Thich Nhat Hanh

Plum Village, France, Family Retreat, 1992

In March of 1989, Ashley and I set out from our home in Vermont with our two sons, Alden and Chris, ages five and eight, to points west.  We planned to home school our children “on wheels” as we camped, visited friends and family, and the great national parks of the southwest and west.  My mother had told us about a Vietnamese Buddhist monk named Thich Nhat Hanh who she had read about.  She said that he held family retreats and that there would be one in Santa Barbara, California in early April.  So we enrolled our family in this special five-day retreat.  With Thich Nhat Hanh, or Thay as we called him (for “teacher”), we learned simple practices…counting ten smooth stones as we breathed, walking meditation, mindfully placing each foot on the earth in the orange groves surrounding the retreat center, tea meditations, bringing our awareness completely to sipping tea and tasting cookies, and sharing songs or poems.  Along with the other children, our sons listened to Thay, rapt in attention, while he sat cross legged under trees in the shade and told stories of the Buddha’s life.  Later Chris shared with us that he didn’t always understand the stories, but he loved listening to Thay’s voice. Thay walked with beauty and intention, touching the earth with presence and gratitude.  He spoke softly and liltingly.  We calibrated to his pace. We were all enchanted.

Thay ringing the bell, 1989, Casa Di Maria, Family Retreat, Santa Barbara

In 1992, after spending the year in Reggio Emilia, Italy, we made our way to Plum Village in France, Thay’s community established when he was exiled from Vietnam for speaking out against the war and advocating for peaceful solutions.  At that time, there was an annual family retreat at Plum Village in August, usually for a month.  For three summers, we went there for two weeks. It felt like an international family camp with adults and children from Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.  We walked among the sunflowers, played games, went for group walking meditation periods along the shaded paths, ate our meals outside beginning in silence and seeing each bite of bread or green bean as “an ambassador from the universe…holding the rain, the sun, the earth, the sky, the seeds, the farmers…all in one bite of nourishment.”  Each of us had jobs that contributed to the well-being of all.  We made friends that we still have for which we are deeply grateful. 

Walking Meditation, Family Retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh, Santa Barbara, 1989

In those days, Thay was well known, but his following was not enormous. During that first family retreat in Santa Barbara, there were roughly 60 people, and at the summer family retreats in Plum Village, perhaps just over a hundred. 

Thich Naht Hanh died on January 22, 2022 at midnight in Hue’, Vietnam, at the temple where he was ordained as a monk.  He returned there three years ago, after suffering a stroke.  In an email exchange yesterday, one of our friends from those early days, Roshi Joan Halifax wrote, 

yes, Thay... now gone beyond. 

I am grateful to have had such a close relationship with him for so many years. 

Now his dharma is in all of us. 

I am deeply grateful also.  We were so very fortunate to have those early experiences with such a wise and compassionate spiritual leader and teacher.  I love thinking that I am carrying Thay’s dharma with me, that it is inside me.  What is Thay’s dharma?...our true nature as compassion, understanding, and love, our path of the practice of mindfulness, the teachings that reveal the truth and our true nature, in this case, Thay’s teachings which we absorbed in our young lives.  Our young lives as parents, and our sons’ young lives as children.  

Now, I hear Thay’s gathas everywhere.  I heard my yoga teacher recite one this morning at the beginning and the end of class.  A gatha is a song or verse used in meditation practice, and Wikipedia says that they were popularized by Zen Master Thich Naht Hanh.  

In, out 

Deep, slow 

Calm, ease 

Smile, release 

Present moment,

Wonderful moment. 

This is how Thich Nhat Hanh describes the meaning of this gatha. 

“Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know that I am breathing out.  Breathing in, my in-breath has become deep. Breathing out, my out-breath has become slow.” Now we can practice, “Deep/slow.” We don’t have to make an extra effort. It just becomes deeper and slower by itself, and we recognize that. 

