The Twelve Holy Nights

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Merry Christmas, and a blessed Christmastide to you! 

In times ago and for some today, Christmas was celebrated as a festival of twelve days and thirteen Holy Nights.  Christmas Eve is actually the first of the Holy Nights, with the first day of Christmastide being Christmas and then the Holy Nights extend until Twelfth Night on the eve of January fifth (anyone remember Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare?)  January 6 is of course Epiphany.

These beautiful and inward Holy Nights is one of my most personally fulfilling times of the whole year.  It is a very inward time, a time to dream and a time to plan.  I am using Raising Little Shoots’ wonderful Midwinter Resource for adults, and it is fantastic! You can find it here: https://raisinglittleshoots.com/the-year-of-light-a-gentle-winter-journey-with-god-from-midwinter-to-candlemas/

In general, I do a lot of reflecting and thinking about what I want to see in my family life during the next year and what I want to see in myself.   I try very hard to schedule nothing during this time, and so even though I have to work a few days during Christmastide, I like to have as much time as possible to just be.   With all of our children being ages sixteen to twenty four, this year has been a time of puzzles, reading, and being on the farm. The flu has hit my poor husband, but the rest of us are healthy and for that I am grateful. It’s a good time to rest!

Many Waldorf families mark this time by setting up a path of stars for the Three Kings to travel on to reach the infant Jesus.  Some families make an Advent-type calendar to mark these days.  Some families make a Weather Tree, and have fun guessing what the weather will be like each month of the new year based on the weather of each of the Twelve Days.

This is a great time to play card and board games with your family, to catch up with your family and friends, to grow more intimate with your spouse or partner as you plan and dream together. I love the ideas of couples planning their year ahead together with a big calendar!

One thing I love is to take stock of the past year and look ahead to the New Year.  Like most people, I am not very good at keeping resolutions.  So I normally choose a word of the year to help keep me focused and centered on my priority. I first heard of this practice from Sheila over at Sure As The World, many years ago. So many treasures over there!

This year, my word is ROOTED.  Each year I have done artistic representations of my word with sort of corresponding focus areas represented. One year I did concentric circles with the word of the year in the middle.  I have done trees with the word as the root and some of the focal areas as branches and I have done vision boards. Last year I did a vision board and transferred a line drawing of myself onto the vision board with all the different areas I wanted to think about around that.

This year, I am thinking particularly about my work outside of the home, and where I am headed. I am hopefully going to be able to get into teaching at the college level and streamline some of my clinical work, nd I am looking at PhD programs. I am not young anymore, but I don’t feel particularly daunted by it either. The second thing I am thinking about is my health, because as many of you know I faced a life -threatening challenge in 2023, so keeping physically healthy is a top priority! Lastly, my main goal is to keep making fun memories with the family. The older the kids have become, the more obsessed my husband and I are with them because they are so much fun and such cool people to hang out with! I will be dreaming and drawing and painting throughout Christmastide to see what comes to me in these areas.

For those of you just starting out thinking about Christmastide and the Holy Nights, maybe you would enjoy this introspective approach of using biography to understand yourself as you move into the New Year.  Here are areas of focus for each of the twelve days:

December 25th:  Think about your own birth:  the circumstances, your family, your own physical body as an infant and as a child.  Write down your impressions.  Pick three words that describe your physical body as an infant and child.  Were you frequently sick or robust?  Did you have any physical challenges?

December 26th:  Think about the Early Years, ages 0-7.  Did you feel loved and accepted and as if you belonged?  When you think back, what were you like then?  What composed your whole world?  Do you have an early impressions of nature and how that affected you?

December 27th:  Think about the years 7-14.  What were your habits, the things you did on a daily basis from what you did when you got up, what you did in the afternoons after school, what you did before you went to bed.  What did you do every week on certain days of the week?  How did that shape you?  Does it continue to impact you now?

December 28th:  Think about the years 14-21.  What were the things you loved, what was most important to you?  What did you dislike?  Are the things that were important then still important now or has that totally changed?

December 29th:  Think about the years 21-28 of your life.  What things do you see happening that were the complete hand of God, your destiny?  Relationships, people, births and deaths, things that changed your life and who you were forever?

December 30th:  Think about the years 28-35.   Can you draw yourself at this age and the things in your life at this point?  Did you have a significant experience at the age of 33 or so?

December 31st:  Think about the years  35 – 42 if you are there!  What was most important from this period to you? What do you imagine this to be like?

January 1st:  Think about the years 42-49 if you are there.  What do you have to bring outward into the world during this phase?  What is it you are passionate about?  What will you do with your passions this year?

