Keeping the Dream

I’m not talking about through child abuse. Well, not in the sense we think of. That’s how I lost my childhood, abuse.

But losing our childhood is happening in another way and on a massive scale.

In a few minutes I’ll wake my little girl up. I let her sleep in longer in the mornings, especially in the summer, when we stay up real late. Although we do home school throughout the rest of the year and can be flexible, too.

Actually, referring to a “school year” is really a strange way of looking at life, when we’re not even in an institution that needs to run within that time frame.

Somehow though, the state regulations do make you, at least, aware of the schedule they run by and expect you to adhere to in some capacity. The reasoning is that its to make sure we are accountable and do right by our children, but I am not so sure the Department of Education, itself, is doing right by the children they are supposed to serve.

I’ve been thinking more and more lately about how oppressive our education system is becoming. Even if I did not have my other reasons for homeschooling, this insidious pressure to TEACH TO THE TEST, that all public schools – brick ‘n mortar and cyber – face, under the threat of losing their funding, would, alone, be enough for me to pull my daughter out of school if she was in one, and never let her step foot in one, if she wasn’t.

I went to our school district’s web site. It had a notice on the home page that stated that from now on, educational trips will be granted for a maximum of five days for the year. Anything over that would be counted as unexcused absence.

So if a child had an opportunity to travel to Europe for a couple weeks or go to NASA in Florida for more than five days, that child would be considered truant – even though their educational experience would far exceed anything that could be offered in a classroom setting.

Why? Because that child would not be in school getting drilled in facts that were sure to show up on the yearly state tests. The results of those tests is the school’s report card. Passing scores = receiving funds.

Students are required to provide job security for their teachers and administrators. Can’t let real opportunities for learning get in the way.

Not only are children coerced into spending more time in school – and they’re now talking about extending hours and days – in many schools across the country, they are given fewer opportunities in other disciplines, such as music, art and drama.

Even if scores were raised through these measures, what are we really attaining? It’s like feeding hungry kids junk food, and watching their weight go up. But are they healthy?

Are our kids educationally, intellectually or emotionally healthy? Are our kids learning the skills to be lifelong learners? Are they even learning what they’re learning in school? Is it even retained after the test and if so, for how long? Are we nourishing a child’s natural drive to learn, or have we beaten our kids down so low they have to be convinced, “learning is fun” or “can be fun”, because our experiences through school is that it really sucks, and we’ve all bought that as a given?

I lost my childhood because of a father who was inappropriate and a mother who was in denial. And it just makes me so sad to see a whole generation of children losing their childhood for institutionalized requirements.

I think I’ll wake Brhiannon up now, so we can go outside and play.

If I had just read the Daily Word for yesterday, I doubt it would have gone in very deep. After all, I’ve read similar words and sentiments before.

But I had just spent most of the afternoon pulling and digging out weeds, and letting the experience speak to me about different characteristics of healing. So when I read the words using imagery of planting seeds and pulling weeds to convey the process of prosperity, it more than spoke to me – it grabbed me.

Not only did I get the original intent of the message, but it spoke to me in volumes on a much deeper and personal level.

All night, I sat in the warm company of wonderful thoughts, thoughts of being spoken to, talked to and taught. About the caring that went into that. About not just being not alone, but supported and looked after.

That “someone” would take the time to reach me in this way, that I’d finally be alert enough to at least pay attention, to take note.

I pondered the process of weeding, going back in my mind how I not only pulled the weeds, but dug them out. How some were easy to pull up with barely a hold on the surface of the earth, and others clung in great clumps with a death-like vice, not willing to give up without a good amount of sweat and effort on your part.

And I thought, that’s how weeding unhelpful thinking and digging up disempowering patterns can be in your personal life. Some can be easily plucked out with a simple decision, and others take work, lots of hard work to uproot, only to find runners that have spread out and there’s more to deal with than you thought.

So this morning, I’m letting myself receive the fruits from this wonderful experience of yesterday, and in considering how much deeper and richer the lessons were for my having lived the imagery before reading them, I found myself wondering, what if that’s what this life is for?

What if physical reality is a classroom for angels (and some would think, also demons) who need to learn hands on?

You know, angels, spiritual beings who need…or want special ed classes, because they’re “right brain” or holistic thinkers. Those lovely consciousnesses who languish with textbook type learning or for whom it’s not enough to understand intellectually, but need to feel, see, taste, smell and hear full dimensionally to really understand, to make their knowledge theirs.

And it changes things a bit for me to go from creatures who deserve to go to hell or beings who live in world created by the mistaken thought of separation, to a type of special ed class, delightful, terrible and filled with opportunities and choices for those special ed students who learn best hands on.

And you do realize, only those kids in institutionalized instruction are labeled “special ed” as if it were a disability. Those in other settings – like in the real world – are called inventors, entrepreneurs and at times even genius.

Not that the human race is particularly genius, but it is, I think, a beautiful example of a desire to engage, to learn and become more than what it was.

And in that is a beautiful vulnerability that can positively take one’s breath away.

…there is a garden. Really. Pulling back long runners of wild greenery, I find a garden, or at least a piece of one – variegated leaves of contrasting green planted as a part of someone’s vision of their home.

Could have been my Kenny. I can see him hastily digging a hole and planting his latest addition from the nursery. Got to do it NOW, you know.

Or maybe it was our son, doing one of the many chores assigned to him at the drop of a hat by his dad. Or perhaps Kenny’s parents, who in their turn, had passed away from one form or another of cancer, too.

But there it was, a little garden growing underneath the weeds.

Healing is like that. No matter how deep it gets buried, whether smothered or strangled, there is that life force within us that perseveres.

And do you know what else can be found under the weeds?

Space. That’s right, space. In some places, clearing the weeds away I found nothing – well, not exactly nothing. There were scrambling crickets and long wet earthworms hurrying to burrow back into the rich earth. But there was no garden, not even a remnant of one. Everything had been smothered away.

I looked at the uninterrupted brown – a wide open invitation for more weeds…unless I planted something in their place.

And healing is like that, too. Not enough to do the work of clearing things out and letting go. We need to choose what to bring in. We have to embrace.

And then I come back in, pleased with my mind’s pondering, and I check my email. There’s the Daily Word from Unity. It reads,

“My thoughts are like seeds in the rich soil of my mind…If thoughts of fear or lack pop up, I release them just as I would remove weeds from my garden.’

Of course.

And healing’s like that, too – coming to you with multi-layered meaning for your multi-layered life.

You know, sometimes with the passing of my sister and Kenny, I feel like an orphan. I know I have family through my children and grandchildren, and I can’t begin to tell you how blessed I am by them.

But when I look to the left and look to the right, there is no one standing beside me anymore. And it’s been a long time since I looked behind me, for I know there hasn’t been anyone there to lean against from my family of origin and theirs for more years than I care to remember.

But it’s days like today, when Life seems to speak to me through weeds and dirt and half buried flowers, and then taps me on the shoulder to whisper another delicious thought using those same images, that I realize just how not alone I am.

And I think maybe I’m not such an orphan after all.