"Crayola doesn't make a color for your eyes..."

"...spring-green is much too yellow
sea-green is far too pale
cornflower is way too mellow
so i'll try again and fail
there's no way i can capture
the way you make me feel
one look from you is rapture
whether blue or green or teal
no color qualifies
that crayon's telling lies
crayola doesn't make a color
for your eyes...

hey look it's periwinkle
so sure i got it now
But you wink and there's a twinkle
in your eye and still somehow...

crayola doesn't make
a color for your eyes
There is no way that
i could possibly describe you
crayola doesn't make a color
to draw my love..."
- Kristin Andreassen

My friend Susie posted this video of Kristin Adreeassen's "Crayola Doesn't Make a Color for Your Eyes," today, and I immediately knew what I wanted to write about.

Eyes. 

Mary Baker Eddy, in her "Glossary" of spiritual terms found in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, defines "Eyes" as:  "spiritual discernment, not material but mental."

How then could you choose a color for your eyes?  It would be like choosing a single color for joy, or love, or home.  Can you imagine the sadness that would descend on the world if  the word "home" was defined as "blue", even the most perfect shade of blue.   Every house, in every land, blue...or green, or yellow. 

Can you imagine if there was a crayola with the word "body" on it?  As if there was only one perfect color for a person's skin.  Oh yea, they do have that don't they...it's called "flesh"...hmmm...I wonder, do they still make a crayola with the word "flesh"  printed on that narrow strip of peach paper with black stripes and bold block lettering wrapped around a crayon? Now that I think about it, it's kind of creepy actually...

Which brings me to....well, where it brings me.  The story.

I was teaching Kindergarten in a relatively small Southern California town surrounded by Los Angeles County on three sides, and the ocean on the fourth.  I loved my class of eager students.  We were a diverse group -- five of seven continents represented by 35 students and one teacher.  I loved walking onto the playground in the morning and hearing the buzz and chatter of almost twelve languages blending as parents said "goodbye" and siblings called, "see you later" to one another in the language used at home, but usually left outside the gates at school.

One of my favorite projects each fall was to unroll large sheets of butcher paper onto the floor of our classroom and have each child (and teacher) stretch out on top of their sheet, so that another child could trace the outline of the his/her body.  Then each one would fill in the outline with a "self portrait" of how we saw ourselves.

Pencils, crayons, scraps of fabric and glue, buttons, strips of lace, and shoe laces would contribute to a fully fleshed out version of how each of us thought we looked.

It was a fun beginning-of-the school-year project and did a lot to help classmates get to know one another through the other's eyes.  After we'd finished our large paper doll selves, we'd hang them on the walls...after introducing them to the class in a series of presentations.  "Hi, this is Amy.  She is five years old.  She lives with her Nonie and Pop Pop while her mom goes to school.  Her dad is away on business for a few years...."  And later in October we would dress our paper doll selves in Halloween costumes. 

At the end of the year we would do the same project over again and see how our concept of  "self" had changed.  It was always most apparent  when we'd introduce this new self (who was now graduating from Kindergarten and was ready for first grade) to the same children we hadn't really known in September, but who were now as familiar to us as our siblings.  "Hi, I would like you to meet Arturo, as you know, he loves to read and do math.  His favorite song is "Thriller" and he can moonwalk.  He has new baby brother that he thinks is too noisy, but he is helping his mom by not telling her to take him back to the hospital."

I loved this project.  Sometimes the introductions were sweet and funny, and sometimes they were sad and full of despair.  Either way we were  going to be a class, a family and we would be there for one another.  We were all in it for the long haul.  We would learn and we would grow.  And it would be fun most of the time, and hard some of the time.

This particular year, I had a little girl in my class named Marguerite.  Her family had recently relocated from San Salvador and she was the only one who  spoke any English...at all.  She was a fragile and shy as a small fawn caught in the middle of an urban park and I could feel her heart beating wildly as I gently placed my hand on her shoulder that first morning.  In that moment, I knew that she would be my tracing partner for our whole-man self portraits that afternoon. 

Over the next few days I got to know Maggie (as she asked to be called) and we laughed about how much more tracing she had to do than anyone else (since I was the biggest kid in class), how funny her braids looked after being traced, and the odd shape of our feet.  

