Meaning

My sister-in-law, Mary, wrote a blog (http://marymenkedick.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/purposeful-girlfriend/) about her connection to a lifelong friend and the constant restlessness they both feel that leads them to search for life’s meaning. In it she mentions surfing the net looking for ideas about this question of meaning and her friend searching ever more books hoping to find the answers she seeks. I can relate. Since my college days I’ve been plagued by this incessant gnawing to understand and find meaning (Most college students go through this phase during their philosophy 101or studying Dostoevsky in world literature, I just never outgrew it.). Good books, as well as films, music, art, teachers, etc., are great sign posts that can point the way for us, but it’s obvious that we have to make the journey to discover meaning for ourselves.

Sometimes I think that this searching for the next book, the one that can give me the "Truth" is indicative of my laziness that wants instant gratification (Gimme the "Truth" now!). It also reveals a lack of trust in my own experience that the meaning of life is closest in those rare moments when I actually show up. It’s at those times I’m in a genuine relationship to life. To be in relationship with life as a person, thing, action, place, idea or feeling is to be touched by who or what I am with. In these exceptional moments there is a real and genuine presence with this other, be it person or something else, which is so powerful I often turn away despite my craving for it.

This is the journey we must make, the journey to the meaning which is available in each moment. These exceptional moments are an expression of underlying unity which comprises one of the two sides of reality’s coin. Individuality is the other. The felt sense of connection that comes in moments of deep and present relationship is to experience these two aspects of existence simultaneously. I think this is the experience that people are trying to reach through their many and often contradictory religions, philosophies, and meanings they assign to life.

We see the rudimentary urge for connection and relationship even in the tendency of particles to form into atoms, atoms into molecules, and so on. It’s what causes us to feel for and reach out to others. The desire for this connection is responsible for the best of what humanity has created and for its acts of goodness. This desire, even if unconscious, is what drives people to go on when it’s all they can do to survive for it’s what makes survival worthwhile. Its promise makes life meaningful.

And yet this genuine presence seems too intense for most of us to experience most of the time. Because of our brokenness it can be painful. We wear shells of protective armor which are created in response to reaching out and being met by the fearful responses of other broken people. Tensing inside this armor is what leads feelings of isolation and acts of individual and collective violence.

It can feel, too, as if our sense of self is being overwhelmed or dissolving. That we might lose ourselves as our boundaries become more fluid. And so we find myriad ways to distract ourselves, to be anywhere but here.

This includes our relationship with ourselves, perhaps even more frightening to most of us than being real with others. How difficult it is to just be with myself without wanting to find something to do to occupy my time so as to keep from knowing myself better. Again, it’s fear. Fear of not being who I think I am, fear of seeing my shortcomings, fear of seeing my potential. Fear of facing the extinction of death.

So the meaning of life is hidden, not in some esoteric teaching, but behind the fear and armor that keep us from what we really desire, to be deeply and fully in relationship with others, ourselves, and with life itself in this moment. To touch this elusive state is the meaning and purpose of life to me.

Moments with Dagmawit

Last Sunday, Daggy and I spent about an hour and a half in our garden digging up sweet potatoes. I have to say she looked every bit the hard working African girl in her long ruffled jean skirt, a mismatched long sleeved blouse and flip-flops as she carried her hand trowel across the yard to the garden, her hair in tight ringlets framing her beautiful, expressive and intelligent face.

She was on cloud nine bending over the soil digging in the cool autumn sun, and stayed enthusiastically engaged the entire time, quite a feat for a five year old. But Dagmawit has a strong drive to be competent, it’s important to her. Also, she is happy when she’s working. Although, she doesn’t consciously articulate it, she knows that happiness is a byproduct of being engaged in the moment with an activity she finds meaningful. I pray she never loses this innate wisdom.

When I found a potato, I’d say “Dig here”, and she’d scrape, dig and pry until she could tug at the tuber and pull it out with her hands. Other times we’d work separately. If I pulled one from the ground she’d shout “Great” and take it from me to put on the growing pile. The feedback of seeing the pile grow was exhilarating to her. At one point she pointed to the pile of sweet potatoes and said, “They’re having a meeting.” Several times she referred to our small garden plot as “our little farm” with a sense of pride and ownership.

