Learning with Friends – Reflecting on Episodes 6-9

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity)

Beth Tener 

We’re at episode 10 of the podcast and that will conclude season 1. The theme has been The Spaces Where We Come Together. The first episode was with Nancy and I, then after the first four episodes, we did a Learning with Friends episode, reflecting on those. Today, we’ll reflect on episodes 6-9.

A beautiful aspect of kinship is meaning making. Each podcast conversation itself opened up new reflections with me and the guests. These are another layer of those, which I hope will spark your own conversations and thinking about the themes of these last four episodes.

I will recap the four episodes. Even if you didn’t listen to all four, I think you’ll still find some benefit in our conversation today.

• Episode 6 was a two-part one, called What Would Healing Look Like with Belvie Rooks. She’s an author, a social justice and environmental advocate and educator. We explored what does it mean to commit to love and life even facing some of the hardest historic and current struggles. We talked to Belvie about meeting Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a youth and he was aged 29. The Quaker community that hosted that meeting then held the youth group over months to come. It planted seeds that grew over decades for her. We also explored an educational program she developed for young people dealing with urban violence, by expanding their realm to see how they fit in the bigger story of the universe. Plus, we discussed some stories with her and her husband from confronting the reality of enslaved African ancestors, which led to that powerful question of What would healing look like?
• Belvie and Dedan were mentors for young people. I invited Belvie to come back for the next episode, Episode 7, which was called What Would Healing Look Like – part 2, with Liz Miller and Matt Davis of the Pseads Institute some of the young people they worked with. We spoke of how meeting Belvie and Dedan changed the course of their life. They have been caring for their legacy, offering a learning experience with poetry and the story of the universe to over 29,000 students in schools. We also heard from Fran Grace, who’s a college professor, author and publisher of Inner Pathways. She shared how meeting Belvie and Dedan led to shifts in her life and she went on to publish their books.
• Episode 8 was the SeaCHANGE Conference: Art + Conversation with Victoria Carrington and Robert Sapiro. This continued the theme of the spaces where we come together. We discussed a conference that three of us were involved with last year called SeaCHANGE. People are still talking about the way the conference was organized a year later, using words like magic and transformational. We created a space where people of different identities, races and ages got into really deep conversations and use the arts throughout. We’ll touch back on what the magic was that unfolded there.
• Episode 9 was called Circles that Rekindle Spirit and Wisdom. That was with Emer O’Neill and Hazel Bell Koski, two Canadian friends of mine. We continued the theme of intergenerational friendship and collaboration, also connecting to Irish roots and roots and stories of the history and how that informs the kind of ways we gather now. We explored a series of gatherings held in Toronto called Spirit Matters that involved many indigenous wisdom keepers. Eimear and her late husband, Ed O’Sullivan became mentors to Hazel, who was a young artist who found her way to those gatherings.

With Nancy today, let’s talk about gatherings as that has been a theme of this season. SeaCHANGE and Spirit Matters were both multi-day gatherings, that did not have that typical conference flow. In SeaCHANGE, we had one question a day. The first question was: how can we use the arts for healing and social change? Each day had some panelists, small groups conversations, workshops, and then Open Space where people could find each other. People in the room had lots of time to find each other and get into deep conversations. Each day had a blend of spacious time, some offerings, and structure. Nancy, what did you appreciate, as you heard that conversation about what unfolded at that conference?

Nancy Gabriel

A lot was resonant. For me, I love going to a conference that isn’t set up like a traditional conference. You all designed that so it wasn’t that expert model of people on the stage telling the people attending what they needed to know. Instead, you designed it with the understanding that the wisdom in the room, and we all bring a different piece of that wisdom and a different gift and talent. It’s nice to learn from others. Often conferences I attend are very intellectual, they’re about learning and mind focused. The way that you brought in arts and other ways of knowing was resonant for me.

