Don't Let the Crickets Be

On Earth Day, I would usually write about protecting an animal. This time I am writing about capture.
And release.
It's dusk and my five year old hollers, " MooooOOOOOM!" and comes scampering at me, sliding across the Pergo flooring in his socks.
"Mom, Mom, Mom! Come quick, it's important!"
"What? " I ask as I attack a mountain of crusty dishes.
"Just come see!!" He urges.
"Okay, Okay." he face is too excited to let this moment pass.
We walk to the corner of the hallway and my other two sons have something surrounded on the floor.
It's a little brown cricket.
" Mom! There's a CRICKET in the house!!!!" They are inspecting it. It's fun for them. My two year looks like he is going to poke or squash it.
"Leave the cricket be." I say. It's just one little cricket, but I don't need a squashed cricket mess to clean up.
"The Chinese say they are good luck. " I say importantly. I walk back to my dishes.
It occurs to me briefly that it is an insect and I should probably catch and release it outside. But I don't. I choose to be lazy about it and do other things. The dishes seem much more pressing at the time.

The next time my kids see a cricket in a different area of the house I think it's the same one and it hops away under the couch. Not my problem.
Then,pretty soon, we start seeing one in the kitchen, one in the boys room, and the chirping starts up at night.

One night I am up late getting a late night snack, and I pass my husband who is sleeping on the couch due to his increased snoring when he is mildly congested. The crickets are peeping away, one here, one there, hidden little noises making a symphony around us. The pitch and volume is incredible, really. It's loud. The suckers have been multypling in my house.

"How can you sleep?" I ask my husband.
"Doesn't bother me." he mumbles sleepily.
It bothers me. I am not tending house for a cricket festival of mating insects!
Pretty soon, they have migrated, unseen, into MY bedroom and they are keeping me up at night. I am frustrated because before, earlier, I could see the one or two crickets, but now, I can't see where they are to get rid of them!

It occurs to me that there are lots of places in my life, where I have let the "crickets" be.
When the conversation I had with a family memeber doesn't go exactly the way I intended, ah oh well, next time it will be better. I have other things I need to tend to right now.
When the toys start piling up in the livingroom, I think later, later...
When I exceed our budget one month and then another month, I keep thinking, oh it will be fine.

Then, one night, the noises in my head are a cacophony of those put off things, the rewind button keeps automaticlly replaying what my family member said and what I stupidly said back. The toys are driving my bonkers and I hate the way I ineffectively yelled at the kids about them today. The budget has me feel like I am in game of slipe and slide, only it's not fun, and I have been tossing and turning and cranky with my husband.
These "crickets", things that just don't belong there or just don't work for me, but I chose to ignore them, are now keeping me awake at night. They are robbing my peace of mind and stealing increments of my wellbeing and patience. Because I let them, because I chose not to catch and release right when I noticed them the first time.
I can see now that there are just actions to take, catch and release...catch the words that just came out of my mouth and release them by acknowledging that those words are RIGHT there. I said them. And that's not what I want in our space. And then shooo! out they go. And we have a new clear space to create something new.
Same with the toys and the bills, just acknowledge that they are there, right THEN, catch the issue and release it where it belongs. The toys go where they go and a system for having them go that way. The money goes where it goes and we consistently have it go there.
By taking these steps I begin to have a new found freedom in those areas, and find myself being much more present and bold in handling other areas of my life as well. I am writing more consistently, being much more present with my children. I am taking care of business with my business and in communication immediately with my husband.

In fact, my husband teams up with me, hears a cricket inside the portable cassete player in our bedroom the other day, and moves the squatter and boom box outside. I feel a minor sense of victory.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

To Home School or Not to Home School?

My children go to an excellent school. Rated the best elementary in our area. The teachers are shining examples of patience, creativity and expertise. The Principal is delightful, committed and loved by all. We couldn't ask for a better public school.
And yet....my eldest is doing C level work...which is simply because his preference of learning is very creative...he love science and art and excels at systems and story boarding. The style of learning focused primarily on math and writing, he says, is the same thing over and over again. He enjoys school, he loves his friends and teacher, but he goes because we say so and he does Ok because he needs to.