Later on, you will notice that you have become calmer and more at ease. “Breathing in, I feel calm. Breathing out, I feel at ease. I am not struggling anymore. Calm/ease.” And then, “Breathing in, I smile. Breathing out, I release all my worries and anxieties. Smiles/release.” We are able to smile to ourselves and release all our worries. There are more than three hundred muscles in our face, and when we know how to breathe in and smile, these muscles can relax. This is “mouth yoga.” We smile and are able to release all our feelings and emotions. The last practice is, “Breathing in, I dwell deeply in the present moment. Breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment. Present moment/wonderful moment.” Nothing is more precious than being in the present moment fully alive and aware. 

Chris and Alden learning hugging meditation with Thay, 1989

Last night, we watched the last day of the ceremonies honoring Thay’s life in Hue’, Vietnam and Plum Village, France as well as other monasteries around the world.  We watched as Thay’s casket was carried in a long procession of monks and placed inside a cremation structure. We watched as monks brought flames to start the fire.  As the smoke curled around their faces, we listened to poems and songs shared by monks and nuns, and translations of letters written by Thay to his communities of monastic and lay practitioners. He wrote:

I am not in the stupa, (commemorative monument). 

If I am anywhere, I am in your mindful walking and breathing.  

Even today, I am still arriving as a bud about to blossom, or a tiny bird learning to sing in my new nest. 

Do not stop the continuation of my ashes.  

The Buddha, you and I hold each other’s hands, the beloved community, as we climb the hill of the century.  You and I have never really been apart. 

On the edge of the forest, the wild plum tree has burst into bloom. 

Be a refuge. You are the continuation of the ancestral teaching. 

I offer you great strength and energy. 

Coming and going in freedom, 

The wind still soars, earth opens to the clear blue sky. 

Come home and relax in your mindful steps. 

In an episode from the last few days, Krista Tippet replays a 2003 interview with Thay, and also several others who were present at a five-day retreat in Wisconsin lead by Thay that year.  We hear from a female police officer, Cheri Maples, and a Black Baptist minister, Larry Ward.  They speak about how they each were transformed in their work and life by Thay’s teaching.  Please listen to this podcast and to the voices and wisdom of Thay, Cheri Maples, and Larry Ward.

And for we teachers, watch this film produced by teachers in Toronto and the organization wakeupschools.org of Plum Village. This piece was filmed during a retreat with Thay for teachers. Please watch this short, beautiful film and learn more about mindfulness in schools starting with teachers’ practice, insight, and happiness.

Many blessings to each of you. May you be safe and happy. May you be healthy and live with ease. 

May you practice mindfulness as we climb the hill of the century as the beloved community that our ancestors, Thich Nhat Hanh, Martin Luther King Jr., bell hooks, and other wise and compassionate teachers have envisioned and lived their lives to show us the way.  

The Shortest Day

Midd Night Stroll December, 2021

 On Tuesday, December 21, we will mark the winter solstice, light candles and fires, and experience the dark on the shortest day of the year.  In addition to fire, another source of great light in the darkness is the longest full moon of the year, visible for 15 and half hours, 14 and a half of those hours while the sun is down.  NASA reports that the December Cold Moon will appear full for almost three days. 

Today it is snowing, our first real snowstorm, so we won’t see the full moon tonight.  We have a fire in the fireplace and the lights on the tree are twinkling. 

I have been thinking so much about beauty at this time of year… in nature, in human beings, in art, in miracles.  We have recently attended several arts and performing arts events that celebrate both the darkness and the light.  Yesterday we attended the opening of a show entitled “Knowing Darkness” at a local gallery, Northern Daughters.  One of the featured artists, Hannah Sessions, is the daughter of dear friends, and also a celebrated Vermont cheese maker! 

In an interview in our local paper, The Addison Independent, Hannah is quoted:

I am reminded of a quote from a song by Anais Mitchell that hangs in my kitchen, 

“Some birds sing when the sun shines bright,

My praise is not for them.

But the one who sings in the dead of night,

I raise my cup to him.”

