MEND Season 2 - Episode 37

Experiential Capital with Waldorf Educator, Jeff Lough

"Train up a child the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it."  

~Proverbs 22:6

These were the words often bandied about in my (Amy's) childhood.  Used in that moment to speak to a certain type of religious education.  But what if we took this idea into a larger framework?  Expanded the context and the meaning?

What does it mean to educate a child as an evolutionary and still-incarnating being?

What does it look like to take the long-haul aproach - to not rush into books or standardized tests or memorized facts and figures - but to first prioritize the development of the soul - of an inherent sense of reverence, play & wonder - to build a spirited “F-you” into the curriculum of a budding adolescent because we VALUE their want and need to revolt - and have built it into the way we educate them?

And more - what would it look like to translate these ideas - beyond the classroom, beyond the realm of the scholastic, the world of childhood - and to work to educate, emancipate and elucidate humanity as a whole?

Join us as we take this hour to speak to local School Psychologist, Educator, Advisor, Administrator & ardent Advocate - Jeff Lough - about the undergirding philosophies surrounding Waldorf Education, a method devised by Rudolf Steiner in Europe during the late 1800's.  

When we first embarked upon this conversation with Jeff, we expected to find ourselves engaging in a talk around Intellectual Capital, but soon found ourselves knee-deep in the...

Experiential.

Spiritual.

Anthroposophical (don’t worry - you’ll hear that one again)

Material

And so much more.

And while we geek out a bit, admittedly, on this particular methodology and philosophy - 

I want to urge you to keep a broad and open perspective.

To listen for ways that these ideas filter into your own experience.

Your own Philosophy of Life.

And into what it means to empower and educate oursleves - at every step of the way.

What experience do we wish to have inside this Life?

And how do the ideas, methodologies, principles and patterns we subscribe to - help us to step up and claim the fullness available to us?

And what are we actively doing - to step into the world we wish to inhabit?

May the questions put forth here - help shed some light - as you move down your own path.

May they re-orient you back toward your own true north.  And help us all, collectively - reclaim a better way.  

MEND Season 1 - Episode 13

Raised in These Hills...

This week we speak with Iris:  a woman born, raised and now raising a family in the hills of Humboldt County.  When Iris was a child, her father was ‘busted’ by the infamous CAMP, Campaign Against Marijuana Cultivation, and given the option of 1 year of jail time or losing his land.  He chose to keep his land and spent the next better part of a year in prison.

She recounts to us:  the details of growing up in the marijuana culture as a child, the advantages and disadvantages of herself and those around her; knowing the safe house in the neighborhood, the one with no marijuana on the property, where the kids could flee to when CAMP came flying, learning all of the local plants and trees, as well as not having even a phone for many years.  And how she appreciates the openness of her parents, and recognizes the sad fate of too many of her peers whom, as she says, “Feel very big, very early.”

Iris acknowledges the benefits of marijuana cultivation in her earlier years, but tells us the big WHY she no longer participates.  It’s not the threat of jail, "That part wasn’t scary".  She tells us how, as an adult, just two plants helped get her family set.   What her community is doing to integrate the outsiders coming in, and poses the very important question of why Humboldt has alarmingly high numbers of childhood trauma and neglect.

This week we recognize not only the beauty of rural living, but the darker sides of growing up in an outlaw community.  Perhaps it is only through looking at these shadows that we can hope to understand how to come back into the light.