Uncategorized

Lost in the Woods

The question that has kept me searching my whole life is not, “Does G-d exist?” I seem to have been born with the belief that I have a Maker. I have never doubted this Great Mystery we try to name. Whether you want to call this God, or Hashem, Or Allah, or The Shechinah, I believe whatever It is, just is. 

The question that has plagued me throughout my life is: “Who am I to this Universal Spirit?” “Does ‘Whoever Runs this Place’ even know who I am? Much less care about me, guide me, protect me?

I really wanted religion to be the answer to this question.

My search began in Sunday School at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Wilmington when I was a little girl. We would walk the 7 blocks with my mom in our smocked dresses and Mary Jane’s. 

When I was in high school, we moved and started going to a small country Baptist church. My friends all went there, so it was more socializing than searching.  While Reverend Groover shouted about hell and damnation from the pulpit, we whispered the latest gossip in the backrow. Maybe there was not a lot of searching going on there.

In college I tried out all the churches. Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Catholic. I kept wanting to feel something, see something, hear something. I wanted to feel a sense of belonging, but it never happened. Everyone else looked like they had it figured out, what was wrong with me? I still believed God was there, I was just not sure if He was there for me.

When I met my husband in graduate school, he was the first Jewish person I had ever met. He refused to date me unless I could promise I would raise our children as Jews. Wow. That was a first. I just wanted to go to the movies, and he was down the road of having children. Yet, I was drawn to this. Finally! Someone with an answer. Maybe it was THE answer. I decided he was my answer. Without knowing what I was signing up for, I jumped in headfirst.

I was looking for a formula. I wanted to take that Big Mystery and solve it so it wasn’t a mystery anymore. 

Turns out Richard didn’t have any answers, just bigger questions. So we searched together…at first. That took us to Chicago. We put our children into Jewish Day schools, and began to learn alongside them. I converted, we kashered our kitchen, joined a synagogue and began to build a friendship, faith community. As often happens when someone learns just enough to be dangerous, my ego got a little inflated. I might have been a bit smug. I finally had it all figured out! 

So much so, that we figured, if a little bit of religion was good, then more would be better.

So we moved to an orthodox neighborhood and became more religious. We went through a more rigorous Jewish conversion. This time as a family. We began observing an orthodox religious life. Unfortunately, for some people more is not always better. 

That is a wild tale for another time, but suffice it to say, we hit a big fat dead end, and it was the beginning of our entire world falling apart. We had followed religion as far as we could, thinking it was our answer and found ourselves lost and adrift. It is a painful lesson that no matter where you go… there you are. My husband dealt with it his way, and I dealt with it mine. 

One lovely example of this happened on Shabbat. Actually most of the lessons I painfully learned happened on Shabbat or one of the Jewish holidays. We biked with the kids to Michigan Lake near our house to play at the beach. As they were running around doing cartwheels and burying each other up to their necks, Richard told me he had slept with a woman at work. 

I actually laughed when he told me. Looking back, I don’t know why. It just came out, surprising even me.  The next surprise was a feeling of envy. I thought, “Who has time to have an affair?” With 4 children, keeping a Jewish home, and trying to go back to work part-time, I was lucky to have time to use the bathroom by myself. Richard and I often fought for the tiny scraps of free time in our busy life.

Somebody had a few more scraps than I realized! We talked about it a little bit. My body seemed to disconnect from my head. I asked questions as if from a distance. I did not throw things or yell or scream or even cry. Instead, as the day wore on and we biked back, I began to shut down into silent shock. By the time we made it home from the beach, I got into bed and didn’t get out… for 3 days. This scared everyone. I could not speak, or cry, or move, or eat, or even feel anything. I was completely numb. 

Finally on the 3rd day I arose, and put on my running clothes. I decided I was in danger of dissolving into the mattress and disappearing into the dark fog I could feel lurking and looming. I went out into the woods to make myself run until something happened. I was going to run until I could feel something, anything. I was going to run until I cried, or laughed, or screamed or passed out. If I was going to disappear into anything it was going to be my beloved woods.

So I started running. At first nothing happened. I kept running. I ran and ran and while I ran, I realized there was no one I could turn to. Not my family, not a friend, not my husband, no one. I was too filled with shame. The depth of my loneliness rose up in my chest and finally broke me. To suffer is human, to suffer alone is unbearable. The very person I should be able to go to with my pain, was the very person inflicting the pain. I began to cry. It gets a little tricky to run and cry at the same time. The tricky part is breathing. There is a lot of snot. But I kept crying and running and snotting and trying to breathe. I believed I was the loneliest person in the entire world. 

And then it happened. 

I can’t say it was a voice speaking to me or anything. It was just a sense of knowing. One minute I felt forsaken and the next minute a phrase in my head: 

“You are not alone. You have never been alone.” 

I felt it more than I heard it. A deep calm and peace washed over me. My tears stopped. I stood there in the middle of the woods, looking all around me at the beautiful green forest around me. I was in a state of awe. I was not alone. I have never been alone. 

I went into the woods, lost and alone. God found me there and showed me the way back to myself. I was going to be ok. I got into my car and drove home.

The path since then has been a move away from religion (and my marriage) and towards the small still voice inside me. Father Richard Rohr, a franciscan priest, calls it “Falling Upward”. We must fall down to ascend. Every time I begin to doubt my way, someone shows up, or some coincidence happens and I see the signpost leading back to the path of love and away from the path of anger. It feels like a giant invisible hand gently leading me away from bitterness and judgement. My vision clears and I am able to choose the path of forgiveness and acceptance again. Funny how forgiving yourself is the hardest part. The work for me is learning to trust and have faith when the going gets tough. This Universal Intelligent Force of Love has more than earned my trust, but I continue to fall down and be human. 

