Mystery School Monday: Bee with me.

We kicked off this homeschool week with the dawning of the New Wind Moon.  April's cold breeze is intermittently ferrying snow flakes between budding trees yet spring is undeniably in the air.  There's nary a peep of "I Hate Mondays!" at the Warthog School, in fact, it is Baanko's favorite day of the week thanks to what she has deemed "Mystery School Monday".  Emulating a friend she made on last week's nature walk she showed up to the table bright eyed and bushy tailed - ready to make magic.

I had sketchy notes about the wind moon in my folder, words like; inhalation, inspiration  (via poetry in particular), and intention.  I had the ecoliteracy principle "making the invisible, visible" underlined and a list of project ideas to explore just that kind of magic; kites, wind chimes, and bubbles.  I had a loose lesson plan to ride this moon cycle all the way to the doorstep of our next seasonal festival - May Day.  After winter's long nap we need activities to re-awaken and engage our all of senses in time to really enjoy our annual "5 Senses Feast" on May 1st. 


Nudged by routine, Baanko and I started the morning with intention not just for the day but for the whole new 28 day lunar cycle.  We added to our magic spell-ing books the latin root inspirare and explored the beauty and power of poetic language and rhyming words.  From Dr. Seuss to Emily Dickinson it is no news to a child that expressing oneself through either gorgeous and grandiose imagery or rollicking rhythm and rhyme is the secret to casting a spell.  They feel the natural enchantment of poetry and follow it like a darting dragon fly, their own creativity being drawn out of them along the way.


With Earth Day celebrations awaiting us at week's end as well as the fast approaching deadline for public comment period on the EPA's decision about bee-killing pesticides we found ourselves at the table with Emily Dickinson and her appreciation of bees. We read and re-read several times, “Bee, I’m expecting you!”

Bee! I'm expecting you!
Was saying yesterday
To somebody you know
That you were due -

The frogs got home last week -
Are settled, and at work -
Birds, mostly back -
The clover warm and thick -

You'll get my letter by
The seventeenth; Reply
Or better, be with me -
Yours, Fly.

Baanko’s reflections were about expectation and her thoughtful words stung a little as they initiated me into her perspective.  She focused on why the bee wasn't back yet.  A reality that I know too well could come to pass along with all of its implications to the food supply.  Sticking to David Sobel's suggestion "no catastrophies until grade 4" I've sheltered her from the realities of extinction - both the bees and our own.  Daily I see the wisdom of Sobel's protective bubble - her natural affinity for life really deserves more time to wonder and sing in concert with the meadow.  Through our nature explorations she revels in what are essential nutrients for a seven year old: feelings of kinship, seeing and being seen, and mattering to those with whom you share in community so much so that your cycles are anticipated and expected. 


Baanko's world is a beautiful place in which everything, all of it, is magic.  I don't think she would be a bit surprised if on one of our walks in the forest we stumbled onto Baba Yaga's house spinning and dancing about on its chicken legs.  I also think such an event would be on par, regarding its ability to provoke awe and wonder, with our recent experience of the cat tails near the pond all releasing their fluff in unison.  Were we caught in the midst of nature's miraculous process of wind pollination or was Mother Holle up in the sky shaking out her down pillows again?  It was legitimately up for debate.  For her natural magic and fairy tale magic are still one in the same.
   
I sighed as we walked (well, she skipped) to mail our impassioned pleas for the bees.  If only it were as easy as performing the type of magic portrayed in fairy tales to make a love spell for the masses, one large enough to save it all: the bees, the butterflies, the breeze, amen. 

I held back what I felt rise in my soul as I dropped the letters in the box.  My favorite words from Emily Dickinson are not the ones I'm willing to share with her.  Not yet.

"Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it."

Mother's Nature Journal: Jane's Message of Hope

In the world, in person, you have the opportunity to hear or see the lessons that aren't captured in a photograph or an article because they lie outside another's expectation of what will be important.  I have found that the most powerful learning moments of my life have been unbelievably subtle and quick. If I had not been "all-in" with my senses I would have missed some of the most important nuggets of wisdom to be gleaned.  Last October I had one of those treasured moments.  It glinted in the noon day sun near the end of the "Roots and Shoots Celebration of Service" event that we were attending in San Francisco.

