Zeno Mountain Farm: An Experiment in Extreme Diversity

Last week I visited Zeno Mountain Farm in Lincoln, Vermont to see a musical, The Best Summer Ever: A Love Story put on by the most diverse cast that I have ever seen.  On their website the founders write:Zeno is a community of people who move, think, act, perform, and contribute in wonderfully unique ways. We actively embrace this diversity and strive to celebrate each other through art and adventure in every form.  The most important thing in the whole world to us human beings is friendship, community, and the knowledge that we matter to each other.

The cast of the play included young people and adults with Down Syndrome, with Cerebral palsy, and with other disorders, as well as able bodied friends including the founders.  The cast danced, sang, whooped, laughed, delivered lines, and generally threw themselves into the joyful and challenging production.  My dear friend, Laura and I were speechless, in tears, laughing, sighing, amazed and deeply grateful that we could be there to participate with this place and at this event.  Later we toured the beautiful campus high on a mountaintop in Lincoln with distant, sweeping views of the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain.  Our tour guide was a young woman with Downs Syndrome who says that Zeno is the only place where she is truly accepted and celebrated.

The two brothers, Will and Peter Halby and their respective spouses who founded Zeno, purchased the land in Lincoln in 2008 and have slowly built the campus there.  Zeno is in session for a month in July and each summer they produce a play.  Other programs that they host and organize are all over the country including California where they produce a movie every year.  One of their recent movies, Bulletproof Jackson, was the focus of a documentary titled Becoming Bulletproof.  Ashley and I watched the documentary the other night and had the same response that Laura and I experienced at the play... amazement, tears, empathy, and deep respect for all the people who are working to live dreams together as partners, not in institutions but on stage and on movie sets, with patience, great humor, dignity and hard work.

See the movie, Becoming Bulletproof.  You will be amazed.  And if you are in Vermont, go to Zeno Mountain Farm for a visit and to see the play they put on every year.  It will change you.  Carolina Rinaldi says and has written that to learn is to change and to be transformed.  She says that to learn is to love, with great respect for, and through all our differences.  This is what is happening at Zeno and it is humbling.

Leading through Laughter

 

Leading through laughter has been an implicit practice of mine.  And, I love it when I witness it in others.  For instance, Joe Maddon, manager of the Chicago Cubs baseball team.

On July 9th, The Associated Press ran an article that captured Joe’s joking genius. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/sports/baseball/joe-maddon-keeps-his-cubs-moving-and-guessing.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

Joe is not only a master of the unexpected (for instance, once, rather than pulling a pitcher from the game, he sent him to the outfield for one batter while a reliever came in…then he pulled the reliever and returned the outfielder/pitcher to the mound…there was laughter during the infield conferences on the mound), and he also loves to instigate zaniness (as he has talked a few dozen of his players into donning pajamas for the charter flights home from West Coast trips).

Joe says, “[The players] love it!”

Perhaps especially his rookies recognize Joe’s spirit of adventure.  One noted, I watch him when I’m not playing, and it seems like he’s three, four moves ahead of the game…So he’s not afraid to try things, even with the rookies. Just about the first thing he said is he doesn’t care if you mess up.  Like if you’re in a situation where you think you should bunt, and he says hit and it doesn’t work out, he’ll come up to you right away and say, “That’s on me.”

One of Joe’s veteran players put it this way: “Too many guys want to equate smarts with being uptight.  Joe doesn’t.  He just says, ‘Do simple better.’”

And, what is not surprising, this team of players, playing loose and having fun, are leading their baseball division.

It’s an age old athletic adage, YOU PLAY BEST WHEN YOU PLAY LOOSE.

For me, there’s correlating connection, YOU THINK BEST WHEN YOU THINK LOOSE.  In both cases, laughter induces looseness.

Almost always when I’m involved in group discussions, something will strike my funny bone, and I’ll share what I think is the joke.  Almost always if the joke is in fact funny (I don’t always bat 1.000), the ensuing laughter is not a distraction, but rather it is an energizer for divergent thinking…and almost always a new idea emerges, or a new perspective becomes apparent.

It turns out that there’s lots of research on this.  If you’re interested, here are a couple of resources.

“Joyful laughter immediately produces the same brain wave frequencies experienced by people in a true meditative state,” says Lee Berk, lead researcher of the study and associate professor of pathology and human anatomy at Loma Linda University.

