Sacred Refuge

After taking note of Shannon Hayes' book in the New York Times article, The Femivore's Dilemma, this morning I read a fabulous review of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture.  I've been feeling empowered all day.  Surely, having my existence validated feels good, but that's only a tiny piece of it.  It's more that I've been reminded that I'm not alone in my endeavors to make my home a sacred refuge from economic materialism.  

Throughout the day my thoughts returned to the women I'm honored to know... supra-ordinary mamas who are redefining feminism by simplifying their lives and setting their heart's compass to ecological sustainability, social justice, and family well-being.  In some ways, it feels like the mamas of today have given birth to a new paradigm for femininity.  We've discovered that life outside the office doesn't mean a four walled torture chamber of bon bons and casseroles.  We know what road blind servitude and mindless consumerism takes us down and we're choosing a new path.

I don't think radical homemaking would be possible without the blood and sweat of our feminist sisters who paved the way... and I wouldn't want to stay home if our culture was as patriarchally backwards as it was 50 years ago.  Does this suggest a return of the Sacred Feminine?  Maybe our world is finally beginning to realize that internalizing our female half practically tipped the earth off of her axis. 

With my inner-goddess invoked, our school day felt like a downhill slalom.  I woke up before dawn and sat in meditation for an hour, then spent the sunrise in Surya Namaskara with the Gāyatrī Mantra.  Full of sunbeams and universe juice, it was time for tending to seedlings, plants, and compost, then a slow-paced, mindful breakfast, lesson planning, and organizing artwork into portfolios. 

The highlights of our day included:

a little Greek Mythology...
with the story of Persephone, Goddess of Spring and Queen of the Underworld, from The Lady of Ten Thousand Names: Goddess Stories from Many Cultures retold by Burleigh Muten.  

a silly tongue twister...

Swan swam over the sea

Swim swan! Swim!

Swan swam back again

Well swum swan!

... writing some sentences:

Six swans swim swiftly.

Seven sisters sleep soundly.

Silver stars shine in the sheltering sky.

... spelling our S words in song:

s-e-v-e-n, s-e-v-e-n, s-e-v-e-n, that's how we spell seven!

... an introduction to the second spoke of the dharma wheel, right intention - in Pali samma sankappa:

The Buddha explained right intention as threefold: the intention of renunciation, the intention of good will, and the intention of harmlessness.

... a little piano practice perfecting

a Samba!

Then it was time for a piano lesson, a ballet class, and the park with daddy.  Still, the best part of the day was our continued seeking of spring.  We're blessed to live in a warm little corner of the universe and everywhere we turned, Persephone's work abounded.  Too beautiful for words, I'll close here with some pictures.

cherry blossoms aflame

almost like a lotus unfurling

rosemary gone wild

seedlings sprouting...

 and shining in the sun

baby leaves being born on our favorite oak

welcome little leaves!

spring heralds popping up in the fairy garden

snow peas smiling

and the sweet taste of dew drops!


(support the author and buy Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture direct!)

S is for Spring

With one week to go, signs of spring abound and, by yet another sweet synchronicity, we began our letter S unit this week.  

We use Fry's 300 Instant Sight Words for our weekly words.  With a total of 30 S Words on the list, we decided to split it in half and give the letter S two weeks instead of one.  This week's words were: spring, said, see, she, so, stand, such, some, saw, say, school, seem, shall, should, soon, and sure.  Instead of a written spelling test this week, we elected for something more fun.  After singing all of the words all week, we had a family Spelling Bee on Saturday.  I'm proud to report that A. is becoming quite a fantastic little speller. 

Some of other S things we enjoyed this week were Spring's Sprung by Lynn Plourde, beautifully illustrated by Greg Couch, learning to play a Samba on piano, Book 10 in Scholastic's Planet Earth Phonics Reading Program - Snakes, and committing to memory eight math facts we called "sister sums" where we matched doubles (like 4+4 and 6+6) with other math facts (like 5+3 and 7+5).