My middle son is excelling in Kindergarten. He does all his work quickly, somewhat neatly and attacks new concepts with verocity. Everything is a challenge until he has conquered it and then it becomes the most uninteresting thing to endure ever. He has surpassed the standard levels and yet there is no bonus work for him at school, no carrot or opportunity to tutor others or activity to keep him from getting to trouble before his boredom sets in. He complains the homework is for babies and he often grabs his brother's previous first grade leftover math homework and fills it out himself. He loves his teacher and the social aspect of school but puts up with the learning style.

That's just what's so. There is nothing wrong with what their teachers are doing. I love them. I honor them for what they do. They are GREAT at what they do.

AND there is something missing for my sons, not wrong, just something not there that would make a difference for their education. Where I begin to look at what might be missing for my children is in the entire system. The system and structure for learning is in such large groups, 36 now, and focused so much on the material needed to pass the standardized tests for "No Child Left Behind" that the entire context is based on passing those tests. If your child can do that, then great, they are fine. If your child can just barely do that, then great, they are fine. If your child cannot then they might get some extra attention, just enough to get them to the place where they can just barely pass. There simply isn't time within the system as it is for anything else. As much love and care as the teachers give, this is it.
There isn't any extra attention or different teaching style for the kids who are excelling or just barely making it. They just need to do more and more of the same to drill it in. What might really be missing however, is ME. My involvement in their education. Personal care and one on one attention..a guide for their education.

As my husband and I consider moving to an area where we can get a larger yard for gardening and more space for our rapidly growing three boys, I begin to shift my entire perspective on what's important. Where we live is based on the rating of the school, usually....if we are sold on the public school system and committed to the education they will receive there, that is...

This has us ask the question...What kind of education are we committed to our children having? What is our context that we are creating for our children around learning?

Learning is....
What?
Boring? Drudgery? Something to be survived or put up with? Something you rush through to get to the good stuff which is TV or video games? Something we parents put up with? Something we are glad for because it get's them out of our hair?

What if Learning was an Adventure?
What if Learning was an opportunity to connect, to have fun and to create?
Well then homeschooling would show up inside of that context. It just would. Like the context of LOVE creates hugs, smiles and affection....
Learning is an Adventure would look like homeschooling outside, in a back yard with a garden, reading about the history of an area we go on a hike to, math with sticks we broke from branches, art with leaves that we gathered on the hike, and science everyday in between and inspired by everything around us.
Learning as an adventure would be spontaneous, fun and challenging. It would be fast and efficient, scary at times and exhausting other times. It would be immensely rewarding and unforgettably inspiring!

It would require an entire lifestyle shift. It would mean taking on the unknown. It would mean being willing to make mistakes or be unsure....be flexible and creative.
The voice in my head says..For God's sake Zen, just be normal for once! Send your kids to a good school and don't stress yourself out!!!

What if it wasn't stressful though???..(or I mean unbearingly so anyway, I am realistic)...what if it was fun, exciting and creating the kind of education that really works for my children?
What talents could explode from them? What creations?
I wonder what riches could unfold for me if I was plugged into my kids learning and creating it with them...what kind of relationship could we have and what adventures could we go on?? Stay tuned for further pondering on children's education and what's possible.
Either way, whether I homeschool or not, this inquiry to what we want education to be for our children has me being connected and creative in a way I never previously imagined...again coming from this year's context of Courage, Creativity and Contribution!

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Favorite Moment

Sometimes I think God is speaking through my eight year old son Ben.

Like when he said " Mom, did you know that the beach is where angels go to have their birthday party?"

or
" Mom did you know that people get recycled when they die and come back as other people but they don't know it?"

or the other day when we asked him what his favorite part of the day was, he said simply..
" Right now is my favorite. Because you know when you pick right now as the favorite and feel happy, more happy things come, then your favorite is right now all over again."

I am not kidding.
He got what the entire movie "The Secret" is about. He got what hundreds of philosophers and spiritual teachers preach and yearn for us to get.
We looked into his eyes with love and awe and agreed that our favorite moment is right now, right here, with him and our whole family.

