled spiritual growth and led to dead, abstract thinking and stunted lives that characterize a society based on materialism.” – Rudolf Steiner, by Gary Lachmann

Waldorf education is built on a different assumption than that of Materialism (the philosophy that all of reality can be deduced to physical matter) – the main one being that a child IS a spiritual being, and thus the approach to the child’s learning is to nourish the “whole” child (as most would understand it, mind/body/soul — though some of you may realize that to Steiner there were more aspects to a person than just these three, lol. I won’t “go there” today).

Because of this view of child development on this multi-faceted level, the curriculum, if you could call it that, is structured very differently than that of state-run programs:

“Seven-to-fourteen year olds… are taught in a way that will nurture their imaginations, through pictures, stories, and other imaginative experiences. With puberty, the shift is to inspiration… when the ideas which were at first introduced in images can now be grasped directly. Then, with the age of twenty-one – recognized by many as the point of maturity, although, to be sure, maturation can and should continue throughout life – … the possibility of self-education arrives, which is the work of intuition.” – above biography

Now, this may sound a bit too much like the “age based” tenet of public school that I said is one of the problems I have with it, in an earlier quote (the previous quote was from an “unschooling” or “life learning” father, so that may help explain his emphasis). But what I wanted to get across in provided the insights of Waldorf education is that there is a intense aim at recognizing and nourishing the whole child, as they mature through each stage of development, and a keen observation of that child’s needs.

It is from this view of the child that I come to another of my main reasons to opt out of the public educational setting, or any that mimic it, because such whole-child needs can hardly be provided for in a large classroom setting, where an exhaustive amount of restrictions abound about what materials must be used, how they will get, if any, hands-on experiences to engage their studies with all of their senses, the types of meals provided for by the state, the types of dull, sub-alive elements (plastic, fake lighting, fake wood, etc) that surround them for hours and hours each day, — my list could go on.

The Steiner biography’s author sums up the point of Waldorf education nicely, I think:

“The central idea is to create a learning environment which can motivate live thinking and active imagination, and not the mere mechanical parroting of the lesson at hand…”

Many alternative forms of education has the above central idea, including many charter schools and private schools based on other pedagogies. I think that’s, well, that’s quite a start! If we could truly grasp this goal in our approach to education, I think the details would be less and less important ,and the overall values between alternative educational pedagogies would find a common chord. (And would that even public education be completely rebuilt and renewed with the aim of motivating live thinking and active imagination! Think of that!)

“A learning environment which can motivate live thinking and active imagination” is precisely what I want for my children, who, let’s face it, already have a Creator-given propensity towards “live thinking” as well as an “active imagination” – so my job is to ultimately nourish these current capacities!

And one last thought I feel necessary to add, is that of “end result” thinking when it comes to the decisions we make about schooling, particularly about preparation for adult life, future careers, or what college they will get into. I caution myself, and others in this journey, to not focus too much on this aspect of it, even if doing so is a bit against the grain. John Holt’s books talk about this a lot and I’ve gained valuable insight from them, freeing myself from the need to “showcase” my child’s achievements as proof that something I am doing with them is “working” (what does that even mean, anyway?!). Here I leave you with another quote from, “And the Skylark Sings with Me” that articulated this caution well, and culminates some of the thoughts I have shared today:

“I find there is something disempowering in the formulaic, “My Homeschooled Kid Got into Yale… and Yours Can Too!” genre, as it suggests that the learning experiences our children acquire today are intrinsically less valuable than those they might receive in the future at an institution more venerable than our backyard. We consider it important to resist the temptation to narrowly conceive of education as “preparation for life.” Children are living, breathing, learning beings in the present moment, and satisfying their need to learn is critical to their current quality of life, which has its own inherent value, whatever tomorrow may bring. If there is anything typical of my kids, it is, as of all children – unless or until it is ground out of them – their delight in discovery.”

The word discipline has been on my mind lately.

Since moving to Columbia and starting up discussions with the local waldorf book group each week, I have come around to my own spirituality and beliefs in a way I haven’t in a long time – or maybe ever. It is as though parenting, storytelling, Steiner, etc has opened up a back window to my house of faith, and this new entry carries with it many familiar sights and smells, but I am caught by the fact that there seems to be way less personal baggage from this route — the new angle has allowed to me the view from a different side, and I am grappling with tenets of life and faith in a way that is removed from some of the intention, suspicion, and experience of my past. Coming at it from this direction has way less cobwebs. It is a refreshing experience.

When I began to understand the power of story, particularly stories told aloud to children, in the book group and through what we are reading and doing, I was lead, (and I do mean “lead”, as I felt this unmitigated pull from one book/resource to the next, having the subject opened to me layer by layer without at first even realizing the correlations between each, ) to a short personal study on myths (i.e. Joseph Campbell) and then began to look at religious myths and the role these play in integrating mankind to their Creator, throughout history, throughout cultures.

