Chapter Four

Ayaviri

This was a threshold day. Here we were, straddling two worlds, standing at 16,000 feet above the sea; the Pacific slope behind us and the Andean interior in front of us - an endless landscape of peaks rising to between 16 and 24 thousand feet reaching up into a deep cobalt blue sky. Llongote Pass was a bridge from one world into another, from one life into another. As we wound down through high tundra grasses, a scattering of Vicuna grazing and drinking from glacial springs, Luis announced, “We’ve been given another day Pablo! Vamos a Ayaviri!”

To Ayaviri it was. We were committed now. The next road would be several villages and nearly two hundred miles away. This was the Andean interior. Ancient villages nestled in high mountain niches connected by pathways precariously carved into steep slopes where you could sometimes see a silver ribbon of river reflecting the sun some 4000 feet below. A long fall it would be.

Burros were a necessity. Goat milk, pork, chicken, eggs were the principle proteins. Legumes and tubers were plentiful along with other high altitude cold crops and apples! Yes, apples. The most amazing apple hybrids…like the grapefruit sized Viscas apples we ate along one of the many ancient canals built by the Incans.

“Up here, I am Incan!” Luis shouted out to me as he strode ahead whistling one of his inane tunes, half crazy smile on his high cheeked face.

We had stopped to eat apples along one of the canals and to soak our blistered feet, when up came a stocky old man striding behind a burro loaded with burlap bags full of coca leaves. “How far to Ayaviri?” we asked.

“Tres!” was his reply, Three!

“Three what?’ we called out.

“Three!” he shouted back.

Oy! Three miles, three hours, three days, three what? We didn’t know.

We put our rubber sandals back on to very sore feet, stocked up on apples and marched onwards to Ayaviri!

We walked and walked, well past three miles and three hours. Whatever was the mysterious ‘tres’, we weren’t there yet. We pushed on, our feet numb with pain, apples all gone, hungry, beyond tired…driven by sheer will at this point and absolutely loving it!  And just as the sun met the horizon we saw a large cross on a ridgeline ahead.

We got to it and stopped for a few minutes. We must be getting close, we thought, but no sight of Ayaviri.  Here we were sitting beneath a 30 foot high cross, facing another cold night without food, exhausted beyond belief, wondering where the hell was Ayaviri, both of us praying in our own ways for strength, for rest, for help, for something….

Just then when heard bells, lots of little bells.

It was a herd of goats! And behind came the most beautiful woman either of us had ever seen. This must be an angel! An angel goat herder coming to rescue us and lead us to the mythical village.

“Come!” she called, “to Ayaviri!”

“How far is it?” Luis asked.

“Tres!” she hollered back to us, “Hurry, it’s getting dark!”

So we followed, giddy with a strange euphoria, stumbling behind our angel another hour at least before we arrived at the outskirts of the village. She corralled her goats and beckoned us to follow her down through a maze of narrow alley ways all the way to the village center, where, to our total astonishment a fiesta was happening. Our hostess ordered us to wait here. So we stood there delirious trying to get oriented.

Traditional music was blaring out through a single speaker mounted on a pole above the plaza. The music was totally distorted because it had to compete with the diesel generator supplying its electricity. Every few minutes, an announcer would interrupt the music speaking half Quechuan, half Spanish, encouraging everyone to dance, drink and be merry!

We were sitting there watching in a daze, when our angel returned. She said, “Let’s go see the mayor!” So we followed her into a two story building next to the plaza, up a set of stairs and into a well lit room with a big man sitting behind a desk holding a microphone up to a record player in one hand and a bottle of Pisco in the other!

The mayor is the DJ!

He stopped the music, announced to the village that we had guests, greeted us robustly, said thank you to his daughter (our angel), and then commenced to interview Luis and myself ‘live at the Ayaviri village plaza’!!!

What followed was the most bizarre and hilarious situation…

The first order of ceremonies was to pass the bottle of Pisco for a couple rounds to get us warmed up. He then proceeded to ask us our names, where did we come from and what were we doing in Ayaviri???  Luis decided to be our spokesman.