Life is moment to moment. Some of us have less moments than others. As a dear family member passes, I am reminded to be present, that right here right now, if I muster up or open up, or generate those good feelings, more good happy feeling will come, more good happy things, words, events and relationships will come.
It's only me and my fear of unhappy things that calls more unhappy things to me. I have the power to transform my life by choosing right now.
Even when unhappy things randomly happen, accidents, death, things beyond my control (oh yes, I am constantly giving up that I can't control everything or everyone)
if I chose right now anyway, exactly as it is, and know that this moment is exactly perfect, I can then create a happy good feeling moment and be inspired by the world again.
Thank You Ben.

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Whose Train are You On?

Last night I was coaching some powerful women around what they wanted in life. What they wanted was to talk to their loved ones about things that mattered to them. They wanted to connect, to relate and not have judgement, weirdness and conflict.
One serene Japanese woman, said simply, "I want to talk to them about something but they keep getting off track..talking about other things, like their grandbaby or have I called Aunt Melba? I don't know how to get them back on track!" Struggle rippled beneath her smooth, perfect skin. Helplessness began to whisper...

I totally understood. I've been there. How many times do I start to talk to my children about doing what I want them to do and find that they just scream back about gum or their rocket ship?

I stop myself from telling her what to do, as my automatic way of being would. There is something there for her to see on her own.

" What do you see is missing? " I ask simply.
" .....Being with THEM" she comes up with...like a swimmer after a long dive, she breathes, her face relaxes... " Being with them."
"You are trying to get them to get on your train, yes?" I ask.
"Yes" she nodded, clear about her intentions.
" What if you got on their train? "
" Ah, listened to them, got in their world....ahhh...that would be amazing."
" What kind of new world could you experience being on their train?"
She smiled newly, called her friend and created a whole new world of relatedness.
They laughed, they planned getting together.Both got to talk about what mattered to them. Her friend felt heard and empowered.
SHE did that. She got on her friend's train. Saw something new and created with her rather than struggling and resisting and causing two trains to wreck.

Let's face it. We know what's going on on our train, in our brain....and usually it is a one track train and we know exactly where it's going to go.
Depression, sadness, pity, anxiety...all that is is us being on the one track in our own brain in that one direction.
I say throw out the depression drugs! Every last one of them (ok, unless you are in a ward) and go out and volunteer ( and stop eating gluten/wheat, but that's a whole other blog). Listen to your friends problems, build a doll house for someone's sick daughter and listen to her Mom, tell jokes at a senior center and then interview them...whatever gets you out side of your head and onto someone else's train.

I will practice playing with my children more and playing in THEIR world.
As a brilliant lady Kathleen said "It's amazing what comes out of your mouth when you are not in your head." When you are over there with them, all there is is love and relatedness...and a whole new world to see.

Zen Honeycutt

Courageous and Creative

Today I invented the possibility with my accountability partners (yes I have two...it takes two to keep me in line:) of being Courageous and Creative.
That is my theme for this year.
No more business as usual.

That means some thing are changing. I am completing things that aren't working. I am giving up things I once loved to create a new future. I am purging my home of the unnecessary and unused. I am catching myself when I speak the usual broken record words or sounding like my parents in their frustrated moments. Not always, but an astonishing amount of miracles are emerging where I would least expect them.
Simple miracles in simple moments, that become the most meaningful.

Today, after school, I picked up my eldest son at the second pick up for the day, the sixth errand perhaps, and because I told my accountability partner that I would, and because I knew I could, I asked my children what they wanted to do.
"What would we do if we were being courageous and creative?"

Now normally, my son would get in the car, they might bicker a bit, talking over each other, vying for attention suddenly, and we would go home, spread out to our corners...Ben on homework near me on the computer, and Bodee playing with a toy, back to Bronson to protect his momentary obsession. We would have snack together, maybe read a few books, but the day would continue predictably for the rest of the evening, including much whining as I am cooking dinner and terse reminders that the dinner table is not a trough and we are not pigs.

But this time, today was different. I am committed to being and causing Courage and Creativity!

We declare Hike Time! and then Ben suggests afterwards we go home and write about it. "That would be creative!" he says cleverly.
We hike through a new area by a secret marsh in Irvine. Being courageous, it's a new area and we don't have a map. As soon as Bodee even sniffs a whiff of boredom I suddenly stop in my tracks and point "BIGFOOT! TRACKS!" The boys are on high alert and we urgently inspect the huge tracks of what seems to have been a very large footed walker. Then..."SNAKE!!! The longest snake in the WOOOORLD!" I shout...at a long striped water hose.
"Oh Mommy, you're funny, that's not a snake..." I am inspired by being considered funny.
"Are you suuuuure?" I say slyly, and they realize they are not sure and boldly approach anyway.

