THE GOOD SHEPHERD

Today I bought and read a children’s picture book written and illustrated by Beverly Carter, a member of Curves Club where I exercise three times a week. She is an art teacher, author and illustrator, and, among other talents, she is a dog musher, a big deal here in Alaska. The book is titled, “This Dog Team Lives in the House.” The story is about a very sad dog named ‘No-wan-um’ that Beverly found and took home to live with   her other dogs and family in her house. She named the new dog ‘Spirit’.

There is more to the story which you can read when you buy the book; but what struck me as I imagined reading the story to my great-grandchild, Scarlett, is how much it reminded me of the New Testament parable of “The Good Shepherd,” about the lost sheep that was taken into the fold and treated with love.

Mary Maunz’s book, “Nurturing Your Child’s Inner Life”, has a chapter illustrating the parable of the lost sheep with interactive creative materials. She gives other lessons with materials and parable stories to bring out the ‘godliness’ in the child’s spirit. Reading stories like Bev’s and playing with symbolic materials as Mary suggests, is a beautiful way to help children, and all of us, nurture and feel our goodness.

“Free the child’s potential, and you will transform him into the world.” Maria Montessori.

Please read my book, Montessori-Living the Good Life.

NURTURING

I’m still reading Mary Ellen Maunz’s book, “Nurturing Your Child’s Inner Life.” She knows Maria Montessori’s way with the children and has had many opportunities for observing and understanding the spirituality of the child’s inner life. Chapter six on the child’s approach to God has some very practical activities and lessons you can share with your child. She is noted on the www.ageofmontessori.org website.

As a mother, I did many of the experiences she talks about but I wasn’t conscious of why. Many of the experiences just happened because I wanted to share my God-life with my children.  I believe our love of God calls all of us to want to share God with everyone in the universe but we don’t always do so because we are mentally and/or emotionally shy. Our self-consciousness often calls us to share a noise we don’t mean to share.

E.M. Standing, a devoted Montessorian, writes: “Silence predisposes the soul for certain inner experiences. You are not the same as you were before it … It is one of the tragedies of our mechanical age that so many people grow up without discovering the beauty of silence.”

Please read my book, Montessori-Living the Good Life.

APPROACHING GOD

Are you aware of how you approach God? We all have a way even if we do so unconsciously. Sometimes we follow what we are told to do. At times we do what pleases others. Words, ways, rules, and promises give us hope that God will be with us.

For me, the best experience of God is when I’m surprised, like with a sunset, beautiful flowers or works of art, a rainbow or smile of a loved one or a few words in an email or card . . . times when God sneaks into my conscious life and says, “Here I am.”

Maria Montessori tells us that a young child’s subconscious is constantly absorbing God’s message, “Here I am,” from infancy in the womb to birth to three and more years of age. As the child’s intellect develops his consciousness, he will know God and express his knowingness of God’s presence in his own way. Parents and teachers can allow this environment and collaborate with the child by living examples of their own experiences and approaches to God.

Keep in mind, though, that the child’s motto is: “Help me do it myself,” which means spiritually, “Help me to learn about God all by myself.” . . . more about this next week.

Please read my book, Montessori-Living the Good Life.

SILENCE

I began reading Mary Ellen Maunz’s book, “Nurturing Your Child’s Inner Life,” this week. She explains the difference of sharing one’s religion or belief system and living one’s spirituality. She gives excellent suggestions and examples of recognizing the child’s spiritual life and encouraging his development. She has a chapter on how Montessori schools present thoughts of Christ’s teachings. www.ageofmontessori.org

Maria Montessori was a Catholic and taught religion in her time, believing the church’s symbolism helped the children to understand the divine. However, she did not, and insisted that her teachers not, interfere or impose their adult beliefs on the child’s consciousness. She encouraged teachers and parents to nurture children’s spirit with stories of Christ’s teachings through simple parables.

“To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator.” Maria Montessori.

Please read my book, Montessori-Living the Good Life.

KNOWING

Knowing is more than knowledge; much more than the regurgitation of facts and instilled opinions; more than memorized time-tables or lists of spelling words. Knowing happens when one is free to work on a task independently until he feels content that it is done, and free to do it over and over until the work and materials become incorporated in his being. Knowing happens at a time of unknowing.

I remember the excitement and joy I felt the first time I watched one of the children contentedly work with the blocks of cylinders, concentrating as she lifted each cylinder, experimenting as she attempted to place the cylinder in the right hole, in the right block. I sat silently. Not once did she look up for approval—not even when she had all the cylinders in the right holes. Instead, she carefully took each cylinder out of its block and lined them up randomly and began again. She knew and felt the joy of learning. An hour passed before she felt satisfied and returned the material to the shelf. Smiling with a big sigh, she came over and hugged my legs. We both experienced joy.

Maria Montessori tells us that, “The child becomes a person through work.” Please read my book: “Montessori—Living the Good Life,” and check out some of the websites recommended on my website and blogs: www.montessoritheory.com, connieripleylujan.com/blog. We are living in the Age of Montessori. The children are calling you to get on the bandwagon.  www.ageofmontessori.org

KNOWLEDGE

Seth D. Webb has a radical blog that will keep you all excited and on your toes. He starts out with a great quotation of Maria Montessori’s from “The Absorbent Mind.” “If education is always to be a mere transmission of knowledge, there is little to be hoped from it in the bettering of (our) future. For what is the use of transmitting knowledge if the individual’s total development lags behind . . . ? The child is endowed with unknown powers which can guide us to a radiant future. If what we really want is a new world, then education must take as its aim the development of these hidden possibilities.” . . . take time to tune into his blog: http://radicalmontessori.blogspot.com/2012/08/weaving-cosmos.html

As a mother and a Montessori teacher, I witnessed the hidden possibilities of the young child, the secret of childhood that Maria Montessori expressed in her many books. I can’t tell anyone what the secret is because it is unknowing, an expression of the child’s faith and hope. It’s our unknowing that calls us, the adult, to collaborate with the child’s unknowingness. When we give the child an environment of faith and hope, an experience of love, the child can then develop an intellect and potential for greatness and goodness.

In my book, “Montessori—Living the Good Life,” I attempt to express metaphorically the experience of collaboration enjoyed in the creation and formation of clay becoming a pot. The clay has the potential to be many things. The artist has the desire and potential to create a beautiful pot. With faith and hope in her work, the artist allows the clay to be centered and to spin on the wheel while her fingers are gently working with the yielding clay into an unknowing, unique vessel.

“To aid life, leaving it free, however, to unfold itself, that is the basic task of the educator.” M.M.

Please read my book: “Montessori—Living the Good Life,” 

POLITICS

Carl Jung tells us that “The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally unsolvable. They can never be solved, only outgrown.”

I think politics originated when we first went to Moses or the Great Chief of our tribe or the leader of our neighborhood gang or the CEO of the company or the Guru or Avatar. Always there were leaders to elect to tell us what to do, what we had to do, and what we had to pay to have it done. Here lie the roots of commerce and the roots of war.

Maria Montessori tells us that, "Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war." If we want peace, we have to let go of what doesn’t work, what we have outgrown, and be present to the new world arriving. The child has the potential to do this naturally when given freedom and independence to work in collaboration with an environment of unknowingness where his intellect can develop and create a new world.

We must clearly understand, Maria Montessori reminds us in her book, “The Absorbent Mind,” that “when we give the child freedom and independence, we are giving freedom to a worker already braced for action, a worker who cannot live without working and being active. This he has in common with all other forms of life, and to curb it makes him degenerate.”

Please read my book: “Montessori—Living the Good Life.”