No rest for the....
Woke at 6 am today to write in my diary and half a blissful hour later the boys were, mom, can we play xbox.... this being the weekend and they must binge.
So i said, ok. But first breakfast. What are you going to have? Scrambled eggs, we'll make it ourselves. I see. You will cook scrambled eegs... now any other time, i would have said yes, good idea, make some for me as well.... but as the house is sort of teetering between sloven and squalor, i said, nope... i will make panckes.
Making pancakes is good because as you make the pancakes, between pieces (are pancakes pieces when they are not stacks? in Malay it's keping, i.e. slices... or pieces, but for things that are thin only) you can do thinks like put the dishes you washed (hopefully) the night before away, do more dishes, lay the table, tidy the fridge, you get what i mean. And the kids hopefully work up an appetite. Also they get to change into their day clothes so that the word sloth and shambolic are also not added to the adjectival list of esses which your neighbours use to disapprove you with, and everyone is a winner. Except of course, recently the boys, and by the boys i mean Ghin, has taken a notion that we would also like to have whipped cream (chantilly) in his pancakes as well, and i have, like a doting mother with only two children, obliged.
So twenty minutes later, there is a massive stack of pancakes, and the boys are tucking into it. Ghin is cream only please. Oisin who detests cream, is sprinkling his panckes with so much sugar that i get a migrane just looking at it. He rescues the situation by declaring that we would like some cinnamon, thereby making his sugar rush somewhat classier and Ben goes for a bit of the everything.
It is funny watching children/people eat. Ben took out his filling and ate that seperate. Oisin just bundled the thing into a shapeless lump and crunched his way through, and Ghin was very particular, very neat and tidy, but had to sit on the table to eat, thereby invading everyone's space and drawing a disproportionate amount of attention to himself.
It is a bit like doing our watercolour paintings. One of the complaints about Waldorf education is that everyone has to do the same thing in their painting, they can't paint anything they like. But you should see the difference in each painting. It is stunning really. And each painting is a snapshot of a person's personality. And i would say more personality than ability. And, as a teacher, that's what you are looking for; the child and its development. Not to judge them, but to see where they are and to meet them there, so that you can bring them to freedom. And what is freedom? Freedom is many things, but it is mostly enabling the child, as an adult to make decisions that suit them and others around them in the most compassionate, generous and loving way.
Yesterday we also did the music of the spheres. Everything, as quantum physics is discovering, has a vibration. We are all vibrating at various rates, which is why we are more space than solid. The planets too have a vibration and their vibrations are so powerful that they do affect us. Steiner talks about how we long for music, because more than any other form of art, we literally come from music. It is within our very fabric of being, our very substance. We are shaped by the same forces, built from the same forces, that make music.
We were also talking about how teaching music in an intuitive way helps us to hone our intuition. I am beginning to think that intuition is not just a nonsensical nice to have thing. It is actually a sense that we have forgotten how to use, or in our materialist age, just rubbished out of existence.
Intuition is actually our ability to read situations, read people, read things... and then be able to respond with the best part of ourselves. If we are able to intuit properly, we would save ourselves a lot of hassle, as the intellect then does not go into over drive and make us nuts. I'm still trying to understand what i mean, i currently intuit it.
And far from being is woolly activity intuition requires someone to really hone their intuition abilities. Its like if you are going to be dealing with the unseen, the unsaid, you had better get the ability to read these situations with real ability, with some kind of dexterity. Just guessing is rubbish. If you are going to find your way without a map or survival kit, then your knowledge of the forest, the elements, the world around you, better be damned good.
So right now... my own path, i am cultivating my intuition.
....
I have finished Oisin and Ghin's scarf. Now will be truffle making time. After this, i will write in my journal for half and hour then at 9 i will get bathed and changed and then i will do housework, until people are ready for lunch, then i'll prep lunch and after that send them to circus school. I'll come home, do more housework and then collect them. There is this performance in Glencraig today of The Incarnation of the Logos... which is a different take on the coming of Christ. See how tired the boys are... although i do think we might miss it as we are only collectiung them at 8.30 tonight.
I reall wanted to see that performance, damn!
And if i have completed the truffles, it will be putting the Christmas presents together. I got the small boxes that Oisin's class have made and will use those to put the presents in. I'll tie them up in some gauzy cloth... which used to be some old leftover curtain fabric and that will be Christmas presents for me. I look on at the buying frenzy and town and am astonished.
Yesterday we went into Oxfam's old bookstore and got some DVDs, really good ones, a Vespers by Rachmananoff CD and a Winne the Pooh book for Ghin, which he loves. And that cost about £10. So there you go... and then, just to break my heart there was a set of 1965 editions of Shakespeare by Menthuen, a collection of the Belfast School of Commerce that had been donated to Oxfam. They were mostly history plays, Timon of Athens, the Henrys, etc and it just was so sad to think that would be split up. You can't be selling them seperately i asked the man. You have to keep them together. Well, unfortunately he said, people don't buy whole sets... i was devastated. I can't buy the whole set... Peter would kill me bringing back copies of books i already had, but 1960 Menthuens... it was just too much.
The Christmas show was amazing. Oisin is evolving into a performer of sorts. Just confident and smiling and just easy. Easy easy easy. I can see him growing before my very eyes. He has really shot up this year. Really become such an incredibly beautiful child. We were talking about the Golden Age of childhood and i was thinking my son, that's my son... he's at this age. And then, it will pass and he will pass into becoming a big boy, a youth, a man. So drink it in, enjoy it. Delight and bathe and glow in it. One day, one day... it will have passed and i would be so grateful that i did not miss it.