January 2nd: Pick one of the seven year time periods that really speaks to you from your life.  Draw it.  Get together with a friend and draw those time periods together.  Explain your life during that time period to your friend.

January 3rd:  Think about yourself as a physical entity.  What do you need to do to nurture your physical body this year?  What would be helpful?  How could you make this happen?

January 4th: Think about yourself and the habits and rhythms you create for yourself. If you keep journals, look back through the past years.  What months are you tired?  What months do you feel most energized?  Are you an early or late riser?  What days of the week do you like best and feel most productive?  Are there any rhythms that you should be setting in place for you or your family members so that everyone is happier?  Is life simple or busy?  Do your rhythms support you, or deplete you?  What could you change to make this a simpler and more peaceful year?

January 5th:  Think about what you love.  Name those things.  Name passions you have in books, music, subjects, knowledge.  Are you nurturing those passions?  Are your interests changing?  Name one thing you would like to deepen your knowledge of this year.

January 6th:  How can you nurture your spiritual or your religious side? Do you have a religious community? Do you have any kind of community outside of the four walls of your home?  We were made to be in community with one another.  How will you nurture community this year?

Many blessings,
Carrie

November LIGHT

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November is the beginning of the season of light – Martinmas gives us a beautiful opportunity to think about how to spread light into our communities in a world of darkness.

I love November in all its crisp -leaved, golden sunset, chill temperatures perfection.  The leaves are turning here where I live, and it feels like the beauty and coziness of fall is upon us at last. We have had our first frost, and things feel like a cozy autumn.

This is a wonderful month of celebrations for our family!

  • November 1 and 2 – All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day
  • November 4– Election Day
  • November 11 – Martinmas (and there are many other posts about Martinmas if you use the search engine box!) It’s also Veteran’s Day, which we celebrate every day with my husband and father in law who are veterans.
  • November 20- My handsome husband’s birthday!
  • November 27- Thanksgiving
  • November 30- First Sunday in Advent
  • November 30- The Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle

Learning and celebrating:

  • Learn songs for a Martinmas Lantern Walk – you don’t need a lot of people to do a Lantern Walk! I have done Lantern Walks with just one other family and I have done Lantern Walks with over a hundred people! You an also check your local churches – if you live in an area with a German population, there may be a church holding a celebration of this day. I went to a Lantern Walk one year at a German church and they had St. Martin on his white horse and everything!
  • Use transparency paper to make window silhouettes and transparency cut-outs and lanterns.
  • Bake bread on the cold days
  • Look for bird’s  nests as the trees lose their leaves; make feeders start to be filled all the time, make treats for the birds
  • Dip leaves in glycerin or beeswax and preserve them
  • Cook things with cranberries, corn, and pumpkin.
  • Try the book Cranberry Thanksgiving and make cranberry bread!
  • Learn some Thanksgiving songs and practice so you can play them after Thanksgiving Dinner!
  • Find a place to volunteer to serve Thanksgiving dinner
  • Make Thanksgiving Baskets and leaving them on your neighbor’s doorstep!
  • Gather greens and natural items to use for an Advent Wreath.  We do this at church from the areas surrounding the church and it is quite lovely!
  • Find books, cozy blankets and pillows, and mark off half days for just reading and lounging around. Pull out candles, homemade Martinmas lanterns, salt lamps  and scatter them around.  Cuddle up and read with some fabulous tea or hot chocolate.
  • Find handwork projects that you will love and get started.
  • Order some woolens for your family members; my favorite place to get them is Green Mountain Organics
  • You probably already have found your hats, mittens and gloves and coats, but we are a little slower down here with cold temperatures coming later so I just did that this week!

For littles especially:

For the older children:

  • Get them involved in your autumn traditions – baking, cooking, cleaning, taking care of the birds outside, hiking, star watching, volunteering.
  • Think of traditions of gratitude and light.  Some teens may no longer love a lantern walk (although I still love it and I am an adult), but some teens might go for a big bonfire with friends on Martinmas.
  • Some thoughts:  Cultivating Gratitude in Children
  • How do we help older children internalize the spirit of helping the most needy, the most destitute, the most poor? That is the work for this age.

Inner Work:

Other Ideas for this month:

  • Get a small jump on gifts for the holidays. Here is my Pinterest Board of holiday gifts to make
  • Make sure you are still getting your Vitamin N and get out in nature!
  • Dream a little about the next school year in homeschooling 
  • I always choose a word to encompass my year – this year, my word for 2025 was COMMIT and my word for next year is being decided as we speak! I have toyed with the words “Rooted”, “Delight”, or “Restorative”. I am not sure yet. I have some bigger projects planned after some more busy but more fallow years here in this space. More about that later!

