Morning, and living now (was Re: Seeking some encouragement...)
[email protected]
In a message dated 4/16/2005 12:54:13 PM Mountain Daylight Time,
rws@... writes:
I thought that I clearly articulated why I am talking about it. It's going
on in my family right
now.
Not with an unschooler.
Not with a child whose parents did all the things people on this list do and
recommend doing and explain at length repeatedly about how and why.
-=-Perhaps you can dismiss it as unworthy of my speculation, but I can
not.-=-
We can try to reassure you (have) and you can continue to cling to wild
fears.
It would be better if you tried to live in this moment rather than in
reaction to a fantasy of a possible ten-years-hence. If you live in the
ten-years-maybe-horrible future, you WILL do worse in this moment than you could and
should do if you were in this very second in communion with your daughter.
BEING with her. Being with her where she is emotionally and intellectually.
Being with her where she is in wonderment and enjoyment. She might not even be
alive in ten years. It's spring. There are newnesses of all sorts to her
right now outside in your yard or neighborhood. Bugs and flowers and buds and
blossoms you might have seen every year for 30 years, 40 years, but she
might not ever have seen, or might not remember from last year. It's not heroin.
It's not marijuana. It's not illicit sex. It's today, April, 2005,
morning.
This reminds me of something that would help you be at peace and in hope:
_http://www.homeedmag.com/HEM/HEM154.98/154.98_clmn_unschl.html_
(http://www.homeedmag.com/HEM/HEM154.98/154.98_clmn_unschl.html)
Here's the text (with the correction of a glitch; I'll probably move it to
one of my own pages so I can fix that):
July-August 1998 - Columns
Unschooling - Sandra Dodd
Morning
At your house it will be morning again within 24 hours, but it could be
morning in your heart any second.
Somewhere in the world it is morning every moment. Somewhere, light is
dawning. Some people, and I'm one of them, believe that any portal to the universe
leads to the whole universe, and if that's true we should be able to get to
everything in the whole wide world (and beyond) without much effort from
something as small as, say, the definition of a word. How about "morning" and its
particulars--daybreak, dawn and sunrise?
Every day the sun comes up (unless you're in the Arctic or Antarctic, in
which cases your sun-mileage may vary). Every day is a new opportunity. People
say that all the time: "It's the dawning of a new day." If you just let those
thoughts and truths go by, you're missing something important that happens
365 days a year (sometimes with a bonus round). Don't miss important things
like opportunities for renewal and change. At your house it will be morning
again within 24 hours, but it could be morning in your heart any second.
"The morning of the world," someone might say, meaning just as the world was
new and bright. From this we and our children can talk about and learn about
poetry and figurative speech. "The morning of his life..." when likening a
lifetime to a day, with its own first light, eventual afternoon, and twilight.
These are common references. "In Queen Victoria's day..."
At our wedding my friends and relatives all sang "Morning Has Broken," and
it was the morning of our lives together. Later that day we had three
children. Well, later meaning over the next six and a half years. Sometimes time
passes slowly, and sometimes it speeds by, and there is a lesson in focus, and in
flow, and in biochemistry.
Some people collect bugs, or rocks, or videotapes. It's cheaper and easier
to collect words. If you have a name which is a noun, like "Lynn" or "Holly"
or "Gill" you've probably developed an ear for hearing it and an eye for
seeing it in various contexts and have probably looked it up in dictionaries and
name books to see how old it is. This can be done with morning and joy and tree
and wind. I should have put quotation marks on those, "morning" and "joy"
and so forth, to show that I mean the word morning, not the thing-in-the-sky
morning. Now we're talking about punctuation, the mechanics of writing, and the
branch of philosophy called ontology, about what "being" is-is the word
"morning" part of morning itself? Is morning inside my head? Where does a "real"
morning end and just talking and thinking about morning start? Can you prete
nd morning?
You can spend $20 on a Mensa-approved plastic puzzle, or a book of mind-
bending questions, or you can just look out the window, name things, and think.
You can play with a dictionary, ask each other odd questions, and look up the
answers. It's the thinking that counts, the idea-getting, the biochemical
ping when the light of a new concept dawns in your mind.
When people begin homeschooling, that's a big bright morning, but you can
have as many mornings as you need. If you want to change the way you're being
or thinking, just do it. Don't wait for another year, another month, another
day. Good morning!
