We have “officially” started back to school.  We are concentrating on a Charlotte Mason approach this year and I am borrowing lots of good ideas from Ambleside Online.  We are doing short lessons in the morning in math, copywork and reading.  There is still lots of time to play outdoors which is a high priority for me.  Today all three of them rode their bikes in front of our house and played in the yard.  When they came in to do schoolwork, they seemed ready to settle down and work on their math workbooks.  There was actual quiet in my house for those 20 minutes or so!  Then after a short break we did copy work:

Hurt No Living Thing by Christina Rossetti. 

Hurt no living thing:
Ladybird, nor butterfly,
Nor moth with dusty wing,
Nor cricket chirping cheerily,
Nor grasshopper so light of leap,
Nor dancing gnat, nor beetle fat,
Nor harmless worms that creep.

This is a great poem and dovetails nicely with the yogic philosophy of non-violence, something I am concentrating on this week.  Later today, we plan to make rice krispie bars, have teatime, and read some more.  I also hope to get some cleaning done.  And maybe we will even watch the Nancy Drew DVD we picked up from the library. 

“You, just as you are, and your life here, right now, are all there is and all you need to know. You don’t have to do anything special. Mostly, you have to be open to meeting face to face, and even dancing with, the truth that pertains to your life right now. You have to find a way to collect your fractured pieces, examine them, and then accept them as part of who you are. Spiritual practice is about transformation, but it’s also, and more importantly, about working with what is. –Angel Kyodo Williams

I came to the practice of asana with a curvature in my spine. Thousands of hours of my life have been devoted to struggling with the effects of this. On the mat, my lower back became a battleground. I fought and lost, fought and lost. My efforts to heal myself often ended in debilitating back spasms. Over time, though, I began to respect my back. I marveled at its ability to bend backward and forward, to recover from tremendously painful injuries. Eventually I started to befriend my back, and even to see it as something to be admired. I began focusing on what it could do. As this attitude developed, the need to change my back, to fight my reality, lessened and gradually disappeared. The curvature in my back is gone, and I can’t remember exactly when it went away, because when it did, I no longer cared.”

(from Meditations from the Mat by Rolf Gates)

“A hundred times a day I remind myself that my life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give, in measure as I have received, and am still receiving.”

-Albert Einstein (from Meditations from the Mat)

These are the three words I keep trying to repeat to myself today:  Sovereignity, empathy, and acceptance.  You see, I am reading Myla and Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting once again.  It is a book that takes time to read.  It takes time to absorb all the wisdom within it.  I had read parts of it before but like a lot of other books that I borrow from the library, I had to return it before I could finish reading all of it.  And I really need to read this book now.

Here is a nugget from one of the chapters in the book entitled “Acceptance”:

“As we learn to observe and accept our own wide range of feelings, including very turbulent ones, as part of our effort to be mindful, we naturally become more aware of other people’s feelings, especially our children’s.  We come to know something of the landscape of feelings and their changing nature, and are more likely to be sympathetic and less likely, at the same time, to take them personally.  We are better able to accept their experience and their feelings, even if we may not like how they are behaving.  In doing so, we are able to step out of the limited realm in which we as parents can often find ourselves, where we are so carried away by our own feelings and our attachment to our view of things that we cut ourselves off from our children and in some deep way, without realizing or intending to, abandon them.”

Practicing acceptance is a crucial component of mindful parenting, according to the authors.  Seeing and accepting things as they are, no matter how we feel about it.  

I find parenting to be so demanding and time-consuming and it is so overwhelming at times.  I find that there are times when my patience is lacking, my temper is short and I just need to be by myself.  Is that such a bad thing?  I love my kids but I need the time away to get a fresh perspective.   

It is when I am overwhelmed, exhausted and feeling spent that I am my worst self.  When I am able to step back and look at things from outside my cluttered head, I am able to regain a sense of calm and peace that is otherwise missing.  Maybe, practicing acceptance of my own feelings and behavior will allow me to accept my children’s feelings and behavior more easily.

And there are things my kids do that are really hard for me to accept.  The things they do (or don’t do) can drive me batty.  It can bring out the worst in me.  Accepting these things does not mean they can keep doing these things over and over without any intervening on my part.  But accepting the reality of it all could be the first step toward achieving more harmony in the household.  Not ignoring it and hoping it will go away. 

Of course, there are some things that I can just accept and let go of.  Things like the pen marks on the wall and the all-day pajama marathons.  Some things just aren’t that important to me.  Sure, I wish my toddler hadn’t drawn on the newly painted walls and colored on the bottom of our beautiful cherry wood dining table.  But eventually the walls will get painted over and no one but my family will probably ever see the underside of my dining room table.  And when we do look at the crayon marks under the table it will probably be with a sense of wistful nostalgia and remembrance of my 3 yo’s energy and creativity (for lack of a better word, lol).  If I wanted a perfectly decorated house, I wouldn’t have gotten married and had kids anyway.  Some things are fairly easy for me to accept and to let go.  

Other things are not as easy.  Some behavior requires my attention and problem-solving skills and starts to consume me if I am not careful.  This also requires a certain acceptance and letting go.  It is not good to ignore it and just sweep it under the rug but it also not healthy for me to allow it to cloud over my thinking and overtake me.    

So this week, when I take a little bit of time for myself,  I may be chanting my new mantra, ”Sovereignity, empathy and acceptance.”  And in doing so, I hope to cultivate more awareness of what my children really need from me, what I can let go of, and what I can do to help them grow up healthy and strong.

My yoga teacher read this to us tonight after our final shavasana (sp?): 

“Tension is who you think you should be or who you think others think you should be.  Relaxation is who you are.”  

Here is something to start the day off.  A quote for the day:

“The most precious gift we can offer others is our presence. When mindfulness embraces those we love, they will bloom like flowers.”

Thich Nhat Hanh  (Vietnamese Monk, Activist and Writer. b.1926)