Standard
Uncategorized

A little bird told me…

So I was trying to get on the road for a trip. Subtracting myself from all the details of my house, husband and children is a complicated process. I try to set a deadline for leaving and then have to reset it several times before I actually finish cleaning the kitchen, emptying the refrigerator, taking out the trash, packing the car etc. I just have to leave everything in Good order. It is a mom thing.

So you can imagine my delight when I was actually ready to walk out the door at exactly 1 pm. The original time I said I wanted to leave to miss the Friday traffic.

All I had to do was take the dog out to pee one last time and get in the car and leave. I puffed up feeling pleased with myself.

So I took Lucy out through the garage and let her do her thing. I came back in to put her up and turned around to leave and just as I was about to walk out the open door, a little bird flew in my house!

What the hell!! Seriously? It is 1:02 pm. How can this be? A bird??

What can I do? I have an innocent little creature flying around my house bumping into windows trying to find its way out.

So Lucy and I spent the next half an hour trying everything we could think of to free this little bird. It involved ladders and brooms and fans and opening every window and door. We tried sweet talk as if this little bird understood English. Funny enough, Lucy didn’t bark once. She seemed to know that would scare the little thing further into the rafters of my two story living room. She did use her herding instincts to help me. She and I would just come from each side and try to shoo it and sweet talk it toward the opening.

Finally, the little bird perched on an open windowsill and calmly flew off. I swear it looked at me and nodded like, “ok you can leave now”.

I rushed around closing windows and doors before any other wild creature could fly in.

Whew! Only 27 minutes past my deadline.

Now as I traveled down the highway, about an hour and a half into my trip, traffic came to a complete stop. On I-20 this is never a good sign.

As it turns out, there was a 3 car accident that involved a tractor trailer, a U-haul and a sedan. By the looks of the fire trucks, police and paramedics present, not only was it a bad one, but I missed being involved by about 30 min.

Almost the exact amount of extra time it took me to leave my house because of a little bird.

I looked up at the big sky mystery and said, “wow, thanks”.

Now I am turning 50 this year and you might say it is time for me to grow up and stop this magical thinking.

But I would say to you that I choose to live in a magical, supernatural, spiritual, loving existence. I know the difference between my world and the bigger population of the depressed and the miserable. Since I do have a choice. In fact it is probably the only thing I can really choose. I choose to be in my amazing technicolor world.

I choose to believe that nature is full of loving kindness and giving me support along the way. I choose to believe that I don’t know what I am being protected from when things don’t go my way. I choose to believe that nature communicates with me. All the time. I choose to believe nature and God communicate with all of us but most people don’t know how to hear it.

Sometimes I get validation of this that is hard to ignore. Like being protected from an accident that would at the very least ruined my weekend and at the very worst been a tragedy.

And do you know how I know this to be true??

A little bird told me. 🙂

(Doug this is for you. ❤️ For missing me. I am back.)

Standard
The gift of a

Breath

I learned a profound Jewish teaching from a Franciscan priest!  🙂
Father Richard Rohr learned it from a Jewish Rabbi and speaks about it often.  It gives me great comfort in my life.

In Judaism the true name of God is not spoken. All the names we use are nicknames. The true name of God consists of 4 Hebrew letters (יהוה) (yud, hey, vov, hey). When these 4 letters are put together there are no consonants.

Many believe that we don’t speak the true name of God because it is taboo or because of the commandment, ‘thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain’.  This is only partially true.

The real reason we do not speak God’s name is because it can not be spoken. The closest word is the sound you make when you inhale and exhale.

Just take a minute to think about this.

God’s true name is the sound of your breath.

Inhale.  Exhale.
Do it again.

You are breathing the name of your maker.

We are alive when we are able to breathe.

Gen 2:7  וייצר יהוה אלהים את־האדם עפר מן־האדמה ויפח באפיו נשמת חיים ויהי האדם לנפש חיה׃

“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul”  http://biblehub.com/lexicon/genesis/2-7.htm

Breath is life.  Breath is The Spark of God within us.  It is also His name and our own personal prayer.

It is our first word uttered when we are born. It is the last thing we say when we die. We pray it all day everyday.   It is unique to each person and free to ALL.  It is our built in ‘fail safe’.  All the times we doubt ourselves and our worthiness, we are breathing our own affirmation.  God has it covered.  It is not required that we believe in it.  It will happen for us regardless.

When ever I am having a hard time.  When I am tired and overwhelmed.  All those times I am not sure I am doing ‘whatever’ right.

All I really have to do is remember to breathe.  It contains all that I need. It is prayer enough, it is life enough, and it is powerful enough to carry us through.  Trust your breath. When you feel especially lost or heartbroken. Just focus on your breath.

Father Rohr offers a beautiful meditation from Psalm 46:10 to lead you back to your breath:

“Be still and know that I am God
Be still and know that I am
Be still and know
Be still”
May your Breath be with you :))
Standard
Uncategorized

Playground bullies 

During a trip to Asheville NC this weekend, we went apple picking.  Golden Delicious, Rome, Black Arkansas and Fuji are a few of the perfect round shades of green to deep red that are weighing down my trunk as we head home.  

Of course we had to stop at the many attractions that flank these beautiful apple orchards, such as the corn maze 


After getting good and lost, back tracking, walking in circles and having our sense of direction generally turned upside down, we stumbled onto a grand playground that could have been a throw back to my childhood.  Home made swings, a giant mountain of hay with tunnels, a large trampoline and climbing ropes.  In other words, lots of risk and danger :))


Kids were running, climbing and jumping  around in utter bliss. 

What prompted this post was what happened on the tunnel swing. 