“We come from the village of San Vicente de Azpitia in the Mala river valley. We have journeyed for five days coming here, mostly on foot. We are passing through all the mountain villages along this route on behalf of the Institute of Cultural Affairs.”

The mayor was slowly trying to digest all this, as Luis lectured on, describing the development mission of El Instituto, decentralized community empowerment, cultural preservation, economics, ethics, indigenous rights and on and on, as the mayor started to nod off in a crosseyed stupor. All this time we were being broadcast over the plaza loudspeaker.

Then suddenly as Luis spoke the words, … “and Pablo plays the guitar and sings and comes all the way from the United States of America”, the mayor jumped up, grabbed the microphone from Luis and announced to the entire population of Ayaviri, that sitting before him was a famous American singer and can somebody bring him a guitar!

“No, no,” I protested, “No soy famoso!”

“You are now, Pablo!” Luis elbowed me with a maniac grin.

Sure enough, a few minutes later the guitar appeared. It was missing two strings!

“Presenting, Pablo de America!” announced the mayor. “Play! Sing for us!”

And he stuck the microphone two inches in front of my face, looking at me through unfocussed eyes, with an expression that said - You better deliver boy!

So I started. First, Guantanamera, then La Bamba, then Gracias a la Vida, then a couple originals, all the while Luis and the mayor encouraging me on conspiratorially. Something must have been looking over us, because though I was physically totally spent and we had passed the Pisco around many, many times now, on very empty stomachs, the lyrics nevertheless popped into my head and out through my mouth as sweetly and fluidly as can be!

When it was all over, the mayor applauded and thanked us for coming and made a very formal, official sounding announcement to the village, despite his impairment - to treat us as family, to provide anything we needed and to remember this night of nights in El Pueblo de Ayaviri!

As we walked down the stairs and out the door we were greeted by many toothless and glossy eyed smiles, wishing us a good journey, to go with God, be safe, thank you, thank you, we love you…come back…

A crotchety old woman grabbed Luis by the arm and led us to our suite for the night. When we woke the next morning, with hunger pangs, swollen, blistered feet, sore from head to toe and seriously hung-over, we realized we slept the night in the loft of a pig barn! OY!

And that…was Ayaviri.

Chapter Three

Llongote Pass

We woke the next morning to the mouth watering smell of what we found out was fried guinea pig meat, which we had for breakfast before we were given a sweet send off by our hosts. Down an immense valley we walked following well traveled paths leading us back to the narrow dirt road along the river valley. We got a ride on a typically overcrowded bus with people, goats, chickens and even a pig, up, up the valley all the way to the town at the terminus called Yauyos. The bus driver was playing the Beatles on a tape deck held together with twine and duct tape. We got there just before dark.

We spent the night in a ‘motel’ room with no water or electricity. Too tired to care, we crashed on cockroach infested mattresses. The next day we were to present our papers to the mayor of Yauyos before moving on, so we were informed by La Policia in the motel office. It was a necessary formality as a precautionary measure against infiltration of the Shining Path guerilla movement. I had already been introduced to the Latino cultural love for making everything ‘official’, so we were prepared for the ridiculous ceremony of signing and stamping documents in the mayor’s office for the next hour. We were clear to proceed!

It was no small consolation afterwards to be invited to the mayor’s house for breakfast. In his home he was a different human being. He graciously prepared eggs, bread, goat cheese and this magical medicinal drink I had never encountered before. After drinking one cup of this delicious hot tea that seemed to fill my body with strength and uncommon well-being, I asked what could it be?

“Pure chocolate!” he replied.

A little while later he sent us on our way fortified, knowing what we were about to face. In a state of euphoria Luis and I practically skipped out of Yauyos up the herding trails above the tree line into the high tundra once again.