Many blessings and peace to you and your family,

Carrie

All Saints Day and All Souls Day

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Honoring the past.

Honoring our ancestors.

Honoring the goodness in people now departed.

In this world that often feels chaotic and crazy, holding on to the ideals of the good people who have come before us can be a small lifeline of grounding and stability.

I hear from people all the time who don’t feel as if they have this within their family lines.  Maybe their family ancestors, at least those that they know of, aren’t who they want to be or who inspires them.  That’s why I think sometimes a spiritual practice can be so helpful, and All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day can be wonderful stepstones towards thankfulness and gratitude.

On All Saints’ Day, we remember those known and unknown who were holy.   I often think of how I can align with those known and unknown saints who stood up for the the right, the visionaries, the idealists.  What is my right, my vision, my ideal?  What people showed courage over fear, bravery over cowardice, and made a difference in the world?

In the Celtic Calendar, this day was called Samhain and was the beginning of the New Year. This beginning  implies that it is a space that hangs between the Old Year and the New.  This is how we began to see the boundary between the living and the dead can be blurred as we offer our great respect to those who have come before us.  The tradition of offering “soul cakes” to the dead began  out of great respect for the dead in many countries.  I also think this ties in with the warmth of the season – how do we show respect to the life before us?  Is it food, remembering, lighting candles, offering a prayer?  Death is part of Life, and finding a relationship between those two things is often something people try to avoid.  Yet, this is something that should be propelling what we do today – how do we take care of each other and the Earth as we don’t have forever here physically.

Create a beautiful harvest, an altar of remembrance, have a harvest dinner, plant some flower bulbs for the promise of spring!  Happy All Saints’ and All Souls’ from my family to yours.

Warmly,

Carrie

Halloween in the Waldorf Home

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October is one of my favorite months of the year!  Here in the Deep South, we are running temperatures are in the 40’s during the night and around the 70s during the day, so it feels crispy and cool in the morning. Typically at this time of year, we are just gearing up for cooler weather, the leaves on the trees changing colors and crunching under our feet, and preparations for Halloween, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are underway!

How will you celebrate this month in your homeschool?

The Eve of Samhain of the Celtic people became All Hallows’ Eve. This used to be the beginning of the New Year in the Celtic calendar, and it was a sacred time. This night was a blurring of space and time. Great respect was paid in Pagan and past cultures to the dead – including the offering of food, fire, “soul cakes”. This persists in many cultures today, or at least the idea of spiritual connection with prayers for the deceased. We contemplate the relationship of living to dying this time of year. How do we die to ourselves, to something great than ourselves in a culture rife with selfishness and lack of community? How do we find a right relationship to death in a world where violence is rife?

One thing that comes to mind is to connect to the Earth, the wisdom of those with courage to face death. Perhaps this is the time to think about bringing “the light” inside as the days grow longer, darker and colder.  “Jack O’ Lanterns” and other kinds of lanterns are popular this time of year, as are crafts and cooking and baking surrounding the Fall Harvest. 

Focusing on what the animals and plants are doing this time of year in song, verse and story is natural, and to include the role of those little beings, the gnomes and the dwarves,  who help carry lanterns and bring the little animals to Mother Earth.  There are also many wonderful opportunities to tell stories about the leaves changing and falling off the trees and the seeds going to sleep for Winter.

This would be a wonderful time to switch your Nature Table to display all the beauty of autumn and the drawing toward winter. You could use a simple autumn wreath or dried flowers and dried seed pods or bunches of oats or wheat. A large platter of gourds or squashes can also be lovely.

Here is a link to a Waldorf newsletter from 1978 describing a Halloween festival of lantern lighting and the sharing of harvest foods:  https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/waldorf.library.journal.books/articles/CHSpring_1978b.pdf This link should work, but if it doesn’t, you can go to the Waldorf Library website, search under journals for “Waldorf Clearinghouse Newsletter” and “Spring 1978” you should see a link to Halloween. Those newsletters are sheer gold, by the way, if you have small children!

Perhaps the above will spark some ideas for your own festivities! This is a wonderful time for festivities including old fashioned juggling tricks, cards tricks or other games. Some games to think about are mentioned on pages 153 – 154 of the book “All Year Round” by Drutt, Fynes-Clinton, and Rowling if you have that book on your shelf!