At one point in our digging we uncovered and disturbed a toad who was trying to hibernate for the winter. Half buried he endured a few moments of our gently stroking his back as I explained to Daggy about hibernation. Then we covered him again. For the rest of the time, however, she kept asking if we could look at it again, and I kept saying it was respectful to leave it alone. When we finished with our work I finally relented and said we could take one more, quick look. We couldn’t find him. I suspect he dug himself in deeper to escape us pesky humans.

Daggy also came across a number of worms which delighted her.

Yesterday, we learned that the sister of a good friend died. Our friend lives on the west coast so Dagmawit has never met her, but she’s been very generous and kind to Daggy with a number of thoughtful gifts, and they’ve chatted on the phone. Daggy’s response to the news of her distant friend’s sadness was very touching. She genuinely cared, and made a picture for her using many colors, but especially green because Margie told her that was our friend’s favorite color. She included a green stone in the picture because the friend had sent her several beautiful stones. When finished she asked me to write “I’m sorry your sister died.” A few moments later she added several other comments that Margie wrote for her. It was an authentic display of sensitivity.

Later in the evening, at bedtime, Dagmawit and Margie were lying in bed talking about our friend’s sister. Dagmawit asked her mother if the sister would become trees and flowers. Then she asked if we would. Margie said, “It will be a very long time before you become trees and flowers.”

“I’m not excited about that,” Daggy said softly.

Having lived until last year in the hinterlands of Ethiopia, where life is often short and grueling, Dagmawit has seen more death than most American children. It’s obvious from things she’s said that she’s aware of life’s fragility and impermanence. Maybe that’s why she has such zest for living.

Reflections on My Mother

Today marks the fifth anniversary of my mother's death. Five years ago last night was the last time I saw her alive as I held her hand and Margie fed her chips of ice. Mom made a joke, and Margie said " I see you haven't lost your sense of humor."

"You've got to keep something," Mom replied. She died sometime in the early morning.

I've been thinking about this and her last years. This is a poem I wrote based on my reflections when watching her do her morning Bible reading:


Your hand trembles now
As you struggle to hold the pen to paper.
Ink escapes in jagged trails
Where once flowed smooth, bold streams.

That hand has spent its life clinging to a fragile hope
Dangling by a thread over the pit of capriciousness
Where dreams were snatched from your grasp,
More as an afterthought then anything else.
Those dreams that were your Rock of Gibraltar
Tossed aside like a pebble by the hand of fate.

Years of your life have been engaged in a continuous struggle
To calm the waters armed only with your faith.
You waved your flag of truce between enemy lines
Using words of supplication as pieces of gold
To buy an easy armistice.
(Blessed are the peacemakers…)

Worry wraps around your shoulders like a cloak,
It’s heaviness weighing you down
Until its hem dusts the floor behind you.
Your eyes often reflect the apprehensive gaze of a solitary doe.

Nevertheless, your love, like the yellow sun of spring,
Is undimmed by the toll of time.
Unwavering as the promise of eternal salvation,
It is bestowed gently and freely
Upon whichever prodigal son lays his bag of sins at your door.

I see you this morning, frail and childlike,
Sitting on the side of your bed and I ache.
The pain you’ve received in return for your love.
Poised in the study of God’s word,
Bible on your lap,
You imbibe from the sacred scripture.
The tender heart that is both your strength and vulnerability,
An open wound
From which the Blood of Christ,
Each drop an eternity,
Thanklessly trickles off the cross and into the dust of Calvary.

Thoughts on Education

Having a young daughter has rekindled my interest in education. Margie and I both agree that a five year old child has no business being in school for a full day, or being subjected to testing based on arbitrary norms. We’re fortunate to have found and been accepted into a public Montessori charter school that allows Dagmawit to go home at lunchtime and Margie to stay at the school to reinforce our work on building attachment to us. It really seems to be a school that puts the children first, instead of seeing them as magnets to draw federal funding despite its dependence upon it as a public, charter school.

