Hand washing laundry is as ancient a practice as wearing clothes made of fabric. Furthermore, and perhaps very surprising to Americans who generally only know about washing machines and will travel miles to use one if necessary, millions of people all over the world still wash their clothing by hand.
While using water is a constant across time and cultures, other aspects vary. Agitating or bending and twisting the fabric to help loosen dirt is accomplished in ways as varied as rubbing and twisting, beating against a rock, beating the fabric with a wooden bat, or using a washboard. Additions that help the water work more effectively have ranged over time from fermented urine (used extensively by the Romans; it was the ammonia salts in it that helped whiten togas) to soaproot to handmade laundry soap to modern day chemical based detergents.
Regardless of which method people are using to hand wash their laundry, I know that no matter when I am hand washing my family’s laundry, people all over the world are also hand washing theirs. My imagination wanders to the various cultures I know something about. I wonder about the lives of all the people squatting down over water and soap, working, working, working to get their clothes clean. I think about their hand movements. I think about how they often are washing together in groups. I think about how their children are hanging about or helping or playing. Images go through my mind and prayers go through my heart. I feel a deep sense of connectedness to brothers and sisters all over this fair green planet, all using her resources of water and sun and time to clean away the grime of every day life. With practiced movements and ceaseless conversations about the shared sufferings and shared celebrations of community life, people everywhere use their minds and hands to accomplish the sublime task of getting just a little bit cleaner.
Two Sundays ago, I spent a couple of hours going through videos on YouTube that show people from around the world hand washing their laundry. I really enjoyed watching all of them and I learned a great deal from them as well. A few particular images were before my mind’s eye the last time I did our laundry. Those images kept me company and added a deep resonance to my somewhat arduous task. I could hear the laughter from far away and feel the tears and only wonder at the grace of the movements. Down below are links to a few of the videos I discovered. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did and for those of you who wash your laundry by hand already, I hope you feel your sense of connection expand greatly. After all, we are all trying to get clean and Nature, as always, provides the necessities.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
The Ukraine - such vigorous use of a washboard!
Nicaragua and Brazil - The image of the girl laughing in the one from Nicaragua stays with me.
Various locations in Africa -
This one from Bangledesh pulls at the heart strings -
The Philippines -
Here are some from China. Notice how nicely the little girl does her share of the work in the first video -
And, finally, here are several from India. Notice the very beautiful hand movements you can see in so many of them -
And this last one from India with a mother and child playing together -
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Like many of the “living simply” tasks I am learning to do around the homestead, I find that hand washing laundry is done at a pace and with a physical rhythm that encourages contemplation. Also because water is involved, I find that my thoughts really flow. One of the trains of thought that has come to me through several washing sessions has to do with the myriad ways that hand washing laundry is similar to homeschooling. While homeschooling is much more common now than it used to be, hand washing laundry is not yet common again here in the United States. As a matter of fact, I have seen a number of people who engage in homeschooling decrying those who also engage in hand washing laundry. This is kind of interesting because most folks nowadays would decry both with no thought of distinguishing between the two. So stepping back a bit, what can I say from experience are some of the similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling?
1. Both activities require that you re-arrange your life in ways that run counter to the dictates of the modern materials/money economy. Interestingly, since these are both age old activities, practicing them at this point in history requires bold thinking, self-discipline and a creative approach to problem solving.
2. Both are giant steps towards self-sufficiency. All benefits that accrue from becoming more self sufficient in one’s daily activities flow from both hand washing laundry and homeschooling.
3. With both, you build skills that you will never forget and would never otherwise learn. Once you know how to teach a child to read or how to wash their dress to sparkling cleanness with your very own hands, you will always know how to do those things and will be able to do them anywhere, any time.
4. Both homeschooling and hand washing laundry create the space to pray about and devote yourself in service to the needs of others. As such both are, therefore, character building and have tremendous potential to deepen the bonds between family members as well as members of the community.
5. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling are greatly enhanced if approached from a “teamwork” perspective. If the family works as a team to clean clothes or as a team to discover what it even means to be “educated” and works as a team to become truly educated together, then adventure, beauty, love and Divine inspiration may be your constant supports as you undertake either of these daily activities of life.
6. Carried out with awareness, both homeschooling and hand washing laundry demand fewer natural resources than conventional approaches to either education or laundering.
7. Hand washing laundry and homeschooling are both pathways to discovery and connection. People undertake both all over the world so a brotherly feeling of connection is waiting there to be experienced. I will write more about this aspect in another post. Furthermore, simple truths have been hidden away gradually and, at times, willfully by those promulgating the conventional approaches. How many people know now that you can get clothes much cleaner on your own than by using washing machines? How many people know now that a loving parent can teach their children how to read? How many people know now that artificial chemicals and so-called fragrances are the opposite of clean? How many people know now that education is best conducted in an atmosphere of wonder and love? Peeling away conventional attitudes and approaches to both laundering and educating can lead to delightful and unanticipated discoveries.
