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Hopscotching Through Time

In the small village where I grew up, we often played hopscotch. One of us would draw the familiar pattern on the street with chalk, then we would each choose a marker – usually a penny, a small stick, or a flat stone – and the game would begin.

The first player tossed their marker into the first square, then hopped to the end of the court, skipping the square holding their marker. Turning around, they hopped back to the square just before the one holding their penny or small stone, picked it up, and hopped back to the beginning. Then they took aim at the second square. Their turn continued as long as their marker landed completely inside the square they were aiming for, and they didn’t touch any of the lines while hopping.

We would play hopscotch for hours on end.

Memories of this childhood game reawakened as I was pondering how to choreograph the weekly posts that will appear here. Some will be drawn from the earlier incarnation of lightmorning.org. Others will be stories not yet told. All the posts will relate to resilience, the core theme of this website, but they won’t be posted in any chronological order. Instead, we’ll be hopscotching back and forth through time.

Halloween helps us deal…

Each year, near the middle of October, strange figures start appearing in the front yards of suburban homes that are otherwise unremarkable. Foreboding tableaux of skeletons and graveyards, ghosts and ghouls, or an occasional witch, greet neighbors and passersby alike. Such lawn ornamentation has become almost as popular as jack o’ lanterns and trick-or-treating.

Yet on a recent morning walk I happened to see one of these displays with fresh eyes. For as I paused to gaze at three skeletons, dressed in bright clothes and seemingly having a good time, a sentence spontaneously took shape in my mind: “Halloween helps us deal with our subliminal fears.”

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Crying For the Beauty of the Earth

I awoke with this dream on November 28th, the morning after a momentous neighborhood celebration of Thanksgiving in 1997. The celebration took place in Rivendell, Light Morning’s new and still-under-construction community shelter. Nearly twenty-four years later, “Crying For the Beauty of the Earth” remains one of the strangest and strongest of my strong medicine dreams. While it seemed to come out of the blue, it was presaged by a song by Bob Dylan called “Not Dark Yet.” The dream was a descent into unimaginable darkness, and the following eleven days were darker still.

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What Is Worship?

Prologue

What follows was originally intended to be shared with a small circle of fellow Quakers. But as the writing unfolded, it took on a more general relevance, which is why it’s now appearing here. An earlier post, Two Roads, traces the ongoing influence of my Quaker family background. Another post, Medicine Wheels for Story Orphans, explores the evocative similarities between the lives of George Fox (who founded the Religious Society of Friends), J.R.R. Tolkien (who wrote The Lord of the Rings), and Carl Jung (whose Red Book is discussed below).

For those unfamiliar with Quaker ways, and especially with the unprogrammed branch of the Quaker family tree, meetings for worship last about an hour and are mostly silent. Now and then a Friend may offer a brief inspirational message. These sharings are often called vocal ministry.

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The Lofty Chronicles: 8

This continues an ongoing series of posts about a young girl growing up
and pursuing child-led learning at Light Morning. The series begins here
with an introduction. Links to the other posts in the series are here.

A few notes about the following journal entries: Lauren has asked everyone to call her Lofty. In my journal I sometimes use one name and sometimes the other, and she herself sometimes goes back and forth between the two. / We’re a common table community, meaning that we take all our meals together in the community shelter. / We’re also off-grid, so we heat and cook with wood and use kerosene lamps for light.

Tracing Gender Lines

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The Lofty Chronicles: 7

This continues an ongoing series of posts about a young girl growing up
and pursuing child-led learning at Light Morning. The series begins here
with an introduction. Links to the other posts in the series are here.

One of Lofty’s drawings

The Old Paths

Bedtime Stories (Friday, 7 February 1992) Last April (here) I listed the books that Joyce, Lauren, and I had been reading aloud as bedtime stories. Here’s what we’ve read together since then.

Gifts of Unknown Things, Watson
Star Wars, Lucas
The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas et al
The Return of the Jedi, ibid
A Wizard of Earthsea, LeGuinn
The Tombs of Atuan, ibid
The Farthest Shore, ibid
Treasure Island, Stevenson
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Afternoon of the Elves, Lisle
George Washington Carver, Holt
Carver’s George, Means
Oversoul Seven and the Museum of Time, Roberts
A Swiftly Tilting Planet, L’Engle

Continue reading The Lofty Chronicles: 7

The Lofty Chronicles: 6

This continues an ongoing series of posts about a young girl growing up
and pursuing child-led learning at Light Morning. The series begins here
with an introduction. Links to the other posts in the series are here.

On Loan From the Universe

Our neighbors Doris and Harry

A New Kind of Family (Thursday, 5 December 1991) A passing impression this evening of life in the emerging Light Morning form of family. After supper, Joyce went to a village meeting at the Institute for Sustainable Living and Marlene went to a weekly gathering at our neighbors Harry and Doris. The rest of us are sitting around our off-grid community shelter which is lit by kerosene lamps.

Adam’s in the kitchen reading the current issue of Harrowsmith. Ron’s by the wood-stove studying a book about dreams. I’m on the couch with an old issue of Whole Earth Review. Lauren is sitting on Tom’s lap in the rocking chair, listening to stories about his youth, for which she seems to have an insatiable appetite and which Tom loves to share. Everything’s warm and cozy and family.

Continue reading The Lofty Chronicles: 6

The Lofty Chronicles: 5

This continues an ongoing series of posts about a young girl growing up
and pursuing child-led learning at Light Morning. The series begins here
with an introduction. Links to the other posts in the series are here.

The Irony of Pinocchio

Sage and Lauren with marigolds

You Can’t Just Say No (Monday, 2 September 1991) Our new grain grinder has just arrived. It’s an expensive machine whose large flywheel should make it much easier for us to convert wheat berries into whole wheat flour. Even seven-year-old Lauren can crank the handle with no trouble. She’s thrilled to finally be able to grind flour with the rest of us.

Unfortunately, the output is far below both our expectations and the claims of the manufacturer. After seeing how little flour it seems to produce, we use a timer and a measuring cup to run some trials between our older, harder to crank machine and the new one. The results clearly show that the new grinder will have to be returned.

Our daughter, however, has not been included in this decision-making process. Lauren’s eyes fill with tears when she learns that we’re going to ship back the beautiful new machine she’s been using to help make flour. All our reasons and statistics are meaningless to her. We who value making communal decisions by consensus have acted as though consensus is for adults only, thereby disenfranchising the littlest member of our community. We have, in effect, become a bunch of neighborhood bullies.

Continue reading The Lofty Chronicles: 5