What I once saw as fake, legalistic, empty, ritualistic, etc, I began to get from a standpoint of human development and consciousness, (and by no means do I mean that I now understand it is I am getting at here – I have only tapped the surface of this subject).

I felt myself drawn to the mystery of my own religious heritage, the history of my church, the stories of battles and adventure and reformations… and even towards its sacred text (the Bible), in much the way Brian McLaren urges people to read it, not as a “rule book” but as a “narrative”. I wondered why, if I celebrate and honor the sacred stories for other people groups as important, crucial, real, and magical for that culture – why do I not see my own beliefs in this way?

In other words, perhaps there is a different way to approach my faith beyond that of a passive submission, unquestioning and often too full of pride, folly, ignorance, and judgement, OR the other extreme; a dogmatic, theological discourse on every verse in the canonized bible taken literally (and an inevitable exasperation with that discourse that leads to living a life of fairly inactive personal faith, because I can’t help but feel like it is missing the whole point!). And that different way would look something more like the ancient stories of my faith, as archetypes, and that in embracing this story in such a way, I could experience the true elements of the story (of any story) in a deeper way (much the way I am learning to craft stories for the kids, and let them sit with a story, and let it resonate deep within their being in the way that Waldorf education promotes).

I have immersed myself this Summer with some of my old favorites, like Thomas Merton and Kathleen Norris. I have been reading about storytelling for children while understanding its importance for adults as well, through authors such as Joseph Campbell and Thomas Moore. I have been setting my listening preferences to things I would have never expected – Gregorian chants and chanticleer! I am craving something sacred and I am finding it, and it is lighting up something within me that has felt displaced and wandering for some time now. For crying out loud, I am even falling in love with liturgy! I have been going through the Morning, Mid-Day, and Evening prayers in Shane Claiborne’s “Common Prayer; a Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals” each day and finding them tremendously meaningful and beautiful. I have been attracted to monasticism, reading several books on monk habits, including the Rule of St. Benedict, and looking up local monasteries where I might go stay for a retreat and understand more about this way of life. In my desperation for liturgy, I attended Vespers at a Greek Orthodox church here in town. This week I rented “Of Gods and Men” and just balled – I felt such a kinship to the French monks and let the movie really move me in a deep way — (they really did a great job with this movie – you must watch it!).

It is pretty bizarre to me, this refreshed thirst. I have very little experience in a liturgical setting and most of it wasn’t pleasant. But now I can’t get enough. Where for many years I cringed at the word “discipline” or “ritual”, I now feel like it has been a crucial missing ingredient in my life. As I am beginning to see how a child needs his parents leadership to push and stretch his will, so do I need my own (strong, ahem) will stretched and pulled. I need to make my bed each morning. I need to do the dishes as soon as I dirty them. I need to embrace the mundane, tedious, sacrificial daily work of being a homemaker in much the same way that monks embrace God’s call to a life in constant communion with Him through the mundane and unglamorous tasks at hand. Each scrub of the bathtub, cleaning up of my child’s vomit, chopping vegetables for dinner, or the discipline of keeping my checkbook balanced and home uncluttered can be a prayer; can be a meditation on being in the moment, of sobriety and depth, of thanking God in silence and solitude or chaos and confusion; of the losing of my life in order to truly gain it. Imagine that.

It’s also been really neat to watch Ethan this month, and my own mothering, as a result of some of this searching… We have made certain times of day even more sacred, particularly bedtime. I began collecting poems, verses, hymns, etc awhile back which correlate for different times of the day, and different seasons of the year. It’s a daily journal, in a way a daily office, but for our particular family. Ethan seems to really relish the spiritual songs. After our nighttime reading (we have finished the first four books of the Chronicles of Narnia since moving to Columbia, and he just eats them up. He is loving Prince Caspian right now and asks so much questions about Aslan in relationship to Jesus… its very dear), we light a beeswax candle and I read a verse about the flame being our reminder that God hearing our prayers and lights up the darkness, etc, then together he and Ver blow it out and in the immediate darkness that surrounds us, we begin to sing the Our Father. From there we may sing other songs, like Take My Life, Doxology, Be Thou my Vision, and Let Their be Peace on Earth, his favorites. It requires me to set aside my impatience and any feelings of bitterness or exhaustion; I am extending my evening but I am gaining so much by laying in the darkness with my children and having a time of family worship before bed. I have often been shy and unsure about bringing my faith into my children’s lives, but lately I have felt compelled to infuse their childhood with this mystical and beautiful story, and to enrich the growth of their souls with the words of these powerful spiritual songs.