Beth Tener 

I think some of the magic was the place that we had it. Green Acre, a Bahai Center of Learning, was a place where people had hosted gatherings, talking about big issues of the day, in a beautiful place by a river, for over 100 years. That created a different quality to the space. I’ve been to conferences about sustainability in a hotel ballroom where you can’t see anything outside and the walls are made of vinyl wallpaper.

Nancy Gabriel

When you do a conference in a place like that, it creates the opportunity for nature to be part of the conversation, to be part of the wisdom that exists in the room, as people are talking. Even thought that may feel intangible, it can really shift things in subtle and important ways.

Beth Tener 

We started with connecting to the land. We were guided by a woman who lives at Green Acre and has a history of being in relationship with an indigenous community in Minnesota. The way she connected us to the land and the trees and the plants there was amazing, even some people walked barefoot in the river before the conference started. Many people commented on how we took the time to orient ourselves to the place and how that changed the flow of the time.

Nancy Gabriel

Belonging can be very connected to place. For for many of us, our ancestors were ripped from those places that they historically belonged to. Even though everyone there didn’t belong to Green Acre, I wonder if starting that way created a sense of belonging, even if it was temporary. Wow, what a way to show up more fully.

Beth Tener 

Probably over half the room was people of color, in terms of the audience and almost all the speakers. You could tell that for those who had come to this place often, it was a local sanctuary. You could see how people were relaxed and willing to have the conversation go to a different place quicker than might normally happen, because of the place we were holding it.

Beth Tener 

Robert and I, and another person Najee Brown, were on the team that designed and hosted it. Victoria, who was also on the podcast, was one of the participants. It was such a joy to hear her share things that unfolded for her during the event that we didn’t even realize and share what has unfolded since. It was an incredible experience of diversity and what life could be like if we could get into these spaces in these conversations. We didn’t do all the typical, “let’s go over ground rules.” It was more that we lived into it.

We explored moments where people had a shift of their assumptions or had an experience different from what they expected. Things shifted around because they had an experience of connection, maybe different than they’d ever had. I talked about “positive disconfirming experiences” where it makes you realize, “Oh, life could be this way,” as opposed to anti-bias training. I’d love your thoughts about that.

Nancy Gabriel

I love that. It felt like there was a real generosity of spirit in the room and that created an environment for people to shift. If you’re assuming that everybody is doing the best they can, that you have something to learn from them, and that the learning might be a little bit uncomfortable, but worth it, you can step into these things in a way that can really be profound.

Beth Tener 

I agree. Another aspect was the way we did the Open Space. One of my friends who listened to that episode, said, “ you really captured in the conversation, the way that Open Space allowed people to feel so free.”  This is the time we invite the audience to set the topics. We say: “What do you want to talk about? You can go here, you can go there. If it’s not working for you in that conversation, you’re free to go somewhere else.”

Victoria said, “I never feel that way at conferences.”  This was a living example of how life could be. It felt like an embodiment of what we’re trying to do.

Nancy Gabriel

Therein lies the power in that conference. You were embodying the values, you were walking the talk. Often, that’s disconnected in the structures that we traditionally come together in.

Beth Tener 

Yes, that is living love. How do we live what we want the world to be like? That’s what we tried to do.

The next theme I’d like to talk about is the idea of intergenerational relationship, mentoring and mutual exchange. We heard this in the Belvie Rooks episode and the Eimear and Hazel episode. I mean when you have mentors outside of your parents and what those relationships can look like. A core theme of Belvie’s life is as an elder mentoring young people. She and her late husband Dedan Gills did beautiful work in that area. In our podcast conversation, we heard how she was mentored, when she got to see Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. when she was a teenager. A youth group was held over a year. I have a couple of clips of Belvie talking about that group. She then carried that forward. You will hear what she and Dedan offered later in their life to Liz and Matt, young people who then carried that forward into how they worked with students. You could hear the four generational lineage of that quality of seeing people through the eyes of love and giving them a space to grow into their own. Here is Belvie and then Liz:

