Most recent contributions by Sally
Wintering Into Wisdom
An excerpt from Wintering into Wisdom:The Dance of a Lifetime:
The Transaction of Individual and Community and Work
By Sally Z. Hare, Ph. D.
Not until we winter into wisdom can we see the dance we have been dancing all our lives, the transaction of Individual and Community and Work. We see what we know. And some things have to be believed to be seen…Life is a dance, not a linear uphill battle. It begins as a dance between our role as individual and our role as community member. It’s a dance between light and shadow; a dance between simplicity and complexity; a dance between abundance and scarcity. This dance is about embracing paradox, about being in life in a way that is not either /or, but both/and. It's a lifelong dance between who we are and whose we are and what we are here to do; a lifelong dance co-creating our Work in the world, developing our birthright gifts so we can use them in service of the community. Through the process of this lifelong dance, we are constantly constructing and co-constructing the Individual and Community and Work. I have spent most of my professional life in education looking at communities in classrooms and in schools, in work places and on college campuses, deepening my understanding that we humans are communal creatures – and that learning for us is a social action and interaction. Only as I winter into wisdom do I also recognize that we spend our lives in a dance co-creating who we are and whose we are and our Work in the world, what we are called to do.
Wintering into Wisdom: A Transactional Theory of Community
Community seems to be the solution for everything wrong in our world today. The breakdown of community is cited as the cause for everything from children murdering each other in schools to racism and ethnocentrism to drug overdoses to the high rates of suicide. The disappearance of community gets the blame for why we are destroying the planet – and it is Brian Swimme’s solution for what he calls the “crisis of mass extinction” (Bridle, 2001).
Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone (2000) has become a national bestseller, as we search for ways to understand social change in the United States and the growing sense of disconnectedness and isolation that led to the Columbine shootings and the Oklahoma City bombing. Putnam’s detailed graphs and tables point to his belief that we are looking for ways to create or re-create social capital as the antidote for the so-called loss of community. I say “so-called” because I don’t believe we lose community any more than I believe we can create it. Humans can’t exist without community. If we’ve lost anything, it’s our own hearts – and our own capacity to know what’s all around us, to hear our own inner selves, our spirits. We’ve lost our ability to know community, to recognize the dance.
Community begins at home. Our parents are our first dance teachers. Relationship and communication skills, so essential to community, start, for better and for worse, in the home. Community development has to begin within the individual, as each person reclaims his or her identity and integrity and remembers what it means to know community. And we learn those first dance steps, the basis for community development, at home. T. S. Eliot’s words offer insight into why we can’t see this dance that we have been dancing all our lives until we are able to
winter into wisdom:“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."Some things have to be believed to be seen. We see what we know. Yes, it takes the grace of wintering into wisdom to see the dance of a lifetime, the transaction of Individual and Community and Work.
Sally has written a children's book, as well as a number of articles and essays. She often speaks to groups, in addition to facilitating workshops and retreats.
Jim has also contributed a chapter on Parents as Partners in education, a textbook for teachers in training.
His ABC's of parenting was published in Tom Carr's The Blueprint for Parents.
The ABC’s of Parenting
A is for accepting yourself and your children as able.
B is for behaving so your children feel they belong.
C is for the courage you have to make choices, to be consistent, to cooperate
and to truly care.
D is for the dignity you give with discipline.
E is for the effort and energy to encourage.
F is for, family flexibility, forgiveness and allowing feelings.
G is for the goodness you show with guidelines and goals.
H is for the honesty and honoring you teach as you do, and hugs go a long way too.
I is for the interest you show and the intentions you have to influence.
J is for the joy when justice is found jointly without judging.
K is for kindness in all that you do.
L is for love, the greatest of all, and two ways to give it are to listen and to limit.
M is for modeling the messages you send.
N is for nurturing, a need we all have.
O is for the obligation to our opportunity, with optimism.
P is for the patience we need to be positive professionals as we praise and
protect and prepare.
Q is for questioning our quick reactions.
R is for responding with respect to the rights and responsibilities with
reasonable rules.
S is for sharing our ways of solving and surviving that create for all a healthy sense
of self.
T is for the time it takes to teach, to trust and to show how to thrive.
U is for understanding. To give it is to get it.
V is for the constant vigil it takes to validate the value of your children, and
yourself.
W is for the wisdom you need to keep the wonder of parenting warm, whole
and always worthwhile.
X is for xenogenis, the production of an individual who is completely different
from either of the parents. Your child is not a xerox of you. She/he is unique
in all the world. Be eXcited!
Y is for you, the most important person to your young.
Z is for your zeal, the eager endeavor of devotion to your purpose, to keep you
from the zig-zag sharp turns away from your critical course.
© 1995 Jim R. Rogers, ParentsCare
For a free copy, request at ParentsCare@sc.rr.com