I Hope

I hope you're with your family today or friends you love very much. 

I hope you spend this day with your congregation or your neighbors or your one special person.

I hope you touch them with your hands, embracing them even if they, or you, aren't the touchy-feely type.

I hope you look into those people's eyes, living now with them, filling them up with how much you love that they are here with you.

I hope your television stays dark today, darker than the longest night sky, and instead you sing some songs, dance, and, of course, tell stories you've told again and again until they're frayed at the edges: stories that are the continuation of the ones that we've told since the beginning of people. I hope today you'll add a new thread to our story, that one that goes back so far no one can say who first told it. 

I hope you sit on laps or too closely on the sofa or forehead-to-forehead and giggle about something that no one else would find funny, breathing the moist laughter you make together.

I hope you play as if you are a child.

I hope you do it all again and again and again, every day, every moment, until you are the story we celebrate together on this day each year.

I hope that you know you are my story and that I love you. 

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Anything Worth Knowing

A couple days ago I posted about the Winter Solstice, inspired in part by my anticipation our annual Feast of the Winter Solstice. This annual potluck, hosted by the Fremont Arts Council and attended by anywhere from 500 to 1000, has become one of the most anticipated events in our family's calendar. Each year our community takes over a vacant warehouse of some sort, spending the days leading up to the event "building" the raw, cavernous space into a place of festive beauty. We hang the walls with greenery, the ceilings with chandeliers, and install artworks both large and small.

It's a night of bands and acrobats, dancers and plate jugglers, ritual and bawdiness, quite reflection and raucous shouting. We wear horns and wings, fur and twinkle lights. It's a playful, joyful event as holiday events should be.

One of the things that often tires me out about the holidays is that it often feels like it’s all about just going to different places to have conversations, which is fine as far as that goes, but sometimes I want to do things with the other people. That’s why I like to spend my Feast “working" the door for the bulk of the evening, which I turn into a personal quest to touch every single person who passes through our evergreen archway. And I'm not just talking about some shoulder-tapping, air-kissing hug, but a real one involving full body contact and time to feel it. I spent nearly 4 hours hugging every single person who passed through the door. Oh boy, that was fun!

The Ice Queens processed among us in their stunning dresses of

paper and bamboo cane, bringing their light and beauty into this

longest night.

It’s already a touchy-feely community and my little piece of annual performance art meets with responses ranging from indulgence to enthusiasm. I made eye contact with each of them, welcoming them, telling them as I do the children each morning as they arrive at school, "I'm happy you're here." I imagined our souls were connecting for those brief moments. I was often pulled in by the peaceful power of what felt like ancient souls, while in others I sensed an adolescent restlessness.

Our friend Tiberio decorated human bodies with fruit slices, a piece of

performance art both strange and beautiful.

Many of the hugs were bawdy or subtly sexual. I liked those a lot. Others were heavy with sadness and need. I gave those people as much time as they wanted. Many took it on perfunctorily, an approach I worked hard to shake by making them stand there with me, not letting go until we had a real moment. There were some who enthusiastically shared my “duties” for a time, partnering me in the effort, giving and receiving hugs from friends and strangers, spreading a little love.

We made a community sculpture of clay, creating something that only

all of us could have made together.

The best hugs, of course, were the ones returned to me with equal energy. Pow! We both wanted to be there. We understood. We were pure love.

We gathered together in the center of our space for the annual ritual of drums, feverish belly

dancing, and light. It's an intense and wonderful moment of community.

This is the experience I have every morning at school as the children arrive. We're so happy to see each other. And there is nothing more magnificent than the hugs I get from the 2-year-olds when they crowd around my stool at the end of the day. We are so grateful for the time we’ve been together. I’m proud when I get to share that kind of unqualified acceptance with adults. We forget how easy and how wonderful it is.

Then we all came forward with our candles, adding them one by one to the dark clay

we had earlier formed together.

This may sound a little crazy to some of you, but don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I know that a lot of people look at us from the corners of their eyes, suspicious of grown-ups engaged in such frivolousness, wearing costumes, hugging, flowers in our hair, frolicking together like silly children. 

We each bring our own light into the dark, but it is only a pinprick.

It's only when we all bring our lights together that we can really see in 

the dark. It's together that we make the world light.

By now everyone knows that children must play. What everyone needs to know is that adults must play as well. It's still the only way we learn anything worth knowing.

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!

Friday Round-Up

If there is one consistent and common complaint I get about this blog, it's that people find it hard to keep up with the sheer volume of words I spill here, so I'm going to try something a little new and see how it goes. Since blog readership is notoriously low on Fridays anyway, I thought I'd try dedicating this day to giving everyone, including myself, a chance to catch up.

So here it is, the first in what may or may not turn out to be a regular weekly digest of what's gone on here this week:

Let's Work Together

In this post I tell a pair of parallel stories, one from school and the other from the wider society, in which those in authority react to bad news by defensively circling the wagons in an effort to cover up and deny failings: "This is what comes from a culture in which we've come to believe that mistakes are shameful, that transgressions must be punished, that we are bricks in a hierarchical pyramid rather than equal members of a community. It makes people conspire to hide things, to lie, to cheat, to circle the wagons out of fear, when the natural response should be to say, "Oh no, this is not good. Let's work together."

Bells And Whistles

I discuss my classroom planning process and how I try to approach it as a daily experiment, one in which I try to prepare for every eventuality, but very often fail: "I typically arrive at school 1.5 to 2 hours prior to class time. I tell myself it's because I hate the feeling of being rushed, but it's really because I like having the luxury to stand amongst the things I've prepared for the kids and imagine the many ways they might choose to play there.

Direct Instruction From A Great Horned Owl

The children at Woodland Park don't have a lot of experience in the teaching style called "direct instruction," but in this post we proved we can manage it if given the chance and a little help from a great horned owl: "It's not so much that I don't appreciate that there could be some value for some children in direct instruction, it's just that I've found that no matter how many times I tell kids, "2 + 2 = 4," they won't know it until they've actually discovered it for themselves through a process of play-discovery known only to themselves."

Love Bites

This is the story of my friend Charlie and how as a 2-year-old he found his own special way to show how much he loved me: "Circle time was one of the few parts of the day when we knew we could count on him to keep his hands to himself. That's because he was busy biting me.

Even The Sun Stands Still

Humans can hardly think without resorting to metaphor, and there is none more profound than the Winter Solstice: "The word 'solstice' comes from the Latin phrase for "sun stands still." We spend the rest of the year in motion, moving forward, making progress. But if we can hold still long enough to listen, we hear winter whispering to slow down, take stock, cut back, rest, tend to the core of what makes life worthy of its name."

Mat Slamming

Perhaps we aren't the first to invent this very fun full body sensory experience, but we did invent it. What a great time we had slamming our bodies into the gym mats, but beyond that, there are some very interesting comments at the bottom of this post that explain why it's more than just fun: "Who wants to knock it down?"

I put a lot of time and effort into this blog. If you'd like to support me please consider a small contribution to the cause. Thank you!