We courageously go off the path and walk through winding trails. The boys pee in the bushes with glee and we Christen it the "Pee Bush", walking past it with our noses pinched.
The afternoon is a delightful adventure of nature, trees, rocks, mud, birds, lizards, flowers, marsh ponds and singing boys filled with freedom.



We go home and their drawings and writing about the adventure was as if we had gone to Disneyland.
Bodee also created an apology letter to a boy in school that he insulted. It took great courage for him to acknowledge that he did that and he very creatively wrote "There were two boys who were MAD and then became friends."
Instead of "There, ARE YOU HAPPY?" like he wanted to. It took courage for me not to get angry with him and to create understanding and the freedom to express himself...even if it did take three attempts at an apology.

We ate a delicious dinner and made a video for Daddy who was working late. Bodee and the boys sang a song about how much they love Daddy. Priceless.
We even did a Venus Fly Trap science project afterwards...even though I really wanted to check out and write...because my children wanted to create something WITH ME.
And it matters that it's me that does it with them.

I am inspired by our creation.
Inspired by the joy and glee in my children. When I bought them a pack of gum on one of the errands they sang songs for ten minutes about Happy Glee Gum. When we found a new path they shouted at the top of their lungs with bravado.What if we created like that? Expressed joy like that?
When my boys saw a tiny path, they took it, regardless of knowing where it might go. What if we were courageous in everyday actions...what new things, what miracles might show up?

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com

Death and Love

" The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?" - Kahlil Gibran

My Aunt Jade is dying. She is in hospice and is not completely aware anymore. She is happy and comfortable though, and at peace with the time being near.
My mother's older sister is a sassy San Fransican activist, one of the people who barrages the government with letters, emails and phone calls to save the whales, the water quality, the turtles in mexico. She is one of the reasons we have the society we do. She is creative, compassionate, fiery and tenacious.
She has straight, pure white hair, cut into a perfect bob that falls to her chin. She wears bright ethnic clothing, celebrating Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Tibet and the Ecuador. She is a independent Chinese woman who speaks excellent Spanish, lives part time in Mexico, teaches high schoolers in San Francisco and enjoys a walk with her dog Radar in the park, chatting casually with her neighbors, more than anything.

I love her because she is vibrant, opinionated and active. She makes a difference in the world around her, and whether you agree with her, or see her verocity for change as passionate or angry, all agree that she knows she matters. She knows each one of us matters. She stood for each of us when we were too busy to email the government. And she emailed us again because she knows we matter and we can make a difference.
I love that about her. She empowers me to be active. She inspires me to care.

As we sat in the sunny dog park by her burgundy, forest green and gold Victorian home in San Francisco on a recent visit, a floral scarf wrapped around her head, wisps of white hair blowing in the breeze, I held her hand and summoned my then 7 year old over to us. I looked at my Aunt Jade and asked her, "If you could have one wish for our future generations, what would it be?"
She squinted at me through the sun, surprised, a little bit, inside her brown eyes, and said " Oh that's a big question...."
She looked down, for a moment, thoughtfully, then up, sure, and said to Ben and I, "To take care of the earth."
Ben looked at her solemnly and said. "I can do that."
I sighed, squeezed her hand and was complete with the relationship we have had. In my heart, my love for her was so full, it overflowed into the next generation.

The sorrow I feel for her near passing is not a misery of which I feel victim of. It is a deep understanding that I only feel this sorrow because I have had the honor to know her, to be influenced by her, to be related to her and to be inspired by her. All a blessing. All a gift.
I thank my Paw Paw (Chinese for Grandmother) for birthing and raising such a dynamic person. I thank her daughter Andra for caring for her mother generously, all the while creating a creative and vibrant life of her own passions. I thank my mother for having had a relationship with her sister that was joyful and open and allowed me to get to know my Aunt Jade. I celebrate her life and know that death is but a phase in life.

"Knowing that I am of the same nature as all other natural things, I know that there is really no seperate self, no seperate personality, no absolute death and no absolute life" - T'ien T'ung-Hsu...from my Zen calendar from my dear, dear sister.

