Daily Prompt Love <3 Reach
8 May 2019
Make art about what you’re reaching for.
3 May 2017
Every day I sling the door open to my classroom, and enter, looking across the room at those amazing students, and greet them with”Good morning, you beautiful creatures!”
I hadn’t thought much about it, until apparently I missed a day greeting them this way, and I heard about it 🙂 “You didn’t call us beautiful creatures!”
And they are–so beautiful–these young creatures striving, focusing, questioning, and reaching, always reaching, even when they’re not sure yet what it is they’re reaching for. Some stumble, and fall. Some create the wind itself as they move from place to place. Others are much too hard on themselves, harder than we old people could be, harder even than the unbelievable media and family and societal pressure they carry on their young shoulders every day. They are creatures of grace, and incredible endurance, surviving, thriving even. in the mess we’ve left them.
They are dreamfog and summer storm and mountain clay and stardust. They are every road to everywhere, every path woven of hope and young hunger.
They are miraculous, these creatures, these wind dancers and fireaters, carrying their huge hearts out openly before them in their hands, offering them like gifts, like the gifts that they are. ❤
They’re funny, and they’re compassionate, and they’re curious, and wise, so much wiser than they’re given credit for, than they give themselves credit for, and I learn from them every time we’re together in those rooms. Every day they teach me, so I never forget what it is to dream.
Tonight, we shared a meal, and I listened to presentations for projects ranging from the environmental and natural–water quality, animal rescue, waste conversion for fuel–to a cross-section of the humane–programs for kids in poverty, kids with disabilities, for educating kids in technology, free financial services for students and for the poor, projects to help the hungry.
Tonight, I saw the future, y’all 🙂 and no matter how hard it seems right now, that future? It is indeed filled with beautiful, beautiful, beautiful creatures.
Make art about young people, about what we owe them, about what we can learn from them.
30 April 2017
I asked for a dream before going to sleep last night, a dream that would help me to solve a problem, answer a question I had. In the ways in which I was raised, dreams were just one of multiple ways of learning, ways of knowing.
Unlike mainstream Western culture, which tends to limit ‘knowing’ to what is categorized as ‘rational,’ indigenous cultures across the globe recognize multiple sources of knowledge an individual or community possess and can access, including traditional wisdom, dreaming, land knowing, symbols and images, shared knowledge through connectivity, and story, among others.
Make art about ways of knowing.
4 March 2017
In many cultures, the teaching of heritage and cultural practices is carried out by members of the extended family, grandparents, aunts, and uncles. In certain cultures, this relationship and teaching is formally recognized, and in cultures with matrilineal descent is referred to as the avunculate, sometimes called avunculism or avuncularism, a social institution where a special relationship exists between an uncle and his sisters’ children. Several Native American tribes practice a form of this, where the uncle is responsible for teaching the children social values and proper behavior while inheritance and ancestry is reckoned through the mother’s family alone. Modern day influences have somewhat but not completely erased this tradition.
Thinking on this especially today, as I watch my sons interact with their sister’s baby son, my GrandPerson Max <3. Thinking on it too, as it’s the weekend of my lovely daughter’s birthday, and my own brother, Bill, now gone on to the next life, was present and there for her literally from the moment she first drew breath. He remained a constant source of Love and education for all of my kids until he left us. My daughter Lia couldn’t say ‘Uncle Bill’ when she was small; it came out ‘Opie Gill.’ So now her brothers are not just ‘Uncles’ to her son, but ‘Opies.” Important job they have ❤ And I have no doubt they’ll honor it well.
Make art about extended family, about aunts, or uncles, about those elders from whom we learn our culture.
5 March 2017
Spent the day with my sons, two wise and funny young men. The two things that impress me about both of them are: 1) their shared sense of honor, and 2) their shared insatiable curiosity. They are both always–always–learning something new, or seeking to learn something new, or thinking about how they can learn something new.
Make art about learning, about loving to learn, about the magic and mystery of curiosity.
Overslept, so it’s late, but it’s here.
Make art about having to explain something, about providing an explanation, about the image below.
22 November 2016
Make art about leadership, about the qualities of leadership, about the responsibilities of a leader.
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