Teach your children well

Iona drew this - she is the angel and I am the small child.



Alice meets up with the caterpillar and asks him which way she should go, he says well where do you want to be and she replied that she did not really know to which he responded in that typical fashion of someone with many many legs, that it did not matter which way she went in that case.

I have been in the salt mines of late.
I am blessed with this amazing girl child who is the most spontaneous, alive, zestful, playful being imaginable.
Once she went through a phase that lasted a few weeks where she developed a story about death. She started really experiencing pain. I mentioned to her that her pain body was taking control and explained what was happening. She understood immediately and now kicks it out before it kicks in.

So here we have radiance and here we have her mother.
Her mother who perhaps spends too much time in front of this flat screen with changing words and images.
And from these words and images, a world is created and it is a world that totally evokes the pain body into action.
And not only that but it sort of flushes this mother with a vague sense of superiority that she is aware of things that her friends in the pub on Friday night are not.
She is also unbelievably cynical and because the emotional roller coaster of keeping up with “the world” and it’s happenings are exhausting she tends to avoid taking up Iona’s offer to pick up pecan nuts, or to build a hide out.
When this mother does (by pure grace, not by intention) find herself being together and baking or such, it is such joy that the question arises, why don’t I do this more often?

And yet the magnet switches on and I am sucked into this sphere which I consider to be as real as this table, but switch it off and it does not exist, remove a cable and that whole world disappears. So how real can it be? And how is my presence here benefiting anything. I mock the Fox viewers for their blind adoration and following, I just happen to have the same blind following to the alternative source of news.
Does that make me a better human being?
I don’t think so.
Last week, or should I say when the moon was full and sleep evaded me I headed down to the lounge to stir the fire back into life. I found some pictures Iona had been drawing and then some writing that she had done. A seven year old wrote this, (translation to follow):
sum peepil say that the woild will cum to u end. Wee ar bee coming cleveru bi maykin things bit wee ont uwar ubaout the plooshin for the woild when makin thins. And wee shod start wokin together lyk bees and the umerocins ur beeg priks. To hulp the woild hyuris ulitil sayn I madup. Work togeeth for ur world s
hulth.

Some people say that the world will come to an end. We are becoming cleverer by making things but we don’t worry about the pollution for the world when making things. And we should start working together like bees and the Americans are big pricks. To help the world here is a saying I made up: “Work together for your world’s health”.

Okay so I follow the Waldorf principal and we don’t take spelling seriously at this stage. But what did surprise me was this child wrote this piece on her own initiative and what concepts had I placed in her realm.
I made the older kids watch zeitgeist and write essays on it. . I also read to them a blog that Nina mentioned “After Armageddon” and they had to write essays about what they had seen and read and she obviously picked up on it.

And then it occurred to me that I had, through these actions led them to hold the belief that not only were the Americans arseholes but that they were also separate from the rest of the world and were single handedly destroying it.
As I mentioned earlier remove the power from the computer and it ceases to be a source of information.
Remove the concept of evil American and it ceases to be anything but a geographical phenomena rising from the ocean of untold beauty and potentiality.
Some of the most beautiful, expansive people I know are Americans.

Here I am teaching my children, polarity, division, separation, superiority, inferiority and fear. And as hard as I tried to compact this into my pipe I could not get it to ignite. It could just not sit with me. I mean obviously it was not a mistake, nothing is. Everything that happens happens because it is meant to happen. It could look like a travesty, a crime, whatever, but it happens because it is the play of life. Arising from emptiness and dissolving into the same.

Tomorrow I can assure you I will loose this pink fluffy acceptance I will say fuck that it’s bullshit, it is a travesty etc. etc.

So not judging the situation but at the same time mind tries to find an alternative.
How about I give up trying to teach the kids “about the world”. How would it be if I left them to directly experience whatever arises without trying to fit into my view of life. My tainted lens.
Would it be possible? Is it their destiny? Who knows.

What has happened is that I have rediscovered the joys of picking up and discovering the pecan nuts as they nestle under the fallen autumn leaves.
I have discovered the joy of putting mattresses on the lawn in the gentle winter sun and watching the clouds change character and dimension with the varying temperatures of the day.
Watching the leaves dance their way to their deaths. Noticing how some will stay alight for just that much longer.
Listening to the birds and their ever present calls to each other.
Planting broccoli, parsnips, potatoes, coriander and lettuce (blessed winter climate that one can still grow).
Tickle the kids backs.
Make up stories.
Discover how to make apple crumble with quinces.
How to make cashew nut milk.
How to ride my bicycle with no hands.
Teaching the kids to drive.
Drawing with Iona. Explaining to her that everything is perfect. That every person is completely whole and divine. That nothing needs to change.
And in this space it is so completely true….

Until I come back to this Pandora’s box.
And even that is perfect.
You can’t get away from the fact that everything is exactly as it should be.
How beautiful is that.