The first time I ever saw a llama in the wild was on this trail near a goat herder’s corral and hut. It came leaping from behind a tall stone wall as we were filling up our canteens in a small stream. I was so excited and awestruck by this magnificent animal when behind it came an old woman throwing stones and waving a stick cursing the llama for drinking her goat’s milk! My romantic moment dissolved as Luis broke into hysterical laughter.

We continued on our way knowing we had to get over the pass by the end of the day to avoid a cold and windy night.

We climbed and climbed, this time wearing our rubber sandals, up and up, watching the river valley recede and finally disappear behind us, and wondering which next summit would reveal our pass. It was getting late. It was getting windy. And still no pass. Dusk was coming and we could go no further. So we decided to make camp in the high tundra with no cover, very little to eat and drink, and inadequate bedding as we would soon discover.

We ate our standard fare, drank a little Pisco Luis bought in Yauyos and watched as the stars appeared in their overwhelming fireworks. We were camped at 16,000 feet in the Andean summer; the Cordillera towering above us another 6,000 feet; we had no sleeping bags of any kind, just wool blankets and sweaters, we were hungry and now a little drunk from the Pisco, the 180 proof alcohol Luis insisted would keep us warm. As evening progressed we began to feel the cold, but fell asleep exhausted nevertheless.

Some time later, we both woke up startled. We were freezing! It was bitter cold and windy and we were hungry, tired and trembling in convulsive shivers. We both lay there looking up at the most incredible night sky, feeling as if you were floating through space, that you could practically touch the lights beaming down on you - on the verge of hypothermia!  Without thinking twice we started hugging each other trying to generate some heat between us.

Here we were, two men from two completely different worlds,  his in fact very conservative when it came to men displaying warmth for each other, laying under the Southern Cross on the rooftop of the world frantically hugging each other for hours until came the first hint of dawn.

As soon as the light changed Luis leapt up from our dismal night and started setting fire to the tundra bushes all around us. It would take him 5 minutes to get one to ignite. It would burst into flames for about 20 seconds and then be gone, leaving a smoking charred stub where once lived a fragile bush that probably took a hundred years to grow.

I couldn’t join him. My environmental morality would rather have me shivering on the frozen ground under a wool blanket. I had already broken my vegetarian ethic by eating guinea pig and dried fish. I was not going to start burning down the Andean tundra. Meanwhile, Luis was having fun jumping from burning bush to burning bush trying to shake off the night’s icy grip! He thought I was an idiot. He was right.

So I watched the sun’s rays descend from the snowy glaciers above down into the boulder fields and moraines, down into the tundra above us and then I took off up the mountain to meet the sun’s warmth! When I got up there and started to thaw out, I smiled as I saw about two hundred charred stubs left in Luis wake. Looking out over hundreds of miles of mountains put things in perspective!

I could see the pass and its sheltering boulders just 1000 feet above our camp only 20 minutes away!

Today we headed over the pass below the mystical mountain called Llongote, the most beautiful peak I had ever seen. The pass itself was truly a threshold from one world into another. We were now facing the Andean interior. Luis stopped to write a prayer on a tiny piece of paper and lodged it into one of millions of cracks in these huge stone sentinels that marked the pass. Looking closely I noticed thousands of tiny paper scrolls in the rocks, thousands of prayers and blessings sent out by the extraordinary Andean souls whose stories our lives were now intersecting. I then wrote something and jammed it into a crack in the rocks ~ Thank You Life, Thank You!

Where would today lead us? We had no idea. Only that our destination was the next village down the valley, the village of Ayaviri! Onward to Ayaviri!

On the Pacific slope of the Peruvian Andes human traffic flows two ways: up and down the steep river valleys from villages perched at 14,000 ft. nestled amidst 18,000 to 24,000 ft. mountains down to sea level AND from valley to valley across the high passes that connect them.

Growers and herders have been traveling these routes for centuries making their bodies short and stocky with big chests (for larger lung capacity) and incredibly wide feet. Since pre-Columbian times much of the trade between regions occurred laterally, from river valley to river valley. Textiles, llama and alpaca wool, metals, fruits, grains, vegetables and the many extraordinary tubers including potatoes that originate there were successfully exchanged between high mountain villages.