There were about 10 children of all ages on this attraction.  I was doing what I love best, observing children at play.  

I know that if you give children the freedom to engage in risky play together they handle it quite responsibly, but it is still such a pleasure to watch it first hand. Without knowing each other’s names there was expert cooperation without any one  boss. They took turns pushing and riding without any conversation about it. The older children kept checking in with younger children to see if they needed to slow down or get off. Younger children were watching how the older ones did things and then tried to emulate them.   They ran this swing like a well oiled machine, not the accident waiting to happen, it could have been.  There are many businesses, organizations and adult groups that could learn from this kind of team work. 

Until…

An older woman carried over a small child about 3 years old. He did not walk over on his own. He was not drawn to this swing by his own volition. Probably because it was developmentally beyond his risk taking interest. Yet, she placed him on and proceeded to take over pushing the swing. The other children were quiet and let her take the lead as you would expect of respectful children. She began to push. The other children followed her lead to help her. The small child began to lean. She kept pushing. Then he leaned some more. The woman told him to hold on, still pushing. We all looked at each other knowing what was imminent. The child had a look of fear on his face. Then boom. Sure enough he fell off the swing. 😦 

Now the woman gasped and ran over to pick him up. What she said next did not surprise me one single bit. 

Woman scolding, “You children are pushing it too hard! You shouldn’t be doing that. You are pushing it too hard for little kids! That is why they are going to get hurt!” 

Me, “Actually I disagree. They have been doing a very responsible job of working this swing”

The woman huffed off with her crying grandchild in her arms. 

I reassured the children that they were working hard to be kind to each other and play together. This was not their fault. 

If I could speak to this woman I would advise her to let her grandson pick his own interests to follow on the playground. If and only if, he wanted to ride this swing then he would have been better off with these children helping him. They would have helped him, communicated to make sure he was comfortable and stopped way before he fell all the way off. Having said that, if he had fallen off he would have been helped up and learned a few things about balance and swinging along with a bit of dirt. 

Why do adults show so little respect for children?  Their interests, instincts and abilities? Maybe because we can. 

I have been learning to stand back a little and give children the respect of their own way when appropriate. What I have been given when I do that is the gift of my  greatest teachers. 

After this incident, another boy came over to the swing and began to play. He said, “you know that woman who picked up that child? She is a teacher at my school and she is really mean.”  

Out of the mouths of babes. Enough said. 

Standard
Remembering

The Forgotten Path

photo-6

Why do I get so much joy and satisfaction watching my children play in nature? It is something I have wondered about myself.  One of my favorite activities.  I like to play with them in nature, but honestly, I like sitting back and watching them even more.  I struggle here, to put it into words.

I use the term ‘my children’ loosely as I have taken on 18 other children each week out in the woods.   Watching children in deep play outdoors is something I love.  Why?

Freedom?  I know that when they are unencumbered, outside and unstructured they are free.  Maybe it is the sitting back that is so rewarding.   I move out of their way.  I step back from the telling and the teaching, and create a sacred space for their freedom to step forward.  I love watching where they take it.  There is a deep sense of peace that descends on a creek when children become engrossed in what they and the creek decide to do together.  Two puzzle pieces, the creek and the children, fitting together perfectly and suddenly it all makes sense.  Freedom is definitely an essential ingredient.  Yet…

Wild is the other.

When children set out on their own adventure into wilderness, they are seeking a relationship.  They are looking for connection with each other and me.  But deeper than that, they are seeking connection with the wild.  They know on some soul level that when they find that tadpole and hold it in their hands, it was created in just that way, at just that moment, just for them.  When they are mining for gold in the creek and they find a ‘crystal’, they believe that rock was put there at that moment in time, just for them.   When they sit in their secret hide out, hidden from the rest of us, they are not alone.  They know that this secret spot was created around them, for them.   They don’t seek connection with the man made bridge, as much as, they are drawn to what is flowing and growing and swimming and winding beneath it.  The wild.

img_3193

Two weeks ago when a pouring rain just happened to find us outside looking for adventure, they embraced it as the gift it was.  How could this not have been created just for them?  The joy as they received this gift however they chose, was something I will never forget. Standing back and watching them dance with the wild was my joy.

They went home high.

The next day I heard reports of “the best day ever”.  One child told his special grownup that it was “the best day of his life”.  Then he changed his mind.  “It is the second best day of my life.  The best day was the day I was born.”

I watch this and I remember.  I remember what I was born knowing and then forgot. I remember my own freedom dancing with the wild.  I seek relationship with What created the wild.  I catch a glimmer of conversation with my Creator.

The Forgotten Path.  Children are born into the world knowing this path.  It is not forgotten for them.  By protecting space for them to play on their own path, I remember.  They are my guides.  They teach me how to recall all that I know.  It is as much for me as for them.

img_3247

 

 

 

Standard
made with love

Cocoon of Trees

Chicago 2014.  I sat listening to crickets in the trees one night before our move South.  So much unknown terrain stretched out in front of me.   I remember thinking that only in nature can the deep quiet be so loud.  That is when it happened.

God said to me, “It will be the same.”

What I thought?  What will be the same? It is such a surprise to be spoken to this way.  Not the way we speak to each other, but a knowing, a memory of the conversation.  As if you catch it just after the words are spoken.  It took me a minute to gather my wits.  What just happened?  And then I knew.  I was about to pick up my family and move to another planet.  God was tucking me into the roller coaster ride with a message to hang onto.

“It will be the same.”

