An Invitation to the Present Moment

Dear Angeleah, Avery, Bailey, Bethany, D’Marco, Emerald, Erin, Gabe, Haley, Hannah, Jessica, Kennedy, Kyanna, Lindsey, Marissa, McKayla, Megan, Mical, Miekayla, Monica, Rachel, Talia, Taylor, and Tyler,

Wow! There are 24 of you. Surprised? I am, seeing as the class size in the final year of our middle school program in Seattle was only 5 students.

Cynthia and I are getting ready to be with all 24 of you, by doing the following:

• We enjoyed our time beachcombing with the Montessori elementary families at Fort Flagler. What a warm and welcoming community! Those of you students who will be "new" like us are in for a treat.



• We are also spending time at Sky Valley this summer, learning from Jenny and Polly about the materials and methods of the elementary classroom.



• Together with Cynthia's husband Peter Donaldson we are teaching a class of fifteen middle schoolers at the University of Washington Summer Program.



• And I'm spending some of my time this summer pondering three words: education, adventure, and sustainability.

EDUCATION:

What thoughts or feelings come to your mind when you hear that word? Some of mine are frustration with too much sitting indoors, or the feeling of being defeated before I’ve even begun because of the long list of “have-to’s” keeping me from my own secret personal list of “want-to’s”, or better yet, "dream-to's." The Irish poet, William Butler Yeats, warned us about how we use the word. Educare in Latin means to lead out of. But out of what? Ignorance? Poverty? Childhood? All those uses of the word suggest to me that somehow I'm not good enough for the world. That I'm lacking something. That I'm empty of value. But Yeats paints a different picture. He said, “Education is not the filling of a bucket, but the lighting of a fire."

I appreciate his image. It suggests that each of us has some precious gift--our passion, our unique perspective--to bring to the world. It also reminds me of what Maria Montessori had to say about human beings as learners, how we all have an inner guide, the Teacher who is within. Have you sensed your own inner fire? What kindles it? Have you heard the voice of your own inner guide? What has that voice called you to, in your life so far?

ADVENTURE:

So, what about that word? Is it a cliche, especially when used to describe a learning experience? What I'm thinking of looks something like this:

Does this mean that I'm feeling a bit "at sea?" Not exactly, although there are a lot of new things to think about. The word adventure comes from the Latin verb advenire, which means to come to, or to arrive, or to happen. So for me, adventure is what is happening right now, right at the borderline between the present and the future. If I were an icebreaker, one of those ships that plow through polar ice, then adventure would be the sound of ice crunching and cracking and the spray and pattern of ice pieces scattered to either side of my prow. Adventure in this case would not be recklessness. It would be alertness. It would be my careful progress forward through the ice, keeping my eyes on my nose (without going cross-eyed.) And on the horizon, and on the sonar screen for what’s below the surface, and on the cleared trail behind me. Looking at life as an adventure means learning to live in the moment, to be aware, awake, paying attention to what is happening, to what is arriving, to what is coming at me. Looking at life as an adventure means lighting a fire inside and taking care to make sure it doesn’t go out. I'm trying to tend my fire. I'm trying to stay alert, and pay attention. How is your fire doing? What is happening in your neck of the woods? What is commanding your attention this summer?

SUSTAINABILITY:

We live in a global consumer culture. What this means to me is that when people all over the world decide they need something, they go somewhere outside of themselves, outside of their own homes, or property, or land, or region, or country, or continent to get it. And I don’t mean just get it. I mean consume it. To devour it from the bottom up, utterly. You eat just the raspberries picked from the bush and more will grow next year; you eat up the whole plant, roots and all, and the world has one less source of raspberries come next spring.

If I want to sell something in a global consumer culture, I need to learn how to advertise it on a large scale, so that all over the world people will learn what it is that they need. As an advertiser, I have to be very smart, because I need to persuade people that they need something—my thing—enough to be willing to leave home to get it (consume it). This means lots and lots of money spent on advertising, and on lots and lots of labeling and recognizable packaging, and on lots and lots of traveling back and forth—of people and products. Which means lots and lots of gallons of fuel.

Of course, in some places there is now ordering over the internet, and overnight shipping, so that some of us can pretend we don’t need to leave home to get (consume) what we need. We can pretend we aren’t responsible for all the energy it costs to get that item to arrive at our front door from halfway around the world.

To put it in a nutshell, there’s a lot of waste that goes into a global consumer culture. In fact, there’s enough waste to fill many nutshells. And the evidence suggests that all this waste is catching up with us. So much so that it threatens to overwhelm us, and the rest of nature along with us. To cram one more thing into my last nutshell, there's enough waste in our global consumer culture to damp the fire inside of ourselves. There probably aren’t enough squirrels in the world to provide us with the nutshells we’re going to need, unless...

...unless we can learn how to become a global sustainer culture. (Here's a clue: we should pay more attention to squirrels.)

To sustain has the Latin word for hold and the Latin word for under in it, and describes the action of holding something up from underneath, the way a foundation holds up a house. Sustaining means understanding first principles, the foundations of how things are, and then supporting those principles. Living by those principles. To live by the principles, we need to learn about them, to pay attention to them, as they are revealed in nature. Ranger Rob reminded us at Fort Flagler that without crabs--aquatic janitors and sanitation engineers--scuttling across the floors of the world's oceans, we would be buried in the litter of sea life. We'd suffer the same fate on land (buried alive!) if not for all the slugs, snails, beetles, worms, and microbes that make up the family of mostly invisible sustainers we call the Decomposers. That's good news, to me. What's good news? That nature has already figured out how sustainability works. If we can just pay attention, nature can show us the way.

I'm still at the beginning stages of understanding all this. Probably some or all of you are already well on the way to figuring this sustainability thing out. As a geezer-in-training I'm not as flexible as you springy young whippersnappers, and my habits are more established. But the challenge of learning a new way to be in the world has definitely kindled my inner fire, and I feel that trying to live and work and learn sustainably is an adventure worth embarking upon. The good news is our global consumer culture is going to have to change into a global sustainer culture in the next thirty years, and your generation will be involved in a major way in creating a new civilization. I wonder what amazing sustainable solutions you will come up with?

Our first assignment as a new learning community at Sky Valley is to plan how we can create a school environment and culture that is as green, as waste-free, as sustainable, as possible. As we go about planning our Occupations for the coming year, our constant guiding question will be: "What is the most sustainable way that we can accomplish this task?"

In the next week, you'll be getting an Occupations questionnaire from Cynthia and me in the mail. Please fill it in and send it back to us as soon as you can, to help us in our planning. Eventually, no doubt, you will be teaching me how to do all of this kind of communication paperlessly, online.

I look forward to the EDUCATION.

Or should I say... ADVENTURE ?