Reading Rhythms

Reading circles have started this semester. 
Here is what a Thursday morning reading hour looks like
 on an Encinitas January day in the 2nd grade:

Mom, Do You Believe in Fairies?

Whenever Avella asks me this question, part of me clenches. But I outwardly, cheerily respond in the positive. "Mm Hm!" I hum, finding something that suddenly needs attention on the stove. I try nobly to mask the twinge of guilt I feel at not being entirely honest, and I pray she doesn't probe much further as I deftly change the subject. If I were to respond truthfully, I would have to tell her that I do not believe in fairies. I don't believe in fairies any more than I believe in water. Or the ground I walk on. Or the air I breathe. Or the warmth of fire. What is there to believe? I simply know their existence to be truth. 


Eight years old feels different. I am noticing that her cheeks no longer have their pink rotundness. Her laughter bubbles a little less innocently -- it seems now to carry a subtle desire to make others laugh as well. She is at a threshold where she has absorbed just enough of the grittier things of the world to tip the scales away from that sweet cocoon of childhood. In 2nd grade they are immersed in the world of saints -- those souls who contrast most sharply the world's downward pull into inertia and darkness. To understand their significance, some part of our children must understand that to which these great beings stand in opposition. And from the world of the saints, they wander into the world of those trickster animals in Native American tales and moralistic fables. Those earthy characters who must always choose wrong for us to viscerally grasp the "why" of choosing right. Certainly without the metacognitive awareness of it, our children are being shown the whole spectrum of possibilities for human behavior -- for their behavior. From animalistic to angelic. And... they still believe in fairies. What an interesting time.


What is my struggle here? As I look at my daughter, and see the threshold she now straddles, I feel the path she must walk, alone. I recall so clearly my vicious clinging to my belief in magic at this same age. It became more desperate when my sister shook my Santa-cloak with her smug, worldly knowledge, dangled before me in sing-song taunting. (She still feels terrible about that, I must add.) I remember well how the world of the unseen was more real to me than so-called reality, and I wanted to protect that awareness -- against sisters, friends, and strangers -- doubts in any guise. And so I pledged to myself, looking out of the window in the sleeping silence of a moonlit winter night, to keep my faith in magical worlds alive and strong until the ripe age of 21 (the limit of my imaginative capacity to conceptualize old-age). Then, I thought, *then* I would be rewarded with the key to infinity.  


Well, suffice it to say, my 21st birthday was far from magical by eight year-old standards. In fact, by that time, most of the deeds we hope those not-clever-enough animals in the fables won't do, were done. And the darkness those saints so sharply contrast, was dark. Life deals blows. And I know that I felt it coming when I made that desperate pledge in the night. If I hadn't, no pledge would have been necessary. Rather than finding the key to infinity, I found the key to oblivion. I was quite far from that which, in my childhood, I held more precious to me than anything. But, it wasn't gone. 


I met with Mr. Gebeau today, and we discussed the flow of the year for the children. They started with saints -- lots and lots of saints. And they've moved to the animals with all of their mishaps and misfortunes. "But," he added, "we're going back to the saints again after this -- we'll finish the year out with saints." Maybe that is my struggle. We start in a more angelic place, as infants and children. A more unconsciously-angelic place, perhaps -- still shimmering naturally from our most recent astral sojourns. But we are then all pulled into the earthiness of being human, where we have to make difficult choices. A lot. Every day. And the animal nature rears up sometimes uncontrollably. And we have to learn how to steer this complex ship called "me" through the choppy waters called "world". But we are neither all "of the world," or all "of the spirit." We are both. Each one determining how near to Saint we go, or how near to Coyote. 


I had to lose sight of my childish belief in fairies before I could know the truth of their existence. I had to walk through terrible darkness, and act in animalish ways, to grasp the significance of choosing to carry light. Because, I realize even now, we are all born with the potential to become saints. It is our choice whether we will develop that potential or share the fate of the fables' protagonists. What my daughter calls fairies, I have grown to embrace as the play of the Divine that dances invisibly through the mundanity of life-as-we-know-it. Through determined plowing of the soil of silence, I hear the voices and feel the presence of multifarious beings of light that thrive in our positive thoughts and die in poisonous environments of negativity. These are no longer things I need to profess belief in. I do not need to cling to them for fear of threatening "truths". I do not need categorical proofs, nor do I need to hear supportive voices to bolster my position. Through my journey, from light, through darkness, and back toward light, I am where I started, but belief has transformed to knowing. 