So my thoughts around education revolve around how do we create an environment for learning that allows each child to unfold fully according to her essence? I have no fixed conclusions, although much of what’s below feels intuitively right. I’m only trying to create a cognitive milieu in which these ideas can swim. Part of it has to do with what the goal of education should be. As a nation we’ve seem to have decided that education’s primary goal is to produce workers/consumers for the economy. The impulse to work is innately good and necessary, but an individual needs to be conscious of what he does, why he does it and for whom. To cultivate that sort of self-understanding education should expose students not only to technical skills, but to an examination of what it means to be human, or more specifically what does it mean to be “me”? Not in the narcissistic sense, but in the deep sense of expressing our essential individuality.

“To educate a child to memorize rather than understand, to accept rather than question, to be passive rather than to be active may be fulfilling a quota, but it is not teaching.” –Elizabeth Napp

The following is a list of possible aims of education, incomplete and in no particular order. Notice however how interrelated they are:


Critical thinking
Problem solving
Cultivating a sense of community
Practical skills relating to trades, professions and/or calling
Fostering an esthetic sensibility
Stripping away what we think we know
Self understanding and the art of reflection
Silence
One-pointedness of mind or attention
An ability to observe
Empathy and compassion
Autonomy
Negotiating with peers
Fostering curiosity
Seeing connections
Valuing questions over answers (our answers are shaped by the questions we ask)
Respect for hard earned wisdom vs. obedience to authority
Appreciation of the natural world
An awareness of the body and heightened sensuality
A joy of movement
A sense of awe and wonder
Purpose


There are also ideas and practices about childhood learning that I’ve found interesting from my reading about Waldorf and Montessori education, the early education philosophies of the Reggio Emilia schools in Italy and Summerhill school in England, and the writings of Paulo Freire, Howard Gardner, Ivan Illich, G.I. Gurdjieff, Jiddu Krisnamurti, and others.

Architecture and design of the physical structure and inhabitable spaces: I’ve believed for a long time that the building which houses a school should be part of the learning process. The building should reflect a unity and harmony within itself, as well as with its surroundings that suggests a centered, expansive awareness open to learning and exploration so that even very young children can sense unconsciously the esthetic built into their environment. The interior spaces should create a flow that enhances the movement from activity to stillness and back with communal space and space where a child can work, create, read, or just sit in solitude before rejoining his peers for group activities. Fill the space with art, natural light, plants.

Create a culture of allowing mistakes and viewing them as feedback, not as being wrong: We learn from doing and part of the process is examining the feedback we get. If something doesn’t work we’ve learned something. How can we take what we’ve learned and try again in a different way? Sometimes the feedback we get gives us a result that’s better than the one we were aiming for. Unfortunately, from a very young age children pick up the message that making a mistake is wrong, and stop taking risks. In school they focus on grades instead of learning.

Confusion as a contributor to learning: This idea comes from Reggio Emilia a town in Italy known for its progressive early childhood education program. Promote problem solving abilities by provoking problems for children to solve using the resources and tools available to them.

“To think for oneself is to not know the answer in advance. “ - Jacob Needleman

Kids love to work: Children are often very enthusiastic about engaging in work projects with their parents. An almost certain way to bring Dagmawit into balance is to give her some meaningful work to do, chopping vegetables, washing windows, washing dishes while standing on a stool. If this inclination is encouraged and supported, it will carry into the middle childhood years onward. In the short run it’s easier to do something yourself, or to do things for children that they can do for themselves. Long term creates passivity in children, and an expectation that someone else will take care of it. It also deprives them of a sense of competence.