8. We are hardwired to find satisfaction in primary labor, i.e. the kind of work that is directly related to survival and real, natural life. Our economic engine is predicated upon us turning our backs on our true natures. It forcefully keeps us lulled in a state of perpetual forgetfulness about our true abilities and our higher purpose. However, I can say from vivid personal experience that taking the time to become reacquainted with the primary labors of life brings peaceful satisfaction brimming to the surface and spilling over into smiles, affectionate touches and contented sighs. The sight of honestly clean clothes ruffling in a breeze, the sound of milk hitting the milk pail, the experience of a child’s understanding blooming before your eyes are experiences that are wonderfully fresh and yet deeply remembered. There really is no substitute. The more of these activities you can include in your daily life, the more satisfied and confident you may feel.
9. Both hand washing laundry and homeschooling increase flexibility and expand your range of choices. Now if a person’s goal is to engage in secondary labor (i.e. most jobs which are sort of made up and have nothing to do with creating food or clothes or shelter), to earn ever more money, to increase prestige and to have more things, then - no - neither hand washing laundry nor home educating are the way to go because they dramatically decrease the flexibility needed for those sorts of endeavors. However, if living a natural, unassuming, deeply intimate, conserving sort of life is your goal then both hand washing laundry and homeschooling expand your options considerably. You can wash clothes based upon the weather. You can wash inside or outside. You can work alone or with others. You can decide how much elbow grease to put into a particular stain or pair of work jeans or not. You can use equipment or not. You can make small adjustments throughout the process because you are consciously a part of the entire process. It is the same with homeschooling. You can choose educational goals, content, scheduling, exact location… everything. You get to choose everything based upon your style as teacher, the propensities and learning styles of the students, budget, other daily tasks that must be accomplished, spiritual goals or not and so on. As any of these conditions change, you are free to change with them because while doing it yourself is more work, doing it yourself comes largely free of institutional rigidity and hindrances. You are flexible and free to respond to inspiration.
10. One of the most startling similarities between hand washing laundry and homeschooling is the wildly successful outcome that comes from giving individual attention. With both activities, individual attention is perhaps the greatest key to success. Examining each item of clothing in the bright light of the sun, assessing what sort of treatment it needs and then supplying said treatment is the key to keeping everything in the best possible condition and making it last the longest. Prayerfully considering the needs and aptitudes of each child and then stretching as a parent/teacher to meet those needs and aptitudes goes further in making it possible for each child to become what they should become than anything else. Simple systems carried out with modest resources generally encourage the magnifying glass of the human mind to be pointed towards the needful. Improved outcomes nearly always follow.
Honestly, I find striving to live simply a gold mine of ideas, discoveries, insights, and opportunities. This seems to be true no matter what the “living simply” activity is (and is one of the biggest secrets of our times I might add). In any case, it is certainly true with both hand washing laundry and homeschooling. May we all boldly and yet humbly step away from institutional thinking and discover what we can through the profitable use of our own hearts, minds and hands.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
We have been hand washing all of our laundry for about six weeks now and it is going pretty well. We are still fine tuning how we do things but we do have enough of an effective system going to share what we have learned so far.
Equipment: For our wash tubs, we are using two large Rubbermaid bins. We use these simply because we already had them. Having used them all this time, however, I can say that we are looking forward to getting some real wash tubs some day - preferably ones on legs. Anyway, we use the two large Rubbermaid storage bins for washing and scrubbing (which my husband set up on cinder blocks for me to help spare my back) and we use two 5 gallon paint/food storage plastic pails with bale handles for the two rinses. You can get these at hardware stores. We find them to be a perfect size and the handle is really helpful for hauling the water away to dump on select garden locations.
For agitating the wash and rinse water, we are very happy using the Rapid Washer from Lehman’s. It works much, much better than a regular hardware store plunger as it moves much more water with each plunge and it fits perfectly into the 5 gallon pails. You occasionally need to use a mallet to pound the handle back down into the metal head of the plunger.
For scrubbing, we are using a glass washboard also purchased from Lehman’s. They note that the glass washboards last the longest and that they are by far their best seller so I went for one of those. I have always been “stain removal” challenged. I don’t like using chemicals and I have never found anything that really works all that well at removing stains anyway so I just sort of gave up ages ago. Using a bar of soap, water, a washboard and elbow grease, however, is like magic. Honestly! So many stains just disappear before your very eyes. I have read others comment upon the fact that items they would have otherwise thrown away were saved through the ministrations of a washboard and a few minutes of vigorous effort. The washboard at the bottom left of the photo is the one we use. (I might mention here that brass washboards are used primarily as musical instruments, in case you were wondering.)
Wringing as much water as possible out of each item shortens drying time dramatically. I read many comments here and there on the web about women wrecking their hands and wrists from years of wringing out clothes. Well, one of my wrists is already wrecked so official equipment was called for. I bought this wringer which Lehman’s sells but got it here instead for about $70 less. Apparently these wringers are used at car washes so you can find them for sale through various businesses other than just Amish ones.
