This freedom comes with the promise of happiness through self-discipline. It takes time, patience, and deep sympathy for others and the world we live in.
Monthly Archives: February 2014
Letting go…
What They Live
I have seen this poem a number of times and have it saved at home amongst my teaching materials. It is an important reminder that adults serve as the role models for children. They see, hear, and sense are authenticity. It is all about relationships in the moment with children.
What They Live
If a child lives with criticism,
He learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility,
He learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule,
…
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Learning is the Thing for You
I told students, when I learned something new, I was going home to tell my wife. I unsure they believed me, but, often, I would go home and tell Kathy what I had learned or a particular frustration from the day. Often, the latter led to learning.
T. H. White, in this excerpt from The Once and Future King, suggests learning is a universal solvent for what ails us at any given moment. It distracts us from worrisome, sad, and fearful things focuses on something right here in the present moment. It occupies our minds, fills our bodies, and feeds the soul of our being.
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn… “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss you only love, you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then–to learn. Learn why the world ways and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured, never fear or distrust, and never dream regretting. Learning is the thing for you.”
A Peli-Can’t!
I really enjoyed this play on words. It and the images bring a warmth into an otherwise cold day in Spokane. A Peli-Can enjoy warm days sunbathing.
PeAce
When it snows, we can find ways to use the snow to send great messages. Peace today.
Landscape Survey
I chose a metaphor about 21st Century learning being similar to a living topography in my writing to date, which is different from the flat world view of some i.e. Thomas Friedman.
There is definitely more information available in our world and it comes at us much faster, but my view is one that of textured and layered world and not flat. This uses the etymological roots of topic linked to topikas and topos. In this sense, we engage topics which are alive and there multiple meanings continually emerge, one for each person in the learning environment.
I am challenged by the thought my understanding is not the only one that applies. I only need to turn to nature and see what John Brehm pointed out in this poem. I constantly survey landscapes as communally a better world hopefully emerges, not through a unified understanding, but one diversely rich and humane. I am called to remember others see things from a particular and unique perspective that is their own, not mine.
And what about this boulder,
knocked off the mountain top and
tumbled down a thousand years ago
to lodge against the stream bank,
does it waste itself with worry
about how things are going
to turn out? Does the current
slicing around it stop itself mid-
stream because it can’t get past
all it’s left behind back at
the source or up in the clouds
where its waters first fell
to earth? And these trees,
would they double over and
clutch themselves or lash out
furiously if they were to discover
what the other trees really
thought of them? Would the wind
reascend into the sky forever,
like an in-drawn breath,
if it knew it was fated simply
to sweep the earth of windlessness,
to touch everything and keep
Frugality for happiness, contentment and liberty
This is an excellent post about what being frugal means. I am reading Wendell Berry and Gary Snyder and they echo the sentiments in this post. A household economy is based on the wealth of love and is frugal when it comes to consumption of material things. The focus is on the question: “What do I need to lead a full and fulfilling life?”
“Frugality is one of the most beautiful and joyful words in the English language, and yet one that we are culturally cut off from understanding and enjoying. The consumption society has made us feel that happiness lies in having things, and has failed to teach us the happiness of not having things.”
from I’m a Frugal Girl
One of my favorite words is frugality – a psychological trait shaping how resources are allocated between consumption, savings and investment over time. As it is pointed out in the ‘Essays on Management’, frugality lies at the heart of good household, business and organisational management. Frugality however should not to be confused with selfishness or “meanness.” Frugality requires a mind-set limiting small pleasures today with a focus on a better future. It implies an eye for micro-detail where decisions to save, conserve or consume matter. It implies observations of both social complexity…
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The Journey
Mary Oliver is one of my favourite poets. When I open a book, I am often drawn to her writing. There is something in the simplicity that is profound. She peels away layers in ways that help me see the world quite differently.
Father Richard Rohr comments that we live the first half of life in busyness and, if we are lucky, the second half is one where we slow the pace, contemplate, and find wisdom which helps us grow into the life we are.
Quite often, the voices which distract and the barriers on the road are ones I create. It takes time, patience, and support to find the light seeping through clouds. The stars’ make the journey hopeful, that I can go deeper into the life.
One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations–
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice,
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.
Teacher as Transformer 