Belvie Rooks 

After that, we sat in circle, and we listened to each other. And we talked I think that’s where I learned to listen deeply. The Quakers really, because so much of their spiritual orientation is silence. It was kind of hard as a teenager, but it also it turned out that it was okay to sit in silence after somebody spoke, with a broken heart. So I learned the quality of deep listening. And I learned that the safety, actually, which is amazing thing to learn as a teenager, that it was safe to be vulnerable. It was safe to speak our truth. It was safe to speak our fears. And we became like a little family. I realized now what a profound and lasting impact that had.

Somehow, the adults who had chosen this as a path managed to create the space where we knew it was safe. I was in high school then.  I had a kind of intuitive understanding of what trusts looked like and felt like. That’s part of what began and I tried to create. But if you’ve not seen it, and experienced it, you don’t know what you don’t know.

Liz Miller

The way that Belvie and Dedan’s work has rippled through our lives and our experiences and now into this other generation that we’re lucky to work with. One of the deepest impacts is these unexpected openings when you can kind of feel life breath come back into the room.

And it isn’t because there’s an instruction for how to do that. There’s no manual saying “follow these steps and this is how this will come to life.”

There’s a really deep trust that we experienced with Belvie and Dedan that shows up when you’re able to believe in that space in a new way. What I see that create for young people is an animacy that I think is deeply missing. In most spaces for learning and living right now. No matter how old or young you are, I think it’s hard to be a human being in this time. So there’s a breath of joy that is the ripple effect of their work. And there’s a ripple of realness.

Beth Tener 

Nancy, what did you notice, as you listen to those conversations about intergenerational connections?

Nancy Gabriel

It circles back to something I said a minute ago about the way we show up and the attitudes that we come into the room or the group with. Belvie is such a warm, loving presence. The minute she walks into a room that’s having an impact. I think she also walks into the room, genuinely caring and interested in what the young person has to say, what they think, and how they feel. She really values that.

Too often right now, we don’t have those spaces, as young people, to be seen and valued by people with experience. I worked with an undergraduate student recently. He just graduated. I asked “what’s something you’re going to miss about this institution?” He said, “I’m going to miss our time together.” I was so surprised. He said, “Because you gave me confidence. It was the first time that I shared my ideas and you listened to them and said “these are valuable. We’re going to integrate this into our work.”

Then he went on to participate in other programming. He said, “I showed up, feeling “I’ve got ideas, and they’re worth sharing.” I was so struck by that, because I think often in higher ed, and in many places, it’s not assumed that young people have something that’s so valuable that you’re going to revise your programming to include their input. I think it is so critical for those of us who are older to show up in that way…because, know a lot! They have experienced a lot and their perspective and the way they view things is just different from how I grew up, what I knew, and what I’ve learned.

I was jazzed up by that effect that Belvie and Dedan had with the youth and how they created all that spark: for those young people to believe in themselves and the beauty and gifts that they bring to the world.

Beth Tener 

It reminded me this story that Liz told about the first time she met Dedan. He sat down and said, “What do you think about synchronicity?”

Nancy Gabriel

He didn’t talk down to her.

Beth Tener

For me, I remember someone treating me with that level of honor and dignity, calling forth and caring what I had to say. Once you feel that, it is an an imprint. Then you know how to go forth and offer it to the next person. You could hear it and Liz, and Matt and the way they were interacting with these young, third and fourth graders, saying “ you are poets, let’s hear what you can do.” They have that confidence that you could write poetry.

Nancy Gabriel

The ripple effect of that way of being with those young people is huge because you touch each of those young people, and then they bring that forth and touch more people who bring that forth. And now we’re doing the work through love.

Beth Tener 

We know that trauma patterns repeat generation to generation, but here we’re doing the opposite. My heart was moved, particularly in that second episode with Belvie to see the line from how she was held in that youth group and see how it is related to Liz and Matt doing their work. It is beautiful.