Soon it was time to fill in the blanks.  We drew in fingers, eyes, nose, mouth...and for some freckles, long (mostly just wished for) fingernails, and pierced ears.  It was a fun, noisy time of day...and we thoroughly enjoyed watching one another come to life as our flatter selves took on personalities.

When it was time to color in our selves, however, the mood changed (as it usually would each year).  Choosing the right color for hair, skin, hands, lips made everyone a bit tense.  I watched as Hispanic children wrestled with the right shade of brown, tan, or beige.  African-American children struggled with why they were called "black" and what did it mean that they wanted to use the same shade of brown as their Hispanic classmates.  Asian children wondered why someone had suggested yellow as a skin color and no one wanted to be "white"...except those who just didn't want to do any coloring at all.  We spent hours talking about colors and how they didn't define us accurately.  I remember "Maggie" being the last to choose her skin color.  She chose "rose,"  a soft strong pink, because she thought it was the most beautiful...and she wanted to be seen as beautiful and sweet like a flower. 

But it was the shift that came with the choosing of eye colors that astounded me that year.  Our joy returned.  Everyone felt that they could mix and match colors for their eyes.  We spent one afternoon moving from person to person, just looking deeply into eachother's eyes, trying to describe the colors we saw, to one another.  There were stripey blue-green eyes with spots of gray, deep brown eyes that sparkled with golden glitter, and gray eyes streaked with purple.  There were eyes like shards of pottery, and eyes that looked like the ocean on a summer's day, eyes as dark as a midnight sky and eyes as pale as the blue snow of the arctic. 

I will never forget, however, the color of Maggie's eyes. Once we'd finished our describing exercise, and were sent off to color in our own eyes..supplementing those one-on-one shared descriptions with visits to the long mirror in the back of the room...we were alone with our flatter selves.  I came up behind Maggie kneeling tenderly over her paper doll self in the far corner, and almost gasped.  She had painted rainbows in each of her eyes and sprinkled the paint with glitter.  Then she had drawn a big eye on her chest where her heart would have been and painted it in with a glowing, glittering sun...again, spirinkled with glitter. 

I kneeled down next to her and watched her work, her forehead crinkled in concentration until she sat back on her bottom and heaved a big sigh.  I asked her if she would tell me about her eyes...especially the one in her chest.  She said that the eye in her heart was the one that was like the sun.  It made everything she saw turn into rainbows even when it was gray and cloudy in her mind. 

I've never forgotten it.   I ask you, "who was really the teacher that day?"

What color would your eyes be?

Thanks Maggie...who introduced her end-of the-year self portrait to us as Marguerite with confidence and joy...I love the color of your eyes...

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Can you paint with all the colors of the Wind..."

"...You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind..."
Stephen Schwartz
"Colors of the Wind*"

Our twins had lived in the suburbs for most of their childhood.  Everyone in their neighborhood had gone to the same school, shared similar values, shopped at the same stores, and spoke the same language....and my children had known almost everyone they knew...as long as they could remember.

When we moved to a wonderful urban neighborhood near the largest university in our city a few years ago, they were uncomfortable with their surroundings. The children who lived on our street were fearless, outgoing, gregarious...and different.  They came from many different countries and faiths, spoke a dozen or more different languages, ate unusual foods, and weren't afraid of strangers. 

As much as we encouraged them to engage in neighborhood games, it took almost two years before they felt comfortable walking across the street and joining the other children who were taking turns on a wonderful rope swing that hung from an ancient sycamore tree in front of the University coop. As their parents, we longed to have them feel at home in a neighborhood we loved dearly.  We loved walking in the public gardens that quilted the large urban park near our home.  We felt blessed to be surrounded by museums, galleries, a world-class zoo, and libraries.  We hoped they would grow to enjoy it too.  And they did, but it took dissolving false perceptions about what it meant to be "different."

I remember the first breakthrough.  It happened one afternoon as we drove home from their private school in the suburbs that first fall after school was back in session.  As we turned on to our wide street canopied by enormous oak and sycamore trees, the girls commented on "those poor children" who were playing hopscotch, dodge ball, and foursquare...or sitting in small groups...on their asphalt play yard behind the large church/school surrounded by chain link fencing on the corner.

