Good Morning

I wonder if I'm back? I'll try to check in with a word or a flower each day.

Even when writing, there was time for the poppies to bloom

Submitted my thesis for the teaching course. In Hebrew. With writing partners less than half my age. A work of love and synergy, and the moon is full, and I wandered among fields of red poppies at dusk. I have been away for so long, I need to find my To Life voice again and I shall. The flowers today, for every day, including when we were co-writing that all consuming paper on Universal Design for Learning, a magnificent concept and timely, yes every day throughout the process I did get out and watch the flowers grow.

To Life !: Even when writing, there was time for the poppies ...

To Life !: Even when writing, there was time for the poppies ...: Submitted my thesis for the teaching course. In Hebrew. With writing partners less than half my age. A work of love and synergy, and the moo...

Changing the Subject

It's a sacred, laden job to be given: teaching kids to communicate. Student clinicians who observed my therapy today asked me why I let the kids change the subject. I let them change the subject because their ideas are far more interesting to me than the ones I bring to the session. Yonatan wanted to talk about David Ben Gurion standing on his head. Shon brought a Tof Miriam, a simple tambourine, and planned a birthday party for it. All the kids knew it was pretend, and practiced their collaborating and conversation skills around the birthday party for Tof Miriam. Mem Fox, a teacher of children's writing, is quoted tirelessly, as wanting children's writing to "ache with caring". That is what I want for my children's conversations. I want them to move from topic to topic, touching upon this and that, until that sparked moment when they come upon something that lights them, flares within them and holds their interest in a heartdriven, real way. The way competent conversationalists chat, and suddently lean in towards each other with intent when they come to an issue that really matters to them. If I stick to my plan, the kids may learn the rules, I suppose. But if I loosen the reins, and let the conversation run free, I'll find out what their hearts are aching to share.

Radical Acceptance

For this fresh, incoming year, a hope, a small promise to myself, an intention: The waves at the beach threw me off balance today, hurled me salty into the waters, and I decided to laugh, take the salt along with the dear cradling waters, the serenity between crashing waves, the dialectic of calm and astounding, the ride. I decided to ride the rhythms, savour the extremes, accept. Mommy taught me, just this summer. It's waves, she said. Ride them. Yesterday's swim was glorious fun. After summer's warm waters, the cooling of the sea and the return of the big waves come just at the right time, as tonight we pass into a whole new year. We will mark the turning of the year at Kibbutz Beit Alfa, where pomegranates, dates and apples are ripe on the trees just in time for the blessings, May we enter the coming year taking the bitter with the better, the stinger and the honey. May we ride.

Omer, Day 1

Day One of the Omer is done. Day One celebrates boundless, overflowing lovingkindness in our boundless, overflowing lovingkindness. A world with no boundaries, no defining lines. A mother nursing her newborn babe, and the lasting sensation of this same entire love even when the mother and her babe are both grown old. Me and Mommy walking by the sea. Daddy and Mommy kissing me goodbye, and then kissing each other in the space above my head, when I set out to a faraway land. The way that kiss lasts with me. Chesed in Chesed today was about entire patience when someone didn't understand what I was saying; the patience to repeat and explain, with love and respect, until the words came through. Chesed in Chesed today was about taking in another person's point of view even if it was outrageous and against my values, entertaining their perspective for just long enough to see their world, stand in their shoes, walk their path. There will be time for gevurah, for taking a stand, for asserting our values, for boundaries. But today was to taste that aspect of ourselves which is chesed in chesed, boundless, overflowing lovingkindness in our boundless, overflowing lovingkindness.