We also heard about intergenerational relationships in the episode with Eimear O’Neill and Hazel Bell Koski. Eimear and her husband, Ed, were part of a transformational learning center in Toronto. They were hosting these Spirit Matters gatherings, which included wisdom holders from indigenous First Nations people in Canada and Africa. Hazel, as a young woman, was trying to find her place. Is it activism? Is it art? Where do I fit? For her, getting invited into that circle and getting to film it was a story of a sense of a homecoming. She said she knew she was hungry for something, but didn’t know until she found this.

I will play a clip of her as she developed a friendship with Eimear, who grew up in Ghana, and is Irish, originally. Her parents are from there, and now lives in Toronto. She’s really understands the history and patterns of colonizing, in Africa, the Americas and Europe. Hazel is someone who holds both indigenous and different European lineages. She was wondering: “How do I sit with all of this history?”  Here’s a clip about how their relationship helped Hazel shed light on that:

Hazel Bell Koski 

I had gotten to meet Eimear for the first time. It was there in the little cottage in Toronto, where she gave me this beautiful like touchstone, which was: “you are a meeting place of bloodlines.” Because at this place in my life, I felt so disconnected and ashamed. Becoming a meeting place of bloodlines was more empowering than being not enough this and not enough that.

Beth Tener 

That’s a beautiful way to give you a way of seeing your identity.

Hazel Bell Koski 

Yes. From there, we went to Ireland. I got to know them and be supported. I was welcomed in. Their mentoring style is just come along for the ride and show up. Both of them would call that forward in me, this desire to share all my gifts, be in circle and help out. They said “hey, how about this? Why don’t you apply for this grant?”

Beth Tener 

Nancy, what resonated for you in hearing about Hazel and Eimear’s connection?

Nancy Gabriel

What I heard is Hazel’s search. She was an artist and she was doing art but she wanted it to be connected to some kind of social change. She experienced activism and thought, maybe that’s not the way for me. Ed and Eimear provided a third way. A way to do art that was connected to something larger, to something bigger.

Beth Tener 

For me, the part about the meeting place of bloodlines, for those who are mixed race, and the feeling that I should be less of this or more of that. Now, people are trying to untangle these different levels of power dynamics and oppression and privilege. It can be hard to hold it all. When Eimear gave her that framing of the meeting place, you could sense how that allowed her to be who she uniquely is in a different way.

Nancy Gabriel

That story shows the value of having a relationship to mentors over time, people who can see you and who you trust. Throughout Hazel’s story, there are places where they were able to see things about her that she wasn’t able to see. They were able to contextualize what she was experiencing in ways that, she was so close to it, so she couldn’t. With all of their lived experience and wisdom, they had the perspective that you can’t expect someone young to have. This is why these intergenerational relationships are so important. With all of the lived experience that elders have, it is a shame for it not to be shared.

Beth Tener 

It is a mutuality. Belvie said “it wasn’t just me to them, it was also them to me.” Hazel talked of feeling  disconnected and ashamed and the feeling for those who don’t have connection to their ancestors. She  was holding both the white European settlers and native Indigenous ancestry. When Eimear said “meeting place of bloodlines” within the context of Spirit Matters and being in circle connecting to the indigenous line, it allowed her to hold it in a different way than before she arrived there.

Nancy Gabriel

It turned it into an asset. I love that framing of making that a gift and not something that makes a person less than.

Beth Tener 

When the guilt and shame are mixed in together, those emotions can be very heavy. When you see how Hazel’s artistic gifts started opening and coming into community and flourishing, you can see when those emotions could shift that so much more of her gifts could come in to those healing spaces.

Nancy Gabriel

I know in my own life, when those guilt and shame are primary, I’m not bringing my best full self forward.