From the time of the Incans up through Spanish conquest and colonization, the Andean economy thrived without interruption. Then came the overnight industrialization that swept through much of the so called third world in the 20^th century. The era of Latin American dictatorships, puppet governments and rampant exploitation began. Suddenly, the economic flow of goods changed from a vibrant decentralized multi-layered lateral distribution to a totally centralized system. Roads were built to connect the high mountain valleys to the coast. Now everything was brought up and down the valleys by truckload and busses through the coastal cities to the capitol, Lima as the central hub.

The Andean way of life was now radically changed. Many villages lost their young men and women to the lure of the city, modernity, factory jobs, the military and for a very few, education. All too many of these young people ended up living in destitute barrios where raw sewage flowed down open canals in the streets where children played and landlord-dealer-pimps patrolled the neighborhoods like little dictators. Disease, poverty and extortion prevailed in these circumstances.

The mission of many well-meaning 3^rd world development organizations in the 1960s, 70s and 80s was to reinvigorate the decentralized regional economies that had collapsed in the wake of industrialization. The funds for development were provided ironically from some of the multi-national corporations who were doing the most damage - the oil companies, the mining companies and the banks. But most of this money was poured into agri-business, technology and infrastructure projects that only fortified the centralized urbanization of the country. The rural places were slowly suffocating, bleeding out their most precious resource - the young!

Our mission was to trigger a revolution!

Chapter One

The Mission

Me and Luis poured over the maps strewn out on our cots. We were to travel over 360 miles in all. At first by bus and truck up the valley and then by foot over the ancient high mountain passes that connected one Pacific drainage to another. Our self-appointed mission was to scope out the high mountain communities at the apex of two immense river valleys; “to take a pulse” on the vibrancy of people living on the rooftop of the world. Luis was certain that the answer to Peru’s crisis lived in these isolated communities. We realized our journey of 12 days would include close to 200 miles on foot as best we could tell from the maps. We were undaunted. Hey, we were 21! What was to stop us?

Luis Aburto was born in Azpitia, Peru. Before this journey he had only ever seen the 12 miles of valley between his village and the coast and the 100km trip up the coastline to Lima. Our journey was going to be as new for him as it was to me. But for Luis it was a pilgrimage, a sacred mission.  He was a fiercely passionate young spirit determined to free his country from “500 years of pillage!” he would say. He would explain to me it was the will of his ancestors to be free of foreign domination. I had no idea how much of a pilgrimage our journey up the Andes would turn out to be.

In those days I believed that if you wanted to see change in the world, you had to get out there and make it happen. My reason for being in Peru (I thought) was to be part of a grass roots world movement of decentralized community empowerment. We were there to help make Azpitia attractive to its wayward sons and daughters - economically, culturally, socially, spiritually. To bring them back home.  Luis however, believed that the only lasting change that was worth living and fighting for was on the behalf of the divine. It was so strong in him that he would never proceed in important things unless he had a ‘sign’ of some sort. Just about every action, every event, every conversation, dream, change of weather, you name it, was to be read and interpreted as divine directive. It was the lexicon of the spiritual.

I’ll never forget the day for example, Luis came in for the community breakfast with a dire look of foreboding announcing to all of us there that something bad was going to happen that day. We were just waking up, trying to eat a little breakfast and here’s Luis telling us he had a bad feeling about that day.

“Great! Thanks for the cheerful news, Luis. Good morning to you too!”

Sure enough though, about noon that day there was a tremendous earthquake that literally sent waves through the village, knocking down structures and scaring the daylights out of everyone. We later found out that one of the villages higher up the valley had been completely wiped out by a landslide and that a busload of passengers flew off one of the high mountain roads.

Consequently, I learned to pay more attention to Luis’s premonitions and divination skills!

I always wondered what he thought about the adventure we were about to embark on?

