I found this in my little zen garden in the classroom today. I love to watch what happens within its boundaries throughout the day. Some students have to work it every day, ordering it to their perfect idea of what it should look like. Others seem to have a need to make it messy, to jumble the stones, or bury them, spilling the sand over the edges. This used to bother me, until I realized that the need to disorder is also a type of ordering, a shifting of energies, and a necessary one in a day which is regimented by 45-minute blocks, and assignments that must be done, and attention that must be paid. Disordering the zen garden is its own way of taking control. I still can’t quite reconcile myself to the seeming-wanton spilling of sand over the edges, and the ones who scrape the rake harshly against the bottom of the tray. Still, even those who do that have their purposes, and I am committed to be an observer at this point, and not a director of the zen garden. Lately, they have taken to leaving messages. I am partial to “Dragons and fish.”
The strange dreams continue. Last night there was a lion in my tent. I tried growling at it to scare it away. It just became more aggressive. Fortunately, Jon was there to wake me up. Only half an hour later, I had the chance to return the favor and wake him up from a fearful dream, too.
My next dream was less intense, but equally appalling–lost at sea in a little island archipelago. One of our party found a little boat and rowed off to see if he could find a mainland somewhere. When he came back, I paddled off in the opposite direction and found Finland–there was a sign right on the beach: FINLAND. So I knew we were saved.
Gratitude List:
1. Snow Day coming up
2. The boys might be fighting more these days, but at least they’re talking about it, trying to figure out what sets them off, so maybe there’s some learning taking place.
3. How ideas birth ideas
4. Resolve, determination, grit
5. Someone to wake me from the nightmares
May we walk in Beauty!
Mockingbird Chronicles 