The Gamble of Song

Welcome to The Singing Lottery, where every morning we each draw a song out of a hat, open our hearts, breathe deeply into our lungs, lift our heads to the heavens and SING. Together. I know it sounds strange, but hear me out.

This is my answer to the impossibility of a daily circle time. We would love to have a circle every day, and it sounds good in theory. But that lengthy, involved, lovely, composed circle with all the songs and fingerplays and recitations just isn't something we can do everyday in our house, especially with Kitty Bill competing for attention.

But... I still want my girls to sing. Daily. Together. In a lovely, harmonious way. As a guided activity, which is very different from the normal and contstant outpouring of their own creative song that happens throughout each day. In this I want them to listen. To memorize. To sing together. To work together, and to start the morning with song. Every day. United and present and lyrical and healthy.

I think it's IMPORTANT, but you don't have to take my word for it.

“Music is a strange thing. I would say it is a miracle. For it stands halfway between thought and phenomenon, between spirit and matter, a sort of nebulous mediator, like and unlike each of the things it mediates — spirit which requires manifestation in time and matter that can do without space.” --Heinrich Heine
"We need no convincing about how phenomenally good music makes us feel. There's nothing esoteric about the fact that when we sing, our pupils dilate and a rush of endorphins (our body's natural painkillers) surge through our bodies. Singing increases oxygenation in our bloodflow, tones the nervous system, heightens our immunity, and affects glandular secretions. Healers often use sustained vocalization of individual pitches for the purpose of resonating specific body areas to realign and rebalance." --Naturally You Can Sing

Singing promotes deep breathing, oxengenates the blood, stimulates brain activity, releases 'feel good' endorphins, reduces stress, builds self-confidence, enhances memory, and boosts creativity! --Beth Lawrence, Viva La Voice

"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful." --Plato

Sounds great, doesn't it? Singing daily for health and inner peace and connectedness. It's a communal exercise. Turning it into a game like The Singing Lottery brings in the element of surprise, mystery, and fun. What will we sing today? My girls can't wait to find out! But of course there are rules, too.

The Singing Lottery Rules
1. Anyone can contribute a song to the hat.
2. Each song must impart a sense of goodwill, joy, spirit, and/or welcome.
3. The songs can be in any language.
4. Each person has to draw at least one song from the hat.
5. After each participant has drawn a song, the singing commences.
6. Each participant must sing standing up (posture and breath are important.)
7. All songs will be sung together, as a group.

We're having great fun with it, currently singing selections from Sing Through the Day, This is the Way We Wash-a-Day, Teach Me German, and the musical play of Peter Pan. Moonshine in particular has been heard repeating the songs throughout the day. Not just Moonshine though, me too. I can't help myself. It feels good.

What will you sing?

Feel free to play along.

Back to School...

This is Moonshine's "rainbow leaf." Yes, the autumnal change is upon us. The morning air is crisp and cool, the oaks are scattering their acorns, and a few leaves here and there are slowly turning. I love this time of year!

Last week we stuck to our rhythm fairly easily. We enjoyed the morning walks and the chill they left on our noses and ears. We pass a house on our walk that the girls have taken to calling "the castle." It's a grand house of limestone with two turrets, one on each end. It's really something to behold, especially on a street with fairly normal-looking houses. Some of them are just as large, but turrets? Lion statues poised on the steps? Not even close.

This house has really peaked the girls' interests in castles and what it would be like to live in one. As soon as we return home from the walk Moonshine runs to the costume box and gets princessed-out. More often than not Sunburst has joined in, and they've been queens of their own castle.

While I'm waiting for our shipment of school supplies (and for my grand plan to solidify,) I thought we would keep with the castle theme . We're warming up to the new school year with a few more Grimm's tales and accompanying writing practice. So far, so good. I'm bringing in a few of the "castley" stories that reference God a bit more, since we're going to delve into the stories of the Saints this year, it seemed like a good warm-up to the idea of godliness.

Sunburst isn't too comfortable with the idea of God, actually. Jesus, is easier somehow because there is a human form and baby worship, but God? She can't quite wrap her brain around it, all on her own. I once overheard her at a party debating with a table of mixed-age children about the existence of God and his/her gender. It never occurred to me that children would discuss this topic at length amongst themselves, but there they were... Sunburst adamantly espousing her disbelief and another child declaring that God is a woman. "But God doesn't sound like a girl's name," I heard before I walked away shaking my head and thinking they would get clearer answers from a magic eight ball.