I am still using (infinitesimally) small quantities at a time of Charlie’s soap for washing. I use so little at a time now that I think my remaining supply will last for another six months at least. However, when the bottom of the container is finally in sight, I will start making my own laundry soap. As for the bar soap to use for removing stains, I still don’t have a good bar I like yet. I will grab a bar of Dr. Bronner’s or something the next chance I get. Someday I intend to make my own laundry bar soap. Someday…
Method: To fill the bins and pails in our outdoor laundry room, my husband rigged up a hose that goes from the utility sink in the basement through a hole in a window screen and out to the outdoor laundry room. I am very grateful to be able to wash everything with warm water that I am neither heating myself nor hauling. It is not always easy running up and down the basement steps to turn the water on and off in a timely fashion but, hey, the children perform that task admirably. So our method is as follows:
1. Fill one bin about a third of the way (too full and we get soaked when plunging). Fill the other bin just six inches deep or so and place the washboard at one end and the bar of soap at the other. Fill the 5 gallon pails about halfway. Put maybe a 1/4 tsp. of Charlie’s soap in and swish it around so that it is well mixed.
2. Sort the laundry to be washed by color, heaviness and dirtiness. Put the cleanest, lightest clothes into the wash water first. Plunge a bit and let soak a little if there is time. Then plunge vigorously for two to three minutes. I have read that you should agitate the clothes and water for 10 minutes, but I just don’t strength enough in me to do that frankly. If any item is stained, toss it into the washboard bin.
3. Squeeze the clothes out and toss into the first rinse pail. Agitate enthusiastically for 25 plunges or so. Squeeze out thoroughly and toss into second rinse pail and repeat. Wring out and toss into a basket of clothes waiting to go through the wringer. Rinsing at least twice is a big deal and the key to success to ending up with sparkling clean laundry. Sometimes we have to rinse certain items more times than twice. We always try to find a balance between clean rinse water, water conservation and reasonable time investment.
4. Work through any clothes that have been tossed into the washboard bin. Rub a very small amount of soap onto any stains or dirty areas and rub vigorously on the washboard. Rinse and toss into first rinse pail. I want to emphasize the hint to not use too much bar soap for this exercise. Rinsing out excess soap is trying and wasteful.
5. Put all items through the wringer. It helps to wring things out in some kind of order so that you can keep the wringer at the same setting. You want it as tight as you can get it for thin things like dish towels and shirts and so on. But you loosen it to wring out things like thick bath towels or jeans or jackets. I have learned to put many items through the wringer two or three times in a row to get them really quite dry. If you fold the item in half, it not only effectively increases the pressure and effectiveness of the wringer, it has the effect of pressing the item. We are now lining up three dish towels together at a time, folding them in half and putting them through the wringer all at once several times. They come out looking ironed and they dry on the line in a hurry. This is a good place in the whole laundry process to experiment to discover more effective methods Cheaper By the Dozen style.
6. Hang everything to dry and feel more satisfied from doing a load of wash than you ever thought possible.
7. Definitely include all family members in this weekly event. Children gain strength and precision. Husband’s feel good lending their broad shoulders. Bonding ensues. Teamwork issues are spotted and ironed out. And then everyone gets to feel incredibly satisfied surveying the family laundry tidily hung from the lines and gently flapping in the breeze.
8. Once the hand done, real soap-cleaned, individually wrung, sun-dried laundry is brought inside on a regular basis, you may notice two positive effects in your home. The first is that everyone will make darn sure that these heroically cleaned clothes are put away double time. The second is that family members may automatically start generating less laundry due to the subtle, natural process known variously as the awareness raising, consciousness expanding, gratitude generating affects of hard work.
To spend some leisurely time with us as we do our laundry together outside, sit back and watch the following videos. Oh, and on the fifth video my husband shares some great thoughts about the moderation that arises naturally from working within natural systems and resources. I really appreciate what he has to say there.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Years and years ago, I read a brief article in Countryside magazine written by a woman who washed her laundry by hand. She explained that her wringer washer was set up outside next to a creek and she rhapsodized about washing clothes to the melodies of bird song. The image created in my mind by her writing and experience has stayed with me to this day. Washing clothes outside by hand seemed so refreshing and satisfying, by her report, and I secretly wanted to experience this for myself.
Quite a few years later - oh about four years ago or so - our washing machine broke. I very timidly showed my husband the wringer washer in Lehman’s and wondered aloud about replacing our washer with that? He very spontaneously and energetically let me know that the idea was nuts and the next day we went together to find a nice, normal, serviceable, inexpensive washing machine. In the years that followed which included moving and setting up our first homestead, I was grateful to him for making that call because there was already just so much work to do. However, my very odd secret wish to wash our laundry by hand outside never went totally away. However I didn’t have time to think about it so it didn’t matter.