I drove slowly by the school and the girls bemoaned the plight of "those poor children."  Their well-equipped playground out "in the county" was filled with state-of-the-art equipment, landscaping, environmentally friendly wood chips, and even a new Gaga pit.  They couldn't understand how "those poor children" could stand it.

After we pulled into the parking space in front of our house, unloaded backpacks and lunch boxes from the car, and changed out of school clothes, I suggested to the girls that we take a walk to the coffeehouse on the corner for an after school treat.  They loved the coffeehouse on the corner where their big brother was a part-time barista and were happy to walk hand-in-hand with me past the school across the street, on the corner. 

As we approached that end of the block, skipping along cracked sidewalks, uneven from the growth of large tree roots that had lifted them like seismic plates long ago, a bell rang and children poured onto the playground from doors on two sides of the school building.   It was for me easy to slow down our pace.  My girls were fascinated by children who quickly divided themselves into teams for kickball,  and congregated in small groups to play foursquare or hopscotch in hand-chalked squares all over the pavement. 

I asked the girls to close their eyes and tell me what they heard.  They were still young enough to like this kind of game.  They said they heard, laughter, giggling, cheering, balls bouncing, girls whispering, boys yelling.  I asked them to open their eyes and tell me what they were seeing.  The identified happy preschoolers, fast boys, girls who danced around making up cheerleading routines, or threw markers for hopscotch. 

I asked them if they could point out one of "those poor children" they felt so sorry for only minutes earlier...disadvantaged children they had been sure "just couldn't be happy" without the same kind of well-equipped playground they enjoyed at their school "in the county".

They couldn't find one.  These were happy children, they were wearing clean, brightly-colored uniforms, they were with their friends, they were laughing, cheering, teasing, competing, being disciplined by teachers that obviously cared about their safety and happiness...they were just like them.  

This was a lovely opportunity for each of us to practice "spiritual translation."  What from a limited perspective appeared as a diminished sense of bounty...no swings, grass, or equipment, fewer teachers, "less" screaming from every direction,  to spiritual sense -- " the constant conscious capacity to understand God" (and that He is always present) -- there was an abundance of creativity, joy, innovation, community, generosity, patience, sharing.  We started to see that through the lens of spiritual sense the girls had more in common with these children...than what at first glance appeared different.

This was the first, of many breakthroughs.   We enjoyed two dozen months of happiness in our city home.  The girls grew to know their neighbors, to feel protective of the "wild-haired professor"  and his black kitty who greeted us each afternoon when we returned from school, to anticipate the return of grad students at the end of Spring Break, to wave to the little girls who visited their grandma each weekend, and to look forward to the first signs of spring and the ducks in the park.

The day we reluctantly filled the moving van and left our wonderfully diverse urban neighborhood, we had to call the girls away from where they were playing with a group of neighborhood children across the street...they had become part of the beautifully rich and diverse threads that made up our neighborhood.  A tapestry more lovely because of the many colors and textures found woven through its fabric. 

Last weekend we joined friends for a Spring Break visit to our beloved Forest Park in the old neighborhood.  The girls pointed out favorite gardens, trails we had walked hundreds of times when they were just a day-to-day part of our neighborhood, recognized saplings that had been planted after a devastating Spring storm...flowering trees that had grown "at least a foot", and wondered if the ducks in the pond were decedents of "our duck family"...the ones we fed and talked to on our family walks in the park after dinner on summer evenings.

We now live halfway between "the city" and "the county."  We are learning new things here too.  When we drive through our old city neighborhood the girls tell us how much they loved "our old house" and the neighborhood where "the sidewalks were crooked and there was a big rope swing where all our neighborhood friends played in front of the student coop across the street."  Yes, we smile too.  "Those poor children" had become their neighbors...and friends.