It had been a truly peak experience.  Jane Goodall not only took the time to meet and listen to each and every one of us as we presented our service projects but she then spent forty five minutes delivering an inspiring talk.  It was a windfall of nourishment for my exhausted mother/mentor heart.

The quicksilver learning moment happened when Dr. Goodall came down from the stage after delivering her inspiring "Jane's Message of Hope."  Members of her organizations were in the wings, her son and grandson were in her audience along with a field full of children and their teachers.  She was leaving the stage alone and already lunch boxes were being zipped up, children's voices were unhushed and their bodies had been set free.  I sat firmly, eyes forward, processing everything that I had just heard.  Like many women, Jane Goodall has been a "shero" of mine since I was a little girl.  Her words, both to me personally and to the Roots and Shoots audience, were charged with agency.  Jane Goodall is spending her eighth decade of life, a life of enviable focus and purpose, in non-retirement empowering the next generations to embrace, with hope, the overwhelmingly and super-heroic task of saving the earth.  She didn't use those words.  Her podium moments (from what I've witnessed) don't reverberate with the charisma of a self-help speaker nor are they charged with the sharpness of an  expertise that has been jaded by exhaustion.  Her podium moments are a deep and grounded pool of personal, processed story that, in my experience, have a truly transformative effect on the listener.  As I sat staring at the now empty stage I was taking in the fact that I had just had my first real life experience of "being graced" by someone's presence.

And that is when I saw it.  Holding the handrail of the stage staircase as she exited alone she stopped half way down and paused.  A long pause.  A pause long enough for me to recognize the experience: She was taking in an awesome vista.  From how she stood, and more tellingly the soft and open expression on her face, we were kin to an epic sunset, a stunning desert in bloom, or an expanse of rainforest canopy.  We were worth taking in, savoring, and she recognized it.  And I was watching a master observer execute her craft:  the art of looking - and really seeing - what one is looking at.

Having a child that struggles with distractibility, as well as being raised a girl child in a culture that is more comfortable looking at women than really seeing them, I have special antennae for noticing people that actually SEE, observe, and wonder about what is right in front of them (a phone on selfie setting excluded).  Such seeing is a capability that I fear current cultural trends (in particular self-focused social media) are pushing towards endangered status.

Since October I've come back to her moment on the stairs countless times.  What was she seeing?  Our future, her audience, in rapt attention ready to be activated into agents of change?  Or, are we already a field of narcissists who have become too rooted in our own self-absorption to make a move.

She told us that day that what she sees on the horizon is hope.  It is grounded in her years of observing nature, in particular, its regenerative quality.  She marveled about how she has seen nature recover back to a point of flourishing if given the chance.

Since Jane Goodall's talk we've found Project Drawdown - a practical place to put that hope into action.  We've signed up for the Drawdown EcoChallenge that begins tomorrow and runs through Earth Day later this month.  For Team Warthog School we're celebrating Jane Goodall's eight-fourth birthday by taking a stand - one I first discovered in David Orr's essay "Hope in Hard Times":

     "I once put a poster on my office door that showed a large owl bearing down on its prey, talons outstretched, eyes full of malevolence.  At the bottom center, with its back to the viewer, a tiny mouse stood at rigid attention, right arm raised, with its middle digit fully extended: on the brink of eternity, no philosophy, no art, no words, no resignation, no apparent fear, no solutions, no squiriming, just defiance. People would stop, look at it, and always laugh - not out of hard-heartedness, I think, but because they saw something of themselves in that mouse.  We laugh at Peter Sellers similarly: Who cannot see themselves in the loony pretensions of Chief Inspector Clouseau, or Wily Fox, for that matter?  In our situation, this is gallows humor that admits the end is nigh but offers not solution, no finest final hour, just a certain style of exit.
     There is another kind of humor, however, that goes deeper and offers a more hopeful stategy in the face of dire possibilities.  Joseph Meeker describes this as "the comedy of survival".  Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl called it "a tragic optimism".  True comedy is not so much about jokes and laughter but rather about the recognition and acceptance of our limitations and foibles, right down to our reptilian brainstem.  It is, in Frankl's words, "Saying yes to life in spite of everything," including those limitations.  We are a spindly legged upstart species, a precocious and horribly immature primate family full of remarkable abilities and grandiose pretensions, with a bloody and destructive past."  