Here is a link to a Halloween circle from 2012: https://www.waldorflibrary.org/journals/98-gateways/331-fall-2012-issue-63-halloween-circle?highlight=WyJoYWxsb3dlZW4iXQ==

Directly following All Hallows Eve is All Saints Day, a day to honor saintly people and to look forward to the upcoming festivals of saints such as Martinmas on November 11 and Saint Nicholas on December 6th. Then, on November 2, All Souls Day, was an opportunity to remember deceased family members and friends.  People would pray to those who had passed on to ask for blessings.  Usually  food was left out overnight for the visiting spirits of this time ( soul cakes are traditional!). There are many further posts about these festivals on this blog.

Happy planning, and many blessings to you all.

Carrie

A Rhythm Snapshot!

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This is a snapshot of our rhythm right now, and because it involves working outside the home and having only one tenth grader at home (other two children have graduated), it looks vastly different than when all three of our children were young. However, I think this sort of rhythm can also be the reality of many in these economic times and we are all striving towards more calmness, beauty, and order in our homes.

First of all, if you have small children, let me be very blunt in that I think if it’s at all possible, children should have their days based at home. I think this is important for neurological development, and I think in general the day care, school days, and after care are far too long for children under the age of 14 because the United States is not geared to families, working families, and children. I think the hours away from home are just too long. We are not like countries where children walk home for lunch in the middle of the school day and therefore I think the hours at school and work should be shorter. I don’t think children should have to be in daycare from 7 AM to six thirty at night. That’s my opinion, and realistically being home and having children not in daycare or preschool or longer school days with after care isn’t possible for many people with the way the economy is. If, however, you feel really led in this direction, I have numerous back posts regarding this matter. I also think it is vitally important that families feel supported in this endeavor of being home, and not feel isolated. Families at home need community and to feel that their children have community, and this seems to be a tall order these days. So, for many of us, we are at an impasse with meeting these needs.

For our family right now, a general week looks like the below (outside of farm chores, which are multiple times a day. Farm chaos or work emergencies can also bring things to a halt). Some of this varies if my husband is home or traveling as he definitely can jump in and drive our son to any outside class or activity and he and one of the children handle the vast majority of farm chores without me. I could not work outside the home if this wasn’t the case. It’s a team effort between us all, including our adult children too. I also put notes about where I want to go in terms of rhythm for the future. I am a work in progress and striving, just like many of you!

The most important thing to do is to treat ourselves (we mamas juggle a lot!), our spouses and children with a lot of love, kindness, and compassion. The best way to live a simple life is to simplify our attitude. This is going to look really busy to those of you that work at home and stay at home, and it probably will seem familiar to those of you that work outside the home and homeschool. It’s a juggle.

Sunday –Church and yoga day or just stay at home ❤

This is a day to reset the nervous system, and a day to meal prep. Sometimes everyone (grown children) is available for dinner so that’s always fun. This month I am doing more of a “Crocktober” month and that really cuts down on meal prep. Sunday is a good day for our son and I to catch up on any homework for outside classes. It can also a good night for my husband and I to see friends. Every now and then I have a patient emergency, but for the most part this is a guaranteed day of rest.

Monday – Homeschool and work day! I work on Mondays doing pelvic health physical therapy, and work with our son in the morning and at night after dinner and the gym. It’s also a good day to clean for a little bit! I like the Home Blessing Hour from Fly Lady to hit the high spots and then try to work the FlyLady zones for fifteen minutes the other days. At night, we like reading or puzzles.

Tuesday- Baby visits in the afternoon for work, and outside classes for homeschooling! On this day, I usually have a few pediatric/ lactation home visits in the afternoon and our son has outside classes. We go to the gym at dinner time if the rest of the family can handle the horses (unless I got to the gym in the morning).

I want to turn part of this day into more of planning day and setting goals for the week; a day for writing, making art or projects, or doing my online continuing education courses in the morning. We usually go over schoolwork in the late afternoons, specifically math, and at night as needed on this day.

Wednesday – Work, work, work and outside classes for homeschooling. This day is often my longest physical therapy work day, and our son has outside classes and Sea Scouts, so not much honestly gets done.

Thursday – Baby visits in the morning! I work in the morning with lactation and pediatric PT patients. Our son has Spanish class in the afternoon and he is usually busy in the morning with work for his outside classes. I try to run errands on this day while he is at class, and we usually we go to the gym on this night. Sometimes I get to see a friend during this time!

Friday – Homeschooling Day and get ready for the weekend! Sometimes our adult girls are at a horse show, either competing or catch riding so my husband might be hauling horses or doing something like that. This is a day where I try to put my own appointments if I need to, because our son can work independently enough that I can run and do something and come back.