A few years passed which saw us move again and set up this homestead. No end to the work. Yikes. So tired. Yikes. And then a few months ago, I stumbled upon several wonderful blogs such as Lentils and Rice, Ante Family Agrarians, A Process Driven Wife. These headed-towards-off-the-grid living ladies were all starting to wash their laundry by hand! Interesting. Here, for instance, is the Laundry Adventures category at Lentils and Rice. I think I discovered all of this when she was at about here and Kris Ante was about here. They both had nice simple explanations about how they were doing their laundry, together with clear photographs and rave reviews about the results of their labors. My husband happened to be sitting in the room while I read through these posts (and I should mention here that we had just had our washing machine flood the basement due to human error, if I recall correctly). I said, “Oh look, these woman are washing their laundry by hand with plungers and buckets.” He glanced at the photos, jumped to his feet and said, “You wanna try it?” “Well, uh, it just so happens that I do,” I replied barely keeping up with him as he dashed down to the basement to grab empty containers, a plunger and the laundry bin.
My husband’s enthusiastic approach to doing our first load of hand washing was to dump everything in the laundry basket into the wash water. Ahem … some running of colors ensued which gave rise to his clever invention of dying shirts with good old Virginia clay. I will have to post about that sometime because he turned his very nice, but now red streaked, Lands End shirt a gorgeous color. It looks great on him. Anyway, we washed and we hung to dry and it was fun. We agreed to try again another day.
A day or two later we tried another load. This time time rather too many clothes were dumped in all at once and that created its own sort of difficulty. I clearly needed to take this task in hand and study out how to do it the most effectively. We got through that load, however, and I went off to do a little more research on hand washing protocol. Right around this time, our washing machine again flooded the basement only with no human error involved. To this day, we have no idea why it flooded. There was a washing machine left here in this house which we had used for quite a while. My husband took out our old machine and hooked up the “left here” machine. To our astonishment (read that as anguished astonishment because the clean up involved was no laughing matter), this machine also flooded the basement. Several inches of water covered almost the entire basement floor. We have no idea why.
It appeared that what started out as sort of a lark quickly became an activity we were sort of pushed into doing full time. No money, no washing machines, plenty of dirty clothes, and several blog posts full of hand washing inspiration added up to officially becoming a hand washing family. Paul and I shook our heads and simply got organized. Hand washing the family laundry was obviously here to stay.
For various reasons, we had to sell our little Toyota at this time. That was kind of a hard decision to make but one of the things we decided to do with the proceeds was purchase official hand washing equipment. Doing the laundry for eight people on a farm is not a lightweight chore and I was going to need all the help I could get. I will share what I got and where I got it in a separate post.
We have washed all of our laundry by hand for about six weeks now I guess. Almost all of it has been done outside in what I call our “outdoor laundry room.” It was kind of tough for me at first because it was so physically grueling. My joints are far too loose. All the pounding and other repetitive motions did a number on my joints plus bending over so much did a number on my back. I hate feeling too weak to accomplish an essential task so I looked forward to gaining strength and a positive rhythm with time. I just hung in there.
I am pleased to say that actually we have all gained strength and a nice rhythm from doing the laundry together outside. The children can and do help a lot. Some of them can even do quite a bit of it on their own. Sometimes my husband helps and that is really great. The other day he and I worked together outside for a long while, plunging and rinsing and wringing and hanging. It was so pleasant to be out in the sunshine and bird song working together quietly on a mutually shared task. Very beautiful. A very natural way to spend time. And the quiet was lovely.
The latest development is that he and I took our trusty old pick-up truck to town today and bought a half ton of gravel. The “floor” of the laundry room was getting too muddy and I have wanted to put gravel down in several other key spots, like in front of the hen house, for a long while so off we went. Our ten year old has been steadily shoveling out the gravel for hours now so we have a utilitarian floor covering for our outdoor laundry room as well as a margin of safety in front of hen house, milking barn and gates.
Our next development will be to shift laundry operations to the basement when it gets too cold outside. We get the hot water for doing our laundry from the faucet down there anyway. And we have a second wood burning stove Paul is going to hook up so that it will be warm and toasty for both the laundress and the drying clothes. We have yet to figure out a way to install the wringer down there. We will have to see how that aspect works out.
Robin Brashear of Prepare and Pray fame told me that they lived near Amish families when they lived in Wisconsin a while back. It was apparently not uncommon for them to build laundry rooms off the side of their houses with water, a drain and a wood burning stove. It gets mighty, mighty cold there in the winter so they found a way to do their laundry with the same methods but under shelter. So while it does not get quite that cold here usually, we will be doing something similar in the basement.
I have several more posts to go about this topic of hand washing laundry so I will see you there!
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
At about sunrise on these fall mornings, I am in the kitchen every day making the first of several breakfasts that get served up through the course of the morning around here. Yesterday morning as I was moving about the kitchen, I glanced out our large south-facing window and could just see the blazing pink of a sunrise out of the corner of my eye. I never open up the east facing windows in the dining room this early because the shades and blinds make too much noise and I don’t want to wake anyone. So often this flash of pink out of the corner of my eye is all I see of the sunrise.
As it got just a little bit lighter, I glanced out again and noticed one of our Nigerian Dwarf does standing up on the large compost heap at the back of the pen quietly facing the sunrise. I stopped in my tracks and stood gazing at her. She was suffused with the achingly delicate light of a November sunrise in the mountains. It struck me that she was being nourished by this light, that she was drinking it in.