“When you do something, do it with all your being.” - G.I. Gurdjieff

Parental - teacher – child collaboration: This is should be evident. Parents are the most important people a child’s education. But ideally their involvement with the school will extend beyond just staying informed. A better scenario is parents and teachers working together to determine policy, curriculum, evaluation methods. It’s more inclusive and democratic, and therefore messier, but ultimately everyone’s invested which is optimum for the children. Teachers and parents to a degree should follow a child’s leanings and interests when designing curricula and activities. Kids learn best when they’re interested. As children become older they can become consciously self-directed.

Project learning: This allows for integrating fields of knowledge and learning in an environment that is contextual and therefore meaningful, as opposed to teaching subjects separately, devoid of context. It’s the way the world actually works. Nothing exists except within relationships. Allowing the children to have a voice in the project and its direction adds to the relevance and meaning. Assist by offering ideas, but not something already formed.

“The highest function of education is to bring about an integrated individual who is capable of dealing with life as a whole.” – J. Krishnamurti

Indirect teaching: Control the environment not the child. Set up the learning space so the child learns from discovery and doing as opposed to being told. When it comes to awakening certain qualities such honesty, generosity, persistence, etc., lecturing directly to the child is the least effective thing we can do (but easy to fall into). An indirect strategy is to speak to another person about something you want to convey to the child when the child’s within earshot. Another is to use stories and analogy. With Dagmawit we’ve created the serial story of “Dazzle” a little girl whose experiences strangely parallel those of Daggy in substance if not in detail. It works! Once when she had declared she wasn’t going to share anything with a young friend who had been generous with her, Dazzle had experience that led her to see the benefits of generosity. A little later, Daggy came into the kitchen with some little item and said “Me going to give this to Natalia”.

"Liberating education consists in acts of cognition, not transferrals of information" - Paulo Freire

Teacher-students: A true teacher is also a student who learns from her students. Rather than leaning on manuals and guides, she allows her curriculum to evolve in response to her observation of her students.

Those are my musings. I’d enjoy hearing from my readers about their thoughts on this subject.

“Education in the true sense is helping the individual to be mature and free, to flower greatly in love and goodness. “ - J. Krishnamurti

Attention, Belief, and Self Knowledge

I’ve always been entranced by the beauty and allusions to mystery that I’ve found in the myths, art, architecture, music, ritual that have been created over the centuries by the world’s religions to express the inexpressible. What I haven’t been able to buy is rigid dogma that mistakes metaphor for fact, superstition, and the prejudice of many, not all, of the practitioners of religion. Most conventionally religious people ignore the mystery, lying at the heart of the true religious impulse, that religion’s great art forms were created to invoke. They want answers that will blanket the fear of the unknown and douse their insecurities. Certainty of belief is a buffer against insecurity.

Though not a Buddhist, this is why I find the essential teachings of Buddhism so attractive. Like all other major religions, Buddhism has branched out into many different forms. Much of it still retains the original stance of what the Buddha himself taught. It doesn’t ask me to believe anything, rather it offers an empirical approach that suggests certain practices, saying, “Do this and see what happens”.

One of its most fundamental practices is that of developing attention and presence. What is clear to me from the self observation this practice cultivates is how mechanically I live most of my life. My freedom as a human is mostly illusory, existing only in those moments of presence and awareness. There’s a modicum of freedom only in those moments when with attention I can observe and question myself. The questions lead to inquiry not only about possible actions, but also my motivations for them. Is the motivation to feed my ego, or my soul? Take the low road or the high?

I easily fall back into unawareness and belief because I’m lazy, easily distracted, insecure, and grapple with a tenacious and needy ego…oh yes, and have a four year old daughter. When I’m able to gather my attention, however, my experience tells me the effort to be present and aware is worth it. The questions flowing from awareness leads to self understanding, as does simply the act of observing my thoughts, feelings, actions, and my reactions to moment to moment events and interactions with others.

Here are the words of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha himself, on the subject of belief versus knowing through self examination as translated by Alan Clements:


Do not believe something just because it has been passed along and retold for many generations.

Do not believe something merely because it has become a traditional practice.

Do not believe something simply because it is highly regarded as ‘truth’.

Do not believe something just because it is cited in a sacred text.

Do not believe something solely on the grounds that it does not accord with your logical reasoning.