The elation you feel when you laugh is a great way of combating the physical effects of stress. When we laugh, our body relaxes and endorphins (natural painkillers) are released into the blood stream.

Maine

Last week we returned from a successful trip to Italy visiting friends and colleagues in Reggio Emilia and facilitating a retreat in Mercatello sul Metauro with Angela Ferrario.  Then we headed straight to Maine.  First to a family reunion of Cadwells...all of Ashley's brothers and most of the spouses and children... about 22 of us.  Ashley grew up going to Boothbay Harbor where his uncle, John Andrews had a cottage right on the water.  The cottage is still there with several smaller guest cottages and that is where we landed...with beautiful weather, kayaking, biking, hiking, and even swimming in the Maine waters. Then, we joined son Chris and our daughter-in-law Leila on a trip further up the coast to Southwest Harbor  where we used to go with my parents when Chris and his brother Alden were little.  This trip, we were lucky to be able to bike the carriage roads of Acadia National Park, and to hike majestic Pemetic Peak overlooking Jordon Pond and Frenchman Bay.  After the hike we enjoyed the famous popovers at Jordon Pond House that I remember eating as a little girl when I went there with my mother.

Over the years I have realized that...the craggy Maine coast, the ocean air, the lichened rocks and trees, the fragrance of bay and rugosa rose, the sweet burst of the taste of field blueberries warmed in the sun... these are all in my bones. Because I grew up here during the very early summers of my life when we would leave the oppressive land locked heat of the midwest and head for the northeast and the coast.  Far away from the city, far away from schedules, and close to freedom and wide open space.  That is what I love so much about returning here.  In Maine, I feel that I return to the part of me that is central, most important and free.

Now Ashley and I lucky enough to be on North Haven Island.  To get here you take the ferry 12 miles off the coast of Rockland.  As I write, I am listening to a red eyed vireo outside the window.  Soon we will climb Ames Knob and look out on this most spectacular day at all the surrounding islands and the deep blue Maine sea.

The owners write about this place...We believe that there are places in the world that can change the way we think about things, that allow us to deepen our connection to nature and that remind us how fortunate we are.  North Haven is that kind of place.  And on the dinner menu there is this quote from Edna St. Vincent Millay...

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

May we all find such places where we feel most ourselves and most free this summer and always.

Does Beauty Hold the World Together?

Lately, every where I turn, I see the tender, gentle, spring world taking shape around me.  In Vermont, spring comes slowly amidst cold days, and gray days like today.  Yet little by little, the earth turns green and the trees and shrubs move from bud to flower to leaf.  We live in an old apple orchard that is now a cloud of pink and white fragile blooms.  In our orchard, we live on a hill overlooking the Scholten Family Farm, 400 organic acres where we watch 80 Dutch Belt cows graze.  The Scholten Family makes Weybridge Cheese for sale in local markets and beyond.  Now, the fields are plowed and the cows are out. As I watch spring unfold, among other things, I have been listening to National Public Radio's weekly broadcast, On Being, where host, Krista Tippett interviews all kinds of people.  Two of my recent favorites are with cellist, Yoyo Ma, Music Happens Between the Notes, and Nobel Prize winning physicist, Frank Wilczek, Why is the World so Beautiful? In some wonderfully connected ways, Yoyo Ma and Frank Wilczek are speaking about the same things.  What we can't see that holds us, curiosity and vulnerability, knowing and not knowing, being present, and that all life is in constant movement and change, while certain fundamental things remain the same.

These ideas remind me so much of Vea Vecchi when she speaks about poetics and aesthetics.  Ever since I have known Vea, she has quoted Gregory Bateson who defines aesthetics as "the pattern that connects."  Rather than being something pretty or pleasing, even though it might include those things, aesthetics points to the fabric of life that holds the world together...the unseen, the seen, the in-betweens, the visible and invisible, the emotions, the sense we make of things, what we are naturally drawn to as humans, and the great mystery of the universe that we inhabit.