Chapter Two

The Saint of Cachuy

We set out wearing tire sole sandals, carrying rustic canvas backpacks packed with wool blankets, a change of clothes, bread, dried fish and canteens. None of the backpacking gear I was accustomed to back home in the Rocky Mountains. This was going to be different. We were going ‘native style’. Any food to be had was going to be given to us along the way by the good graces of the people we would meet. “We’ll be provided for”, assured Luis.

The first day we traveled in the back of a flat bed truck way up the valley to a little village at the base of the trail to Cachuy. In the tiny mud thatch house we stayed in that night, our hosts told us of the Ascension of the Saint of Cachuy. Now thousands of people come to the tiny village of the Saint in the annual pilgrimage celebrating the miracle of his ascension to heaven! We would be the next two pilgrims to visit the site.

We woke to the reliable crowing of roosters, braying of burros and smell of freshly baked bread and set out before the sun rose. We were told it should only take us half the day to get up to the village. As we ascended the trail overlooking the river valley below an elderly man passed us at quite a clip, blessing our journey on the way. He was walking barefoot. So Luis decided it was a good idea to do the same in respect to where we were going.

We continued barefoot.

We walked for hours. We were not to stop to rest or eat or drink. In the late afternoon, well past ‘half a day’, the old man who had passed us going up was now coming down with a load of beans in burlap sacks strapped on his back. He blessed us again without breaking stride saying that Cachuy was ‘not far’.

Now I grew up in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. By the time I was 19 I had climbed over a dozen 14,000 ft peaks, slid down glaciers, and soloed the wilderness for days…But that was nothing compared to this. Here we were climbing to a village located at 14,000 ft. with elevations towering above it! This was a different scale altogether. Besides that, we were trekking the Peruvian Andes, the home of the Incan Empire! And…and…we were barefoot for God’s sake!

Luis was ecstatic, totally in his element.

It was his belief and determination, however crazy and other worldly it seemed, that kept me going. I couldn’t feel my feet by this point. I could barely feel anything. And honestly, I don’t know what finally got us to the village some three hours later! But there we were, sitting on the steps of the tiny chapel dedicated to the Saint of Cachuy looking up again at the most incredible starry night.

I kept thinking about the elderly man we met twice that day. His face is still clear to me to this day! These were the Quechuan descendents of the mighty Incans. The mountains cause their inhabitants to be somber, reflective, kind hearted souls, simple and transparent. But in no way are they superficial. They knew details and nuances about the mountains that would astound even the most avid mountaineers back home. This was their home.

Why do the high mountain people of the Andes and Himalayas wear such beautiful embroidered colors: pink, turquoise, purple, fluorescent green, yellow and orange in contrast to their desert surroundings? And the soulful music of the Andes! How beautiful! When you are there you understand it. The panpipes, the charangos and mountain harps - haunting, soulful tributes to the Great Mother, the Great Father, the millions of years and the starry universe that seems just beyond one’s grasp.

After a while another elderly man came to greet us and simply invited us to stay in their home for the night. We followed him by starlight to a small hut lit by candlelight where we were warmly welcomed by a lovely woman whose face seemed to tell a thousand stories in a glance. She spread out a blanket on the mud floor right next to their bed. Few words were spoken before we fell into a deep, deep Andean sleep.

As a young man I had an uncanny instinct for adventure somehow, which often led me to some remarkable people in remarkable places. One such meeting was in the Athabaskan village of Minto, Alaska located just forty miles south of the Artic Circle. It was summer 1979. At solstice the sun never set!

One of the village elders adopted me that summer. I think he was trying to find a husband for his grand-daughter, but that’s another story. His name was Peter John, a name given to him by the Jesuit missionaries. His Athabaskan name was used only in ceremonies. Over the summer we had many long conversations sitting on a bench looking out over the immense Tanana River basin.

He taught me something that became part of the creed of living for me - “something to wrestle with all your life, if you choose to” - he said with that inscrutable smile.