I definitely like to reserve the late morning and afternoon as much as possible for being home, cleaning up, and preparing something yummy, almost like Shabbos cooking of my Jewish friends so we that we can have a restful night and peaceful Saturday. Our son works fairly independently during this time to get a jump on things due in his outside classes for the next week. He can also hang out with me in the kitchen and I can help while cooking! Sometimes we will do work at night if he has a sailing race the next day or the weekend is just busy.

Saturday – Reset and relax! Sometimes our son has sailing races, or we have a horse show, but usually this is the day is to be with family and at home. If I have to take an emergency lactation patient, I would rather do this on a Sunday than Saturday even. I just enjoy having some options on Saturday, whether that is to be outside on the farm or doing what I want inside the house. Or just relaxing!

As you can see, there is not a lot of margin with working outside the home and homeschooling. There isn’t really a ton of time to hang out with friends or date nights or take a whole day to go hiking like we did when our children were young. The horses have to be taken care of around dinner time, (and all the other times LOL) so that’s a barrier for sure, along with the fact that the week is just busy.

I am working on changing some of this with very set hours for outside work, but over the late summer and the beginning of the school year there really wasn’t a full day I was home, not even on weekends with continuing education, conferences, and patients. That was exhausting! The home visits that patients love can be very taxing on me and my family due to long drive times in my area so I am limiting my geographic radius for now for those visits. Charting also takes a lot of time. Getting stronger boundaries surrounding what I can and can’t offer should be helpful as we head into these last few months of 2025.

That’s just the way it is, and maybe you feel this way too about your own brand of controlled chaos or that you are evolving like me. I think my reality is the reality of what a lot of people are juggling. I would love a link to your blog or Instagram post about rhythm to help inspire all of us here. Of course, if you have small children, your rhythm will look much different than mine, I hope, and I am sure mine will change again when our youngest graduates high school as well. Then we will officially be empty nesters, and my husband actually mentioned retirement for the first time ever this summer! Very exciting!

Take your seasons in stride and enjoy the ordinary days that so often make up life. There is joy in lighting a candle at dinner, snuggling together after a long day, watching the sunrise or sunset, petting the animals, and knowing that life is beautiful every day. ❤

Warmly,
Carrie

Glorious and Golden October

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October is my favorite month of the year! Here in the Deep South, the days can still be so warm, the nights can be so cool in comparison, and the leaves are starting to turn to the beautiful golds and yellows and even brown. I have that poem by Robert Frost in my head in October:

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

But October is surely that golden period where all things are suspended in autumnal glory. I start thinking about flannel sheets, elderberry syrup, what to make for Christmas, pumpkin bread and pumpkin muffins, lanterns and lights. It’s the best!

I felt like I was racing around in September. We came back from a lovely beach vacation with all of our grown children (yay for our friends who farm sat so our entire family could go!) but from then on it was a mad dash to get all the pediatric, adult pelvic, and lactation patients in plus two conferences. I was working through Saturdays and Sundays and everything else! So, I am also excited for October and a return to rhythm and loveliness in our home. Our basic home rhythm right now, with homeschooling one tenth grader and outside jobs and a farm will be detailed soon!

These are the festivals that are our anchors this month:

October 4th- Blessing of the Animals and the Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi

October 31 – Halloween is my least-favorite holiday of the entire year (Ba! Humbug! LOL), but I love All Saints Day and All Souls Day and those are very important feast days in the liturgical year, so I am looking forward to those days and preparing for those days at the end of this month. You can see a back post about Halloween In The Waldorf Home, and this one about preparing for All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day

The little things that make ordinary October days magic:

Playing in the leaves

Apple picking

Pumpkin farm visits

Making pumpkin muffins and breads

Longer nights with deeper and later sleep

Warming foods

Fuzzy flannel sheets

Warm teas

Lantern making for Martinmas

Finding ideas to make for holiday gifts

Some ideas for celebrating:

A back post about warmth and children:

Warmth

Warming Foods – this back post is from January, but it might give you some ideas for warming foods

Autumn Circles and Autumn tales for little ones and you can see an example Circle Time for tiny children here: https://theparentingpassageway.com/2011/10/09/october-circle-time/

Make lanterns

Re-instating tea time – so warming and lovely

If you have small children, you might really enjoy this post from Liza Fox about meaningful work for toddlers

We are going to:

Plant fall bulbs

Make bone broths and infuse it with herbs – dandelion root, burdock, astragalus, and echinacea.

Change bed linens to flannel sheets and adding blankets and thicker comforters

Stock up on birdseed

Make sure we all have hats, gloves, snow gear  and boots for winter

I am thinking about:

Our out-of-the-home activities for the Winter and Spring.

