Some of granpawayne's personal info & stuff.

Reflections on beholding the face of my grandchild

Life is a cycle;
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter.
 
I am now in the Fall of Life. If I may borrow from Hinduism, I am now in my Third Dharma, Vanaprastha. I am now in this the third phase of our life, of our responsibilities as human beings, and as manifestations of the Godhead. Now retired from "making a living" and "raising a family" one has new responsibilities as a grandparent.
 
In spite of our individualism I do not believe that we are fundamentally individuals. We are but elements of the Tree of Life, extending back, and back, and back in time. Even before Time, and before Space, and even before Mass, and before Energy. Back to that No-Thing from which every Some-Thing has come.
 
Gazing upon the faces of my grandchildren I peer down that long road of life. I lose my sense of individualism, of my selfish claim to life.
 
Gazing upon the faces of all of our grandchildren makes it easier for me to turn with the cycle of life, go with the flow of life, and to understand and accept death as an integral part of it.
 
But this caring gaze is also the root of a sense of responsibility and guilt for unfinished business. When I look at the living conditions of so many of our grandchildren I realize that there is much that remains to be done. Beginning first with the development of a sense of a single human community manifested by our care for all of our grandchildren.

And what brings me here,
   out into the cyber sea with my web-writing?

The smell of the machine oil rising out of this typewriter;
the feel of the leap of levered letters
responding to the pressure on their keys;
the look of the print as it appears on the paper in front of me
. . . . .
all of these draw me into language,
into conversation,
into dialogue.           MORE on writing?

One who knows
does not speak
one who speaks
does not know.

 
      Lao Tzu (65K)

Does this mean I should be silent if I knew anything. . . ?

My day job:
     a de-institutionalized teacher.

I heard a phrase in a song once, "legal alien", that rang true to me and my experience of alienation from the expectations of the rulers of the kingdoms and queendoms of this world. I am a legal alien. I have civil rights under these people but I no longer accept their claims to a monopoly over my ideology, my understanding of the situation that I am in or the value system that directs my life. Their versions of the nature of piety and justice are but ephemeral cultural expressions of what rises out of silence and finds voice in the throats of our prophets but who have been co-opted and become the guarantors of the inquisition at Sodom and Gomorrah, at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at Hanoi and Bagdad.

"Blessed are the peacemakers for they shall become the droppers of bombs."

So here I stand on the boundary line between fidelity and treachery. It is their version of piety and justice that they suggest I adopt as my own as they wait impatiently for me to genuflect and kiss their rings or their asses as the case may be.

That makes me a de-institutionalized teacher. It means I do not "believe in" the System.
No more than the Hydro Québec workers "believe in" the company they work for. I do, however, believe in teaching and in learning; and in the simple human relations that make that possible and effective.

granpawayne
Winter Solstice on the eve of '999

More on teaching Learn 'em how to learn.


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