It was one of those extraordinary Alaska summer nights when the sun dips just below the horizon for several hours and the light becomes a magical twilight infused with charged particles. As ever, we were sitting at his overlook listening to the call of the loons, waiting to spot a grizzly or a moose or a wolf…just talking, listening, watching.

He would tell me these unbelievable stories about growing up there, what it was like in the old days - before electricity, before the roads were built, before the bush planes. He was now 80 years in, a former village chief, a tribal council elder and a very wise and respected, beautiful human being.

One of the things he said that night stuck with me to this day:

“All this,” he said, arms outstretched, indicating the vast wilderness around us, “the river, the mountains, the sun and the moon, the wild animals, the great trees and even this,” he said, patting his chest with both hands, “our body, NONE OF IT IS OURS. IT DOES NOT BELONG TO US. WE BELONG TO IT!”

That stuck with me.

He explained how the first salmon caught in the spring is celebrated in the potlatch ceremony. How nothing is taken for granted:

“For everything we are given - the air, the water, food, everything - we celebrate it by giving back ten-fold, in honor and thanks to The Great Mother, to The Great Father. We are guests here. This is their home!” he exclaimed, pointing to the exaltation of water fowl that just rose up from the marshes, “Our home is elsewhere.”

“Some humans think they own things. They act as if the earth, the animals and trees, all living things, even their children, belong to them. How can it be?” He spoke without bitterness or judgment, but with a kind of resigned wistfulness about the state of human affairs, “Don’t they know that everything is the property of Creation, and is to be respected as such?!”

Thank you Peter John.

Our gifts are not our possessions. We can value something, care for something, without having to possess it, to claim it, to control it! Life is far too short to be bound up in such mediocrity. The amazing thing is we are given the choice!

]]> http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/wisdoms-of-an-athabaskan-elder/feed/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/sing-with-spirit/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/sing-with-spirit/#comments Sun, 16 May 2010 17:15:31 +0000 P.A. Zeir http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/?p=203

It’s always a real eye opener what becomes important to children working together toward a performance.

We recently completed a 12 week program with 2^nd and 3^rd grade students culminating in a performance entitled Home Planet Earth. The whole project is chock full to the brim with wisdoms and lessons to do with the planet’s eco systems, the water cycle, sustainable practices, care for the animals, the value of diversity and world citizenship… demonstrated and brought alive through dynamic song and movement theater.

In one of our final rehearsals we gave a little pep-talk counsel that really stuck with many of the 80 children. It was simply this:

The first part of this program is totally for you; for you to learn all about the earth through these special songs, dances and stories. The second part is learning how to work together making a performance. The third part is about you giving what you have learned to the world, to your families and friends!

What is the most important thing about giving this special gift to the audience?

The answer: To sing with spirit!

For whatever reason, this really caught them.

After our final performances, we give 3 different assessment/feedback forms to the teachers, parents and students. Three of the questions in the student form were:

What helps make a performance special?

What is something you did that you are really proud of?

Draw a picture of something you really liked in the performance?

Surprising to us, a good majority of the students answered one of these questions in big bold letters saying: Singing with Spirit!

We grew up playing lots of Basketball. Everybody had a hoop in their driveway or access to one nearby. Soccer hadn’t caught on yet in the USA. So it was Football, Basketball, Baseball and Hockey. Of those four, the only one that had any kind of compelling rhythm was Basketball.

There was school ball and there was street ball. Most coaches didn’t want you bringing your street ball into high school courts. There was an etiquette to the game and street ball style broke too many rules to be welcome. That was true until our 1975 season and a rookie coach.

The truth is we loved street ball. Us white boys would go down to the ‘rough’ neighborhoods and join in some real hoop. Down there, it was all about the rhythm. Somebody would always bring the boom box and the Rhythm and Blues tapes and we’d play ‘till we dropped. If your team couldn’t get rhythm’d up, then forget it, you’d get whooped. And that’s how it was.

We’d go from our street hoop to playing ‘school’ and it would feel like you just got your wings clipped and your shoe laces tied together. On top of that, the real feeling of camaraderie was gone.