And tying in with this topic of personal ah-ha’s and such, I’ve been coming back around to the topic of community, and going through some hardships here in Columbia at what community shouldn’t be, how much I miss my communities in other states, and how easy it is to give up and move on when things don’t go as we would like. By no coincidence I am sure, I had read Life Together (Bonhoeffer) earlier this year, and just last night before bed read a quote from that book in another I am reading, “Monk Habits for Everyday People” by Dennis Okholm. It was left with me shortly before bed. When I woke up, ate some pancakes, and we all ventured out to try a new church this morning, what do ya know it, they shared the exact same Bonhoeffer quote in the sermon (and the experience of the new church was very encouraging and sweet — we have settled on calling this one our local church “home” and look forward to getting more involved, yay!).

Things like that have been happening all over the place for me. One little trail leads to the next and I see this little glimpse of the corner of the tapestry my Father is weaving for me, for all of us. It is a nice confirmation internally, to feel like you are where you should be, that you are experiencing (whether pleasurable or painful) the very thing you are meant to experience at this time. It is a comforting thought, and one that sustains me today, through unknowns and disappointments, and amidst exciting possibilities and beautiful new connections.

My car troubles have been mentioned in almost every post for some time now, which is slightly redundant and ridiculous. But allow me to do it again…

After the flat and all that earlier this week, we got “new” used tires on Friday and then on Saturday the same one was flat again. Me thinks the rim is bent. Ouch.

And of course, like the wonderfully zen mama that I am, I got all bent out of shape about my second flat tire for the week and through a nice little inner fit. My mind went everywhere – including the ever present question, “should we just sell the car and go back to Portland?!”

I came home, still having an internal fit, which of course is all too apparent to the kids, and in a huff sat down on the couch and opened “The Imitation of Christ” (Thomas a Kempis) which I picked up for a whopping .25 cents at the Salvation Army a few days ago.

Curiously, there was a bookmark already in it, so I flipped to that page. The chapter it opened to was called, “Of the Consideration of Human Misery”. Awesome, I thought in my self-induced pity party. How apropos.

And then I got a nice kick in the pants from Mr. a Kempis. Here’s what I wrote down in my journal, as I laughed at myself for the incredible immaturity I had been displaying over a flippin’ automobile (and bank account balance):

“Why are you so troubled when things do not go as you wish or desire? Who is there that has all things according to his will? Neither I, nor you, nor any man upon the earth.

There is no man in the world without some trouble or affliction, be he King or Pope.

… you see that all these temporary things are nothing; in fact they are most uncertain, and rather a heavy burden…

Man’s happiness is not the having of temporal goods in abundance; but a moderate portion is sufficient for him.

… for there are some who cling [to this perishable life] so closely (though even by laboring or by begging they hardly have bare necessities)… oh senseless people! and unbelieving heart, to lie buried so deep in earthly things…

Oh how great is human frailty, which is ever prone to vice!

… now you purpose to be on your gaurd, and an hour after you are acting as if you had made no resolution.

Justly then may we humble ourselves, and never think anything great of ourselves, since we are so unstable.

And even what we have at last just acquired through grace and with great labour, may soon be lost through negligence.” [um, like a new tire gone flat again... doh!]

Anyway, this is my great insight for the day… nothing new, I know, but a good reminder. This world and its things are uncertain, and a heavy burden — would that I could do without them completely! — but even when what I have and/or think I need faulters, the reality is that my hope should be fixed on something far bigger, more eternal, more stable, with no burden but an easy and light yoke.

Practically speaking, I don’t know what we’ll do about this car. It’s far more money to fix a rim than a tire, so we’ll have to see how it goes. I’m going to look into the bus system here better and see if we might be able to do without a car, but I worry about cold winter months spent at the bus stop in the morning to get Ethan to kindergarten…

Two things I know – far worse things could happen (and are happening in the lives of people I love every day). AND… God is still good.

I think I sweat more in the last 2 days than I have in my whole life. Fortunately, we found some solace from King Sun in the cool creek water at Rock Bridge and the shady canopy of blueberry bushes at Missouri Highland Blueberry Farm.

And rather than go into the details of:

A. what it was like to run out of gas at the farm, completely alone (even the farm purchases are run on the honor system – there was seriously not another person there but us!), with the nearest gas station 10 miles away, or how miraculously the car started again once we got on level ground and actually made it to the gas station! or