The same trees, the same sounds, the same sky, the same.  God will follow me there.  With his majestic creation.  I will be starting over, a stranger, but I will be wrapped in a cocoon of crickets.  The same crickets.  They will sing me this very same song.  The one they have been singing forever.  Since the beginning.  A cocoon of trees.  The same trees.  Green and tall and solid, with roots that connect them in communal unity.  A cocoon of sun and sky.    The same sun filling me up with the essence of myself.  A cocoon of earth and dirt.  The same dirt reminding me of where I come from.  All familiar and the same.  This will be my blanket of comfort in the unease of change.

South Carolina, 19 months later, I stand on my back deck.  It is night and I am listening to the crickets in the trees.  They are the same.  A cocoon of trees tucking me in.

I go to say “good night and thank you.”

I look up at these guardians towering over me.  At that moment it happened again.

IMG_2690

God said, “It is here to take care of YOU, not the other way around.”

I said, “who?”  “what?”  There I was again trying to catch the conversation as if that is possible.

God said, “all of it, but especially the trees.”

I stopped chasing and let it sink in.  “Wow, that changes everything.  What fools we are NOT taking care of them, so they can take care of us.”

I got no response.  Just the wind blowing and the crickets chirping.  The same as always.

No wonder I feel grief when I see a forest felled in a single day.

Long ago, when God made the world for us, trees had legs.  They could walk and run just like us.  This is not in the Torah.  It was inspired by my daughter, Hannah, one day as we hiked through the forest.  Trees traveled from place to place.  Usually, they were making sure we were taken care of.  It was their job.   For thousands and thousands of years this worked.  We loved the trees and they loved us more.   Then about 10,000 years ago, we stopped living in small family clans and started figuring out how to farm the land.  We changed.  We started trying to conquer instead of collaborate.  Everyone wanted to be the boss and nobody wanted to compromise.

We began killing for meanness.  We fought just to fight.  The trees were extremely worried for us.  The Grand daddy trees called a council meeting of all the elders.  They came from all over the world for a once in a million year event.  They wanted to help us.  Trees know only peaceful protest and standing for what you believe in.  Period.  No exceptions.  They decided that they could only lead by example, and it had to be drastic.  That is when it happened.  They stood.  Still.  Forever.  The only travel now is a seed carried by wind, or bird or other avenue of nature.

They are waiting for us.  They stand still in their love for us.  They refuse to move until we change our selfish ways.  Of course, we didn’t get it.  Still don’t.  Will we ever?  We cut them down and they let us!  They just stand silent.  When they fall sometimes a groan slips out, but usually their thunderous fall is all that marks the tragedy.   Then the ones still standing  just continue their watch over us.  A loving example.  Waiting.

I am in a quiet place of my life.  It is hard lonely work to pull up your roots and replant them.  Is this how the butterfly feels?  Tucked into her cocoon.   Wrapped up tight.  Is she quiet and lonely?   Or does she know that it is loving protection for the work of change?   The only way transformation can take place.  Does she know that it is temporary?  Something to cherish for the restorative sleep that it is?  How I want to appreciate this silent stillness.  How I want to become the tree I already am.

I am tucked in my cocoon of trees.  They rock me to sleep and sing me to wake.  If you listen in just the right way, they will tell you things.  Ancient things.  They look down with love and look away with respect.  They hold me safe.  Protecting this time of transformation.  They never lose hope.  They are always the same.  I am the one who needs to change.

 

 

Standard
February 2016

The Day the Angels Disappeared

They would sing to me.  A song with no words, and deeply familiar.  There were so many. Choirs of them.   I would sing with them, and other times I would just sit in awe.   Words fail to describe the power of them.  The closest I can come is JOY, and that is like describing a technicolor  3-D IMAX movie as an old black and white film.  Beautiful, glowing with light, enormous, ethereal?  These words seem insulting when describing them.  How old was I?  I was young enough that I didn’t have words to describe it to anyone, or even think to try.  I assumed it just was.  Didn’t everyone visit with Angels?

When I would go to sleep they would come to me.  Or I would go to them, I am not sure.  The memory is strong yet fuzzy.  Similar to how I see without my glasses.  I can capture most of it and imagine missing pieces, but it always seems to be at a distance.

As a small child, napping was a wonderful place to go.  Sleep something to welcome.  Maybe it was all a dream.  If that is so, then I only had one dream.  The same each time I fell to sleep.  There was no other.

And then one day.

I have two vivid memories.  They happened around the same time, but since memory is fluid, I can’t say for sure.

The first is standing frozen in front of the TV.  My parents had been so excited that a popular children’s movie was airing.  ‘The Wizard of Oz’.  They put it on and probably thought it would give them some much needed adult time to catch up.  They left me to watch by myself.  The witch and the monkeys haunted me for years.  The purposeful meanness, so hard for me to digest.  I couldn’t leave the room and I couldn’t bear to watch.  I was sweating and shaking.  I did not know that feeling before.  Unfortunately, I have known it many times since.  Fear.

The second memory happened chronologically after the first.  Yet, it could have happened the other way around.

I remember going to take a nap.  As soon as my mother left the room a bee landed on my covers and began to slowly crawl towards me.  It was the biggest bee I have still to lay eyes on.  I could not move, or run away or even call for help.  I just lay there sweating and watching.  This horrible, terrifying, hairy monster walking up my covers to where I lay, helpless and horrified.

I don’t know how it ended exactly.  The bee did not harm me.  I just know what happened next.