All that changed in ‘75. Our new school coach had a different philosophy. He knew about street ball. He knew about rhythm!

We suited up for our first practice and before we could even think about it, our new coach had us running drills to Motown music playing on his own boom box. He’d say, “I don’t want to see one pass or hear one bounce that’s off the rhythm, do ya hear? Now go!” And we’d drill for 90% of the practice just trying to get synchronized with the beat! It was great!

The same applied to running plays and shooting. After a couple weeks, if you were playing outside the beat, you hit the floor with push-ups. There were a few players who saw a lot of that floor…

By the time we had our first game, we thought we’d be invincible. But the problem was - the other team! They had no rhythm. They completely threw us off our rhythm. This was a problem. All this time we had been scrimmaging against each other - to a beat. Now we were playing without the support of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Temptations and Otis Redding. We were in trouble!

Our coach anticipated this. The practice following that first crushing defeat, there was no boom box. He brought a metronome instead. He started us on the long road of “internalizing the rhythms”! And that’s all we did for the next few weeks: walking the rhythms, running the rhythms, dribbling the beat, passing to the beat, shooting on the beat, with that metronome ticking away in our heads. It was crazy. A few guys threatened to quit. And what made it worse was we lost the next 2 games - by a lot.

We were also aware that our coach was under a lot of pressure. Parents and faculty were starting to complain about his unorthodox methods.

But the team was on board! Most of us really had the feeling that if we just stuck with it, something amazing would happen.

It was game four. We had just spent the last two practices drilling ‘on beat’ while the coach deliberately tried to throw us off our rhythm banging trash can lids together and shouting humorous insults at us. The team rhythm prevailed! We were facing a lot of resistance now, but something between us kept us together strong.

We won the next seven games!

We knew we shared something extraordinary. We tapped into something, something real; something as old and persistent as the heartbeat itself. None of us could really articulate it then, but it stuck with a few of us.

There is a natural rhythm and grace to just about everything. Finding it opens the door to uncommon strength and assistance from the natural worlds.

Our coach, by the way, went on to teach and coach at that same high school for the next nineteen years!

Anybody game for a little Rhythm Ball?

Tough times are truly the measure of a person’s character, the measure of collective character, be it a community, a city or a nation. There are so many invaluable lessons to be learned from the world’s scattered indigenous peoples. Ways of life and living such as - no one goes hungry! And - no one’s gain shall be at the expense of others. These are impossibilities within the true blue human ethic. Each member of the tribe, the village, the community is integral to the well-being of the whole. Loneliness and isolation are anathema to life. Service and charity are the most natural responses to being part of a collective support structure.

When times are hard, we find ways to be more resourceful, more conservative (in the true meaning of the word). Tough times don’t require us to become cheap or miserly, especially with the most valuable resource of all - our humanity.

When times are lean, the real measure of people depends on the quality and character of humanity they rise to. Don’t be cheap with life! Just because you may be counting every penny doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot to give. If the value of our charity as human beings is measured only in terms of dollars, then we are certainly lost.

These are the times when finding that deep well of humanity in yourself is crucial. The wish to give service as a natural overspill in return for all that supports us, freely, without counting the cost, without strings - is the charity that defines our humanity.

Find ways of giving - especially those who feel they have nothing extra to give. Genuinely giving from the best of yourself opens the flood gates and life comes pouring in! Wake up and Give!

]]> http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/charity-challenge/feed/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/in-3-minutes/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/in-3-minutes/#comments Mon, 19 Apr 2010 02:14:33 +0000 P.A. Zeir http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/?p=192

Think a moment about the elasticity of time. How it seems to drag on sometimes and whizzzz by other times. Time flies when you are utterly engaged with the all of you. There are slow times and fast times, there are green times and blue times, old times and new times… It really is quite a dynamic and multi dimensional thing - time.

In many cultures there used to be one day of the week set aside for resting together, being together in a slow, expansive, open, ‘sacred’ time, where the pressing matters of the world were totally disengaged from for a while. It seems we are forgetting how to do that.