B. what it was like to get a flat tire on the highway not 5 minutes after getting gas, and then not being able to get the tire changed because the wrench/bolt remover thing was stripped, and then miraculously a home-based auto repair shop was the first stop on the next exit, who of course had all the necessary tools and got us back on the road to home,

which is why

C. we were concerned about going on the float trip (2.5 hours away) in the first place! (providence!)

I’ll just leave you with a few pictures I snapped from our adventures

“Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.” — Henry David Thoreau

It is Sunday morning, a morning I’ve held space for church attendance for many, many years. However, this morning, as has been the case for several months now, I crave to go “down to the river” as the ol’ spiritual song says — to seek out the Father in the baptismal flow of a stream and the worshipful song of the birds and fellowship with the trees. There are a good many labels for this and a good many folks I knew in my conservative, fundamentalist circles would catch themselves saying a prayer for my salvation right now (nature worship?! hell bound, for sure!). Oh well. I can only go back to what I know. I and everyone I know was born from this dust, whether you believe this happened over millions of years or 6 thousand. We are made for the Garden and it for us. Why can’t we can do as the legend of Adam and Eve, walking through the trees and communing with God? Or as Jesus, retreating to the wild places and the gardens to contemplate and pray? Perhaps if our churches looked more like a greenspace, modern religions wouldn’t be so disconnected from nature as a place of worship and from the earth as a place for peace…

More on these thoughts…

We have been ingenious in this century finding ways to hide from nature, and in the process we have let enchantment recede piece by piece. Then we wonder why we now have a religious and spiritual crisis. We blame each other for not having the moral fortitude to maintain traditional values and sustain church commitments, but we don’t complain about the commercial obliteration of nature by the great screen of advertising that lines every American town and city road, or by the ever-present noise and light of an insensitive culture that keeps nature’s presence blissfully blocked out.

The only explanation for our acceptance of these commercial insensitivities is that we have forgotten that nature is the prime source of the spiritual life. Block it out, and we obliterate the source of the spirit that our souls thrive on. Erect another billboard, another neon sign, another rack of halogen lights, and we push spirituality farther into repression.

On the other hand, build a real market, invite the neighboring farmers into the city, keep animal nearby and cared for, let the songs of birds and insects penetrate the sounds of machinery, let the darkness descend at night to gently envelop every business and every home, and you will see the spiritual life begin to rise and glow, and you might hear the voices of those spirits, nymphs, little people, and ghosts that were heard generations ago, that fed the quotidian imagination and excited a spirituality not yet divorced from good creation.

…Give nature a place, and you introduce egoless and unambitious spirituality, a spirituality that serves well as the starting point and base for other forms. There need not be any conflict between this natural spirituality and more evolved forms of theology and church, and if there appears to be such a conflict, it may be a sign that the spirit has lofted too high above the earth, has forgotten the goodness of creation, and is serving human ambition more than the community of beings that inhabit the cosmos.

… Spending time by a river teaches us many things, one of them the flow of life, and its constant movement, and it’s clear that the enchanted life demands an appreciation of this flow. As soon as we try to stop it, problems arise, and the psyche of a person or a community begins immediately to show signs of rigidity and dryness.

…If anything, we have lost the one thing that would sustain our intimacy with nature — a religious sensitivity to the sacredness of all forms in nature. The oceans are not only a bountiful source of fish, transportation, and recreation; they are also one of the supreme sources on the planet for contemplation and other aspects of the spiritual life, but we could know this only if we were deeply schooled in the necessary virtue of reverence.”

– Thomas Moore, The Re-enchantment of Everyday Life

In an interview I’ve been watching with Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth, journalist Bill Moyers questions him about similar concepts:

CAMPBELL: ‘We have today to learn to get back into accord with the wisdom of nature and realize again our brotherhood with the animals and with the water and the sea. To say that the divinity informs the world and all things is condemned as pantheism. But pantheism is a misleading word. It suggests that a personal god is supposed to inhabit the world, but that is not the idea at all. The idea is trans-theological. It is of an undefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being.’

… Campbell later reads a famous letter from Chief Seattle in 1854:

“The President in Washington sends word that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?

Every part of the earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every meadow, every humming insect. All are holy in the memory and experience of my people.

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The shining water that moves in the streams and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is sacred. Each glossy reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water’s murmur is the voice of my father’s father.

The rivers are our brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes and feed our children. So you must give the rivers the kindness that you would give any brother.

If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life that it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also received his last sigh. The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell our land, you must keep it apart and sacred, as a place where man can go to taste the wind that is sweetened by the meadow flowers.

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.

This we know: the earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

One thing we know: our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him and to harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.

Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered? The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted with talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And what is to say goodbye to the swift pony and then hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.

When the last red man has vanished with this wilderness, and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?

We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it, as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children, and love it, as God loves us.

As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you.
One thing we know – there is only one God. No man, be he Red man or White man, can be apart. We ARE all brothers after all.”

