Bringing children together - to sing!

People approach the vastness around us in many different ways.

Many times we take vast things for granted.  Mountain ranges, forests, oceans.  As if our inability to grasp the seeming infinitudes causes us to place the inability within a mindset that there's a bigness that we might not need to consider any further than to acknowledge that it is, yes, a lot of bigness.

Many times we find ourselves tending towards concern, alarm, even despair, of aspects of these vast spaces that are being challenged, possibly destroyed.  

Maybe there is a tendency towards distraction, even as there is always the hope that there is a tendency towards greater awareness.

Sometimes we celebrate this bigness, this vastness, which has the possibility of allowing us to acknowledge, potentially to respect, potentially to place ourselves there within it in an attempt to discern some particulars.  

Maybe it really doesn't matter what particulars.  A simple moment of wonder.  A breath of fresh air.  The feeling of stinging cold upon our feet when we step into cool clear water.  The discovery of a beautiful rock, or bug, or depthless crevass.  The sound of crashing waves or wind through pine needles.

Sometimes we share photos or videos or poems.  Maybe we write research articles or blog entries or diatribes in the comments sections of online news articles.  Maybe we organize groups to go hiking or paddling or snowshoing, or to take trips to natural history museums or to watch movies about nature's beauty or about attacks on nature's beauty.  Maybe we go sit in a park or go hang out on a beach and relax.

We do what we do, we do what we can.

Ocean Beat is a group that is working to connect schools to sing together via the internet, as a way to celebrate one of the vastnesses - oceans.  It is working with organizations and schools around the world, including the South Africa, Paraguay and Indonesia – to share music and dance.  

I've been corresponding with Dixie Belcher who is trying to identify a platform that allows for a dynamic of a real-time virtual concert in high quality sound.  Today we happened upon the coolest interface - artmesh.  Unlike google hangouts or skype, this is a complete management interface designed for creating cd/dvd quality stereo audio production of simultaneous recording from various places around the world.

As Kenneth Fields - who heads the project - writes, artmesh is "a new protocol for live P2P [peer to peer] network music performance between multiple cities with live broadcasting on Youtube." 

It's exciting to think that this can happen!  Good luck Dixie"

There was a time

There was a time
when I did not feel
compelled
to accept every moment
of every day
as a precious gift,
to wander shorelines
streets
wilderness
landscapes of
happiness, depths of despair
confusion
joy emptiness hope calm
with utmost awareness
to bring everything within
as much as anything
is within
in order to share it out
whenever possible
as much as there is
possibility.
There was a time
when I did not have
daily cravings
for giving up
my sense of self
to the smell of seaweed
to the sound of ebbing tides
to the feel of wind on my face
cold warmth pain sense of loss
sense of being lost or being found
or finding my way or losing my way
or to complete and utter
immobility transfixed on beauty
of the simplest things
to memories of smiles
giggles
laughs
and sometimes
just easeful nothings,
a glance away,
a glance my way,
a rustling of the urge
to explore
out beyond everything
I myself would ever
be able to imagine
like the slightest of spring
breezes
whose destination
absolutely no one knows
a complete forgetting
of me
as I believed that
there was an inner belief
that
it could be because
I would always be there.
There was a time
when I did not have children.

Remembering my place

I headed out from the edge of the water along the Eastern Shore in Nova Scotia, thinking I was going to beat the ice from reforming.

I just made it back.

Just imagine...

Imagine being a child who has the whole world around them to be explored with a whole depth of imagination and wonder.  Imagine how the ways we introduce those children to things is constantly and consistently focused on the natural environment around us.

Imagine an outdoor classroom where children spend the day hunting for bugs, learning bird songs and baking the ultimate mud pie - where lessons have a natural magic: instead of counting marbles children collect and count acorns; to learn colors, geometry and fine motor control children use paintbrushes to spread pollen between flowers and record the color, shape and number of petals to share with the class; and with a pile of leaves and twigs they build sculptures and art that reflect the wilds of their imagination.

Imagine a child's favorite thing about preschool being “running up hills” or to “be quiet and listen to birds — crows, owls and chickadees.”

Imagine preschool children learning about the cycles of nature, of life and death, food and waste as they learn about self, family, community, beliefs, values and their place on this earth.

Imagine a preschool where children "grow up wild" through a wide range of nature-based activities for building school readiness skills.

Imagine a kindergarten that triples recess time so children can play outside more.

Imagine a whole network created to connect all children, their families and communities to nature through innovative ideas, evidence-based resources and tools, broad-based collaboration and support of grassroots leadership.

Imagine a whole movement dedicated to becoming more connected to the natural world where even people living in wild, nature-rich places can develop a more thoughtful connection to nature and to each other as they face social pressure to acquire more material goods in the pursuit of a popularized Western lifestyle.

Imagine a whole "no child left inside" curriculum based on the premise that children need to become more environmentally literate so that they can be wise stewards of the very environment that sustains us, our families and communities, and future generations.

That which cannot

To bring ourselves within a space of awareness of things around us, there might be a tendency towards trying to allow more of a self-reflective mood that causes us to acknowledge that we as the physical bodies we are might do well to expand out beyond the ways we have come to recognize as how we do things, towards a way of simply being where we are if only for a moment, amid that which cannot be articulated any more than to be moved within.

Claude Debussy once wrote, "To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! … that is what I call prayer."  But how do we define prayer?  It doesn't necessary have to be about religion?  If there are elements of self-reflection within our moments of peace and calm, they might bring us into a space not of asking for things but of being more appreciative of what is there before us - before us as in there before we were ever there and before us in the sense of right there in front of us within the smallest of details. We encounter the physical world with a combination of senses, sometimes with all of them intact, sometimes as "other abled".

It may be all we can do but to witness and when witnessed, possibly shared through the various means we have to communicate with others - inevitably, it seems - since we live within communities of understanding that have us comfortably grounded in consensual reality that we draw upon as naturally as breath, participating in uniformities of perception, expression and a complacency of knowing even as we acknowledge that this causes the world to narrow down to commonplace experiences that so often tend towards precluding wonder...

But to effect that wonder?

The magic of that next island

The next island
the next corner
the next thought
hope
imagined work of art
call to a friend
tentative step
looks back at you
waiting
to be happened upon
you by it
it by you
a bend in the road
a distance
beyond the borizon
a heeded glance
an acknowledged nod
towards that
direction
a thought forgetting
to hold its own hand
because it knows
it is it that is there
if only to break free
to take a peek
at you
before slipping off
beyond
that next island

I began a project that I envisioned as becoming a quite tangible "thing" - if only within the virtual space of the internet - where people would celebrate nature through sharing and where the sharing would become a space in itself.

I reached out to the world, in my own limited naive way, to ask for help.  I received help in many ways and was humbled by generosity.  It wasn't money so much as insights, ideas, suggestions, comments and just plain encouragement.  And I have been given 138 dollars, which I hold as precious, as a responsibility to something I can hardly define but which tends towards a responsibility to make good with the trust that has been placed in me, much like I place trust in myself when I head out onto the water towards that next island.

There are times when I don't get out past that next island; there are times when I don't even reach it.  Paddling alone, I have a certain mindset of testing myself, exploring my limits even as I place myself within boundaries of thoughts and understandings, deals I make with myself, hypotheticals, announcements, bottom line decisions and sometimes just plain and simple no.

I know why I do it.  I feel comfortable with myself, with my whining and hesitations out on waves that I don't really know if I feel like contending with on that particular day, or hitting winds or currents or cross-currents or fog or some deep-seated sense of unease that I've come to learn I should listen to.  And that next island always, always maintains its magic of being there for me in its quiet insistent existence.