The ‘dead of night’ can, of course, be literal or metaphorical.  We might enter the ‘dead of night’ when our life circumstances feel overly challenging or taxing…when we are spiritually depleted or we are deeply sad or discouraged.  The approaching of literal winter has not always been easy for me.  That time before the snow flies and calls us outside; the time when the day ends impossibly early, and darkness can feel never ending and oppressive.  What keeps us singing? As I have resolved to relish the shorter days, I have appreciated the opportunity this show has presented: an opportunity to embrace the darkness and find unique beauty in it.  I have found the subtle hues of the late day sky, the warmth and life that emanate from barn windows in the dark, and the sparkle of stars.  These are all wonderful things this time of year, the dead of night, possesses. 

Hannah Sessions, available work

Last night I went to see a local performance of “Amhal and the Night Visitors” in a small, simple church in Salisbury, Vermont.  I was absolutely stunned and transfixed by the performance. The acting, the voices, the candle lit church, the simple set, the beauty of this music and the generosity and magic of the story.  I remember listening to this short opera story about a poor boy and his mother visited by the three kings with my mother, Christmas after Christmas.  It turns out that it was first broadcast on television from NBC studios in New York City in 1951, commissioned by NBC and composed by Gian Carlo Menotti. 

Continuing on with the theme of art…last week I was lucky enough to spend a day with my childhood friend, Eliza Rathbone. We visited the Cape Ann Museum where I had never been.  It is a joy to be in any museum with Eliza because she grew up in a family where the history of art and artists were part of her daily life.  She is Emeritus Curator of The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C.  She is currently curating a show for The Cape Ann Museum on Mark Rothko, Adolf Gottlieb and Milton Avery, their friendship, and the work that they did on Cape Ann and the coast in Gloucester, Massachusetts.

Eliza told me…”I want every detail to be accurate, I want the show to contribute to the lasting body of work on each of these artists, and I want people to have some kind of revelation..to learn something that they never knew before.”

I reflected on what Eliza said on my way home to Vermont.  I realized that, in some ways, all these things are important to us in our work with teachers in schools.  Of course, we want to accurate in all our research, recommendations, references, relationships.  And we want to contribute to teachers’ and students’ lasting learning, their way of approaching learning and living in school, their frameworks and worldviews.  And, we want teachers to have revelations and awakenings to what is possible in school when wonder and joy are present in abundance.    

On this shortest day, and in this season of darkness, we wish you all joy and awakening to the new year which we all hope will be full of light. 

I conclude with the poem entitled The Shortest Day, by Susan Cooper, recited every year at the Christmas Revels wherever it is performed. 

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died

And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen;

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing behind us—listen!

All the long echoes, sing the same delight,

This Shortest Day,

As promise wakens in the sleeping land:

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends,

And hope for peace.

And now so do we, here, now,

This year and every year.

Welcome, Yule!

Rift Valley Children's Village in Tanzania

During this time, the first two weeks of the month of November, 2021, I was planning to travel toTanzania to volunteer at the Rift Valley Children’s Village.

This is what happens there:

At the Rift Valley Children’s Village, (RVCV), we are giving children a second chance at childhood by offering them more than just a roof over their heads and a bed to sleep in. We provide a loving forever family and permanent home to over 100 orphaned and marginalized children in a remote corner of northern Tanzania. From the moment each child arrives at RVCV, they are safe, they are loved, they are home. 

Raised to be thoughtful, ambitious, and passionate, it is our hope that when backed by the unwavering support of their family, our children will become Tanzania’s next generation of leaders. Supporting our children through every step of development until they reach fiscal independence is our responsibility.

Member of the RVCV family

One of our dearest friends, Peggy Bacon, has been involved with this community and school since it was founded.  She has taught there, lived there, served as president of the board, and, as a board member, continues to work hard to raise funds for this amazing place.  I was going to travel with Peggy and her husband, Carter.  I had ordered watercolor sets, drawing pens, and wonderful paper.  I had planned to work with small groups of elementary children outside to draw and paint what they could see and what we could find in the natural world around their home and school.  

Had it not been for my concerns about the Delta Variant, I would have gone.  Peggy and Carter did go and they will return soon.  For them, it is almost like traveling to a second home.  One of my greatest hopes for the future is that I will be able to go with my paints and pens, work alongside the children, and see the Tanzanian world through their eyes. 