Beth Tener 

I also heard delight in the way Ed and Eimear interacted with Hazel. That spirit of “hey, come along with us, find this grant and open that door.” That is a beautiful spirit of how we can be with each other., like when Ed said “Oh, you’ve got to meet Brian Swimme. We’ll figure out a job for you, so you can be at this event.” I love that spirit.

I liked the part where she was all jazzed about the Universe Story. She was with Ed and Eimear and said she was going to move to California. They talked her down, saying “this is good, but you might not want to throw all this out.” I can think of times I wish I had some elder mentors who said “Yeah, Beth, but wait, hold it.” – those who hold the larger view and help guide you at the right moments.

Nancy Gabriel

I see a theme through all of these podcasts of generosity. It was so generous with Ed and Eimear, and there was that sense of generosity at SeaCHANGE, and with Belvie, Liz and Matt. They had a willingness to generously give their gifts to other people.

Beth Tener 

I also saw  a quality of recognition in Hazel. Liz and Matt, and in Fran Grace, when she met Belvie. Hazel said “I pick up on it when a door opens or I get told something that’s an opportunity. I know when to listen and act on it.”

They all stepped up and received the gifts given. Liz and Matt saw that they could take what Belvie and Dedan offered and do more with it. They checked to see if they were willing. Belvie and Dedan’s legacy was the heart of the organization that they have grown.

With the ageism in our culture, right, and our tendency to just do what the program says, such as get through college and get the internship…all those ways that society gives you the markers of what to do. You don’t always see those openings. These folks stepped into something that was being offered.

Beth Tener 

Another theme in all these stories was about the power of the arts. We heard different ways that the arts were woven in. I loved the conversation with Eimear about art. She weaves art with trauma therapy. Here is a clip:

Eimear O’Neill

“Play is where a lot of kids do their creative thinking and creative working through. Then those of us who are artists then carry that forward into our everyday life. The arts and the capacity for individual and collective creative expression are so important. Words are in our dominant language, in English. Art is in everyone’s language. It can hold all sorts of complexities and paradoxes. It can be seen in a moment, and then it can be unpacked over time. Think about what we’re still learning from great artists who have been previous to us. Even your own art, you can understand it more or get epiphanies about it later.

Beth Tener

I remember you saying, most indigenous languages don’t have a word for artist, is that right? Because everyone’s an artist.

Eimear O’Neill

They sometimes have a word for artists, but they don’t have a word for art, because it wasn’t separated out from the rest of living and expressing creatively. It was just woven through life. It wasn’t until the so- called Enlightenment that it got separated off and an elitist group became the ones who could define what was art, and give it a worth. Whereas art making has its own worth, its own way of knowing. It is  important to recognize that the way it was treated in most of our mainstream culture was actually oppressive and elitist, rather than opening it up for everybody to be able to participate.

Beth Tener 

And I’d like to share this quote from Victoria Carrington in the episode about SeaCHANGE. In that conference, the day flowed from movement, dialogue, arts workshops, and more dialogue. You were moving between arts modalities and various conversation modes. The room was full of artists. Here’s a quote from Victoria about how the artists felt in the space.

Victoria Carrington

Feedback I heard was that the artists felt seen and valued as an artist. It hurts my heart sometimes to know that art isn’t as valued in American society as it could be. Because art is so important to so many societies. It’s so important to the human experience: music, dance movement, fine arts, painting, sculpture. All of those things. I heard from of all these artists who were said “I felt valued.” The term came up – “ dope-ability”  which is the dope + nobility. They felt regal like kings and queens and royalty. It’s not what artists often feel like – this feeling of “I feel like royalty when I walk into this space.”

Beth Tener 

And then lastly, that theme of Hazel with the prayer flags. Her form of flags emerged in these gatherings. It started as a little workshop and then evolved into an art form that she’s taken in a lot of places.