“The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.” –George Washington Carver

“I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it…. People think pleasing God is all God care about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back.” —- Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
– George Gordon, Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage

“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church,
I keep it staying at Home -
With a bobolink for a Chorister,
And an Orchard, for a Dome.”
– Emily Dickinson

“God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.” — Martin Luther

“What is necessary to keep providing good care to nature has completely fallen into ignorance during the materialism era.” — Rudolf Steiner

I posted recently about our local AHF (A.ccess H.ealthy F.oods) program which selects qualified families who would benefit from an extension on their SNAPS (formerly called food stamps) benefits on edible purchases at the Farmer’s Market. This morning I used just $40 in SNAPS and was able, with the AHF program, to get all of the following (which was quite a site as I made two trips back to the car with armfuls of market bags, and had the sleeping toddler on my back as well!):

MEAT, DAIRY, HONEY
2 whole free range chickens (8-10 pounds of chicken total)
8 .25 lb lean free range ground beef (hamburger) patties
1.5 pounds of local raw wildflower honey
2 pounds hand-crafted olive oil pasta (1 speghetti, 1 rottini)
1 half pound fresh goat cheese
2 dozen free range eggs

PRODUCE (all were purchased from organic, local booths):
1 green onion bunch
2 pounds assorted summer squash and zuchinni
1 pound of beets
2 pounds red potatoes
2 pounds heirloom tomatoes
1 small red cabbage
6 corn on the cob
1 head of lettuce
__________________________
TOTAL: an $80 value

I can officially call our fridge full

These next 3 days Chris is off work, as most of the Uprise/RagTag/9th St Video employees head off on a 3 day retreat/float trip. With many pressing financial things to think about, we weren’t able to swing the trip this year, but we are going to make the best of our “stay-cation” anyway. In the plans are a free folk band concert tomorrow, a state park day with a grill-out of hamburgers and corn cobs, and a blueberry picking excursion to a no-spray u-pick blueberry farm where blueberries are just $2/pound!

How are you all spending your Summer vacations? Any other stay-cationer’s have ideas on how to make the most of your retreat-at-home?

Independence Day’s local weather foretold thunderstorms as we peeled ourselves out of bed to start the day. Lucky for us, the claim proved false.

Instead we enjoyed a day spent almost entirely outdoors, soaking up a mild Summer sun and the comforts of nature, family, and food.

This morning we packed up a small picnic brunch and headed around the corner to Shelter Gardens (go check out the link and come back). We recently discovered this public garden space nearly right in our own backyard, and it is fast becoming an important resource for us. It provides a space to sit among beautiful botany and mindful landscaping, with several water features, a couy pond with waterfalls, windchimes, bird feeders, an herb garden, rose garden, zen garden, etc. It also has a One Room School house replica complete with old desks and chalkboards and a wood stove. It’s totally Little-House-esque. I can’t wait to utilize the space for our daily walks and to do lessons here as well, since it is the nearest space to my home that offers a natural landscape and a little peaceful solitude (I live on a busy urban street with the fire department close by – the noise is constant!)

We took our time at the gardens, I did a bit of yoga in the grass and found some neat collections. The kids played tag and climbed trees, Ethan got a great skinned knee (the markings of a childhood well-spent!), and we ended with a story time around a big tree (readings from Tales Told Again).

Later we insisted on naps for the kids, were pleasantly surprised when they both (even the almost-6 year old) succumbed to Mr. Sandman (give me a dream…). When they awoke, we headed out to drop off today’s milk delivery to a few people in our milk co-op (and found some old metal vanity chairs on the side of the road that I can’t wait to repurpose into totally chic children’s chairs! you can see those in the final picture, as they came in very handy later in the day ) and then finally we were onward to Lake Stephens.

Lake Stephens. I don’t know what I would do without. Here I find a place that is the closest nearby element of that crucial element WATER. Maybe it’s because I am a Pisces. Maybe it’s because I grew up on the Florida Gulf Coast and probably spent more time in the water than in any other play as a kid. But my soul needs water – the liquid, fluid, dreamy element that nourishes me and brings peace to my active mind. Inside city limits in the Midwest, I find some solace in Lake Stephens. A man made lake, slightly funky water (if you’re used to the ocean or fresh water springs), a faux-beach… who cares? I lay out my blanket, take out a book, slip down my straw hat low on my forehead, and let the sun work is magic on me. We go all.the.time.

Today Chris and I brought our suits (vintage finds at the Salvation Army, .50 and $1, respectively!), and SUBMERGED. We played Marco Polo. We dug underwater pits. We collected pebbles from the bottom. Oh yes, we are grown-ass-adults, and we totally did. In such play, children and adults alike connect with so many soul enriching elements at once – the water, the earth of sand and clay at the lake bottom, the fiery King Sun gently toasting your shoulders, and the warm breeze of air giving any part of you out of the water the shivers! It is truly amazing how life giving it can be, how sensuous an experience, to spend time outdoors and get dirty!