"You think the only people who are people
Are the people who look and think like you
But if you walk the footsteps of a stranger
You'll learn things you never knew you never knew

Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon
Or asked the grinning bobcat why he grinned?
Can you sing with all the voices of the mountains?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?
Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

Come run the hidden pine trails of the forest
Come taste the sunsweet berries of the Earth
Come roll in all the riches all around you
And for once, never wonder what they're worth

The rainstorm and the river are my brothers
The heron and the otter are my friends
And we are all connected to each other
In a circle, in a hoop that never ends

How high will the sycamore grow?
If you cut it down, then you'll never know
And you'll never hear the wolf cry to the blue corn moon

For whether we are white or copper skinned
We need to sing with all the voices of the mountains
We need to paint with all the colors of the wind

You can own the Earth and still
All you'll own is Earth until
You can paint with all the colors of the wind*..."

*WIND. That which indicates the might of omnipotence and the movements of God's spiritual government, encompassing all things."  - Mary Baker Eddy

with Love and hope...

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Camp and global consciousness

From the Porch of Crowsnest

(written while looking out from my porch, across the lawn and toward Valerie Lake)

Someone recently asked me how I, as a spiritual thinker deeply committed to global healing and the actualization of the divine  within each individual ...impartially and universally, could spend my summer at a camp high in the Rocky Mountains that serves the children of one religious denomination exclusively.

I have spent many, many hours thinking about this question this summer.  Here are my musings (discovered through in prayer)…. for what they are worth:

The days here are filled with opportunities to see the depth of diversity in those things which seem so alike.  A field of daisies when observed from a distance seems to repeat a pattern of yellow circular center and white petals, but when I get up from the Adirondack rocker on my porch and wander through that same meadow, carefully observing each flower, I note diversity and individuality that escaped my purview from a safe distance.  To get up close and personal, to be able to examine each flower in the context of its surrounding flora (how a blue columbine brings out the sharp loveliness of a daisy's simplicity, how a larger more mature daisy highlights the petite freshness of a new small bud) helps me better appreciate each daisy's uniqueness, as well as the divine intelligence that repeats such a lovely pattern of beauty.

So it is with camp.  Yes, each of our campers comes to this glorious place (in the palm of “five fingers” at the base of Mount Columbia) from the common genus of being a student enrolled in a Christian Science Sunday School.  But when seen in the context of one another's approach to this common perspective diversity (of inspiration, study styles, application and language for sharing those perspective) becomes clearer in the bas relief of another's individual way of approaching their spiritual journey.   We have campers from private boarding schools and urban public schools, from small islands in the Caribbean and from suburban midwest neighborhoods.

This lesson was so clear to me one summer not long ago when we had a camper arrive who, although enrolled and in faithful weekly attendance at a Christian Science Sunday school throughout the year, considered himself an agnostic (someone who believes it is impossible to know whether or not God exists) and professed to feel a growing alliance with atheism (disbelief in the existence of God).  Not only was he not sure that you could prove, or experience, the presence of a God that might exist, but he wasn't sure that God even existed at all.

This was unsettling to others who felt that a belief in Christian Science was the common ground that camp was based on.  But the requirements were not intellectual buy-in only a willingness to attend a Christian Science Sunday School, which this young man met on a weekly basis throughout the year.  In fact, this boy not only attended Sunday School, but was an active and vigorous participant in those classes, often frustrating teacher and fellow students with his genuine and well thought out questioning of what seemed to him to be pat answers to his deep and conscientious probing of  mass acceptance of cultural and religious paradigms.

Our first Sunday School class (I have to admit I begged to be assigned to his class) the question was asked of him, by another student, why he didn't believe in God.  I intervened and asked her to explain, rather, why she did.  And her answer followed the same patterns of scholastic rhetoric that had long frustrated this young man.  An answer that seemed well rehearsed about God being all and Truth being reliable.  I then asked her (and the rest of the class) to tell us of a time when she had actually experienced the presence of God and why she/they had attributed that experience to the divine.  She thought for a few moments and then shared with genuine tears, that revealed deep feelings connected with that experience, about a time when she was alone in the dark and too afraid to get out of bed to go to her parents in the middle of the night and the words from a hymn popped into her head and how she had felt a pure warm peace flow through her and she knew that there was indeed a God.