We are so impressed with what this organization has been able to accomplish and with its plans for the future. 

The founder, India Howell, moved permanently to Tanzania in 1998.  India recognized the growing number of orphans and at-risk children living in poverty and felt compelled to take action.  In 2004, she partnered with Peter Leon Mmassy to create a loving and permanent home for 17 orphaned children. With the help of supporters and the Tanzanian community, that single house has grown to a Children’s Village for 100 children and a thriving community-based organization providing free healthcare, primary and secondary education, and Microfinance loans and training to the residents of Oldeani Ward.  Today India is the legal guardian of all 101 children and she is known throughout northern Tanzania as ‘Mama India.”

Founders India Howell and Peter Mmassy

In Tanzania, over 3 million children are orphaned. Nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Many people struggle with medical care and children do not have access to the educational opportunities that they deserve. These statistics are heart-breaking. What to do in the face of such hardship?

The Rift Valley Children’s Village is committed to a holistic, community-led solution. They address the challenge of systemic poverty from all sides by providing education, healthcare, economic opportunity, and a home for children. They equip a geographic area, home to 10,000 people, with the tools and systems that it needs to realize a brighter future. 

While Peggy and Carter have been working with children and teachers and helping at the Children’s Village, I have watched the leaves fly from the trees, and the geese fly south.  And I have delighted in the images that Peggy has sent to me. 

One of them said, “Your kids.”  

We met India and Peter when we lived in St. Louis when they visited the United States to give presentations about their work and to raise funds. We have supported the Tanzanian Children’s Fund ever since by making donations every year.  

Please go to the website of the Rift Valley Children’s Village and have a look. We are sure that you will be touched and inspired by the good work that is happening there in so many ways every day.  Also, they are open to and actively looking for volunteers if you are able and eager to do that. Contact the coordinators of the volunteer program here.  

Here’s to all the beautiful, dedicated, everyday work that honors and lifts the lives of the children and community members at the Rift Valley Children’s Village, and to the work all around the world where people with vision and commitment change lives for the better and for good.

The Rift Valley Children’s Village

The beautiful photographs and the map included in this post are from the Tanzanian Children’s Fund website.

October

Before sunset

October is so beautiful in Vermont. It takes your breath away. We are marveling at the landscape, the color, the light, the clear skies, the tomatoes still ripening, and the bright planets of Venus and Jupiter just after sunset. I was inspired to get out my “real” camera. So, this month we will post images of October along with Robert Frost’s poem with this month’s name as its title, urging us to “Slow, slow!” We will be back next month to share writing, reflections, and learning.

Delight in October wherever you are.

Misty Morning

October

BY ROBERT FROST

O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

Aster amellus

Robert Frost Interpretive Trail, Ripton, Vermont

View from Hurd Grasslands, Weybridge, Vermont

The Power and the Pleasure of the Natural World

Looking for starfish, Mitchell Cove, Tremont, Maine

We were fortunate to spend several weeks with our three grandchildren both in Vermont and in Maine during the months of August and September.  On many occasions, I became intrigued with what happened when they engaged with the natural materials of the world, everywhere…in the woods, on riverbanks, in lakes, on the cobble beaches of Maine, in the vegetable garden! So much to see, so much to smell, handle, arrange, feel, discover, invent!  

I was reminded of a book that I love, Beautiful Stuff from Nature, edited by Cathy Wiseman Topal and Lella Gandini that came out a few years ago.  Building on their first book, Beautiful Stuff, Cathy and Lella sought out schools, both public and independent, where teachers had stories and examples to share about organizing learning experiences around collecting, playing with, composing and studying materials from the natural world.  The book is organized around the themes of Getting Started; Cultivating a Naturalist’s Sensibilities; Your Unique Place; Outdoor Explorations; and Bringing Nature Inside.  It is illustrated with beautiful photographs and is written by teachers of toddlers through elementary ages in both the United States and Canada.  It is a thoughtful, helpful resource that is well worth having in any school or parent library.