So i said, ok. But first breakfast. What are you going to have? Scrambled eggs, we'll make it ourselves. I see. You will cook scrambled eegs... now any other time, i would have said yes, good idea, make some for me as well.... but as the house is sort of teetering between sloven and squalor, i said, nope... i will make panckes.
Making pancakes is good because as you make the pancakes, between pieces (are pancakes pieces when they are not stacks? in Malay it's keping, i.e. slices... or pieces, but for things that are thin only) you can do thinks like put the dishes you washed (hopefully) the night before away, do more dishes, lay the table, tidy the fridge, you get what i mean. And the kids hopefully work up an appetite. Also they get to change into their day clothes so that the word sloth and shambolic are also not added to the adjectival list of esses which your neighbours use to disapprove you with, and everyone is a winner. Except of course, recently the boys, and by the boys i mean Ghin, has taken a notion that we would also like to have whipped cream (chantilly) in his pancakes as well, and i have, like a doting mother with only two children, obliged.
So twenty minutes later, there is a massive stack of pancakes, and the boys are tucking into it. Ghin is cream only please. Oisin who detests cream, is sprinkling his panckes with so much sugar that i get a migrane just looking at it. He rescues the situation by declaring that we would like some cinnamon, thereby making his sugar rush somewhat classier and Ben goes for a bit of the everything.
It is funny watching children/people eat. Ben took out his filling and ate that seperate. Oisin just bundled the thing into a shapeless lump and crunched his way through, and Ghin was very particular, very neat and tidy, but had to sit on the table to eat, thereby invading everyone's space and drawing a disproportionate amount of attention to himself.
It is a bit like doing our watercolour paintings. One of the complaints about Waldorf education is that everyone has to do the same thing in their painting, they can't paint anything they like. But you should see the difference in each painting. It is stunning really. And each painting is a snapshot of a person's personality. And i would say more personality than ability. And, as a teacher, that's what you are looking for; the child and its development. Not to judge them, but to see where they are and to meet them there, so that you can bring them to freedom. And what is freedom? Freedom is many things, but it is mostly enabling the child, as an adult to make decisions that suit them and others around them in the most compassionate, generous and loving way.
Yesterday we also did the music of the spheres. Everything, as quantum physics is discovering, has a vibration. We are all vibrating at various rates, which is why we are more space than solid. The planets too have a vibration and their vibrations are so powerful that they do affect us. Steiner talks about how we long for music, because more than any other form of art, we literally come from music. It is within our very fabric of being, our very substance. We are shaped by the same forces, built from the same forces, that make music.
We were also talking about how teaching music in an intuitive way helps us to hone our intuition. I am beginning to think that intuition is not just a nonsensical nice to have thing. It is actually a sense that we have forgotten how to use, or in our materialist age, just rubbished out of existence.
Intuition is actually our ability to read situations, read people, read things... and then be able to respond with the best part of ourselves. If we are able to intuit properly, we would save ourselves a lot of hassle, as the intellect then does not go into over drive and make us nuts. I'm still trying to understand what i mean, i currently intuit it.
And far from being is woolly activity intuition requires someone to really hone their intuition abilities. Its like if you are going to be dealing with the unseen, the unsaid, you had better get the ability to read these situations with real ability, with some kind of dexterity. Just guessing is rubbish. If you are going to find your way without a map or survival kit, then your knowledge of the forest, the elements, the world around you, better be damned good.
So right now... my own path, i am cultivating my intuition.
....
I have finished Oisin and Ghin's scarf. Now will be truffle making time. After this, i will write in my journal for half and hour then at 9 i will get bathed and changed and then i will do housework, until people are ready for lunch, then i'll prep lunch and after that send them to circus school. I'll come home, do more housework and then collect them. There is this performance in Glencraig today of The Incarnation of the Logos... which is a different take on the coming of Christ. See how tired the boys are... although i do think we might miss it as we are only collectiung them at 8.30 tonight.
I reall wanted to see that performance, damn!
And if i have completed the truffles, it will be putting the Christmas presents together. I got the small boxes that Oisin's class have made and will use those to put the presents in. I'll tie them up in some gauzy cloth... which used to be some old leftover curtain fabric and that will be Christmas presents for me. I look on at the buying frenzy and town and am astonished.
Yesterday we went into Oxfam's old bookstore and got some DVDs, really good ones, a Vespers by Rachmananoff CD and a Winne the Pooh book for Ghin, which he loves. And that cost about £10. So there you go... and then, just to break my heart there was a set of 1965 editions of Shakespeare by Menthuen, a collection of the Belfast School of Commerce that had been donated to Oxfam. They were mostly history plays, Timon of Athens, the Henrys, etc and it just was so sad to think that would be split up. You can't be selling them seperately i asked the man. You have to keep them together. Well, unfortunately he said, people don't buy whole sets... i was devastated. I can't buy the whole set... Peter would kill me bringing back copies of books i already had, but 1960 Menthuens... it was just too much.
The Christmas show was amazing. Oisin is evolving into a performer of sorts. Just confident and smiling and just easy. Easy easy easy. I can see him growing before my very eyes. He has really shot up this year. Really become such an incredibly beautiful child. We were talking about the Golden Age of childhood and i was thinking my son, that's my son... he's at this age. And then, it will pass and he will pass into becoming a big boy, a youth, a man. So drink it in, enjoy it. Delight and bathe and glow in it. One day, one day... it will have passed and i would be so grateful that i did not miss it.
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