One after another the students in the class shared their examples until it finally came back to our resident agnostic/atheist.  He didn't say anything for a few moments and then shared an experience that he had had as a child that he always came back to when he was afraid.  By the end of that class not only had each of us been shown that just because we had all come to camp from the same starting point as Christian Science Sunday School students, but that in that sameness there were diverse ways of thinking through our common desire to know what was true.  It was also clear that there was a common thread of experience with the divine that united us.   It was our common experiences that nurtured a trust in the diversity of one another's journey towards the arrival at answers that would be satisfying and would bring peace.

So what does this have to do with my own inner confidence that this time at camp is contributing to the pool of spiritual seekers who are becoming well-prepared globally conscious thinkers?

Each day at camp our campers must go through the demands of keeping cabins clean, meeting schedules and deadlines, dealing with critical weather or environmental challenges from a spiritual perspective. These ever-changing demands require them to partner with other campers and counselors who bring a diversity of experience and approach to finding solutions they may have assumed, based on everyone being a Christian Scientist, would be handled in the same way they might.  Yet, the fact that they are each bringing new perspectives and vantage points to those challenges or the issues at hand offers important freshness and balance to the process of thinking and praying together for those solutions.   What they often realize is ... that what they really have most in common is the simple desire for a solution.  That this desire for good, for peace, for harmony or wellness is enough to bring about the needed change.   This new perspective has the potential for a new United Nations….a new spiritually confident “security council”.   Mrs. Eddy says that “security for the claims of harmonious and eternal being is found only in divine Science” (which she elsewhere defines as “God’s government of the universe inclusive of man”).  I love thinking that camp is giving our young men and women the opportunity to find secure and lasting peace.  And that they can discover that this deep peace is rooted in their certainty that no matter how different (or the same on the outside) we may appear, we can always trust that the message of Eddy's "Daily Prayer" is not a great humanly designed suggestion, but a divine imperative that promises this kind of lasting peace.   It reads:

               “Thy Kingdom come
               Let the Reign of divine Truth, Life and Love
               Be established in me, and rule out of me all sin.

               And may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind
               And govern them.”  - Mary Baker Eddy

As we grow in our experiences of trusting that there is a divine impetus working in each of us to enrich our affections for good, our hunger for peace, our desire for harmony, we will have confidence as peacemakers....surrounded by a glocal community of like-minded, like-hearted peacemakers. 

Isn’t this what camp is all about.  Starting out thinking we are the same, finding out that we are different, then discovering and resting upon the realization that what is common in us is God working in each of our hearts.

We are raising global  thinkers here in the "palm of five fingers", in the heart of the Collegiate peaks and I can’t wait to see where they find their niche in this vast global community.  Already we have counselors from this summer heading off to Peace Corps duties in South America, Asia and Africa.  We are a training ground for global transformation and I feel privileged to be part of this new generation of spiritually prepared ambassadors for good. 


K

Lesson from Bedmaking in Santa Fe

My husband and I have been talking a lot lately about a subject that is so dear to my heart as a former educator and someone who spent a considerable amount of time in her early career developing curriculum, writing IEPs (Individualized Education Plans), assessing teaching models for effectiveness and celebrating diversity.  So many of our schools today expect children to learn how teachers teach...rather than expecting teachers to discover how each child learns and explore with those students new teaching and learning models that leave every one in the learning dialogue feeling successful.

My friend Jil, who is a brilliant educator and one of the most creative thought leaders in the field educational diversity has helped me integrate my love for diversity in the classroom experience, more fully into an appreciation for diversity in other areas of my life....home, business, my retail buying experience (i.e. "sorry ma'am but we don't have anyone that can help you at this time - while five associates are standing around talking over coffee at the counter)....I am learning that my model of appropriateness, of how it should be done, when to do it, and whether it fits my comfort zone...is inconsequential....it's all about trusting that each of us may hear the voice of the divine in different ways and operate out from different models...but that there is just one Mind giving each of us the "model" of expression that best serves a more universal, divine purpose...and often, what seems like patterns of learning or living that don't line up with ours, cause us to grow in even more valuable life-enhancing areas like patience, meekness, selflessness, and mercy.

Diversity in learning styles, modes of operation, approaches to reasoning through issues and concerns, communication, and making decisions, make our world a stronger and richer place to live, laugh and love in.

