In a class on subversive teaching, I recall the sweet learning of the world—the sweetness that occurred, for example, when I first held a car's steering wheel next to a trusted driver. I remember arms wrapped around me to tie a scarf and lace a shoe and fry an egg and apply color to canvass and sew a hem. Sweet learning as safe and familial presence, with touching and mutuality; sweet teaching as the gift of being in the right place at the right time.
Sweet learning cushions the bruises of life. As if I missed out on the honey of encouragement and forgiveness—as if I were you—I build loving memories
in this time by choosing a source of love, a mentor who pays attention—not a lover, but a
kitten or puppy, maybe, or my brother’s children or a librarian or—more than
one-on-one—an entire presence like a library, a forest, a seashore, a street protest; by choosing one focus within an environment to be both anchor and teacher.
Pick up and hold a book, lean on a tree, sit on driftwood or sand, hold a sign. What do you see? Let the ground and air support you. Give yourself to them and feel the sweetness pour in. A long minute, a short hour, a half day—long enough to let the place wrap around you while you grow part of it. Or take a class, I suppose, to reach your brain or move your body or let your creativity spark between sensation and its materials.
So much sweet learning! No judgment, and it's renewable again and again even though a parent or a planet dies, even though another part of the world waits to use you well or poorly. You drink in the sweetness and take it back out there as a new memory of loving arms, of a universe that is a marvelous container. Let the earth hold you up, breathe. Let the spaces among written words, right here, be a maze that your fingers trace for your heart's delight.
For earthweal weekly challenge:
* Find “Sweet
Learning: Life's most important lessons are rarely taught in school.” By Linda Christensen in rethinking schools.
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© 2020 Susan L. Chast
How I remember this sweet learning - my mother's voice by the sea, congress with a frog in plastic bucket named Big Toe who bid me sing. After a point however -- puberty, and its decades-long prolongings -- the rites took me screaming into the wood and ripped away sweet learning. Becoming a man with all that awful heritage in tow. I might never have grown up otherwise, but mentoring after that was difficult and painful -- madness, alcoholism, recovery, marriage, books, work. Sweet and hard learning -- the difference between the male and female mysteries? I suppose, if those archaisms even faintly exist. And learning to write? I still channel my mother's voice by the sea. Great write, Susan, thanks for bringing it to earthweal. - Brendan
ReplyDeleteOh yes! The arms of mother nature is where we find our comfort.i love this, Susan. It lifts my heart.
ReplyDeleteTo be present, in the moment. That is always a lesson worth learning.
ReplyDeleteNature can be such a gentle teacher! You have captured that message beautifully here. Though many lessons are learned the hard way, many more are learned gently and we must be grateful for these.
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