Today, standing on those spindly legs we are choosing the position of tragic optimism rather than gallows humor.  I am committed to teaching our children how to really see what they are looking at and to not shrink away from what they observe but rather to have the courage to say yes to life in spite of it all.  The sense of renewed hope that Jane Goodall shared with us last October was an invaluable gift.  I am hoping, that our commitment to act this April will serve as both a birthday and a thank you gift to her. 

Happy Birthday Dr. Goodall and thank you.

We would love for you to join us by either joining our team or by creating your own to inspire and challenge us through the month long eco-challenge.   

Spring Quarter: Mystery School Mondays

It took me about a month to process the unexpected shift in students at The Warthog School.  It was a whirlwind that lifted our son, on excited yet anxious wings, to his new school this past January.  Never have I seen someone so rise to the question we pose every blue moon, "What would you do just once in a blue moon?"  A boy who vowed never to step foot into a classroom again suddenly dreamed up a dream that left us breathless.  Like everything about him the transition was intense.  Yet he declared and delivered on his dream.  He is now a proud and happy member of our local village school.  Winter's quickening has passed and in its place I quite literally see spring in his step.  He is alight with inspiration, readiness, passion, and joyousness.

After he flew our nest I spent about two weeks working on "what comes next" for me.  My first action item was to begin my Raising The Red Tent blog.  It is a project that I have patiently waited for the opportunity to embrace.  Our son opened a door out into the world so I dashed out behind him.  It was a glorious and indulgent two weeks of engagement.  I wrote, I created intentions, I sent invitations, I met with other moms to talk about the vision... I felt aligned with authentic self and purpose in this new (yet familiar) direction.  It was a late January flurry of excitement so enchanting that I forgot to close the door behind me.  And, as winter's wind will do, she gusted an unexpected guest seeking shelter back through the threshold of The Warthog School.  Before I could blink, and taking me by complete surprise, my next student had arrived.  Our daughter was standing in front of me with her heels dug in.

"It's my turn." She said with eyes that expected compliance.

Although I felt the tug of everything else I was just beginning there was no way to deny or ignore it.  Yes. Absolutely.  It's her turn.

It's her turn in our family.  It's Her turn in our culture.

Growing up alongside a sibling with behavioral special needs I've tracked the signs of what I know she's at high risk for: second fiddle.  I've been on the look out for the tell tale signs of self-diagnosed less-importance.  Accommodation.  Stuffing of needs.  Over-compliance.  The "It's OK, it doesn't matter" approach to conflict resolution.  She's got a blush of them all already which made her defiant stand a breath of fresh air.  I'm relieved that she is ready to be first chair. 

And with that, The Warthog School was called back into session for spring quarter.  We are already off and running and you can follow all of our adventures in holistic, nature-based learning here.  If you do, you will hit a weekly intersection of our two blogs.  We're calling it Mystery School Mondays and it's where The Warthog School overlaps Raising The Red Tent.

Homeschool is giving us an unexpected chance to once weekly go deep for the day (rather than just an hour) into a subject that we all need to understand now more than ever - the mystery and wonders of the feminine.

There is a nesting nature* to this pairing that will long keep me inspired.  The Warthog School was originally born under The Red Tent. When my children were small and I was still working full-time at The Red Tent I began The Warthog School as a curriculum that would supplement my children's lives with the ecoliteracy and biophilia.  I couldn't find what they needed so I started creating it.  Like my children, The Warthog School was quite literally born under The Red Tent.

When E.P.'s learning needs demanded that The Warthog School become a full-time homeschool this nesting flipped.  My passion for all things red tent had to be downsized and put in storage in my heart while we allowed The Warthog School to unfurl into a full-fledged homeschool adventure.  I had to retire from what I knew, recovery, and jump into something new - prevention.  While homeschooling our son I jotted notes about my old passion, "How will I raise a red tent for my daughter?" And, as the years ticked on, "When?" 

Mystery School Mondays are answering those questions for me.  I am raising a red tent for my daughter, now, by putting it right on her campus.  Once weekly the Warthog School will be something that I believe our culture has sorely missed  - a women's mystery school.  A time to marvel together about "girl power" and all the positive ways we can direct our future as women.

*"Nesting Nature" became the first mystery to explore on our new Monday studies...