This is my struggle. As I watch my daughter on the threshold of this journey. As I hear her ask me if I believe in fairies, knowing that behind this question is the doubt that must act itself out before it becomes lasting knowledge. I cannot say no, yet I cannot fully say yes. But what I can do, what I need to do, for her, is to let her go. Go into her own journey. Into the crushing loss of belief. Into darkness. For on the other side of that darkness, I know: the number of fairies waiting for her, is infinite. 

Technology, Authority, and Laughter

I think it was a November Beach Day Friday -- I've been putting off this post for so long I don't remember the date. It was a Beach Day like any other except for the sheriff's helicopter that landed and took off again in the parking lot on top of the hill. I don't know why it made that visit, but the effect on the children gathered in the playground just below was electric. What noise! What power! What a massive display of mechanical magic! The beast did not merely demand attention, it hijacked it. But the children gave it freely and joyfully, jumping up and down, shouting, pointing, smiling, laughing. It was infectious, really. I don't know that I've ever laughed at a helicopter before, but now I wonder why one wouldn't. I once heard a definition of humor as that which is incongruous to us. We laugh at combinations of things that are not expected; the "absurd". I noticed recently that I tend to smile and laugh a lot and I wondered about that. But recalling that definition makes sense. We float in incongruous absurdity. A massive flying machine that emits volcanic noise levels settling its bulbous body just above the playground. The juxtaposition of innocence and power was... funny! Watching the children's joyous abandon was equally funny. I thought, there is no intimidation, no apprehension, just childlike celebration of life's wonders. 


And then the police car pulled up.


I would have to guess that on any other day, this kind officer would have carried out his duties without molestation. But the children were already emboldened by their celebration-of-power dance, and they swarmed the vehicle without a moment's hesitation like sand fleas. He wasn't going anywhere even if he wanted to. Then, congruous with the incongruous events of the day, he suddenly opened up all of the car doors and let the children stream though. Touching this, touching that... "Just not *that* button or we'll have the whole squad here in seconds..." He even let them turn on the siren -- for a second or two. He showed them the handcuffs, he answered their little peeping questions... It was like watching a lion roll over to let twenty little cubs crawl all over his belly. I couldn't help but to laugh. 


No intimidation, no apprehension, no stiff respecting-at-a-distance of these figures and symbols of power and authority. While part of me was laughing, another part was in awe. How wonderful, I thought, to embrace our world with this kind of natural curiosity and joy. It is as though they do not recognize the separations, the barriers between what belongs to me and what doesn't. By right of my innocence, their actions say, this wondrous thing belongs to me and I celebrate it. By right of my curiosity, this police car, and this police officer, belong to me, and I can reach out and touch, and ask, and dialog with this new thing I just discovered as part of my world, part of me. And by following this innocent boldness, the children will have a different understanding of what these things are and do and mean for our society -- different from the stories spun from the television and movie industries. Their understanding will come from direct experience and direct inquiry, rooted in the freedom of their receptivity. 


This situation was not incongruous because these are highly technological and outwardly-authoritative things and our children's education rests its foundation in the natural world and  the development of their own inner authority. It was incongruous, to me, because we don't normally see this kind of joyful embracing of the unknown, or of Authority in our culture. Seeing our children respond in this way, and knowing that this is the kind of spirit that we are nurturing in them throughout their Sanderling education, gives me a glimpse of a more beautiful world. Not so different outwardly. But different in how we, as souls, can receive our impressions of this tremendous, incongruous world, and how we can respond to them. A world with the same technology, and with the same authority structures, perhaps. But with much, much more laughter. 

Laughter in the Light of the New

With all the talk about darkness and the coming of winter, this new year seems like a good time to look at all of the light that is around us. Winter Solstice is now behind us and the next transition ahead is the birth of the sun in Spring. I've been noticing how full of giggles Avella has been these past few weeks. The heaviness of the dark season seems to have lifted. 


We had a joyful Winter Assembly last month, with our class eliciting much laughter and lightness with their creative rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas. (Particularly the "six geese a-laying"... Not just the preschoolers thought that was cute...) And in attendance was Kian's new little brother, Jonah. Avella was so proud that he chose to make his arrival on her birthday - November 27. And we are all so happy for this growth in their family -- our family. 

Beach Days have resumed with beautiful beautiful sunny days, and with them the joy of free play in the sand dunes. It's a nice way for the children to end the week -- to let the light of sun and laughter fill their bodies, from bare toes to bare heads. :) 

This is all I have for now. More light soon coming...