My mother had to go back to work.  My sister and I were put on a bus in the morning to go to a day care center.   I remember the sick feeling in my stomach.  My younger sister just one and a half years old.  She was screaming and clinging to my mother’s neck.  They peeled her little arms away and strapped her in the van.  I watched my mother get back in the car and drive away.  My sister kept crying.  They told her to stop in a commanding  voice.  She couldn’t.  Her little chest heaving and hiccuping.  The woman driving the bus reached back with a ruler and spanked her legs, telling her more sternly to stop.  She cried harder.  She spanked her again.  It continued back and forth like this until the end of the ride.  Then they took us to separate rooms.   I did not see her again until later, as they put us on cots to nap.  I lay there missing our bright kitchen where my mother and sister and I would sit eating lunch.  I missed riding my tricycle up and down the sidewalk. I missed getting up from my naps to tip toe into the kitchen where my mother would leave fresh bread cooling.  I missed my mother.  I heard my sister crying.  I got up to comfort her.  I needed to get comfort as much as to give comfort.  They caught me before I got to her.  They spanked me and put me back on my cot.  My sister and I had never been spanked before.  No adult had ever struck us.  They told me to stay there and not get up.   I swallowed my sobs as quietly as I could.  I already learned what happened if they heard you cry.  I did not get up again.

The Angels never came back.   I have only seen them again in memory and imagination.

My mother did not stay home anymore.  Day care became our foster care.

The loss was gargantuan.  My whole body would ache at the missing of them.  What did I do wrong?  Why did they leave me?  Please come back!  Some how I knew it was over.  Going to sleep became something else.  I did not welcome naps.  I would run and hide to keep from going to bed at night.  These early memories have been a powerful force shaping my path and direction as an adult and mother.

It took a long time to put all the pieces together.  To understand what happened.  It was simple really.  I came to know forces we must battle here on earth, whether we like it or not; fear, doubt, hatred.  It takes innocent faith to see Angels.  You must trust completely.  Children are born in this pure state, and then life happens.   We spend the rest of our time searching for the way back.

This is not a story I have ever shared with anyone.   No one goes around talking about their experience with Angels.  How do you explain your grief at losing something that people don’t believe exist?   I am not sure if I was even able to share my grief of what happened to my sister and I at the hands of irresponsible cruel caregivers.  If my parents are upset by this I would tell them this was no failure on their part.  In fact, I would argue quite the opposite.  They did something so right.  They were able to protect me from fear and doubt until I had long term memory to store my Angels.

As powerful as those traumatic memories have been in my life, the memories of Angels have been more so.  I have cherished this memory of my Angels all of my life.  Evidence of a power so great and filled with light that words cannot define it.  I wonder if we all are born wrapped in this gift of love.  Meeting with Angels while we sleep.  Easing the transition to a physical world filled with fear and gravity.

In a rather low point in my life, I took a workshop called “The Illuminated Heart”.  One of the exercises within the meditations was to call your Guardian Angel to be with you on the journey.  Focusing on it this way, I felt the presence of something so big and familiar that it brought tears.   I recognized the Angel as being with me all my life, just out of focus and on the periphery.  This realization was a game changer.  I know I may never see Angels again as I did with the clear eyesight of innocent faith.  But I know they are with me always.

I had a conversation with my son, Zeke, this week before he fell asleep.  He had been listening to a story about witches and was having trouble sleeping.  As I searched for how to help him, I shared my story.  It is the first time I think I have shared it with anyone and it prompted me to write about it.  He listened and had many questions about the Angels.  I struggled for words to explain.  He immediately fell asleep.  He slept through the night and awoke to tell me how he had asked his animal friends to help him defeat the witches and bad guys in his dreams.  Maybe he connected with his Guardian Angels.  He walked taller the rest of the day.

In Judaism there is a bedtime prayer that calls 4 Angels to guard you.  It is ancient and meant for protection during the dark night.  I do not know the entire prayer in Hebrew.  Even though it is a prayer that is intended for you to say for yourself, I call the Angels to come guard my children before they go to sleep.  Then I recite, the Shema. I have done this every night for more years than I can remember.

“I call upon you Hashem, put the Angel, Michael on the right, Gabriel on the left, Uriel in the front and Raphael in the back, and above my head the Sh’khinah (Divine Presence) (3x ) Shema Yisrael Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad) (Deuteronomy 6:4)

It is the last thing they hear before they fall asleep.  As I go to sleep, I call the Angels for my children that are now away from home and then myself.  This may not be religiously correct, but it is my way.

I want my children to hear me call the Angels by name, every single night.  In this world, there is a constant battle raging between light and dark.  Between faith and fear.  While we cannot insulate ourselves or our children from the forces of dark, I firmly believe that light and faith are the stronger force.  Just the memory of Angels can be powerful enough to beat back the dark.  Just the possibility of light can give us the hope and courage we need to face down fear.  May your Angels always be close, guiding you and giving you light for the way.

Standard
More time in the woods Part 2

An Afterschool Program

What are your earliest and most powerful play memories?  Mine are outside playing with other children.  If there were adults there at all, they were on the periphery.

Many sleep overs with Debbie and Melody on their farm.  We would play ‘king of the hill’, work on our ‘house’ in the back of an old bus and run through freshly plowed fields of soybeans.  They taught me how to hit a softball.   I learned what an electric fence feels like when you accidentally touch it!  It was a small price to pay to hold the baby pigs.  I saw my first birth as a baby calf came into the world.

Countless days exploring the Sound with my best friend, Betha.  Her backyard was the Inlet Waterway.  Here we were also served up a large dose of freedom.  We were allowed to ride bikes as far as our endurance could take us.  We would take her boat by ourselves to go clamming.  It is the only time I liked the taste of clams.   Maybe dipping them in freedom was the secret sauce.  I felt the vastness of the ocean when the motor quit and we began to drift out to sea.  I lived to tell about it.  Turned out the gas line came loose.  We had the fear, nerves and exhilaration of saving ourselves.