One of the definitions of healing is bringing together that which has been separated. When I think of the spaces that we gather, as Eimear said, we can split arts off, or we could bring arts back into the way we create these communal spaces. What did you notice Nancy in these stories about how the arts was involved?

Nancy Gabriel

For me, the arts represented that opportunity to bring more of ourselves to the meeting. So we are not only in our head. They also offer a way for things that we know to come out. With art, you don’t have to know what it is, before you start. With speaking, we often know what we plan to say. But with art, you don’t know, it can really be emergent. I think that the power of that really came through in all of the stories, the power of emergence, and art as a vehicle for that.

The podcasts point to the idea that there are artists and there are other people, that some people can do it and some can’t. It wasn’t always that way. For the ancients, everything, art and creativity were connected. Every act of creativity was considered sacred. When something was created it had a sacredness to it. I see bringing art into these gatherings as a way to bring the sacred in. It is subtle but it’s contributing to the profound and meaningful experiences that people had, in each of these stories.

Beth Tener 

Also, when we say ‘art,’ it often conjures up a painting or a piece of art. I also want to define this as creative expression, or co-creative expression, which could be movement or even the way we design things. SeaCHANGE was itself a work of art – the art of how we created the space, the art of how we invited people to show up into the conversations, and how we left space that allowed these folks to connect.

Or in the Spirit Matters gatherings –bringing indigenous wisdom holder, into the center of downtown, into a university. What a creative act that is to say: “This is wisdom that has long been held outside of academia. It is time.” And then how they created the space. It was the most colorful room I’ve ever been in, in like a typical university classroom, with the prayer flags. When you sit in that space, as you said Nancy, more of your humanity and your creative expressions, sensitivities and perceptions, expand. It allows more than if we only use our heads.

Nancy Gabriel

I really liked what you said about art, and creativity being much more than the visual arts. I worked with someone who was very talented visual artist and very creative. I always felt, I’m not a talented visual artist and that she’s the creative one. Someone we were working with said, “that’s her form of creativity. Right now, that’s what’s preferenced.”

Being able to create a space for groups to come together, that is creative. Being able to set up a system so everybody knew what to do and where to go when, that is creative. If we broaden that perspective of creativity, it allows us to all of us to participate in that act of creation, and bring more of ourselves there.

Beth Tener 

When you create part of the conference with Open Space, you invite the participants to offer questions and topics. You believe they have creativity. I love it because you can never predict what surfaces. Robert mentioned the winter conference that we designed like SeaCHANGE. In Open Space, we had a young person who said, “I want to talk about what is marriage and why is it an institution?” So he and his young wife got a great group of people to explore that. So there’s the creativity.

If you want to host that dialogue you see who shows up. Someone else said, “can we talk about how we create good space for teens?” In that case, 40 people showed up for that conversation. Other times, maybe four people show up, but you end up having a conversation that goes all different places you would have never foreseen. I also love the creativity in how the group can cook together.

Nancy Gabriel

The beauty of Open Space is that the diversity in the room gets the opportunity to express itself and talk about what it wants to talk about.

Beth Tener 

We also talked with Belvie about the power of poetry. We heard from Liz and Matt about how they get third and fourth graders sharing poems. We’ll end the podcast with Liz reading one of those poems.

Nancy Gabriel

I have something to add about Belvie’s connection to the greater whole. In listening to her story and the way she connected the youth to something bigger, to the universe story or the origin story. It was a meaningful way people to be able to get out of this moment and experience. It made me think of a conference I went to many years ago, at Tufts, about resiliency. It explored why some kids who grew up in similar situations are more resilient than others. One thing is to have an adult, just at least one adult better if it’s two adults in your life, who care about you, who mentor you, who aren’t your parents.

The other thing was about whether or not you felt that you were part of a greater whole, where you felt connected and part of something bigger. That really helps youth. There’s a lot of research on the connection between this idea of resiliency in youth and this sense of connection to a greater whole. Belvie and Dedan were doing that in the way they were approaching it. It’s not a hard thing to do. It  is important to feel our place in the world, not just our individual experience, but to feel we are part of something bigger.