All too often we say to ourselves, “I don’t have the time!” and thus instruct ourselves to shrink everything down into our busy, pressed for time, stressed out realities. But…

How time is for us, from moment to moment, is all to do with our state of mind and emotion, our attitude and perception - all of which are in our hands.

There is always, always the time! It depends entirely on our state of mind.

There is a thin line between ‘open time’ and ‘closed time’, between time in which everything is possible and time in which all doors seem to close. We inadvertently close ourselves off by how we habitually handle stress. But…

It is possible to change old habits by making new ones!

Think about what can happen in 3 minutes.

In 3 minutes you can change the course of a day…or a lifetime!

In 3 minutes you can sing a song that can change your state, from inside out.

In 3 minutes you can decide to get on with what you’ve always wanted to do with your life!

In 3 minutes you can thank someone and change the course of their day…

In 3 minutes you can bring a chaotic class full of youngsters into an open, ready and responsive state by doing a rhythmic mind livening song or a simple coordination game, like ‘patty cake’!

In 3 minutes you can slow down and listen to what’s really trying to happen through your life that day.

In 3 minutes you can change the course of history, your history.

In 3 minutes you can stop, take a deep breath, remember your purpose, reconnect to your passion and radiate that into all you do!  It’s always just an attitude away!

]]> http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/in-3-minutes/feed/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/learning-to-love-the-unknown/ http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/learning-to-love-the-unknown/#comments Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:24:34 +0000 P.A. Zeir http://talkinghandstalkingfeet.com/blog/?p=190

If you don’t understand someone, if something’s foreign to you or simply “off your screen”, if you really just don’t get where someone is coming from - rather than walk away with shrugged shoulders, making a judgment of one kind or another which closes doors, try something different. Try to get inside their shoes, to see through their eyes and further, to get inside their world view, their beliefs, their references.

Why? Well, to become more fully human for starters. To become a better representative, a better educator, a source of inspiration!

Ask another - why do you see things the way you do? Why do you do things the way you do? Really ask them, personally. You might be impressed, surprised, moved by what comes back. Better that than to live with our assumptions.

Sometimes the response will be - “Huh. I’ve never really thought about it. It’s just the way I’ve always done it”- prompting the person to self discovery. But other times what comes back is a revelation that can lead to new learning in you!

It is one thing wanting to understand someone with reference and experience quite foreign to you. That is invaluable! But this is also addressing things nearer to us and familiar to us that we may take entirely for granted. So ask your family, ask your colleagues, ask your friends - What causes you to do the things you do?

It will open your eyes and train your ‘eyes’ to be more open. There is so much more unknown about life, about each other, about ourselves than is really known. Therein lives such richness! It’s in learning to love the unknown!

Children learn by catching your sense of discovery, wonder and enthusiasm about a subject, not by having to manage lots of fragments of information. If you don’t want it to go in one ear and out the other, find the way to reconnect yourself (not your students, you) with the joy of discovering that subject as if for the first time!

Educators are here on earth to quicken the spirit of learning, to spark that sense of discovery, to trigger the uncontainable enthusiasm that goes with being human on the journey of life, the feeling that the future is open and everything is possible!

This may be the 100^th time you have approached a certain subject. It may feel tedious and redundant to you. But to your students it is not. For them, learning the water cycle, or learning the difference between nouns and verbs, or learning about people from a foreign land, or being able to put their thoughts on paper may open wondrous new worlds!

Make it new for you! Theaterize it! Yes! Act the lesson out! C’mon, break through those dusty inhibitions. Put the lesson to verse, rhyming verse. Make it a new challenge for you. Make a story out of it. Sing it, rap it! Make a field trip out of it. Whatever it takes.

If you are in it, they will catch it from you!  There’s nothing more contagious and compelling than the feeling of beginning; doing something for the first time. It’s fresh, it’s clean, it’s new and it’s all you have to do. Simply enter the subject as if it were the first time………every time!