I can’t remember all the weekends I spent playing with cousins on my family’s farm near Chapel Hill, NC.  Spending all day, getting dirty, building forts, climbing trees, playing chase.  Then riding home in an old pick up truck long after the sun went down, starving and unable to feel fingers and toes from the cold.

Then, just about the time girls my age began chasing boys, my Dad gave me a horse.  It was love at first sight!  I pined away for him at school all day until the bus could get me to the barn.  The only way my parents could drag me away was with promises of when I could come back.

And if I was not at any of those places, you could find me at Wrightsville Beach, 10 minutes from my home.  My parents were especially drawn to the ocean.  They took us there in the spring, summer, fall AND winter.  They went for themselves and we got to benefit.

I spent most of my childhood in some kind of natural setting, playing with other children and/or animals, unsupervised.  It was an age of freedom.  You must know deep in your bones what that feels like, before you will care enough to seek and protect it.  I would like to say that I am giving my children the same experience.  Frankly, it is not that easy now.  I have access to wild natural areas.   I take my children there to play.  I arrange play dates.  I would lean towards kicking my children out the door and saying “don’t come back till dark”, but they would be alone.  Those days of children roaming the neighborhood in their free time are over.  Most children are tied up with homework, their electronics or organized after school activities.  Present day parents, including myself, worry about the safety of children roaming unsupervised.  It is a slippery slope because now there are less children allowed to roam unsupervised which makes it less safe!

Has the age of freedom for children passed?  If so, now what?  I won’t accept my children growing up without tasting this delicacy.  Play, in nature, with other children, without adults hovering and directing.

This past fall, I tried an experiment.  Our school has access to a wild wooded area.  They believe in the importance of nature based play.  So with their permission and support, I started an after school program called the ‘Woods Exploration and Adventure Program‘.

I honestly figured it was a way to get what I wanted for my own kids.  I was hoping at least a few kids would sign up.  Much to my amazement it filled to capacity.   It has become the most popular after school activity.   Every single week, I have children asking me to talk their parents into enrolling them.

I am sharing it because it is easier than you think.   Call it a  grass roots movement to ‘re-wild’ our children and detox them from the sedentary virtual adventures of technology.  Let them have some real live adventures of their own.  Let them have at least a taste of the freedom most of us grew up taking for granted.

As I gear up for round two,  I am learning much along the way.   As I watch these children navigate freedom of the forest, I am wondering if we have romanticized the past a bit?  Did the complete freedom of days past come at a cost?  Did children get socially stuck and need help working things out?  Did that lack of a trusted mentor within reach leave kids stuck in roles of bully, bullied, left out, freak…?

I believe we are on the edge of a new age.  One that has the potential to be better than the past.  A hybrid of what was good about freedom for children to play in nature with other children, combined with the kind of mentoring and support that we know benefits their development.  It is free to organize and easy to implement.  Any caring parent can do it.  Here is all you need.

Ingredients:

l.  A wild playground.  Anything from a vacant lot to a backyard to a forest.  Not a planned playground environment.  A natural environment to interact with and explore.  The more ‘loose parts’ the better.

IMG_0617

2.  Mixed age group.  This is important for social emotional development.  Older children become more nurturing when younger ones are present.  Younger children step up to learn from older ones.  Competition is not as fierce as with same age peers.  Valuable learning happens in mixed age play that can not happen otherwise.  A ratio of one adult to 12 children is a good guide.  Yet, you can do it with just one other family on the block too!

3.  Unstructured play.  An adult present as a coach for relationship roadblocks.  The adult does not direct the play, but can participate or stand back and observe without interrupting the flow.  The adult serves as a trusted mentor for children to go to for guidance or comfort.  This is very different from structured activities that children spend more and more time in after school.  Those are adult led and children are told what to play.  They have an important place in teaching skills, but this is child led and created with adult support.  This is a crucial part of developing the ‘whole child’.  Body/mind/spirit.

4.  Enough time.  It takes about 45 minutes or longer for children to work through all the negotiations and whining and boredom to enter into deep play.  Often times, grown ups get annoyed or discouraged and give up too soon.  Two hours is not too long to plan for this activity.  I started with a 1 hour program and it is not enough time.

5.  Risk taking.  Children are allowed to take risks.  By having the freedom to practice taking risks, they learn to assess risk, manage their body in space and test their physical abilities in a way for which they are ready.  The adult is there to spot, if necessary, but not impede risk taking.  If a child is putting themselves or another child in danger, then the adult needs to step in.  If it happens repeatedly or with the intent to harm, this may signal a need for further intervention and removal from the group.  Most children become safer, by beginning to protect and police each other, when they have freedom to take risks.  Parents/teachers/caregivers involved should discuss what they are comfortable with ahead of time so that the group leader has clear guidelines to stay within.

6.  Rules.  Created by the children with help from the adult at the very beginning.  These can be simple.  Ours are:  1. stay safe and 2. have fun.  This covers pretty much everything.

For many thousands of years we have evolved and developed through play based connection with others in a natural world.  Only since the invention of agriculture have we come out of the woods, so to speak.  In the last 200 years we have made progress with lightning speed.  We do not yet know the unintended consequences of today’s sedentary/technology/achievement driven culture on our evolution.  What we do know is that our partnership with nature is a good one and, at the very least,  does no harm.  At the most, it can be therapeutic and reverse some issues that are on the rise in children.  Anxiety, attention disorders, behavior disorders, depression and obesity.  Some where in the middle, it can be preventive medicine.  Providing our children with unstructured play in nature with other children can be a way to take an active role in our very evolution,  balancing our minds and bodies, while we play catch up to our ‘progress’.  It is how we invite our children to fall in love…with nature and their own freedom.