I'm toying with the idea of starting into the second grade lessons with form drawing inspired by the story The Clown of God, told by Tomie dePaola. It has just that spark of the mystery of spirit and miracle that I've been looking for. And touching on our own personal needs, it's a good look at the circle of life, following one clown's life from early childhood to his death, from poverty to fame and back to poverty, and seems to encompass the spectrum of human/animal behavior we'll be covering this year in our readings. It's also a good introduction to St. Francis and the Brothers, which we'll return to in another main lesson. It's brimming with material.

Most of all, I love the passage in the story where Giovanni meets the Little Brothers:

"Our founder, Brother Francis, says that everything sings of the glory of God. Why, even your juggling," said one of the brothers.

"That's well and good for men like you, but I only juggle to make people laugh and applaud," Giovanni said.

"It's the same thing," the brothers said. "If you give happiness to people, you give glory to God as well."

"If you say so," said Giovanni...

I'll stir some nature into the story, plug in some forms, and be set to start when our new supplies arrive. I'm excited, actually. The weather, the story... it feels like I might have wandered back onto the path. In spite of everything. It feels good.

Planning for Fall

With the recent events in my life being what they are, I've felt more than a bit unfocused. Scattered, emotionally and mentally. It's not a frame of mind I'd recommend to anyone, especially when raising young children and homeschooling. During my struggles this week to screw my head back on straight, I ran across a couple of quotes in my readings.

I'm always open to signs from the universe, and these two felt a bit serendiptious.

"Do not let the fact that things are not made for you, that conditions are not as they should be, stop you. Go on anyway. Everything depends upon those who go on anyway."

--Robert Henri

"There's a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn't change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can't get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding. You don't ever let go of the thread."

--William Stafford

There are a lot of ways to interpret this idea of "thread." It can manifest as one's faith --mine being weighted by ideas of destiny and the interconnectedness of the spirit world with our own, which is something I have felt and experienced many times in my life. I have to take a breath and remember that everything happens for a reason, as it is meant to happen or unfold-- and that nothing changes but the earthly body. It's hard for me to really hold these ideas in the thick of grief, though I do believe them with all my heart, they don't dissipate my human feelings of loss or helplessness or suffering.

Thread can also speak to our relationships with others-- mother, daughter, sister, aunt, friend, wife.... We have this uncanny ability to tether each other to the earth, to life in all its messiness and hilarities. It doesn't get any more real than wiping bottoms or the salty tears of a teething baby or a four-year-old's knock knock jokes during dinner.

But what about homeschooling and how it applies to my family? Thread is something like a rhythm we can hold onto, a set plan, an order to our days. A bit of stability we can count on.

It's time to get back to a steady beat. If we can hold onto that, maybe we can keep ourselves afloat in this murky current of emotion. Anyway, it's worth a shot. I've come up with a rough plan. We'll try it out and see how it goes.

Monday - wet-on-wet painting/washing
Tuesday - music
Wednesday - handwork/mending
Thursday - music/bi-monthly co-op/park day
Friday - circle/foreign languages

We'll also walk in the mornings and work our second grade blocks into this weekly rhythm. Thursdays are our only "day out" from the house, so it should be easy. I still have to figure out what those blocks are going to be though. I like to come up with a theme that guides the year. Last year was our "quest for the light," which showed itself in our Martinmas play and lantern walk, our letter story, our intro to numbers story (working through the Cave of Mysteries to the Sky Queen with her twelve white horses,) and Robin Red's form drawing story/song. It felt perfect for the first grade year, a child just setting out on the path, coming into the light of knowledge, getting her first taste of that brightness.

The second grade child is continuing along that path, bridging this gap between the animal and spirit world, base behavior and a higher calling. Most Waldorf folks teach Aesop's Fables and Saints' stories this year. Me? I'm not feeling it. I'm reading over the materials and waiting for divine inspiration to strike me. Presenting the Saints' stories feels important, but my intuition tells me they need to be grounded in/with something else. Reality. Truth. Experience. Something. And that these lessons need to cast some light on the things that are unfolding in our own family, hold our space. But how? And what? Hopefully the right answers will come soon....

In the meantime, I will go on anyway. Blindly moving forward, grounded in rhythm and family and friendship, and dirty bottoms.