Physical and emotional clutter and having an ordered outer world for a peaceful family

The benefits of rhythm in the home

As we head into the darker days of  autumn and winter, I would love to hear what you would like to see on this blog!  

Warmly from my little corner of the world, and thank you to so many of you who read this blog,

Carrie

The Beauty of September

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School is in full swing now! Our third child is in tenth grade this year, and is working his way through such subjects as geometry, biology, American literature and history. Despite summer coming to a close, I have to say I love September so much and settling into fall. Fall is an amazing time to think about getting cozy in the home for the upcoming cooler weather and the holidays. So many wonderful things to love about September – cooler weather, harvest, leaves turning colors, long walks and bike rides, apples and pumpkins, acorns, getting the house organized for fall, searching for things to make for the holidays, fall decorating!  

September often seems to be about new beginnings.  Here in the South, the school children have been back to public school about a month, so perhaps it is not “new”, but  it still has that feel to me and my Northern upbringing (where we always started school the day after Labor Day) , that it is a time of possibility and change.

Our farm has been quiet. We had a horse that died recently plus two went to other barns due to owners moving them or leasing situations, so it’s been a tad quiet around here. The bees are getting ready for winter. I am feeding one hive that is smaller and trying to get the bees stocked for winter. Winter annuals will go in soon, and I am hoping to put in some fall vegetables.

For me, September is also a time of contemplation as we head into the mood of Michaelmas. Some of you may know it as The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. It is celebrated on September 29 in the Western Church and for those in Waldorf Education, and it is celebrated by the Eastern Church on November 8. It is truly a time of prayer, meditations, new impulses and an idea of serving others and changing the future.

I love this festival of Michaelmas as one that illuminates the soul into the winter, takes up the challenges in front of us as we wind our way ahead in the dark to help us find that small space of courage and bravery that lets us know we are not defeated yet. We have not given up yet. Imagine a humanity where this was the theme before us of overcoming, of bringing new into the world. I may be attacked along the way of this new birth and new bringing, but I am not decimated. I can move forward.

There is a beautiful poem in the book “All Year Round” on page 129 that could make a particularly lovely blessing for this time of year and you could modify it as you wish:

Thanks to our mother, the earth, which sustains us;

Thanks to the rivers and streams and their water;

Thanks to the corn and the grain fields that feed us;

Thanks to the herbs which protect us from illness;

Thanks to the bushes and trees and their fruiting;

Thanks to the moon and the stars in the darkness;

Thanks to the sun and his eye that looks earthward;

Thank the Great Spirit for all of his goodness.

Adapted from an Iroquois Indian address of thanksgiving

Here are a few things we are celebrating:

Labor Day – September 1  (Beach time!)

The Nativity of St. Mary – September 8 

Holy Cross Day – September 14

Autumn Equinox – September 22 – You can see my Autumn Pinterest Board for ideas!

The Feast of St. Michael and All Angels – September 29.  This is one of my favorite celebrations in the church and at home!  You can see my MIchaelmas Pinterest Board for some ideas!

The season of Michaelmas, for me, really lasts from a few weeks before Michaelmas until a week or so before All Saint’s.  In honor of this occasion, I have been re- reading the words of Rudolf Steiner from his lectures  collected and entitled, “Michaelmas and the Soul- Forces of Man”  In the fourth lecture, he relates the four major festivals of the year:  Michaelmas, Christmas, Easter and St. John’s.  He says, “ Easter: death, then resurrection; Michaelmas: resurrection of the soul, then death. This makes of the Michael Festival a reversed Easter Festival. Easter commemorates for us the Resurrection of Christ from death; but in the Michael Festival we must feel with all the intensity of our soul: In order not to sleep in a half-dead state that will dim my self-consciousness between death and a new birth, but rather, to be able to pass through the portal of death in full alertness, I must rouse my soul through my inner forces before I die. First, resurrection of the soul — then death, so that in death that resurrection can be achieved which man celebrates within himself.”