“for we will not fight to save what we do not love”

-Stephen J. Gould

 

 

 

 

 

 

Standard
December 22, 2015

Dear Dad

Today, at age 70, you face surgery to remove the cancer that threatens your life.  I wish I could be there.  Sitting by the phone feels kind of pathetic compared to the endless ways you have been there for me in my life.  Your wish that we not crowd around you hovering and fretting is understandable.  In my helplessness, I  reach for pen and paper.

I just got word from, John (your brother and guardian in this adventure) that they let you WALK to the OR.  No way did they let me do that when I was in your shoes just 18 months ago!   They had me on a gurney whipping down the hall before panic could set in.  Smart, because I probably would have bolted.  This is symbolic of your deep strength to face whatever confronts you in life.  Even the doctors sensed that you would not run away,  no matter what lay behind those doors.

I recently heard Rabbi Lord Jonathon Sacks discuss what the Torah has to say about surviving trauma.    When Sarah died, Abraham was 137 years old.  He had already survived one trauma, the binding of Isaac.  How does a father survive almost sacrificing his only child?  Now his life long partner has died.  Two traumas involving the people he loves the most.  How did he have the strength to survive them?

The Torah says that Abraham, “came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her”.  Then the very next line says, “and Abraham rose from his grief”.  Rabbi Sacks goes on to say that from that point forward Abraham “engaged in a flurry of activity with two aims in mind: first to buy a plot of land in which to bury Sarah, second to find a wife for his son. Note that these correspond precisely to the two Divine blessings: of land and descendants. Abraham did not wait for God to act. He understood one of the profoundest truths of Judaism: that God is waiting for us to act.”

You are like Abraham.  At a very young age you began to carry others.  As much as we love to hear your ‘poor stories’, they are not what a childhood should be.  Then your father died.  All 8 of your siblings would agree that you carried everyone through a horrible trauma.   You let go of your own 20 year old life, dropped out of college, moved home and simply carried them.   How you were able to stand tall and move forward under the weight of this burden, I can’t imagine.

Rabbi Sacks points to modern day mentors who overcame tragedy,.. Holocaust survivors.  Soldiers who liberated the concentration camps talked about how it changed them forever.  How then, did the people who actually survived them cope?  How did they move past such trauma?

Many of them refused to speak about the horrors.  Not to their marriage partners, or children.  Instead, they began to build a new life and a new land.   “They looked forward not back. First they built a future. Only then – sometimes forty or fifty years later – did they speak about the past. That was when they told their story, first to their families, then to the world. First you have to build a future. Only then can you mourn the past.”

I knew growing up, without ever being told, that your father’s death was a forbidden topic.  Suicide.  Even saying it now feels like breaking a code of silence.  You did not speak about it until I was grown.  Mom remembers when you received the call that summer.  You were standing at the table in your apartment where you were both working 2 jobs to get through another year of college.  She says you sat down and dropped your head into your hands.   Then, as soon as your head hit the table you stood  back up and moved on.  You began to take care of what needed to be done.  She never saw you cry.  Not until 20 years later.

I think there may be trauma so great, that to stop and mourn is a luxury you can not afford at that time.  You run the risk of getting stuck there.  “Lot’s wife, against the instruction of the angels, actually did look back as the cities of the plain disappeared under fire and brimstone and the anger of God. Immediately she was turned into a pillar of salt, the Torah’s graphic description of a woman so overwhelmed by shock and grief as to be unable to move on.”    Abraham “set the precedent: first build the future, and only then can you mourn the past. If you reverse the order, you will be held captive by the past. You will be unable to move on. You will become like Lot’s wife.”

I think all these years, I didn’t really understand.  I didn’t understand that you protected us all from the horror and trauma that you had to face.  You did not allow yourself to become lost in the past.  You refused to dwell there.  You went about building a future.  You had to do this in order to survive.  In your quiet way, you and mom got your college education.  You kept your mother and siblings from drowning and brought your own children into the world at the same time.  Even when I went through eye surgery as an infant and you were told I was blind, you did not falter.  You and mom worked and went to classes while never leaving me alone in the hospital for a single minute.  In a time that parents didn’t stay with their children in the hospital, you didn’t leave me alone.

Then, when we were almost grown.  When all involved could stand on their own two feet.   When holding your silence was going to wreck you and the future you had worked so hard to build.  Only then did you look back.  Only then did you mourn the past.  For the first time in my life, I saw you cry.  You did not cry from anger or bitterness, but with grief of a boy abandoned by his father.

Your sacrifice gave me a childhood.  One that was wholesome and carefree.  You made sure I had a strong and loving father to lean on even in my 40’s.  You built me a future.  Then you taught me how to survive.

micah-94

We went for a long walk just a few days ago, and you were already listening for a ‘future calling to you’.  Something left undone.  Something only you could fulfill.  Something meaningful to leave behind.  Something that would secure a future for both your land and your descendants.   Something that you had to beat this cancer so you could build.

Rabbi Sacks explains, “Abraham heard the future calling to him. Sarah had died. Isaac was unmarried. Abraham had neither land nor grandchildren. He did not cry out, in anger or anguish, to God. Instead, he heard the still, small voice saying: The next step depends on you. You must create a future that I will fill with My spirit. That is how Abraham survived the shock and grief. God forbid that we experience any of this, but if we do, this is how to survive.”

I spent my day writing this to you.  (There were a few interruptions and loud children running around)  I can’t say it was my finest parenting hour.  My body was here while my heart was hovering and fretting outside the OR.   You made it through surgery and are resting comfortably tonight.  I am so thankful.  I honestly would not have been surprised if they had reported you walked OUT of the OR after surgery.