There is also a water feature of sprinklers right behind the man-made beach, which the kids have fun with. Ver adores stepping on them and squirting the water in all directions. This apparently NEVER gets old.

After several hours, we began to get hungry of course. We brought some hot dogs and buns, and a small bag of charcoal, so we headed up the hill at the park in search of a free grill. We were fortunate to find an entire pavillion right next to a smaller playground that was reserved until 11pm, but the reserved party was dispersing as we walked up so we got the whole place to ourselves. We let the kids play, cooked up some franks, and had a race down a HUGE hill. My, how much better hot dogs taste after you’ve played and gotten yourself good and hungry!

Dinner eaten, we took to the streets and found an empty parking lot to let the kids do some Party Poppers.

Later, we headed to the top of the parking garage by Chris’ work and set up camp. Rag Tag theater (connected to Uprise where he works) was open, so we walked down, had a potty break, got some beers and popcorn, refilled water canteens, and came back up just in time for the show to begin (the show went off a mile south at the stadium – a very crowded event happens there so we joined the much smaller crowd on the garage rooftops downtown). As fate would have it, my camera was drained by this point so I have no pictures of the fireworks. But let’s be honest, you’re kinda relieved about that, aren’t you?

The tired kids slugged into their beds around 10pm …

I leave you with a snippet from Care of the Soul, by Thomas Moore (rocking. my. world. — love love love!… more on that another time) that I think is appropriate as we celebrate our nation’s independence:

“America has a great longing to be the New World of opportunity and a moral beacon for the world. It longs to fulfill these narcissistic images of itself. At the same time it is painful to realize the distance between reality and that image. America’s narcissism is strong. It is paraded before the world. If we were to put the nation on the couch, we might discover that narcissism is its most obvious symptom. And yet that narcissism holds the promise that this all-important myth can find its way into life. In otherwords, America’s narcissism is its unrefined puer spirit of genuine new vision. The trick is to find a way to that water of transformation [like Narcissus' pool] where hard self-absorption turns into loving dialogue with the world.”

So this weekend I got seriously fortunate from a somewhat chance encounter with some one who works with a local organization that seeks out families who meet certain criteria who would benefit from having their food stamps extended when making edible purchases at the local farmer’s market. I had heard of this local program before but hadn’t figured out if I was eligible (the program is new this year), but thanks to a friend of a friend who got me connected, my family got signed up. Let me tell you- this was exciting!

(quick aside- I have mixed feelings about being on food stamps, and there’s something even more off-putting about sharing this info about us via the WWW, but for now my family needs it and we are doing what we can to be self-sufficient without government aid. But I do believe there is value in sharing our journey with others, so that the barriers of shame will not limit folks who are desiring a more integrated, ethical, “simple living” lifestyle. So – let’s just put a pin in that for a moment and let me get back to my joy about this program’s benefits!)

Okay, so basically I go purchase “tokens” with my EBT card (like a debit card for food stamps (technically now called SNAPS benefits), if you’re not familiar) at the market booth on Saturday morning, and whatever I use ($20 bucks, let’s say) is DOUBLED in value (I am given $40 in tokens, only using up the $20 of my allotted food stamps). This is already quite a Wow, awesome! But it wasn’t until I actually went grocery shopping Saturday that it hit me just how phenomenal this is. Another way to think about it is everything I get there is now 50% less!

A quick back-story of sorts: Most of you know that our family strives to eat nourishing, local, organic foods (weston price/ traditional foods – based). We try to eat mainly local, pastured meats and dairy products, and local, no-spray produce. (If we do eat grains and legumes, they tend to be used in moderation and purchased as dry bulk goods, then properly soaked and prepared to make them more of a usable food by the human body. If you’re lost by now, don’t worry – I’ll try to circle back around to that topic some other time, or you can read a bit about it yourself — try here or here…)

At first glance, this may seem like quite a luxury for folks on food stamps, right? Well, we don’t do this by going to a store like Whole Foods and leaving with bags and bags of expensive prepared and imported foods (though, in the interest of full disclosure — been there, done that. We all start somewhere!). Instead, I get most of the above items from the farmer’s market, a bulk food order we place each month from Azure Standard for things like peanut butter, etc, our backyard laying hens, and a local dairy farm delivery. (Aside – I do garden at home but at this point raising/growing our own food hasn’t been as much of an option as we hope it will one day be, since we have been renting inside city limits and moving often through all our homesteading adventures).

We do limit prepared foods, canned or boxed items are only utilized in a real “pinch”, so it goes without saying that I cook most everything from scratch, at home. If you aren’t in this habit and think that is impossible, this gets more effortless over time, with practice, I promise. Perhaps start with one meal per week, gradually getting more comfortable and organized. Even now, a few years into it, I manage only about 3 main-course-type dinners this way each week, the other days it’s quick veggie roasts or leftovers or (fill in the blank/ free-for-all). I think as the kids get older and require slightly less attention (this DOES happen, right?! and without utilizing any media or a babysitter?!), I will be able to work more on having a home cooked meal every day, 3 times a day. *crosses fingers* (one can have goals…leave me to my delusions, will ya?)