© 1998 Sandra Dodd
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
rws@... writes:
I thought that I clearly articulated why I am talking about it. It's going
on in my family right
now.
Not with an unschooler.
Not with a child whose parents did all the things people on this list do and
recommend doing and explain at length repeatedly about how and why.
-=-Perhaps you can dismiss it as unworthy of my speculation, but I can
not.-=-
We can try to reassure you (have) and you can continue to cling to wild
fears.
It would be better if you tried to live in this moment rather than in
reaction to a fantasy of a possible ten-years-hence. If you live in the
ten-years-maybe-horrible future, you WILL do worse in this moment than you could and
should do if you were in this very second in communion with your daughter.
BEING with her. Being with her where she is emotionally and intellectually.
Being with her where she is in wonderment and enjoyment. She might not even be
alive in ten years. It's spring. There are newnesses of all sorts to her
right now outside in your yard or neighborhood. Bugs and flowers and buds and
blossoms you might have seen every year for 30 years, 40 years, but she
might not ever have seen, or might not remember from last year. It's not heroin.
It's not marijuana. It's not illicit sex. It's today, April, 2005,
morning.
This reminds me of something that would help you be at peace and in hope:
_http://www.homeedmag.com/HEM/HEM154.98/154.98_clmn_unschl.html_
(http://www.homeedmag.com/HEM/HEM154.98/154.98_clmn_unschl.html)
Here's the text (with the correction of a glitch; I'll probably move it to
one of my own pages so I can fix that):
July-August 1998 - Columns
Unschooling - Sandra Dodd
Morning
At your house it will be morning again within 24 hours, but it could be
morning in your heart any second.
Somewhere in the world it is morning every moment. Somewhere, light is
dawning. Some people, and I'm one of them, believe that any portal to the universe
leads to the whole universe, and if that's true we should be able to get to
everything in the whole wide world (and beyond) without much effort from
something as small as, say, the definition of a word. How about "morning" and its
particulars--daybreak, dawn and sunrise?
Every day the sun comes up (unless you're in the Arctic or Antarctic, in
which cases your sun-mileage may vary). Every day is a new opportunity. People
say that all the time: "It's the dawning of a new day." If you just let those
thoughts and truths go by, you're missing something important that happens
365 days a year (sometimes with a bonus round). Don't miss important things
like opportunities for renewal and change. At your house it will be morning
again within 24 hours, but it could be morning in your heart any second.
"The morning of the world," someone might say, meaning just as the world was
new and bright. From this we and our children can talk about and learn about
poetry and figurative speech. "The morning of his life..." when likening a
lifetime to a day, with its own first light, eventual afternoon, and twilight.
These are common references. "In Queen Victoria's day..."
At our wedding my friends and relatives all sang "Morning Has Broken," and
it was the morning of our lives together. Later that day we had three
children. Well, later meaning over the next six and a half years. Sometimes time
passes slowly, and sometimes it speeds by, and there is a lesson in focus, and in
flow, and in biochemistry.
Some people collect bugs, or rocks, or videotapes. It's cheaper and easier
to collect words. If you have a name which is a noun, like "Lynn" or "Holly"
or "Gill" you've probably developed an ear for hearing it and an eye for
seeing it in various contexts and have probably looked it up in dictionaries and
name books to see how old it is. This can be done with morning and joy and tree
and wind. I should have put quotation marks on those, "morning" and "joy"
and so forth, to show that I mean the word morning, not the thing-in-the-sky
morning. Now we're talking about punctuation, the mechanics of writing, and the
branch of philosophy called ontology, about what "being" is-is the word
"morning" part of morning itself? Is morning inside my head? Where does a "real"
morning end and just talking and thinking about morning start? Can you prete
nd morning?
You can spend $20 on a Mensa-approved plastic puzzle, or a book of mind-
bending questions, or you can just look out the window, name things, and think.
You can play with a dictionary, ask each other odd questions, and look up the
answers. It's the thinking that counts, the idea-getting, the biochemical
ping when the light of a new concept dawns in your mind.
When people begin homeschooling, that's a big bright morning, but you can
have as many mornings as you need. If you want to change the way you're being
or thinking, just do it. Don't wait for another year, another month, another
day. Good morning!
© 1998 Sandra Dodd
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]