Dad, you have faced both tragedy and miracle in your life.  You have faced each with grace and quiet strength.  You have the survivor instinct to get after building a future when faced with trauma.  You are like Abraham.   I will always carry with me an image of you WALKING to the OR today.   It sums up how you live your life.  Walking forward on your own two feet, with quiet dignity and courage to face whatever comes.

Your loving daughter and greatest admirer

Michaux

 

 

 

Standard
making my case for more time in the woods

A Mother’s Manifesto

I want my children to spend more time playing in the woods!   I want them to build forts and climb trees and play wild games of chase and hide and seek.  I want them to co-exist with bugs, ants, spiders and snakes without hyperventilating.

Here is why and what I did about it.

Their school has access to a natural wooded area with a creek running through it.

IMG_1458

Last year Hannah’s teacher took them out here to play.  Not all the teachers felt so comfortable doing this.  The teachers at this school love the children as their own.   A wild wooded area where children run free is intimidating.  The fear of them getting hurt is unbearable.  I understand and appreciate this.  Finding the balance between safety and the need to explore is not always so simple.

So this past August, I helped coordinate an in-service for all the teachers with a naturalist.  We took them out to play and learn in this outdoor classroom.  The following is my letter shared with them, making a case for more time in the woods.

I, Michaux Shaffer, mother of Hannah and Zeke, am here today as a parent representative in full support of my children spending time each day in the woods, regardless of weather, mud, bugs and risk.  I will give you 3 good reasons I feel strongly about this.

  1. Nature is the original multi-sensory learning experience.  It’s got it all.  Children can access, engage and feed all their senses.  It is a full body experience.  This forest is a natural library.  It contains an endless and untapped supply of multi-sensory learning opportunities children can explore at their own pace.  I want my children to have full access to one of our most valuable teachers–mother nature.
  2. Spending time in the natural world benefits not only learning, but the development of the ‘whole child’.  In Chicago access to outdoor movement and play is consistently limited at school by severe weather.  Many times, we begin to better understand the value of something when we see the effects of its absence.  Each winter we lived there, I watched my children grow pasty and weak, losing muscle tone and getting sick often.  My last winter there, the children did not go outside to recess for 3 months straight during an especially cold winter.  Sensory Integration issues, mood, attention and behavior disorders in children that require therapeutic intervention are on the rise.  There is a connection between this rise in serious disorders and children spending less time outdoors.  I saw this first hand in my work as a Marriage and Family Therapist.  It was not just my children who were suffering from lack of outdoor play and movement.  There were many other children who were suffering even more severely than my own.  I saw everything from lacking the core strength to sit up in class, to phobias of, not only dirt and bugs, but the very ground itself!  Not to mention, severe anxiety and depression in younger and younger children.  More and more research is focusing on extended time in nature as a therapeutic intervention alternative for these disorders with amazing results.
  3. My children, Zeke and Hannah.  Richard Louv in his book, “Last Child in the Woods” tells us that fear of the  natural world comes when we disconnect from it.  When children develop a personal relationship with nature, they become stewards of the earth.  One of the core values in Judaism is Tikkun Olam (repair the world).  I would like to find as many ways as possible for my children to uncover their power to repair the world around them.  I want my children to learn about habitat restoration and benefit from the therapeutic effects of spending time in a natural and wild habitat.  Last year, Hannah loved going to school more than I have ever seen her.  I asked her what gave her that spring in her step?  She thought for a minute and replied simply, “the woods”.  So I joined them one day at recess to see first hand what she was loving so much.  I witnessed a high level of imaginative play and movement in all different planes of motion.  Running, jumping, balancing, lifting etc.  I tried to keep up with them to video their play.  I run on trails regularly.  I consider myself somewhat fit.  I could not keep up.  They were able to move quickly over and under very technical terrain and through tight spaces.  Aside from being a workout that could stand up in any ‘cross fit’ gym across the country, these are all kinds of movement and sensory experiences that an OT would prescribe for children with sensory issues.  In a country where childhood obesity is on the rise, I can’t imagine a more beneficial way to get children moving.  I also observed that the freedom to take risks, climbing and jumping had significantly developed their judgment and ability to navigate this natural space, therefore, making them safer in the process.  When they were showing me how they climb on a ‘climbing wall’ of vines, I asked if they could go any higher?  They responded, “no” that they had learned through experience that to go higher was to risk pulling the vines down and falling.  Play researcher, Peter Gray, in his book, “Free to Learn” writes that when children and animals are given freedom to take risks in play they don’t just jump off rooftops to risk their lives.  They become scientists.  They systematically take calculated risks that they can handle, exposing themselves to levels of danger and fear that test themselves, and then incorporate what they learn.  This means that they will get dirty and fall down.  But it also means they will develop safer judgement and increased body awareness and control.  Allowing children to take risks makes them safer!  Zeke is a great example of this.  He has already had 2 concussions, a broken foot and stitches in his chin.  In his stuntman personality he takes more physical risks than most children.   I  have learned through experience, that if I do not let him learn HOW to fall, he will be in much greater danger down the road.  He is, by far, the most skilled ‘mover’ in our family.  He has astounding skill, body awareness and control of his body in space that makes him more coordinated, mobile and SAFE than most children his age.  I want my children to have access to this natural playground so they can take these calculated risks, test themselves and become safer in the process. 

We know that it is crucial for children to have time to move, play and explore.  But when we give them this, in combination with the natural world, we take out an insurance policy of sorts for the future.  For their future and the future of their world.

I want my children to spend time in the woods getting messy, taking risks, repairing their world and experiencing ‘full body learning’.  I believe this is how we support the development of safer, smarter, happier, healthier kids. 

Please share this with anyone and everyone that you feel could benefit from it. 

Yours Warmly–Michaux Shaffer

Standard