December 27th, 2019
I have been working on a broadside about how we as adults have a tendency to put our heads in the sand when it comes to supporting children navigate the complexities, difficulties and suffering of their inner and outer lives. But in the process I have let a good chunk of time go by without reaching out to all of you good people, and have neglected to wish you a happy Winter Solstice and well wishes around Diwali, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza and all the other ways you choose to celebrate light, life, the overcoming of suffering,human fellowship and affinity, communal strength and individual perseverance, sympathetic joy, and the interconnected, interdependent, intercommunity of all living things.
At Leila Day, where I work, we recently had a Winter Solstice celebration where we sang songs, told stories and sat around a fire appreciating each other and the beneficence of the sun. We made a “Solstice Wreath” and stuffed it with our wishes for the New Year. Children wished to overcome their fears of the dark and monsters, to live in the world where there were only nice dragons and nice things, where people never got sick ( adults often focused on health or recovery from sickness), where people never died , to always be with Mommy and Daddy, to be happy with Mommy and Daddy, to be with their friends, to have fun playing, etc. While we tried to “guide” the children away from the idea of these New Year wishes as a Christmas list one child endearingly whispered in my ear ( as if she had got the message that she wasn’t supposed to wish for herself ) I wish for some makeup! Another child blurted out with all the enthusiasm of the possibility of a wish being granted by a magic genie, I wish to be all the Pokemon.
Our director Kim Bohen and I ended our winter solstice celebration with a few heartfelt words which I will paraphrase, mingle and mangle together. We hope you can use this Winter Solstice celebration as part of your holiday and focus on the important things within your family. We all come from different ethical and spiritual traditions and have different experiential and social backgrounds but what we are trying to do here at Leila Day is create a space where we can come together as a community, support one another and provide your children a loving, caring, learning and growing educational experience. We hope you can go back to your families and find ways to treasure the good old ways of the past and transform them to meet your present situations and challenges. Have a wonderful break.
I am having a wonderful break spending time with my family, taking my grandkids to the zoo, watching movies with my elderly dad. Last night we watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers and I was struck by a quote halfway through the movie.
“In my practice, I’ve seen how people have allowed their humanity to drain away. Only it happened slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind… All of us — a little bit — we harden our hearts, grow callous. Only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is to us, how dear.” Stay human my friends. Become human by recognizing the humanity in all of us. Soften your hearts, open them up to the miracle of the child’s natality. Treasure this precious human existence. With the passing of Ram Dass perhaps it is appropriate to end (begin?) with a quote from him. “Let’s trade in all our judging for appreciating. Let’s lay down our righteousness and just be together.”