Do not believe something merely because it accords with your own personal philosophy.

Do not believe something because it appeals to your common sense.

Do not believe something just because you like the idea or it feels right.

Do not believe something because the speaker seems trustworthy and or is highly respected.

Do not believe something even if your own teacher says it is true.

Only when you directly know - those aspects of consciousness within yourself - that when they arise cause you to think, feel, speak, and act in ways that belittle, harm and or otherwise denigrate yourself and others, let them go, abandon them, and cultivate the practice of guarding your mind for the sake of their non-arising in the future.

On the other hand, when you directly know - those aspects of consciousness within yourself - that when they arise cause you to think, feel, speak, and act in ways that elevate the freedom, joy and happiness of yourself and others, allow them to flourish, develop and maintain their re-arising in the future.

To know for yourself.

And even so one must be vigilant, one must be sincere, one must commit themselves as a mother does to her child and foster a pure dedication of inclining the heart towards the dharma in all ways, all the time.

Thus the Buddha's teaching on radical self-reliance.

Daggy, Blueberries and Kairos

The day before we took Dagmawit for her first outing to pick blueberries, Margie was talking about the buckets we’d carry to gather the berries. Daggy lifted her shirt, rubbed her healthy belly, and exclaimed,”This is me bucket!”

What a day that was. The weather gods smiled upon us, granting us a break in the summer heat. The morning was cool and invigorating. To augment the mild temperature, most of our picking was done in the shade as the bushes we focused on were on the west side of a large oak. The sun smiled down from the azure sky, the moon lingered into the late morning as a pale witness to our activity, and a soft breeze blew from the horizon.

Margie and I were uncertain about how Dagmawit would hold up during the picking. In past years we’ve often spent six or seven hours in the summer sun stocking up for the coming year. In general, even kids who enjoy the idea of this old-fashioned approach to family togetherness grow tired and bored after an hour or so, and we were prepared for that, willing to pack up before our usual haul was reached if necessary.

We needn’t have worried. Daggy took to the work like the picker she probably was back in the Sidama region of Ethiopia, her nimble little fingers gathering berries with the quickness and skill she, in all likelihood, honed as a toddler plucking coffee (buna) berries. She was happily talking and singing as she worked, occasionally imitating the calls of the Bob White that traveled across the openness around us. We all ate freely of the sweet, plump fruit until our fingers and teeth were blue

The ancient Greeks had a word, Kairos, which is a quality of time distinct from the tick-tock, chronological time that we allow to govern most of our lives. Kairos is the experience of time that Sam Keen defines as, “organic, rhythmic, bodily, leisurely, and, aperiodic; It is the inner cadence that brings fruit to ripeness, a woman to childbirth, a man to change direction in life.” I think of it as a glimpse of eternity that breaks through our every day experience.

This morning was bathed in Kairos. The conditions serendipitously converged to create a space for it. Daggy picked so well that after four hours we had, as a team, picked the amount Margie and I took six hours to pick in the past. She collected nearly three gallons by herself, and was in no hurry to leave. Margie wisely suggested that we depart while things were good. The sense of Kairos vanishes when it is forced as any experienced parent can tell you.

Resisting the Cult of Consumerism

Those who know us know that neither Margie nor I watch TV. It’s not that there aren’t good programs on TV. Among the banal and the tasteless, quality content can be found. But the goal of corporate TV programming isn’t to create quality programming, it’s to sell advertising. Programs are the vehicles for delivering advertising into our homes. Now that we have Dagmawit, we want to shield her from the habituation that marketers purposefully cultivate in our children with the intent of incubating generation after generation of consumers.

The purpose of advertising, whether it’s delivered through TV, internet, or print, is to make children unhappy with their lives by giving them the impression they’re incomplete without this toy, that breakfast cereal, these sneakers. It projects images of happy children munching on Lucky Charms, implicitly saying to our sons and daughters, “You poor kid! Don’t you want to be happy like these kids? Then nag your mother until she buys you what you want!” Or, “You still play that Playstation 2? How depressing! You really need to get Playstation 3.”

