Fostering Communities

Today my eighty five year old friend Jean was triggered by memories of school years ago.  Describing her classroom experiences brought the past into the present.  

Hickory Stick Days

“School days – golden learn by rule days.  Reading, writing and arithmetic to the time of a hickory stick.

I must have been so naughty at school

I often remember being canned

The headmaster took us for English

And he marked the books

If you had a “see me” on the page

You knew you were going to be canned

Not with something as light as a hickory stick

The cane he used was as thick as your thumb

And you often had to hold out both hands together!”

A piece by Jean today

This triggered in another friend, memory of a widowed grandmother with ten children and her struggles to bring all these kids up in a small house with no running water, no indoor toilet and no electricity or gas.  As the conversation ran on we were appalled at how hard life was in those days.  How death stalked everyone’s life and how fragile each life was.  Without those heroes that put in decades of hard work and service so many youngsters or aged relatives would never have survived.  The fact that they did it without social services or benefits seems remarkable. 

Then, as we shared memories, everyone was struck by how actually these poor homes were not isolated places but shared spaces where grandparents, neighbours, cousins and  friends came and went.  This fabric of community life suddenly seemed so rich and fertile and full of social interaction.  This new generation has all the benefits and handouts but no such rich safety net around them.  Instead, they inhabit a zone rich in materialism but poor in every other way.  We were all shocked how quickly we found ourselves moving from thinking how hard it was for people in those days to pondering how lonely ,isolated and vulnerable this generation is in comparison.  In a world weary for want of a pattern of life to which to aspire, perhaps we need to relearn forgotten skills in fostering relationships and communities. 

Using Your Head

I once picked up a four year old Daniel from primary school in Rhodes, Greece to find he had a huge red mark on his face where the teacher had smacked him.  This smack had been administered during the break a good hour before.  I was angry and tried with my limited Greek to complain.  The teacher sailed past me into the staffroom, ignoring my requests for information about what happened.  The rest of the parents gathered round and told me what had happened, gleaned from their kids. 

Apparently, the class had been let out to play in the school yard unsupervised and became too noisy.   This teacher had left her own class and gone out and smacked the first child she encountered, this happened to be my son.  The parents told me this teacher was notorious for smacking children and complaining would just make things worse for Daniel.  I tried to sleep on it and cool down but tossed restless with the injustice of it.  If only I could speak this wretched language at least I could defend my son in some way.  But my Greek was limited, very limited. 

The next day I went to the staffroom and asked to speak to the teacher responsible.  She came out into the corridor as regal and proud as ever and in Greek asked me what I wanted and told me to be quick.  I tried to tell her but the words would not come smoothly and she grew impatient and went to sail past me as before.  Infuriated I stepped in front of her and prepared to give her a head butt if she so much as tried to push past me again.  Eyeball to eyeball we glared at each other and she suddenly started saying how sorry she was and how it would never happen again.  She came over the next day at school assembly and apologised to Daniel in person in front of the other parents.  Who were all bewildered at the change and wondered who I knew in the educational system to make such a turnabout.  But I had discovered the universal language of head butting cuts across all cultural boundaries.

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Getting cold and getting old

It is so cold I am sitting with a hot water bottle on my lap as I type.  There are several facets to growing older and one for me is the coldness of my extremities.   My hands and feet are like cold Icelandic fish and refuse to warm up.  A friend and I were discussing this aging business and there are some beauties.  Please feel free to add your own.

One was the definition of getting older – various insights/comments were shared

1.     Sitting on the toilet you discover a watermelon seed in the folds of your stomach.  The worrying thing is you cannot remember when you last ate a watermelon.

2.     You suddenly find the need to sit when putting on socks

3.     You suddenly find the need to pee when laughing at jokes

4.     All medical personnel appear to have barely finished primary school to you

5.     People in authority ask you weird questions like who is the present prime minster

6.     You think people in authority are really weird and not necessarily on your side

7.     When people ask you how you are – you really want to tell them the dire truth, including all the aches, pains and worries

8.     As you get older you don’t smell yourself, you don’t see the hair growing out of every orifice, wrinkly skin feels just as smooth as usual and you don’t hear your own farts.

9.     You learn to never take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night

10.       An "all-nighter" means not getting up to pee!

11.       You and your teeth don't sleep together anymore

12.       Your mind not only wanders. Sometimes it leaves completely

13.       Getting a little action means I don't need fibre today

14.    Getting lucky means you find your car in the car parkhe

Demonic Hunter ceiling lamps

Today started out okay, I mean no real emergencies.  Feeling better after being ill is such a gift.  A gift you no longer take for granted!  As I left the bedroom I accidently touched the remote control of the Hunter ceiling light and fan.  It is mounted on the wall and the last time it was touched the lights went on and we took two days to find a way of turning them off.  You ask the simple question why have remote controls for lights and stuff, surely a simple on and off switch would suffice?  I spent the next hour and half pointing a useless remote at the roof lights from various perspectives including balanced on a kitchen stool, leaping off the bed, etc to no avail. 

Deciding that batteries were probably the problem I drove to the nearby petrol station to buy over priced batteries.  But even with these brought no progress, and I turned to the internet for advice.  The Web turned out to be flooded with other owners of Hunter ceiling lamps with much worse problems than mine.  Their automated ceiling lights came on in the middle of the night, during the day, whenever they dammed please.  The fan had a mind of its own and decided when and if it would work.  Horrified, I tried to find a solution to my problem.  Most involved unscrewing the light fitting and buying a £60 replacement thingy.  Desperation kicked in, why not try the caveman approach.  I went to the fuse box and tried pulling out all the fuses that said lights.  This made no difference and I crept up the stairs with a growing dread to find the spot lights still blazing from the ceiling. 