Stones collected by children on the beach

What is so clear to the authors and editors of this book, and to anyone who is lucky enough to be with a child outside, is that the out of doors quickly becomes a natural playground.  When our granddaughter, Delilah, age 6, first arrived in Vermont, we all headed straight to swim in a nearby, cold, clear, flowing river.  Frist thing, she climbed out to a big boulder in the middle of the river and began to organize stones in pools on and around the boulder.  She had stories to tell about what she was doing.  She was making an exhibit, she said, of different colors of stones in the different sized rock pools and she wanted us to come see! 

When two-and-a-half-year-old Jack was with us in Maine, one of his favorite things to do was to go out to the cobble beach and find stones to pitch into what his grandfather named the “muck and mire,” the beginning of a marshland behind a natural gravel wall.  He liked to imitate the sounds of the different size stones landing in the mud…a tiny sound, a medium slurp, and a big galump! 

Building a flag pole with found materials

Nine-year-old, Asher’s biggest adventure in Maine was climbing one of the steepest trails in Acadia National Park with his big uncle Chris.  It was a spur of the moment decision on Asher’s last day and a brave venture that he was so proud to have accomplished! 

And we all made collections…of stones, of snail shells, of crab shells, of sticks, and pinecones.  And we arranged them in various combinations and mandalas.  Delilah took a rock collection home with her to Boston.  And Jack took a snail shell shaker back home with him to New Jersey. 

Cathy Topal and Lella Gandini write: 

Exploring, experimenting, researching, designing, and creating with natural materials can act as an awakening for children-but perhaps even more so for teachers, [and parents and grandparents].  To notice and pick up a seedpod, twig, stone, piece of bark, draws us in and invites us to linger and to wonder.  We start to see-with refined vision-what has been around us all along. Holding a natural form is to look at functional design, transformation, time, weather, and the forces of nature. 

Tide pooling, Wonderland, Acadia National Park

The first project with the youngest children, (age three), that I observed in Reggio Emilia at the Diana School was all about leaves…such a collection of beautiful leaves of all colors from different trees..chestnuts, oaks, plane trees along with seeds and pods. The children collected all this outside with their teachers in the public garden right outside their school.  Then, they organized the collections so that they became like a grand palette to choose from. The teachers asked the children something like this… “What if you were like the wind and could make an arrangement of leaves on the ground, what would you do?”  And in small groups, on sheets of earth colored, recycled paper, they made their compositions, with one teacher as an assistant. 

Study Tour in Ligonchio, 2011

I was lucky enough to attend the study tour in 2011 in Ligonchio, Italy, organized and led by Reggio Children, Dialogue with the Atelier and the Natural World.  We spent the week playing outside in the fields, mountains, forests, and streams with materials organized for us, with prompts and Reggio educators there to guide us.  With Carlina Rinaldi, Vea Vecchi, Marina Mori, and Giovanni Piazza as teachers and guides, in a spectacular mountain setting, we were such a fortunate group. I will always hold that week close as one of my greatest inspirations.  

Before I lived, worked, and learned in Reggio Emilia, I never thought of natural materials as a category, a medium, to use to explore and compose meaning and beauty. To understand natural materials as a powerful, evocative medium was one of the unexpected and lasting lessons that I learned there.  

From Collection of Images from Reggio Emilia, 2009

Now, I can’t help picking up stones and shells, leaves and cones.  I line them up, put them in circles, keep them close by my bedside as reminders… of the constancy and beauty in the natural world, of the cycles of life and death, and of the calm and the wild of the world that we inhabit, and that we are inseparably linked to.  

On my 21st birthday, my mother gave me a smooth, white stone that she had found on the beach.  She wrote, “Always return to the stone to steady yourself, to know your place, to connect to the beauty of the world.” 

When we take children out of doors to look for treasures, when we stand with them at the window and marvel at wind and thunder and rain, when we hike mountains, when we sit still together and watch the sun set or the stars in the night sky, we are giving children a touch stone, a solace, a strong sense of place, and a home.