Still, the highlights of our week were welcoming spring in our outdoor classroom.  We've been closely watching the trees in our area give birth to blossoms and baby leaves.  Our neighbor's Flowering Cherry is aflame with pink blossoms, our winter daphne is full and sweet smelling, the manzanita are covered in tiny white flowers, our snow peas are thriving, and our tomato and jalapeno seedlings are now three inches tall with water droplets always glistening on their primary leaves.

With the sun's return, and our studies turned to the letter S, it seemed like a perfect time for sun salutations... a moving prayer of gratitude to the life-giving energy of the sun.  Sun salutation, Surya Namaskar, links together twelve asanas in a dynamic flow.  Beginning the day with a set in each of the four cardinal directions wakes up our bodies, gets out the wiggles, and as Christopher Key Chapple, a professor of Indic and comparative theology at Loyola Marymout University says in this month's Yoga Journal, "calls us to stretch our minds and spirits to the corners of the universe, allowing us to feel the vast expanse of the cosmos within the movement of our bodies."

The ability to sense the cosmos within our body is something I hope my munchkin is cultivating through our at-home studies.  It comes when we slow down, when we put some space between our habitual responses and our actions, and when we take care to spend time with the natural world.  

Watching tiny blossoms sprout from barren winter branches reminds me that spring is a promise the earth keeps each year.  Sensing the birth of that promise within myself gives me a deep peace -- a trusting feeling in my heart.  There is a surrender, a certain acceptance, in this trusting... a calmness of spirit that informs each day with joy.


Tomorrow we'll begin eight more sister sums, fourteen new S words, sing a silly swan tongue twister, and continue seeking spring.  Tonight, I'm settling down with my family for a Sunday night in stillness.

Dependent Snow-arising

Living in California means rain in the winter so when it started snowing on Friday morning, we adjusted our schedule to incorporate a little of nature's magic.  The flurries started just as we were about to begin our Letter O spelling test.

"Mama, can we please go outside and play in the snow?"

At first, I resisted.  Then it really started coming down and sticking to ground.

"Mama, please can we go outside?  We never get snow!"

By now it was covering our yard in a soft, white blanket.  Knowing that the flurries wouldn't last, I gave in, threw my coat on her, and we ran outside in our flannel pajamas.

While I was eager to explain that snowflakes are a particular form of ice that form in clouds which consist of water vapor, Amelie was eager to touch, taste, and smell each delicate flake.  At this age, the technical definitions aren't as valuable as the experience itself. Still, the very fact that a snowflake's shape arises in relation to its environment is a lesson I couldn't resist. 

Each little flake reflects the internal order of the water molecules and, like everything else, is determined by infinitely varying external circumstances.  Nothing in this world, including us, has completely inherent, autonomous existence.  Everything is dependent on and relational to something else and everything we do, every action we take, has a reaction somewhere else.  In Sanskrit this is called pratītyasamutpāda.  In English it's dependent co-arising... or in this case, dependent snow-arising!  When we see the world this way, we create an opportunity for the meaning of our lives to reach beyond ourselves and into a selflessness which links us with all humanity. 

John Muir spoke of this interdependence when he said, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."  For a beautiful example involving water crystals, check out the EMOTO PEACE PROJECT. 

I couldn't think of a better way to discuss interconnectedness with a little one than comparing us to snowflakes. Our form, inside and out, is shaped by the world around us.  Our thematic unit in October was Pratītyasamutpāda, so she's had an intro to the subject already... but experiential learning, the snow itself, is the greatest teacher.

In so many ways, we're just like those snowflakes.  Infinitely affected by everything else.  Feeling the flakes falling gently on our faces reminded us that snow it just our own limitless being smiling back at us.  After all that oneness with the earth, it was time for that spelling test.  Somehow, I think this was the least important part of the day.  Amelie spelled nine out of ten words correctly and we ended our week with a new O word: snow.