What are these "patterns that connect" in the world and inside us?  I think of architect, Christopher Alexander whose research shows that all human beings, when given a choice, will  choose a light filled room rather than a dark one, certain timeless decorative patterns over others, and a wide array of other features.  He wrote about this in his book, A Pattern Language.  Another fascinating aspect of being human that scholar Rhoda Kellogg has researched, shows us that children all over the world, from the beginning of human history, have made marks with sticks in the sand, hands in the mud, pencil on paper in instinctual gestures of circles,  lines, dots and mandalas.  From the time we are very young, we are reaching out to the world to make marks, make patterns and make meaning, to see what we have made reflect back to us who we are in the world.  And then, there are the universal patterns that artist, Sabra Field describes in Cosmic Geometry, repeating patterns in the natural world, microscopic to cosmic, that humans have repeated since the beginning of history, in the man made world in design, art and architecture.

I wrote a blog post several years ago where I quoted some of a TEDx talk that Vea Vecchi gave in Reggio Emilia, Italy.  I quote Vea again here as her words and ideas strongly connect to the themes of this post.  These words seem particularly relevant and meaningful in our world right now .

The atelier (or studio that is not only a central place but also a way of working throughout our schools) has brought many materials and techniques, but also has illuminated a need, not only for children, but for human beings to communicate in a way that rationality and imagination travel together.  We believe in a multiplicity of languages that are integrated and not separated.  We believe that this makes learning and understanding more rich and more complete.  Poetic thought does not separate the imaginative from the cognitive, emotion from the rational, empathy from deep investigation.  It lights up all the senses and perceptions and cultivates an intense relationship with what is all around us.  It constructs thoughts that are not conformist.  And this creates two important elements: solidarity and participation, both of which are the foundation of democracy. To conclude, we believe that identifying and researching beauty and ethics is the indispensible foundation for a livable, sustainable future that everyone speaks about but that seems so difficult to bring about.  It is only with an intelligent heart, with courage and with vision that we can proceed. 

The Mindful Child (and Adult)

This week we have been at the beach on a small island on the west coast of Florida with our family.  As everyone peels off to head homeward and Ashley and I enjoy one more day, we reflect on how grateful we are to have had this time where land meets sea with our sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren to chase waves and sand pipers, fill buckets with sand, and pick up glistening shells with names like Kitten Paws and Angel Wings. There is perhaps no better place than the ocean to draw us into the present. No matter what our age, most of the time, we let go of our preoccupations, the past and the future, our worries.  We are soothed by the rhythm of the waves, the light on the water, the texture of the sand under our feet and the distant horizon where sea meets sky.  We have so enjoyed this time with our sixteen-month-old granddaughter and our four-year-old grandson.  Watching children this age, no matter where, also brings us into the present moment.

As I reflect on our week, two enormous influences in my life come to mind. The first is the Reggio Emilia approach... in this context in particular, learning side-by-side young children while becoming a participant observer in and documenter of their play and learning.  The second influence is mindfulness as taught by Zen monk and master, Thich Nhat Hanh.  These two approaches guide me in my every day life and interactions.

I have loved reading Art and Creativity in Reggio Emilia by Vea Vecchi and have returned to it often.  In her book, Vea tells learning stories about following her grandchildren through their early years.  I remember watching Vea with her camera and keen eye, observe children at the Diana School in Reggio Emilia.  I wrote about some of these experiences in Bringing Reggio Emilia Home and in Bringing Learning to Life.

When our sons were 5 and 8, we attended our first retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh in Santa Barbara, California.  Over the years, we have attended several other retreats in Plum Village in France with Thich Nhat Hanh.  These multi-age, international, playful and thoughtful experiences have influenced the way that my family lives in the world.

My nighttime and beach reading collection this week includes A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles, by Thich Nhat Hanh, Sitting Still Like a Frog: Mindfulness Exercises for Kids (and Their Parents) by Eline Snel, and The Mindful Child by Susan Kaiser Greenland.

I heard about these books from my daughter-in-law Caroline, who teaches kindergarten in the Boston Public Schools. She learned about them because this year, the Brookline School Staff Children’s Center, where our grand children attend, is focusing on mindfulness. I highly recommend these books. They will give you background, get you started or add to your understanding and practice.  As Susan Kaiser Greenland writes, mindfulness increases our ability to:

• approach experience with curiosity and an open mind

• calm down when we are angry or upset

• concentrate

• develop compassion, patience, humility, happiness, generosity and equanimity

• live gently and in balance with ourselves, others and our world

This week, our grandson, Asher, who is four today, taught us how to do “finger breathing.” Trace the fingers of one of your hands with a finger of the other hand.  Breathe in as you trace up the finger and out as you trace down the other side.  Do this one way and then back again, taking ten deep in and out breaths.  Just breathe and smile.