Beth Tener 

I agree. I experienced that with the First Nations indigenous wisdom holders at gatherings. At the start of a gathering, in those traditions, there are the words that gets spoken before all other words. These remind you of your place in that larger whole, such as honoring all the relations , to the sun, the land, the ancestors. You feel you are one part among many parts of life. As I’ve been in those spaces more, I have brought that into my own practice. It’s a right sizing, with humility, cultivating a sense that there are more big forces of life and creativity, like the universe that’s 14 billion years old, and 4.5 billion years of life on earth, self-organizing, creating more life. It’s not all on me.

This helps with the sense of weight we carry. We can we rest back into those relations and resources. Life is so much bigger than us and it moves through us.

Nancy Gabriel

So Beth, as you’re wrapping up season one and thinking about that experience, what have you learned and what stands out?

Beth Tener

I enjoy the podcasting format of being in longer-form conversations with people who have done interesting work or have a perspective on how to be in the world in this time. I love to unpack that with them and mirror and connect that to other fields. As you can probably tell, I’m someone who loves ideas and loves to curate and see how these ideas all weave together. I’m seeking the ways that we can live in these times that can most help us open and move out of the density and stuckness that feels so strong right now. I know we can create something more beautiful.

It was a joy of being in that dialogue space with the guests and then periodically with you. I found it to be activating and energizing, and actually more fun than trying to sit down and write a blog. The dialogue and learning together, and then reviewing the transcripts and saying “ohh, this was good.” I appreciate the podcast format.

I’ve found the reconnecting with people starting moving us into thinking about creating things together. It reactivates the networks of relationships, as well.

Nancy Gabriel

That is congruent with the theme of  the first season: doing work in relationship with people is so energizing and gets us to a place that’s different than if we’re sitting at our keyboard trying to write. That is certainly what I experienced listening to it. I read what you write, and you’re a great writer. Yet, there’s something about the back and forth and the way that you were able to frame the questions and do your curation and find the threads through this first series.

It’s been fun doing these Learning with Friends episodes with you, because this is the way I learn. I like to listen to or read something and then be in conversation with someone else about it. Thank you for that opportunity and thank you for bringing this work and these voices out into the world.

Beth Tener 

Thank you, Nancy. These conversations have been like a layer of meaning making on top of the original stories, a blending of all the stories. It has been rich.

This wraps up Season 1. There will be a little break before we come back with Season 2. I’m going to close with Liz Miller sharing some of the third or fourth grade poets poems for you. Thank you for being part of this season.

Liz Miller

These third-grade students are very good friends and they wrote these poems, and wanted to stand up and read them in tandem. We had been talking about trees and Dedan’s idea that the tree breathes with you and for you. There’s this beautiful way that the whole world is breathing together. And then our prompt was about sensing the poem in everything. So poem one goes:

I see the life of poetry in everything the light touches.

Everything on the planet has its own story.

There’s goodness in everyone, if you just believe in them.

Every single thing in the universe has its own poem, if you just look to see the real poem inside it.

I sense poetry in the clouds, and in you.

I sent poetry in the wind and the birds, and in you.

I sense poetry in the curling waves, in the green trees, and in you.

And then the second student responds and says,

When I breathe, the galaxy breathes.

My mind is clear and I can focus.

The Kingdom of Love is at my back.

The rhythm of life is calm.

Night stars rise and glitter and the moon whispers to me.

The Earth is happy and quiet.

Trees glow and flowers rest.

A silent Hawk watches over the dreaming land.

In this world we share together.

Beth Tener 

And just a reminder at the kinship hub.net website slash podcast. You can find all the podcasts in a lot of show notes and links to resources as well as all the transcripts of each episode. I hope you’ll check out that website and while you’re at it, join the newsletter, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in season 1.