Mietzke's POST Holden Adventure

Every day I take nine three and four year olds on a walk,  through the school yard out of the gate and into the field where there is a path to follow and treasures to be found.  It starts out the same every day.  Everyone wants to be the caboose.  There is josteling and hurt feelings and sighs of disatisfaction, sometimes tears and tantrums, and when all of this is settled and each little hand has found its way holding on to the rope we set out with our little choo choo song.  Several times all of my little friend need to be reminded not to push or pull not to let go not to run, not to lay down or poke the friend in front of you.  Somehow we always make it at least to the end of the field where the fox has a den and the acorns lay waiting for little hands to fill empty pockets.

Some days we walk to a little tree where we have been building a fort and have hung a tire swing.  Some days we walk to the tunnels that catch the rain and keep it from flooding the horse path.

Every day we see poop and we bend down to see what kind of meal the animal who left it might have had.  There are lots of different poop presents that are left for us, horse poop, fox and cyote poop, skunk poop and bird poop.  The children love to stop and talk about the poop.

My favorite part of our walks are when we pause and the children explore where we have stopped.  The tunnels become underground caves with diamonds,  Our jumping rock becomes a mountain and jumping off of it a great adventure.

Then it is time to hold onto the rope again the jostle for the place as cabuse and the constant gentle reminders of where the rope is and where little hands may hold.  I don't think I ever wanted to hold onto the rope until now.  I always just wanted to go my own way and my own pace, and now I can see the point and the value of learning to lead and follow, and of joining in something uncertain.

It is hard to hold onto the rope when the desire to let go is so great.

Every time I go outside to tend our small bit of earth

I find treasures

Small black treasures that fit in the palm of my hand

Like a wish or a promise

A reminder that life is bigger than I know

That I am not alone in the daily comngs and goings

I went out today

A rake in hand

And pulled the forks of the rake along the ground

Catching pine needles in bundles and revealing the brown earth.

With every pass of my rake

My black treasures

Seemed to work themselves to the surface

Smooth and round

Until I had handfulls of them

I spent a lot of time raking today

Waiting to see each promise revealed

Each little spot of joy hidden beneath surface

Join the conglomeration of stones

That have been gathered in the tending of our yard

I started finding them the first week we came here

Small and black hidden among the plants and in the garden path

There were three sitting beside a bush that I picked up and washed

Revealing shiny smoothness when the dirt had been cleared away

I began placing these treasures in a little spot by the pine

And now where there were three,

There is a little rock garden

Where I go to light candles and think about the day

I love to see them all gathered there

Like silent friends

Listening and waiting

I know that there will be more that are waiting to be discovered

And I know that each time I find one

I hold surprise and wonder in the palm of my hand

I think love is like that

Always being unearthed a little at a time

Giving a glimps of hope

Just long enough to keep us searching

For the next bit of cool smooth light

We have been in Santa Barbara for approximately eight weeks now. We left Holden and traveled for a month and have been attempting to adjust to life on the outside. We live in a duplex in a nice neighborhood. We have two cats and a fully fenced yard. There are so many adjustments we are making. Food is a huge component of our transition I had forgotten how hard it is to continually find meals that we like and want to eat out here. There are so many food choices that it is overwhelming. Community is another place where the transition hits hard. We miss the daily light hearted interaction that Holden provided. We have met many kind people here but connecting with them in the space of a busy of the week where everyone has a myriad of commitments and friends that it is difficult to make time for more. How did we do this before? How did we find enjoyment, community and quiet amidst the hustle and bustle of daily living? Did we ever have any balance or were we always swept along with the current of daily living?

I talked to my friend Melissa Who just left the village a short time ago and we were talking about how hard it is to jump back into phone use, to feel available all of the time to everybody, and the feeling of obligation to answer the phone and call people to connect. There isn’t a lot of leeway. People want answers and are really frustrated if they don’t get a hold of you.