Eggs: Our backyard chickens give us 2 free-range eggs each day but it isn’t enough (we currently have 2 laying hens and 4 hens that should start giving another egg per day in a couple of months – at that point the half-dozen a day will be closer to our actual needs!). We supplement right now with 18 additional eggs for $3.75 each week from a local farm run by 2 boys who began their business as a 4-H project. We support them, bring them back their egg crates, and get lots of affordable “perfect food” protein, which we use in many ways (traditional breakfast dishes, hard-boiled eggs for snacks, baking, homemade custards, egg yolk in smoothies, etc — you name it, we probably throw an egg in it!). This allows us to get the essential fats and cholesterol we need without having prime meat cuttings at every meal.

Milk: (This isn’t part of the program I’ve mentioned, but it falls into this category of how we eat farm-fresh foods so I’ll tell you a bit about our milk too). Our milk man literally leaves farm fresh raw milk on our porch every Monday, in beautiful glowing glass jars (okay, maybe I took some liberties with the beautiful, glowing bit!) But seriously, it’s awesome. His cows are raised on pasture (meaning they roam fresh soil and grass/weeds/meadow, raise their calves, etc), never given meds or hormones, and visits to his farm are welcome. His price is awesome too – $3.80 per gallon. We are currently doing 2 gallons a week of whole, raw milk, straight from the teet . Since we literally feel ill if we drink pasteurized dairy (organic or not – it is heat processed and void of the essential enzymes and bacteria needed to digest it properly) and we avoid highly-processed “fake” dairy (rice, soy, etc), this is a real huge part of our sustenance. (Raw milk is perfect and delicious, but don’t let me stay on my soap box for too long!) In our state, raw milk is legal so long as it is purchased directly from the farm. We turn this milk into kefir regularly for smoothies, and sometimes make cheeses, custards, etc, depending on what kind of free time I can find in my week!

Chicken Meat and Broth: The farmer’s market here is really great for local pastured meats. There is a booth that sells fryer chickens (I buy the whole chicken, organs and all – which have a lot of additional nutrients, and cook slow over low temps to render lots of nourishing meat and bone broth which typically extends for 3 separate dinners). The whole frozen chicken is $10 bucks, for about a 4 lb bird that is, again, raised on pasture (not simply “cage free” – the birds literally have the life and diet of a farm chicken, which makes for healthy, tasty, nutritional meat). We typically try to do a chicken (remember, 3 “meals” come out of one purchase) every other week (2 per month), to keep our food bill low.

Fish Meat and Broth: the market also has a booth that sells fresh caught wild trout, which I bake in tinfoil with celtic sea salt and DEVOUR (this coastal girl really craves fresh seafood living here in the Midwest!). I believe the price was about $6 a fish, some where about that. 2 fish is divided up between our family of 4 and then I use the bones, heads, tails, etc to make broth for another meal. Being on a budget, we aim to get this once a month as it is not the cheapest meat option for us.

Beef Meat and Broth: I found a great way to get pastured beef in our diet on a dime, by getting “stew bones” from the local pastured meat stand. These bones have meat around them still and sell for $2.00 a pound. About 4 bones makes for a delicious stew and then I can cut the meat off and add it back for stew meat.

Other meats: For ground meats, the cheapest I have found is a local goat farm, which sells ground goat meat for about $3.75. Sometimes beef is cheaper, but I like to have some variety and goat meat makes really great meatballs for gyros, etc. Sometimes I get local pastured ground turkey or pork as well, as it makes good sausage (and is cheaper than buying sausage already seasoned and linked).

Of course, there are times funds are slightly higher and we splurge on bacon or something, but this is a list of our basic meat and dairy “staples”. I find that most people assume eating this way MUST cost us an arm and a leg; that abiding by our local/pasture-raised ethical and nutritional choice is an oxymoron for low-income families. This simply isn’t the case, and people on a budget do not have to eat fast food and cheap corn-syrup and processed soy-laden grocery store products and factory-farmed meat products. But it does take forethought, and commitment, and an attempt to look beyond the total “price” at the end of the bill, into food politics and all the various sectors (and living creatures, people groups included) that are hurting in our nation and in our world because of the way we eat (malnourishment, diseases, exploitation of workers, widespread loss of fertile farm lands, etc etc). This isn’t just about being posh, green, or any other catchy buzz word – it’s about caring about our health and the health of our planet in real, actionable ways.