I realized that one large qualitative difference between her life and mine is that she is out there being nourished by sunrises and sunsets every single day. She doesn’t see glances of them through windows. She doesn’t surmise that a sunrise took place hours after the fact when she is led out to the spring house to be milked. She doesn’t lose consciousness of sunrises for days at a time due to her work schedule. She isn’t taken by surprise by the sudden dark because she missed seeing the sun set on a particular evening. No. She is a recipient of every sunrise and every sunset the earth has to offer throughout her life. She is out in them, under them, with them. She is painted by them, drenched by them, regulated by them, strengthened by them, lightened by them. Our Nigerian doe and the earthly cycles that support her are one, each giving meaning to the other in some subtle way.
While I am frequently consciously grateful for having a house that provides us with shelter and a sense of place, I also sometimes feel caged by the very walls that keep me warm and dry. I long to be physically strong enough and mentally free enough to spend more of my day feeling Nature and less of it thinking about or observing Nature.
I want my whole being to be physically soaked by the achingly delicate light of a November sunrise. I want any consciousness of separation or difference to vanish with the fully experienced sunset. I want to unlock the secrets of natural law and natural rhythms and be strong enough to live them, no matter what they are. Perhaps a daily dose of light-of-sunrise will help me live more naturally. Perhaps a daily dose of withdrawing-of-the-light will soften and strengthen me and help me live more deeply.
Perhaps Nature is already providing exactly what we need, in the doses and timings that we need, to become what we are meant to be. Perhaps all we need to do is step outside at the right times in order to go within and go within at the right times in order to be able to truly step outside.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
My wife, Leslie, is someone who never gets the proper credit or celebration she deserves. Born into a family where she was abused and scapegoated by both parents, her achievements and self-esteem were always undermined and negated. Furthermore, she was born on Halloween and so always had to share her birthday with trick-or-treaters. Her birth was never properly celebrated. On top of that two of our children were born on consecutive Mother’s Days and our last child was born on May 17th so there are three major birthdays right around Mother’s Day in our family. Again she does not get the time and attention she deserves even on the given day for mothers here in the US.
Typically on Halloween I have been responsible for creating a good Halloween for the children and blending that with a birthday celebration for Leslie. Leslie has tweaked how we celebrate Halloween to make it more natural and seasonal but I have been the one to implement most of the arrangements. Having to combine the two events has led to a good deal of holiday stress and a mixed result in the desired outcome of both events. This year, however, was different.
Last spring and summer, events revealed to Leslie and myself that the abusive, scapegoating dynamics that existed in her original family were still having a very negative effect on Leslie’s health and well being. In mid-summer her parents were given a choice to either take responsibility for their actions or lose the privilege of contact with Leslie and the rest of this family. They chose to give up contact. We will have more blog posts and videos on this subject in the future as they will perhaps be of value to others who have also been abused.
As Leslie’s 50th birthday was approaching, the condition of her parents’ disappearance was something that was obviously going to come to a head as being the oldest in her family, her 50th birthday was not only a milestone in her own life but in the lives of her parents and the rest of her family. So I reasoned that as her birthday approached, Leslie’s awareness that she was not loved by her parents was going to perhaps become painful. While this was probably inevitable, no one wants to see their loved ones suffer so I started thinking about what to do.
We have never had the material resources available to create the extravagant birthday celebrations common in our country and as our homesteading and natural living work have expanded, the time and energy needed to go into birthdays and holidays have been greatly reduced anyway. For example, now Leslie’s birthday and Halloween take place in the midst of a whole host of other chores and commitments, such as milking and tending to the animals as well as homeschooling and writing commitments. This year with Leslie’s adrenal fatigue recovery being my primary focus and then the unexpected addition of remodeling our house to effectively incorporate a wood burning stove plus the labor intensive addition of doing all of our laundry by hand also commanding considerable time and attention, I felt that I had very little left for Halloween and Leslie’s birthday.
I made the decision to not celebrate Halloween at all this year - not even our way - and to try to pull something out of nowhere for Leslie so that she could have a nourishing 50th birthday. When we told the kids about no Halloween this year, they did not complain or even show any hint of disappointment which was great. Then a few ideas began to come to me about how to make this milestone birthday special for my wife.
A few weeks ago I had the idea to get the old game Operation for Leslie as she had enjoyed playing with it as a kid - perhaps because she had always wanted to be a doctor. I was not sure how she would feel about me spending money on a game for her but it was meant to be. We were at a second hand store in our town one day. I was in the used toy room with the kids. I looked up at the games and there was Operation for 50¢. A week or so later there was another Operation game at the same store for the same price. I bought them both as I thought that there was a good chance that with all the small pieces in this game, many of them would probably be lost and the games might not be in good working order. But to my surprise a few days before Leslie’s birthday, the kids and I went through the games and found that both of them worked and had most of the pieces. Both also came with working batteries. We were able to put together a complete working game. This was great as Leslie had been hesitant to cancel Halloween but agreed to it when she came up with the idea of the family perhaps playing a game together that night. She just wanted the family to do something fun together. On Leslie’s birthday Operation came through. There is nothing better than giving an adult a game they enjoyed when they were a kid and then giving them the opportunity to play it with their children. On Leslie’s special night, this held true and everyone enjoyed operating on the electrically charged patient.