That is a deep concept to grasp, especially in the midst of sorrow.I never understood how people could say that they want to have a party when they die, they want people to be happy. It felt so cold and fake. I get now, there is the opportunity, in her passing to celebrate having been a part of her life. We hurt from death because we love, and if we reside in the love we can be present to the miracles in life. It may continue to hurt, the sorrow is like the burning in the oven, and yet something beautiful can be created from it.
The question to ask ourselves, is from knowning this person, the eclectic, bold and outspoken Aunt Jade, and what she stands for, how will we now live our lives?



With Love to her beautiful and marvelous daughter Andra and compassionate son-in-law Brian,
Zen Honeycutt

Why do we Have To be Nice to Nature?

” Mommy, why do we have to be nice to nature?” asked my 5 year old Bodee on a sunny hike through a nature reserve. We were on our Sunday family hike and I had curtailed his desire to crush anthills and smash flowers and he didn’t like it. And yet, he really authentically wanted to know why…

” First of all, we don’t HAVE to be. And alot of people aren’t nice to nature. You don’t have to be. It’s a choice. You can be. As your Mommy I ask you to be nice to nature, and you can choose to be. Why do you think we might want to be nice to nature?’

He thought carefully” Because they do to us what we do to it. ”

He was roughly quoting the Golden Rule that we had discussed earlier when a squabble erupted between he and his 2 year old brother.

“Great Bodee!….Ben, why do You think we might choose to be nice to nature?” My 8 year old was listening in on the conversation and I was curious to know what gears were churning in his brain.

“Because we ARE nature.” he said simply and dashed over a dirt slope, off the lead the way on our adventure.

We ARE nature.

With the natural disasters happening in Japan and in so many parts of the globe, with such devastating, unthinkable results, it would behoove us to think about our intricate connection to the nature we are.

We are 78% water. If our water sources are endangered, polluted, hoarded or scarce. WE are.

We are consumers of food, which come from nature. If our food is polluted, sprayed with pesticides, highly processed, sprinkled with preservatives or genetically engineered, WE are too.

We are breathers of air. If we create pollution and it goes into the air, through exhaust pipes, factories chimneys, radiation or reactors, and the result is polluted air, WE are polluted too.

We are creators, doers, we Cause as well…we are producers of pollution, which impact nature and ourselves in ways we cannot always see or measure. Just like not crushing an anthill or leaving a flower for a hummingbird to draw nectar from has an unimaginable impact on nature….regardless of how minute we think it is…nature has unimaginable impact on us.

Just imagine, all of human kind’s existence, if measured in distance, would be the thickness of a human hair compared to the existence of the universe and planets. When you think of it that way, one earthquake begins to look a little like grains of sand for an ant hill to the universe.

Sounds like a blasphemous trivialization, doesn’t it? AND what’s so is that the earth will shift again, and will we make up that God is angry and it’s the end of the world, and be victims and raise our stress levels or will we look to an empowering context for our feelings and meaning in life. We can be nice to ourselves or not.

And nature doesn’t care about NICE by the way. Nature, the universe…doesn’t know what nice is. It just is. The plates move. The water flows. The mud slides. There is no meaning of nice or not nice about it. We humans add the meaning of nice or not.

Yes, the results to us are unthinkable…but the source of the tragedy is not in the plates shifting or the water flowing. The source of the tragedy actually comes from a blessed place. It is a tragedy because we love. We care, we are connected to other human beings, to their dreams, their lives, their children. We are related to what matters to them and those they love.

That’s where a situation becomes a tradgedy…when my child is present to what the ants are up to, he chooses on his own, not to crush the anthill. He chooses not to create a tragedy for them. He is a child with imagination and choice.

Nature however, will continue to ebb and flow, rocks and water do not imagine or think about what they are going to do today. God even, if you believe, I assert created the earth and nature as it is, perfect and whole and complete, and just like human beings, nature does what it does. Only it doesn’t have choice. If we can acknowledge the source of the tragedy of natural disasters is within US, and it comes from a source of LOVE, that we are amazing, then we are empowered and peace and creation can begin.

How can we be nice to nature, and to ourselves, today?

Wishing you and your loved ones peace.

With Love,

Zen Honeycutt
www.zenspurplegarden.com