At 50 watts on each lamp, there are three, my electricity meter was all the while spinning like a demonic trooper.  Fuelled by the memory of my last electricity bill, I threw caution to the wind and threw the mains switch.  I might have turned off the fridge/freezer/ etc but at least that meter would not be spinning like a wild thing.  I went up the stairs to gather my thoughts below the ceiling lamp and found it still on!  At this stage I must admit to a dance of anger and profanity beneath the spot lights. 

After some re-grouping I remembered another fuse box outside in the garage and tripped that switch as well.  Going up the stairs there was such a heave of relief to find the lights off.  Never, have I been so relieved to find something not working.  Felt I had bearded the beast and yet there was no real progress.  If I left the mains switch off, as it was now, my freezer would defrost, no computer, no cooking, no kettle this was not a viable solution.  Every time I put on the mains the blasted spots lights came on again. Then studying the lights I figured if I could remove the bulbs a cure maybe possible.  Because the lights had been on five hours or so the bulbs were hot but a handy towel sufficed and they were unscrewed and removed.  This was duly done and I was at last able to put the mains on.  Do you remember that moment in  Cast Away when Tom Hanks eventually makes a fire on the beach and jumps about caveman like screaming in delight,  “I have made fire!” ,well I did a dance around the bedroom screaming  the equivalent about successfully killing lights. Why did it take me so long to come up with this?  There was an idiotic part of me that thought things could be resolved if the right button was pressed in the right order.  And isn’t that a common thing in all our lives.  We fiddle around while Rome burns and are reluctant to take steps to make real change.  A very big part of us just hopes that the problem will be resolved, go away, be avoided or ignored.  We waste huge parts of our life and energy in the time that follows.  While we do that, our own electricity meter, our ticking heart, beats away the lost time and the cost.  There has got to be a lesson there!

How to buy happiness

http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_norton_how_to_buy_happiness.html 

How to buy happiness an interesting perspective on how to get that illusive prey.  Nice to know that science is gradually coming to conclusions that make sense when one thinks about building a more peaceful and just society.  Fascinating results that somehow echo what one already knew deep down.  Reminds me of this quote.

“ Is any larger bounty  conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find that .. he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men? No……. there is no greater bliss, no more complete delight.”

(Abdu'l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 2)

               

shaking and buffeting - a blast from the past

I will walk no matter what the weather.  To be outside is to be alive.  Even buffeted by cold winds and rain, the air forcing its way into our lungs works its magic.  Cleansing out the rheum, blowing the mind free of box-like worries.  Allowing the eye to focus out there on the horizon not on empty walls and this fake life.

As you pace the steps that take you to freedom, your back straightens.  With each step you remember an ancient rhythm.  Finding a solace in the slap of earthy ground underfoot.  The beauty of nature pierces the fog of delusion.  You are struck by the redness of that berry, the crisp leaf somersaulting in happy abandonment. 

Slowly the dross is cleansed and polished from off your heart. You are reminded of what this life is for.   

Recollecting who you are, touching base with all the memories of life so far.  Being grateful for precious souls that have brought love to your heart.  Knowing they inspire you still.  Then all this shaking and buffeting throws the cobwebs of your vain imaginations and at last a tiny awareness of real life emerges. 

Cruel or kind - the animal is the test

Taught my lesson this week feeling truly ill.  Teaching in colleges is tough at the best of times and I dread that moment when you are under the weather.  It usually brings out the pack instinct in a class.  They sense your weakness and go in for the kill.  If you have ever watched a pack of animals turn on a weakened member you can guess the scenario.  Last year I became run down due to a family member’s illness.  Travelling across the London for heart treatment and back really drained me and the class I walked back into was quick to ascertain the lay of the land.  They became increasingly out of control and I hated it and them.  Strange how fragile the relationship you can have with a class can be.  Usually, I find you gradually grow to like classes.  They all have their oddities but then don’t we all?  But at that moment something died between me and that class and I never got it back.   The warmth that should exist between us was gone and I viewed them with active dislike.  However I tried to rationalise my feelings I just could not get past the memory of their abuse of my weakness.  You like to think one can be the bigger person, forgive and forget, but at times you have to name and shame the fact that you simply can’t.  All you can do is move forward with the experience and learning that may have been acquired along with the damage.

So this week heading into college feeling really unwell brought back bad memories.  However, the classes were great.  They sensed my vulnerability and they behaved better than normal.  I put it down to them being animal husbandry students and they have a higher empathy than the norm.  When working with animals you never have to check them for being rough they aren’t.  You don’t have to tell them to think about the animal’s well-being, they are already in that mode.  In fact when you watch how they hold a young goat or a rabbit you see their compassion in the very way they use restraint.  Gently and calmly, stroking the animal into restraint with the least force.  Perhaps, when we are with the very vulnerable our real side comes out.  We are free to be as we really are.  Cruel or kind, nurturing or a bully anything is suddenly possible.  So it was nice to see this week the classes responded almost better than I would have even hoped.  Their kindness to animals included teachers such as I.  But then the real links between animal abuse and child abuse have already been proven by statistics.  Now vets who find a suspected case of animal’s abuse are instructed to let social services know, as those who abuse their pets will often be the type to abuse their children.  (see – this link for other patterns http://www.peta.org/issues/companion-animals/animal-abuse-and-human-abuse-partners-in-crime.aspx) A horrible but effective poster in the US shows patterns of abuse linked to treatment of animals and has the saying “men who beat their children often start with their best friend” above the picture of a puppy.