Irish Kite Making

Last Friday (October 23rd), we made an excursion to the International Center downtown for a class on Irish Kite Making. Just as we finished, the breeze kicked up nicely and the kites took flight.

Club Day

Each Tuesday this Fall, we have had one afternoon a week for clubs. The children have learned to cook, work in a metal shop, babysit, and drive a nail or two.

Perception

A Most Interesting Story

 A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

 Three minutes went by and a middle-aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule. A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk. A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

 The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

 In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

 No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

 Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

 This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

 One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be: If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

Source:  Weingarten, Gene.   "Pearls Before Breakfast."  The Washington Post.   8 April 2007   (p. W10).

Excursion- Birdsong Community Farm

Traveling east, then north out of Cullman, through the blinking yellow light that marks the town of Fairview, Al., down the hill and left before the bridge, and we came upon the home and farm of Joshua and Beth Haynes.  We turned into the drive and were greeted by a large hand-painted sign that welcomed Red Mountain Community School.

 

Joshua grew up farming this property with his parents, and he and Beth, who met at Wheaton College, decided to move back three years ago to experiment with organic and sustainable farming.  (You can read more about them at www.birdsongcommunityfarm.com. <http://www.birdsongcommunityfarm.com>  

This was the first year that Joshua and Beth were growing and harvesting mushrooms, and because of our Head of School’s deep affection for all things “fungi”, we jumped at the chance to participate.  

 

The entire school walked down into the woods for a lesson in how several varieties of shiitake mushrooms are cultivated. We divided into teams to pitch in with the work. One group harvested a basket of ripe mushrooms and helped soak and stack a number of logs that had been implanted with spores. These will start producing in the next few weeks. The other group followed Beth up to the garden to pick a bucket of cherry tomatoes.  All of the day’s harvest was being readied for the Cullman Farmer’s Market this weekend.

 

Following a hay ride through the woods, we were introduced to over 100 “happy chickens”.  The Haynes lovingly tend these chickens who freely roam a three acre patch and generously provide large quantities of wonderful eggs for the farm to sell. We were invited to sow oats for the chickens in one of the pastures by grabbing handfuls of oat seed from a bucket and casting them all around.  The scattering was a chaotic and fun chore for the children and will provide plenty of food for the birds this fall.   

We are thankful to Joshua and Beth for a rich and full outdoor day.  Look for them on Saturdays at the Cullman Farmer’s Market.

 

 

 

 

 

Excursion- Exploring the Neighborhood

As you know, the school takes frequent excursions on fridays, and for the first jaunt this year they were determined to explore the new neighborhood.

There is a garden here called the Jones Valley Urban Farm. They have moved to a larger patch downtown now, but they started out on a half acre lot just off 23rd Street, and behind Alabama Art Supply. One of the school's parents runs Nomad Supply, just across from the now fallow abandoned garden. He is a very compassionate and generous man, and this summer he undertook bringing that lot back to life as a community garden. (The Southtown Urban Housing Community borders the lot, and he want the residents to have a place to put their hands in the dirt, and help grow and harvest organic produce.)

So, first stop on the excursion was an hour pulling weeds in the newly defined beds.

There was a complaint or two ("I would rather be doing math sheets!") because it is August and this is Alabama. But the majority dug right in. They are used to hands on exploration of the local geography. As often as not you will find the different classes outside, walking down the block or all the way downtown.

The next stop, after a long trek to the other side of Highland, was Rojo, the local latin/american watering hole. Rojo is packed 365 days a year because the food is great, it's inexpensive, and you can sit outside. But they had no trouble absorbing thirty something students for corn dogs and quesadillas.

Back down the avenue to the Highland Store where everybody got candy or an ice cream, then a slow stroll home to First Lutheran.

That, my friends, is a good day at school.

New School Year

We are off to a wonderful start to the 2009/2010 school year, and all settled in our new home at First Lutheran Church on Highland Ave.

This year on the blog, look for stories and pictures about life at Red Mountain Community School.

Poems in our Pockets

The woods and pastures are joyous

in their abundance now

in a season of warmth and much rain.


We walk amidst foliage, amidst


song. The sheep and cattle graze


like souls in bliss (except for flies)


and lie down satisfied.

Who now
can believe in winter? In winter


who could have hoped for this?
— Wendell Berry

Just this fall my eighteen-year old daughter Madeleine started college.  Early in September, she called to say, “Mama, guess what happened in my English class?”  The teacher asked us who was afraid of Poetry?!   And Mama!  All but two of us raised our hands.!”

Afraid of poetry are we.