Other things started to come together as well. About a month before Leslie’s birthday, Anna and Faith ran into the office very excited about a present they were making for their mother’s birthday. They told me I could not know what it was. I thought it would be a drawing or a bracelet or something like that. What it turned out to be was a finger puppet play they adapted from one of Leslie’s favorite children’s books, Pelle’s New Suit by Elsa Beskow. The book is about how Pelle, a young Swedish boy, trades various chores with his grandmothers, mother and local tradesmen so that he can get his wool carded, spun, woven and tailored into a new suit.
The timing turned out to be remarkable. Just a few days before they put this play on for Leslie’s birthday, Leslie and both girls learned something of how to card and spin wool at Mabry Mill during the time Will was having his blacksmithing lesson. It suddenly became a shared goal of theirs to start carding and spinning here at home. The play itself was pure joy and Leslie was captivated by it. I could see by Anna’s and Faith’s excitement as they set up the stage that the play was going to be great so I asked them if I should videotape it. They said, “Definitely.”
Both Carolyn and Rowan also had ideas of individualized presents for their mother. Carolyn put a poem from one of Leslie’s favorite poets, Kabir, to music and sang it for her. Rowan made a snowman out of wood in wood shop at school and then used his woodburning kit at home to burn in a face and features. He is a great artist and did a really nice job. Leslie also received a timely gift of two bottles of sesame oil from a long time family friend, fellow Sahaj Marg practitioner and current Pockets of the Future blog and website reader.
However the biggest gift, in my mind, stemmed from an earlier experience that happened during my birthday last summer. Leslie had had the children draw me pictures of things they wished for me. Here are their pictures:
This a tree that Andrew drew. None of us can remember why he drew this but as it has turned out, we have really needed wood for our wood burning stove and for posts for our meditation building.
This is a watch Faith drew as we lost our clock in the living room when our DVD player was hit by lightening. She spent a long time drawing the picture, especially the books on the bookshelf. As I later thought about it, she was giving me the wish of time which is something that Leslie and I both need.
In this picture Anna makes her commitment to have the living room be picked up by evening for a year. She includes a variety of hearts in her work. Since that time Anna has taken to making cornbread, pancakes, bread, kefir, feta cheese and other meals. She also has taken a great interest in serving meals to the family. This has freed Leslie and me up a little bit to do other things as well as relieved some of the pressure surrounding meal times.
In this picture, Will’s birthday wish for me was that our 1986 Ford pick-up truck would be running again. Of all the pictures, this one had the biggest effect on me when I looked at it. It felt as if a subtle switch was thrown somewhere and that truck would actually run again. It was great that Will came up with this idea on his own because it meant that he realized that getting the truck to run again was really important. Up to that point, the truck had gone through a painful dying process stalling out at first and then having some electrical problems. I tried to put a new starter in but there was a bolt that was completely frozen in place and on and on. It seemed like the truck was essentially dead and would never run again.
We basically cannot manage the homestead without a sturdy pick-up and many projects, including the completion of our meditation building, can only move forward with us having a truck. But last spring every time it seemed like we could get it fixed, something else came up or the truck itself showed no signs of cooperation. It seemed like the truck was dead and wanted to remain so. Then two months or so after Will’s insightful birthday wish, the truck was fixed and is now running again. In fact it is running better now than when we first bought it. A lot of events had to unfold for things to come together for the truck to be repaired, including a lot changes in our lives like remodeling the house to put in a wood burning stove that increased the vacuum of need that pulled that truck back from the dead.
So this event changed my conception of what a birthday wish could be for another person. In the case of our children, they have no monetary resources or ability to shop for something but they do have something much more valuable: purity of heart, and the innocence of genuine goodwill for their family members. As our family moves from the world of wishes to the world of needs, we are constantly rewriting the way we do things like celebrate holidays and all of the other consumerism based training we have all received. This fruitful rewriting is now applying to birthdays as well.
So I took the birthday wish exercise a bit further. I sat down with our four younger kids and asked them what they thought their mom needed and what they thought they would like to wish for her. They came up with ideas and then went about the business of bringing their ideas into existence by drawing a blueprint of what they wanted their mother to have. All things start as an idea and then through thought become a plan or blue print. By giving her a picture of their idea, they were taking the first step towards the materialization of their wishes for her. They were giving the gift of a possibility that will grow into a reality in due course.
What better gift is there than to pray for the fulfillment of someone else’s need? To do this, the children had to take a vested interest in another person, the gift receiver, and they also had to take an interest in a particular project. They were volunteering to form a partnership they will be a part of to make their gift come about for their mom. When their drawn and colored wishes come to life, they will look at them and remember the picture and the intention. They will experience the spark they lit to make this birthday wish come true turning into a reality. It is not only a valuable gift but a valuable life lesson. So here are their pictures:
Andrew wished for a garden for his mom. He drew beds of squash, lettuce and spinach respectively.