Until I left Holden I didn’t realize how comfortable I had become with my own quite thoughts. Even though the village is very active I had long stretches of the day where I worked alone or silently beside others. I grew to love the quiet and the sounds that you hear when you are able to just be. It is loud out here. You can hear and feel the business, and the expectation.

On Wednesday nights we have begun to have a small service of prayer in our back yard. We have been singing some of the chants from the prayer around the cross service and read poetry and scripture. It began just our family, my brother and his family, my cousin, my parents, and now a couple of new-ish friends. We have dinner together before hand and then take about a half and hour to just be together in prayer and thanksgiving.

I have made it a pattern to come home from work on Wednesday to cleaning and preparing our yard for the service. We have a very large pine tree in our yard that drops needles like crazy and I spend a half an hour raking up needles and setting out chairs. It feels good to prepare. It was something that I loved about having the worship assistant position at Holden. I was fed by the preparation for worship which put me in the mindset of looking to God in the details and in the greater picture. Everything, from the straightening of the chairs, thinking about the songs and readings, decorating and lighting the candles before the service, and being present with all of the different people who helped to lead the worship at Holden brought me into a space of mindfulness and attentiveness to Gods gentle presence. What an amazing blessing to have been a part of that every day for eighteen months! It was such a place of deepening for me. Erik was also an amazing teacher that helped me to read and look at things in a new way and to open my thinking.

As I adjust to outside living I ache for communal daily expression of faith, and I am wondering how to continue living those moments of preparation. All day today I have been thinking about my daily routine, and asking myself how can I really live into the sacred in the hear and now, in the midst of work and family, cooking, helping with homework, watering the garden, cleaning litter boxes, trying to make new friends and keep up with the old…grocery shopping, trying to find time to exercise… How can I find the sacredness in all of that?

In the morning we awake to the sound of an alarm then start to stir after hitting snooze several times. Then we start the day waking the children I shower and come down to make lunches and gather all of the things I will need at school. The girls eat breakfast and gather their lunch’s backpack’s and instrument’s and give long hugs to kitties before they are picked up at school. When the carpool arrives I pray on their heads and off they go… Once they have left I generally have five minutes to say a verse or read a meditation for the day before I head out of the door myself. All of this is a preparation…What If I could experience it as sacred instead of just another thing to do, to fit in.

In my classroom there is a daily rhythm of preparation that happens before the children arrive at school. We set the chairs in a little circle, and bring out the lavender oil and brushes (we brush the children down with soft horse brushes when they come into the classroom and sing a little song of welcome) We pour warm water in the bowl to wash their hands and set out a towel for drying. We boil hot water for tea and set the pot to steep and we set up the day’s activity and begin cutting vegetables for our soup, or cooking the rice or baking the potatoes. I practice the songs that we will sing during our circle time and practice the little verses. I think about the story I will bring to the children and I spend time making the little puppets who will carry the story as I tell it. Then all of the teachers gather together to say a morning verse and to say a blessing on our day, our school and our world.

Then the children come and as I am thinking about it, isn’t my time with them also a time of preparation, a time of support for growing bodies and minds? Isn’t my whole day from start to finish just an extension of preparation for living mindfully in the spirit of love for practicing virtues of patience kindness and hope? Couldn’t this preparation, this whole day of being awake and alive, also feed me and open me to God’s grace living in the daily rhythm? I get caught up in the “idea” of tasks and forget sometimes that it is in the daily experience in the Rhythm that we find peace, meaning, love and purpose. It is in all of the little things that the spirit of God resounds and love is kindled and fanned through grateful preparation.

It is the grateful part that I seem to struggle with most and it is really just my own perception that leaves me forgetful, and fearful. When I allow myself to enter the experience, to let go of doubt and hold onto the moment then I experience gratitude and see the depth of what is being offered to me through the little things. Maybe in this I can take a piece of Holden with me and honor each task as a preparation for love.