We can trust those differences when, and only when, we are trusting that they have as their source one infinite intelligence that loves and delights in expressing Its creativity in infinitely beautiful and allways good ways. 

As Mary Baker Eddy offers in her "Daily Prayer"...we can know that the "Word" of that infinitely good intelligent sources is "enrich[ing] the affections of all mankind and govern[ing] them".....noone needs to fit our model....we just need to appreciate the diversity of His/Her divinely intelligent design.

I had an experience this past weekend that was profoundly helpful to me in thinking through this concept and in discarding old paradigms of operation in my own life...in trusting that I don't need to know why someone has made a decision or choice that may not have been the one I would have made...nor do I need to try to convince them that my way of doing things might be better or more effective...or more "right" than theirs....I only have to trust in their "free moral agency"....that an all-powerful and good intelligent source is acting as an imperative in their heart and in their lives....and that I have no right to interfere with that sacred relationship and Its voice of purpose defining and designing their way of expressing themselves and living those lives.

While we were in Santa Fe we stayed with my husband, Jeff's best friend and his family.  The first morning I woke up and while Jeff was in the shower I proceeded to dry my hair and make the bed so we could get a head start on the day.

I pulled off the beautiful counterpane patterned quilt...pulled back the cotton blanket and top sheet...brushed off, smoothed out and retucked the bottom sheet...pulled the top sheet back up and smoothed it over the bottom sheet, pulled up the cotton blanket and since the bottom tucking for the top sheet and blanket seemed intact I proceeded to pull the blanket into place...what a comedy of errors....

As much as I pulled and straightened I couldn't get the woven pattern on the blanket to be straight AND the side edge of the blanket to hang straight along the side of the mattress....I was baffled and bewildered and frustrated....then just when I was ready to simply give up, throw the quilt over the strange lumpy mess and go out to breakfast I gave it one more shot.  I pulled the blanket and top sheet off the bed and decided to start from scratch.  I carefully placed the top sheet on the fitted bottom sheet, tucked in the bottom and then laid the blanket on top with the bottom edge of the blanket lined up with the bottom edge of the top sheet along the side of the mattress and the top edge along the top hem of the top sheet....and then I started to howl with laughter. 

No wonder!   The blanket was not woven on a right angle....like a grid....it was woven on the diagonal. or bias....the pattern of the weave cut across the rectangle at a perfect 90 degree angle....no wonder I couldn't get it lined up when the bottom edge was already tucked in... thinking that the tuck was straight and that I needed to get the weave to lie at a perfect right angle to the edge of the mattress.... The entire time I had been looking at the counterpane pattern of the quilt at my feet and that was my only model...No matter how hard I tried to get those two things to match up...the straight edge of the blanket hanging at the side of the bed...with a diagonal pattern to the weave in the body of the blanket it wasn't going to happen...

I had to start from scratch...I had to see the blanket as woven on a diagonal and then I could very easily and quickly make the bed with a resulting straight hem along the side . 

There was never anything wrong with the blanket or with my bedmaking skills.....

Once I realized that the blanket was woven in a different pattern and I adjusted my orientation... the bed was made beautifully and when I finally threw the counterpane (a very straightforward gridlike pattern on right angles) quilt onto the bed I wasn't at all concerned that the diagonal pattern of the blanket and the right angled grid of the quilt couldn't exist in harmony on that bed....or that I couldn't operate peacefully and effectively as a bedmaker with those two very different models in from of me.

This was so helpful  to me in thinking about myself as a mom, a wife, an educator, a neighbor and a friend...a global citizen....diversity is something to celebrate....and it can result in a beautiful bed...

In fact, if I were to take those two pieces of cloth (the bias woven blanket and the right angle woven quilt) and lay them one on top of the other....and try to rip them it would be impossible....because they are woven differently....the two oof them together are stronger and have more tensile strength...than either one alone or if both were perfectly lined up and woven on the same grid.

So, today as  I move through my day of practice, errands, decisions, negotiations, choices, etc.......I am going to celebrate every bias woven blanket I come across....

all with joy and wonder, 

K.





K