You can read these four lectures for yourself here:  http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/MichSoul/MiSoul_index.html  There is also this really interesting collection of articles, lectures, verses and stories all about Michaelmas available in  Waldorf Journal Project #15, edited by David Mitchell.  You can find that here:   http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/WJP15.pdf

The Home Mood:

To me, the fall becomes a time of turning inward; a time of gratitude and reflection.  How do my words, my actions, reflect my gratitude toward my Creator and toward my life?  How do I interact with others in order to show this?  There is a quote I often think about from Dr. Rudolf Steiner that talks about this. He says;

The cultivation of this universal gratitude toward the world is of paramount importance.  It does not always need to be in one’s consciousness, but may simply live in the background of the feeling life, so that, at the end of a strenuous day, one can experience gratitude, for example, when entering a beautiful meadow full of flowers……And if we only act properly in front of the children, a corresponding increase in gratitude will develop within them for all that comes to them from the people living around them, from the way they speak or smile, or the way such people treat them.”  Rudolf Steiner from “A Child’s Changing Consciousness As The Basis of Pedagogical Practice”

Gratitude is such an important mood to create in the home. I think this creation can be tangible,  like those gratitude jars or going around the table at night and sharing something we have gratitude for…those are wonderful in their own way, but I think creating a  true mood of gratitude in the home actually is a much harder and deeper task. 

How do I really permeate this mood and carry it, even when things are overwhelming, is for this season of overcoming and courage as we head toward the longer nights of Winter. I think this is especially pertinent for those of us with teenagers and young adults who often are in the throes of figuring out who they really are, what turn their life is going to take as they launch. It can be a daunting time requiring inner strength on the part of the parent to really hold.

I think prayer comes to the forefront if that is in your spiritual tradition. I have never prayed as hard as I do now for my young adults and all the things they face. Even knowing from a certain perspective that they are made for these times, it can still be daunting. Teaching them deeper joy in the midst of transitions is something valuable that they still can learn from us! The teaching and guiding is not over and in many ways they need us more now than they did when they were small. I also use many affirmations and place that positive energy out into the world on their behalf.

Ideas for the Home:

  • The seasonal table is transitioning to yellows with dried flowers, seed pods, bunches of oats or wheat or corn that are dried, cornucopias, nuts, acorns, leaves and little “helicopters.”
  • I am going through and taking stock of fall and winter clothes and purging what we do not need.
  • Fall menu planning – a time of chili, soup, stew, warming dishes. I eat a lot of plant based dishes, so beans are coming to a forefront.
  • Crafting – I have some autumn crafting ideas on my Pinterest board, but I think I am going to start with Michaelmas crafts! It is beautiful and nurturing to create things ourselves, with or without children.

Ideas for Celebrating this Month with Littles:

Ideas for Celebrating this Month With Older Children:

Ideas for Celebrating this Month With Teens:

  • Find great theater, museum, and festival events to attend
  • Longer hiking, camping, and backpacking trips
  • Bake and cook fall dishes
  • Work on fall organizing and cleaning
  • Stargazing
  • Find new activities outside the home that your teen will adore
  • Find  new knitting, crocheting, sewing, woodworking and woodcarving ideas to try

Homeschooling and Working:

Work has been very busy! I see patients many times through the weekend, but this can also give me flexibility for homeschooling during the week. Our tenth grader is in hybrid school classes, but we still have classes we need to do on our own at home plus the work for the hybrid classes.

What are your September plans? If you blog or on social media, please leave a link in the comments below so we can follow each other’s plans!

Glorious August

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This is a month of sunshine and sunflowers, lakes, and fun – and here in the deep south, it’s also time for back to school. School here begins this first day of August or the second week depending upon your program. We are beginning on August 19th this year for our 15 year old sophomore (he can be over six feet tall, but he’s still my baby!) – our last child in school! Our other two homeschooled students graduated and are living their lives.

This is my birthday month, which I am very excited about! These are the other things we are celebrating in this beautiful month:

August 6th- The Transfiguration of Jesus Christ

August 8th- My Birthday!

August 10- School starts!

August 15- The Dormition of St. Mary

August 28 – our oldest child will be 24! Doesn’t seem possible! 

Ideas for Celebration:

  • Making a  beautiful triptych to celebrate the life of St. Mary.  There are many wonderful ideas regarding this on the Internet.
  • We have about another month or two of tubing, swimming and water park availability to us, so we hope to take advantage as we have only been to lake for our youngest to sail and haven’t really done a lot of swimming!
  • Camping – it can be super hot here, but I am already making camping in the fall a priority.
  • Gazing at the stars
  • Walking in the mornings
  • Working out. I have had good success doing a mixture of hot yoga, Zumba, and weightlifting.
  • Making delicious meals!

The Domestic Life:

This a great time to take stock of needs for fall/winter in clothing, shoes, outside gear, school supplies, art supplies. When our children were little, this was the time I always looked at our woolen clothing. Yes, even down here in the South it can get cold to be outside in the fall and winter, and I am a big believer is preserving bodily warmth for babies and small children.

I also think this a great time to go back to manners.  Children are often in an expansive place with summer weather and may need some help in remembering school behavior, work ethics and manners!  I like opening the first day of school with an introduction to how the space works for homeschooling, expectations and rules in homeschooling and the like.