Advertising also appeals to the basic developmental needs children have. What it’s selling isn’t games, clothing or junk food. It’s selling a sense of belonging, self-esteem, and desirability to the opposite sex. How many times as a kid did you want something because “all the other kids” had one? Did you ever experience a boost in status when you rode up to your friends on a brand new 26” inch bicycle when they were all still riding little kid bikes? And the need to appeal to opposite sex doesn’t begin with adolescence. Little girls receive the message early that it’s imperative to make themselves attractive to boys by meeting a standard of idealized femininity as modeled by their Barbie Dolls, an arbitrary standard very few otherwise beautiful girls can meet, and which can lead down the slippery slope to eating disorders and lifelong dissatisfaction with one’s body.

These needs are all a natural part of being human. As a parent it’s my responsibility to protect my child from the insidious and predatory manipulation of marketers until she is old enough to see it for what it is, and help my daughter meet these needs in healthy ways that emphasize a self-worth based on how she uses her unique gifts, develops her full personhood, and makes a contribution, not what stuff she has.

An interesting and convincing perspective on this is offered by mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme. In his book The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos Swimme argues that advertisements are where children learn their cosmology, their basic view of the world’s meaning. He compares the tens of thousands of hours that children spend in front of the TV night after night absorbing the message of advertising, the light from the screens flickering in their faces, to children of the past who sat around the flickering fires of ancient nights listening to the stories and chants of their elders. Only instead of pondering the meaning of life and the universe through the myths of their culture which attempt to explain how they fit into the larger picture, today’s kids absorb the message that the ultimate meaning of human existence is to work at jobs, to earn money, so they can get stuff. This becomes their basic grasp of the world’s meaning. As a result, consumerism has become the de facto religion for much of the world, religion being what a person holds to be the truth about reality.

He goes on to say:

"The image of the ideal human is also deeply set in our minds by the unending preachments of the ad. The ideal is not Jesus or Socrates. Forget all about Rachel Carson or Confucius or Martin Luther King, Jr., and all their suffering and love and wisdom. In the propaganda of the ad the ideal people, the fully human humans, are relaxed and carefree -- drinking Pepsis around a pool -- unencumbered by powerful ideas concerning the nature of goodness, undisturbed by visions of suffering that could be alleviated if humans were committed to justice. None of that ever appears. In the religion of the ad the task of civilizations is much simpler. The ultimate meaning for human existence is getting all this stuff. That's paradise."

The religion of consumerism. This is how Webster defines the word consume: 1. to destroy 2. to use up; spend wastefully; squander.

The word is indicative of many of the ills that afflict our society and world. We are urged to be good consumers, cogs in a consumer society and, of course what we are doing is destroying, using up and squandering our resources, environment, indigenous cultures, and moral capital. To know this is be more conscious about our choices, or to live in denial while the world burns. Our desire is to help Daggy develop a conscious, sensitivity to life.

When you consider the implications of consumerism on our children, our culture, our world do we want to offer this to our children as the purpose of life? This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t live comfortably, but after food, shelter, and clothing needs are satisfactorily met, research shows more stuff does not lead to more happiness, rather the opposite. We eventually become bored with our stuff and need new stuff all the while oblivious that its acquisition will not sate the hunger we attempt to fill with possessions. As Bono of U2 sings, “You can never get enough of what you don’t really need.”

G.I. Gurdjieff said we are born without souls, but have the potential to develop them through attention and impressions as we move through life. Being aware of where we focus our attention and the quality of the impressions we feed our souls through words, music, art, science, conversations, and experience determines the quality of our lives, and collectively, the richness of our culture, the health of our planet. It’s difficult for the individual to attend to her soul in a world where the human values that flow from the trinity of classical philosophy - the Good, the Beautiful, and the True - are subordinate to the value of monetary profit. As parents the challenge for Margie and me is to create an oasis where Dagmawit can grow roots deep enough to stand on her own against the powerful and seductive allure of consumerism.