Freedom

“Let them go forth in freedom.”
~Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf Education

I have said it before and I will say it again that I cannot quite put my finger on what makes our time here so special nor can I tell anyone about our time here with the hope of total understanding unless you were to come here for yourself and truly open your heart to it. What makes here so different than at home? There really are all the same things to get done, the kids still bicker at times with one another, Scott and I still may roll our eyes at one another, but what we have here cannot be recreated at home. So I continue to ask myself what is IT.

I have concluded that it is FREEDOM.

Our little Noll family certainly is not too far absorbed into the rat race. Scott and I, personally, do our best to steer clear of it and even when we can feel it imposing on us consciously remind ourselves to NOT go there. So it would obviously make sense that we would firmly protect our kids from the little mini rat race recreated for them. Obviously it looks different for a 5 year old than it does for a 35 year old, but the overall substance is the same, that need to rush forward to the next best thing, never really giving yourself the chance to become fully absorbed into your moments.

We do not overextend our kids in the summer. To us, that is what summer should be all about ~ relaxing, slowing down, finding something to do with yourself, getting bored and seeing what comes from that. Right or wrong, at this point in their lives, we have chosen to hold off on all kinds of things we could be a part of in the summer: camp, classes, sports, etc. What we find comes in exchange of that is a sense of freedom. We have no commitments other than to our stomachs when it tells us we are hungry, to our bodies when we need rest, and to our hearts when we need time to recharge. I sometimes feel quite guilty our children will not have had those kinds of summer experiences in their early years and yet obviously do not feel guilty enough to change anything. There will be time enough to catch up with all that when our kids are older, when they are not as interested in fairy houses, running along side the Rhino, or waking up in the morning and “Mama, look at that beautiful mountain!” be the first thing out of their mouth. I watched Katie skip through the tall grassy field in her mud boots and her pajamas this morning, she did it at her own speed with no one telling her how to do it a different way. It was just her own thing, she was totally present within that moment.

So, we are free from all that summer busyness. I will admit that it is an honor to watch just what comes from them, just what comes through them and what comes out. While their little hands create, their imaginations grow. Einstein argued that knowledge is limited to all we know and understand in the present, while imagination can embrace all there ever will be to know and understand. Accordingly to him, imagination stimulates progress. Great inventions, he said, require an imaginative mind. If all Scott and I do now is encourage them to participate in things already created for them, things geared by adults, activities with rules to follow, too much competition- at what point do we encourage our children to dig deeply into their childhood and discover how they fit into the world, how they matter and who they are and sense themselves becoming through just letting them play?

So, back to FREEDOM.
“Let them go forth in freedom.”
For me that means, keeping quiet, challenging myself to not talk so much & projecting my ideas onto them by pointing out what to look at & what to do and disrupting their play by interjecting, which for a long time I thought I was contributing. Why not allow them to create their own play wholey made up from their own ideas? I aim to lead by example, find joy in the little things, so what if they color out of the lines? Thinking of that in particular, I have to ask myself if it is more important to color within the lines and push for “perfection OR if it's alright just to let them have the experience of coloring. I figure that developmentally, they will color within the lines when they are ready~they are not going to NOT know how to do that what they are 10! What good comes from me nagging about them not being able to right now? I think that example about coloring within the lines can be applied to just about anything.

I believe that when you have the chance to live deeply into your childhood, you have a better chance of growing into who you are suppose to become, who you were meant to be and to discover that greatness within your unique spirit.. These summers in Utah only enhance the beauty found in their childhood.