It is so easy to forget

It is so easy to forget.

Of all the energy, of all the matter, of all the swirling galaxies, stars and planets there is a tiny speck that is sentient, and of that tiny speck there is a microscopic dot that is human with our vast, unlimited capacity to love, to create and care for all that is not ourselves. Amazing grace, indeed. But it is so easy to forget the vastness, the miracle that we are, enchanted with our capacity to enchant, forgetting that we are enchanted, forgetting what we really are and how easy it is to love, how natural it is to be kind to everything, like berating. This way to a different new year….

Michael

Themes: 
unconditional love

What if?

Carly fell asleep quickly, holding my hand. My heart breaks, and all too often, when I hear the tone of voice or the rude hostility parents impose on the children they supposedly love. Clearly, most of the actual behavior we call parenting is not love. Most of what we call schooling is not love either. Comparison and competition is not love. Stuff isn’t love. The commercial exploitation of children and of childhood nearly every parent and child experience with commercial media and technology is not love. That doesn’t leave much time for love - does it?

What if it were love that the child experiences as the cornerstone, the safe place, home base, the guiding polestar of their development every day?

What if you and I were always mindful of every child’s brilliance, as is all life in all its forms? The world would change on the spot.

Themes: 
unconditional love

Melting Hugs

Today Carly Elizabeth it officially eighteen months young. Yes, the brain grows more the first year than any other time. The density of possible connections are two to three times that of an adult. What does that mean? Muffins on the floor, toy train wrecks, hidden objects to trip over in the dark, toilet paper strolling down the hall, my wallet in the trash, car keys in the vacuum and a million other surprises.

Themes: 
bonding
brain development
unconditional love

More On The Only Force Powerful Enough

The Challenge and Responsibility We Call Parenting

The miracle we are is a constantly changing interplay, a constellation or radiant galaxy of trillions of independent but interdependent cells relating, communicating and cooperating. No thing is ever the same, not for a blink. As we now know there is no such ‘thing,’ as an atom, only movement. We are that, only movement.

We honor that impermanence, that we are a river moving or we misconceive. We create an abstract, somehow fixed notion that we are static, a me, mostly as a defensive strategy to avoid anticipated and self-projected fear.

Themes: 
unconditional love
safety
model imperative