When we went to Mabry Mill last week for Will’s blacksmithing tutorial, Leslie got to see and hear a spinning wheel at work. She immediately felt a sense of well being watching and hearing the wool being spun into yarn and resolved to have a spinning wheel some day. Knowing this, Faith drew her mom working at her very own spinning wheel for her birthday wish.
Anna chose to draw her mom an orchard. This orchard also includes blueberry and raspberry bushes - all of which Leslie wants to create here.
Will, the person who is training our Will to be a blacksmith, told us last week about his wife Joanna. Among other things, Joanna apparently has great expertise in making goat milk soap. Leslie was very excited to learn this because making soap, and goat milk soap in particular, is a skill she has been wanting to learn for years. Will and Joanna will be coming to visit us soon and Leslie can’t wait to learn more from Joanna. It is interesting that Leslie has been wanting to make soap for years and now it seems this need is about to become a reality. So Will chose this for his birthday wish for his mom.
So as it turned out, this was Leslie’s best birthday ever. In my observation, this birthday was powered completely by love. Often birthdays and holidays become a mix of past training and family obligations with the real meaning of the celebration no longer in the forefront of anyone’s consciousness. The real meaning of celebrating someone’s birthday is that you are celebrating the persons birth. You are saying, “I am happy you were born.” You are grateful to God for bringing that person into your life and you acknowledge that they themselves are a gift to you. So this is how Leslie’s 50th birthday was celebrated. By removing those who did not view her as a gift and who were not grateful for her birth and by removing the distractions and other unnecessary additions to the day, we were able to convey the true essence of our love and appreciation for her. And that’s what people really want to feel on their birthday or any other day - love and appreciation. Nothing fills a void in one’s heart like love.
All the best,
Paul
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
After reading Chapter 1 of Swiss Family Robinson in which the Robinson family finds themselves unexpectedly stranded on a nearly sinking ship, the first project suggested in the Prepare and Pray curriculum is to pack a survival kit. Now we couldn’t afford to literally pack such a kit but it occurred to me that even just talking about what to pack in such a kit would make an excellent thought exercise. So first I read my younger children the list that the Brashears include in the curriculum and we discussed each item and why it might be included in a survival kit:
Solar rescue blanket/space blanket
Fifty feet of nylon cord Waterproof matches/magnesium fire starter
Candles
Plastic whistle
Small flashlight
Small SHARP pocket knife, or utility tool with blade of carbon steel
Water purifier/iodine tablets
Plastic tarp/small tent
Metal cup/mess kit
MRE’s (meals ready to eat), dehydrated foods (hot cocoa mix, complete pancake mix, jerky, powdered milk, TVP, ramen noodles, etc.)
Pack minimal, nonperishable survival meals for three days to which you only need to add water and/or heat. Multiply items which require individual use according to your family size such as blankets, mess kits. Put whistles on a cord pinned with a safety pin to small children’s clothing. DO NOT hang around the neck of small children.
A number of these things the children had never heard of so we Googled items like space blankets (which created much wonder) and magnesium first starters and I explained to them what jerky, TVP, and ramen noodles are. I then asked them to brainstorm about what other items they thought should be or could be included in a survival kit. After considerable discussion and adding and subtracting various items, they (10, 9, 8 and 6 year olds) finally added the following:
Soap Camping towels Solar shower bag
Very small editions of our sacred literature and pictures
Mama’s daily medicine
First aid kit Wild food ID cards
Food mixes we make ourselves
Safety pins (for the above mentioned plastic whistles)
That night at dinner, I asked our older two children (16 and 13 years old) and my husband what they thought of the list so far and what they might include. My husband talked to everyone about LED flashlights and Carolyn and Rowan added the rest:
The flashlights should be LED’s
Insect repellent, depending upon season
Sunblock (really necessary for me!) Emergen-C packets Compass/GPS Hand-cranked radio
Any necessary documents, depending upon the type of emergency
A change of clothes
It was very revealing to me the kinds of items the children thought to include in a survival kit and how their minds worked over the subject. It was kind of like those homeschooling stories you read about children being schooled in some interesting literary way, say, who have to suddenly take a typical mainstream proficiency test. The parents worry about how the children will do but the children end up doing great on the test, leaving the parents in wonder at how much the children picked up they didn’t know about. So I like the way the children are thinking about the necessities of life. If I had to go through an emergency, I would be happy to go through it with them. They have good heads on their shoulders.
The next day I came across a page I hadn’t had a chance to look at before on a web site I really like and appreciate. Thomas J. Elpel has several web sites tied together which you can enter at Thomas J. Elpel’s Web World Portal. The page I saw for the first time is here under Wilderness Survival Supplies. Here Mr. Elpel has an array of neat survival tools that are small enough to be easily carried. He notes:
However, I’ve never liked survival kits, mostly because it is too easy to leave them behind. A good survival kit should be there for an unexpected emergency. What if you leave the kit in the glove box because you intend to stay within a few hundred yards of the car? But then you find yourself going just a little farther to see what is around the corner, and around the next corner after that? That happens to me all the time. I want survival gear that is on my body whether I expect to be in a potential survival situation or not!
