Go Play

The work of being a loving parent is to create a safe, stable, and loving environment for our children to grow. Our children will be different. Different than their parents and different from each other. 

We, as parents, must embrace these differences and nurture them to the best of our ability. We don’t have to tell them how or what to think. We just need to be a decent, kind, and loving role model. 

We need to allow our children to explore all the rich and diverse possibilities that life and learning can provide. We don’t need to tell our children how to play, but we must provide time and opportunity for them to play. 

Play is essential for brain and social and emotional development. We don’t need to tell them what and how to learn, we just need to make all learning available. 

As we watch them play, they will learn, and they will reveal what they will become. 

The Geography of the Soul

"The same stream of life that runs through the world runs through my veins."

- Rabindranath Tagore

The essence of life is within us. Our interior landscape must be nurtured with the sun of our soul, the water of our emotions, and the earth of our mind. Allow the essential energies of life to integrate and swirl within you.

Suspend your criticism.

Awaken!

Open to the geography of your soul.

Peace

I was raised on a corn farm in South Jersey. Not just any farm, a silver queen corn farm. The best eating corn in the world. It was a very small family farm. My mom was the youngest of 6 and each time one of her siblings married, my grandfather gave them a piece of the land. Four different families shared the responsibility for the corn. We all grew our own tomatoes, beans, carrots, onions, potatoes, and asparagus. I did not like asparagus because as a little boy, it was my job to weed the asparagus patch. It seemed to me that asparagus was just attracted to weeds.

My favorite time, as a boy, was to sit on my grandparent's wrap around porch. It wrapped two thirds of the way around the house. It had large wooden rocking chairs and I could rock for hours. I loved it when it rained. Safely tucked into the warmth of the roofed porch, I was fascinated watching rain drops plop into wide-mouthed empty milk bottles. In those days, the milk man delivered your milk. We would set the empty bottles on the big back porch for pick-up.

I loved the peace of that plop, plop, plop. The sound of steady rain outside the safety of the porch, interspersed with the base notes of plop, plop, plop and my violin like rocking chair accompanied by my humming. That was peace. Even the memory bring me peace.