Though we are new to this area, the basic methods and means of getting these staples into our diet have been the same where ever we’ve been, minus the learning curve required to find local sources (esp if the farmer’s market was mainly crocheted hats and cut flowers – hey, it happens!) and meal planning and preparation with these methods. We’re getting there… those things take time.

So let me go back now to the start of this post: all the meats I have listed above I, for now, can get 50% cheaper! A whole, pastured fryer chicken – FIVE DOLLARS. Stew bones with meat – ONE DOLLAR per pound. Freshly caught trout: $3 dollars. You get the idea. And this isn’t even factoring in produce at the moment, which is often (local, no-spray) somewhere about an average of #2-3 dollars per pound, so it’s now half that price.

So you’ll forgive me if I just can’t contain my enthusiasm about this blessing! This means a lot to our family and our health right now, and I applaud organizations like this who are seeking to help those who need food assistance to make healthier choices (and not just cramming USDA propaganda down their throats at sign up time and turning them away to go buy gum/chips/breakfast-cereal/cookies/soda with their food stamps! But I digress – that’s another post for another day…).

I won’t always need the help, but I am darn grateful at the moment that I can extend our food budget via this aid, towards hard-working, ethical, quality local farms and in turn our family can eat more abundantly of the nourishing foods they have to offer! Just makes me wanna jump up and do a little jig… oh wait, I’ll have the move the laptop off my lap…

I woke up this morning to hard rains and thunder; stretched and smiled before opening my eyes. I like the rain. A lot.

So after a quick stop by Uprise for a cup-o-joe, and a morning of cuddling and reading at the library while the thunderstorms passed, we headed back home for an overcast evening of gardening in the freshly wetted soil.

I’ve been making the preparations for weeks, waiting for a day with some time, some shade, some breeze, …some motivation… to really hit the backyard with all I got. Boy, did I!

Mama (tha’d be me) got out the saw, cut the lumber, made a new, double-height raised bed for our Fall/Winter garden. I dug deep, adding the compost, manure, coffee grounds, and a bag of peat moss I have collected these last few weeks. I laid down a system of pipes to get oxygen deep into the soil/compost, and fixed PVC hoops over the top to create a mini green house during cold months. The kids enjoyed digging and mixing, shoveling compost from the hen run into the bed. They also spent some time shredding lots of scrap paper I had been collected, then worked it into the soil and wet everything up real good. Then of course, they helped me add in a jar of red worms and watched them dive into their new home!

We have a weekend of muggy heat ahead, so I covered this new raised bed (currently a compost bed until Fall) with the now emptied plastic bags of manure, placed some bricks on top, and now that sucker is ready to heat up. I’m determined to have a productive Fall/Winter garden this year, maintaining home grown greens year round.

The Summer garden, meanwhile, did not have this kind of a head-start, so was off to a late and resource-less start. Besides a small harvest of strawberries from the strawberry patch, I am growing some sugar snap peas, lots of onions, about 5 tomato plants, as many peppers, and a smattering of squash and cucumbers. Mixed into these beds are some chives, marigolds, sunflowers, etc. Those beds are full of compost from the city, with some homemade compost and peat moss mixed in, but they are shallow and the ground underneath them was pretty much clay, so I can see already the result is slow growth, which may not produce much yield now that July/August (aka Drought Season) will be soon upon me.

Not that I’m giving up on my summer garden. On the contrary, I’m giving it as much as I can. Today I added some fresh compost and covered with the white confetti of mulch from the shredded paper (deflects the intense sun, and so pretty too!). I also added the tomato trellis and built a sort of A-frame of spare wood slanting down the other side which I can use to grow the cucumber/squash plants up. I guess only time will tell (bugs, heat, poor soil conditions – I’m not super hopeful but doing my best!)

Each year the adversity I have found in my gardening endeavors has taught me a lot. Your garden is only as good as the work you put into it, especially around this part of the country, and especially if doing it all organic and with very (very very) little cost. I think that I am at last understanding the importance of healthy soil, and that the real work of the gardener is cultivating soil (the plant then more or less takes care of itself!). Maintaining that balance of microbes and nutrients, water retention and good drainage, attracting the right critters and repelling the wrong ones (and keeping your harvest from being eaten by little bunnies, birds, etc) –

- Ahhhh, it can be overwhelming! And a lot of work (oh yeah, I’ll be veeeerrrrrrry sore tomorrow from all the sawing, hammering, screwing, climbing, bending, shoveling, stomping of today’s gardening adventure). And if you’re like me, having not been brought up learning about growing your food and are set off into the world with a major brown thumb, it also takes a lot of planning and thoughtfulness. And reading of books.

Little by little, season by season, I learn more and get better connected with the earth and its food growing capabilities. For one thing, I’ll never again mistake a squash bug for anything but my archenemy and promptly … bludgeon them on sight.