Ranier Marie Rilke, a German poet of the early 20^th Century, writes “works of art are always the result of ones having been in danger, of having gone through an experience all the way to the end, to where no one can go any further.  The further one goes, the more private, the more personal, the more singular an experience becomes and the thing one is making is, finally, the necessary, irrepressible, and as nearly as possible, definitive utterance of this singularity."  (Rilke in Letters On Cezanne) 

This could hint at our fear of poetry.  All art can be a little disconcerting.  And no wonder!  In attending to it, and opening our self up to it, we are taken to the depths of another’s delights and sorrows and are often even then left hanging.

In seasons of deprivation, I have often found myself gifted with an unexpected providence; a sense of abundance internally in the midst of something restrictive or even devastating on the outside.  Our days seem laced with expressions of this.  Have you noticed?  People tell us some horrific story of life’s relentless blows and then describe the deep inner gifts that were given in time so that at the end of the day, they are grateful for the trial.

But rarely do we ask for the catastrophe, and surely it would be ridiculous to do so.  My mother had a cross-stitched quote in our bathroom that I read many days while growing up:  “If all of our troubles were hung on a line, you would take yours and I would take mine”.  This quip was beyond me and I could not say it honestly.  But now I see that our troubles are particularized and each, when received instead of only endured, creates gaps and incertitude that finally make me soft and supple enough to hear the tender voice of the Other, and put me into a posture to be tended by the Good Shepherd.

I have found that listening to poetry has a similar effect on me.  Listening to poetry extracts stillness from my ‘working breast’, as George Herbert calls it, and quiets my soul like a weaned child. I find that to keep in time with poetry, I must take deeper breaths and move my inner feet at a more deliberate pace. It is all a slowing down, a settling in; the preparation as significant as the hearing.  To rush off after hearing a poem read is incongruent with the form, and so I pause afterwards, like a comma or a Selah, and reflect.  To resume the activity or thinking that was going on before the insertion of the poem is to reenter changed by only a degree, but still, I enter more attentive and calmer, and might I say, truer?

At the end of the day, we will be grateful for anyone and anything that was given to make us more thoughtful, hospitable, restful, kinder; more receptive to Truth and Beauty and Life.  Could it be that in gifting our children and ourselves with poetry of all kinds that we are tasting of the very more of Eternity?

Some essential thoughts about poetry:  (What do you think?)

Poetry is meant to be read aloud.  What is not said is as meaningful as what is said.  Lyrical language (words thoughtfully chosen to ‘get at’ the idea of the writer) is the tool.  In listening, we are better able to take in the meaning.  Voice and pace and word all in one reading. 

In poetry, the form rises out of content.  The inspiration to write comes from an experience or thought first.  This is the rhythm of the Gospel:  First the gift, then the living.  First the grace, then the response.    Poets hear a cadence and wait for words that fit the meaning.

Poetry is related to poverty, often rising from being stripped down to essentials.  The idea is that much can be said with fewer words.  It is the beggar’s garment in the world of literature, where less is more and to be impoverished is to be enriched. 

It doesn’t take long to read a poem.  But it does take fierce attention. Stillness and presence are fruits of our attending to our current poet/friend.  In an age when most of us are exhausted with our ever doing, attending to poetry relieves and soothes us into remembering that we are human beings, not human doings, and that our glory lies in what is given to us not in what we earn.

Poetry Practices

Practice sitting still and quiet for a minute at a time.  This is a meaningful exercise for children as well as adults!  It becomes a game to see if you can ‘feel a minute.’

Let your resonance with one poet lead you to another….How the Holy Spirit must delight in luring us this way.   Madeleine L’Engle led me to  Lucy Shaw who led me to Jane Kenyon who led me to Donald Hall who led me to…

Many novelists or memoirists publish poetry as well.  Reading their poetry makes an internal conversation with them even more layered and personal.   This is how I have come to know Wendell Berry and Kathleen Norris.

Finally…

Just days ago, my daughter relayed an’ uncorking’’ that occurred upon the reading of a poem.  While reading it she was surprised to find tears and clarity, stirring and rest, joy and the release of a latent sorrow.  All in one place.  All at the same time.

It seems that a childhood steeped in  ‘How I love to go up in the swing, up in the sky so blue.  Oh, I do think it the grandest of things ever a child can do’, and ‘’Baa, baa, black sheep, have you any wool?  Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.” created capacities to hold the likes of Rainer Rilke or Wendell Berry or George Herbert. 

When my children were young we learned this poem by Beatrice Schenk de Regniers: 

Keep a poem in your pocket

And a picture in your head

And you’ll never feel lonely

At night when you’re in bed.

The little poem will sing to you

The little picture bring to you

A dozen dreams to dance to you

At night when you’re in bed.

So - -

Keep a picture in your pocket

And a poem in your head

And you’ll never feel lonely

At night when you’re in bed

May we each taste the gifts that come from being still and open to another in the garb of a poem?