Getting back into a rhythm that supports school is also a huge help with that.  It provides that balance between rest and quiet and expansive doing for children. Rhythm is a key word for this month and the structure of the rhythm of school for homeschooling does us all good!

Meal planning gets us through because I am too busy to have to spend a lot of time every day planning.  So, I like to plan 2-4 weeks of meals and shop. You can also start stocking up on things for fall and winter!

Homeschooling:

We are jumping into tenth grade (for my third time!)  I am really looking forward to this. We are doing some classes through a homeschool hybrid for high school and will do some of our own blocks and courses. Our son has cybersecurity things and Sea Scouts along with the farm and volunteering to keep him busy. I love the quote from The Waldorf Family Handbook that says that the goal of high school is to prepare them as “free independent individualities and to orient them realistically to the world outside of school.” I have always taken that as the mantra for high school! Be prepared for life.

 This is the year we really start preparing for college admissions as well, so preparing for the PSAT and ACT, looking at possibilities for where to attend, what credits we need, transcripts. It’s easier to do it now and not be behind when it comes time to pull everything together when it is time to apply.

Self-Care and Rhythm:

My biggest priorities right now in addition to homeschooling and working outside the home are my workouts, medical appointments and self care.

I want to hear how August is shaping up for you! How is school looking?  I have been very busy doing homeschool consulting this month! If anyone needs help with homeschool planning or planning for family life, please email me at admin@theparentingpassageway.  My rates for a half hour phone call are super reasonable and I have helped lots of moms this month!  Please let me know if I can help you!

Lots of love and many blessings,

Carrie

Sophomore Year Reading

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So, for our sophomore year, these are the books we are reading.

For Language Arts (and this is set generally by an outside class in American Literature that takes a classical approach):

The Pearl by John Steinbeck

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Common Sense by Thomas Paine to overlap with American History

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Anthem by Ayn Rand

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Assorted poetry and/or short stories

I require Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston and African American poetry in our homeschool. I have a back post about this on this blog if you want further details.

For computer:

Ghost in the Wires – Kevin Mitnick

Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know by PW Singer and Allan Friedman

The Art of Invisibility – Kevin Mitnick

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software – Charles Petzold

For Military:

Sea Stories: My Life in Special Operations by Admiral William H. McRaven

Make Your Bed – Admiral William H McRaven

The Finishing School: Earning the Navy SEAL Trident by Dick Couch

For General Personal Growth:

Do Hard Things by Alex and Brett Haris

7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens by Sean Covey

Can’t Hurt Me by David Goggins

What books do you require for sophomore year of high school?

Blessings,
Carrie

Organizing The Week

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It’s almost back to school time for many of us here in the south. This seemed so strange to me when I moved to Georgia in the 90s as in New York school always began the Tuesday after Labor Day. And honestly, the start date has crept further and further toward the beginning of August over the years I have lived in different southern states. It used to be more towards the end of August, but now the public schools down here begin August 1. It hardly seems fair, but then I remember we get out of school in mid- May. So there’s that!

I am taking a serious look at the calendar. I have to look not only at my commitments (hello, work) but also when we are homeschooling at home, when my son has outside classes, and the balance of homemaking and farm duties. And, to be honest, I have a few more appointments these days for general upkeep in my 50s than when I started homeschooling in my 30s!

The farm routine is set in terms of when horses need to be fed or go in and out. The apiary is easily checked on a weekend. I know what days are office visits and what days are outside classes. I know when I would like to get to the gym. The more wild cards to fill in are home visits for folks, which I often don’t know until the day before, and general things that come up all of the sudden on the farm.

I have penciled in the times to work with our high schooler as he can do much of the work on his own, but there are things we need to work on and do in order to count for high school credit as well. There are some things this sophomore year of high school I would like him to read outside of assigned material for outside classes as his interests are primarily cybersecurity and computers, boats and possible military. We also need to do a fine arts credit and some electives this year and next year in addition to some of the things he is doing in core outside classes.

I generally plan two meal prep days to keep us going, and tidy every day plus more major cleaning two to three times a week. Farm life is generally messy and the house can get quite dirty! I like to put appointments as much as possible on Fridays, but sometimes I don’t have a choice as to when some of my check ups can happen and they are about an hour to an hour and a half away, so sometimes that’s just life.

So basically a revolving circus much of the time, but I like to pretend I have a structure! It sure was easier when our children were young and we were home more!

What’s your best way for organizing your week? I would love to hear from you!

Blessings,

Carrie