Thus was born the Always-With-You Compact Wilderness Survival Kit, featuring gear that I have on me at all times, regardless of whether I am attending a wedding in the city or hiking in the mountains. The kit includes the book 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive, which I do not carry in the field, but it clearly outlines the essentials of wilderness survival. Carry the book knowledge in your head, and the additional equipment in your pockets, and you will always be prepared.
Go to his The Always-With-You Compact Wilderness Survival Kit page and read about all the tiny items that can do big jobs like start fires, light your way or sharpen knives. Everything there is so practical and well designed.
Mr. Elpel’s tag line for this page reads
The best survival kit is one that will be on you when you need it!
So true and I would add that the best survival kit is one that will be in you when you need it which is why we are using the Prepare and Pray curriculum now. It is giving us all a chance to think together about changing times, memorize guidelines and scriptures, mold ourselves to a new life, encourage adaptability and imagination, and strengthen the habit of praying about the future and looking within for direction. The best preparation for an uncertain future is to become:
So where is wisdom? Wisdom must be permanent. Babuji said that a fool is wise after the event but not for long. A wise man is wise during the event. He knows, and now he will not do it again. A saint is wise before the event. He doesn’t have to see to know; he doesn’t have to experience to know. Heart Speak 2004, vol. 2, p. 49 –Rev. Chariji
We gained a great deal from approaching this project just as a thought experiment. I am sure we will gain much more from actually putting such a kit together and using it as a family. Whenever we do that, I will post again only that post will certainly have pictures. It is hard to take pictures of thoughts!
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
It is a gloriously beautiful day today. 70 degrees, breezy and not a cloud in the sky. Pretty amazing for November 1 and pretty amazing weather in which to hand wash the laundry outside. Every single extra time I get to wash the laundry outside at this point feels like a “win” to me. So I washed away. My husband helped which takes considerable strain off of my joints.
In the middle of washing, we had to take our oldest off to a choral audition so Paul decided to load up the back of the pick-up with hay and take the children on a hay ride after dropping off Carolyn. Lucy, our border collie, and Ramone, are human loving Nigerian Dwarf buck, came with us. Everyone had so much fun. I sat in the back on the hay with the children on the way home and just loved it. I could see the rolling hills and the distant Blue Ridge Mountains so much better than from inside the truck. I was awash in gratitude all over again for at last being in Floyd country.
When we got back, I resumed my outdoor laundering. I save socks for last because I have to scrub each one on the washboard and that takes considerable time and effort. Today as I carefully washed and scrubbed each sock, I enjoyed thinking of each person to whom that particular sock belonged. Washing clothes by hand, I realized, is like the slow cooking of food. The length of time and degree of consciousness required provide an extended time to pray through and over what you are doing. I truly believe this makes food more nutritious and it certainly gives hand laundering deeper meaning.
As Lalaji said in the movie we have about him, “It is not possible for time to be wasted if it is spent thinking of God.” (rough paraphrase)
As I washed the socks of my hardworking, visionary husband and my lovely aspiring opera singer and toucher of hearts through song, I thought of a Navajo prayer song I have loved for many years. It was just the thing to muse over and sort of sing quietly to myself as I washed the socks in which they walk. I found I automatically changed the words as I could remember them to “he” or “she” rather than “I”:
Today I will walk out, today everything evil will leave me,
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever,
nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.
In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.
With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty,
living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.
(There seem to be a number of versions of this beautiful prayer/song. I found this one here.)
May my beloved family walk in beauty in socks washed in beauty, hanging in beauty under a beautiful sky.
From the beautiful mountains of southwest Virginia,
Leslie
If you would like to support the Pockets of the Future Project, prayers, encouragement and donations are always welcome.
Our homeschool here is called The Lionsgate School. Its motto is “Self-Sufficiency, Social Service, Spiritual Knowledge.” It is somewhat patterned after the gurukula of ancient India and draws its philosophy of life and education entirely from the teachings of Sahaj Marg. For quite some time I have wanted to start a separate blog just for The Lionsgate School but now is not the time to take on something new! So I will just keep posting about our homeschooling thoughts and experiences here right along with all manner of homesteading, homemaking and other subjects. Perhaps some day I will organize it all and put it in one place on another blog.
We have been homeschooling our children under a religious exemption for years now. It is a freedom America offers for which I am deeply grateful. I just learned that I need to apply for this again in Floyd County as we received our exemption back in Louisa County. In reviewing the explanatory letter I am sending to the man in charge of these things at the School Board, I thought I would also share it here with you all in case it may be helpful in some way. The following includes just a fraction of our thoughts about what a sahaj or natural, spiritual education may include and what some of its goals may be. I have been thinking about this subject for 16 years now and pray daily for further instruction and revelation about what a real education for our children is, as He would want it to be. I am pleased for what has been revealed so far but know that there is much more to go in discovering what is a sahaj education.
Here follows the major portion of the application letter:
My husband and I are members of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission which makes available to all interested the Sahaj Marg path to spiritual realization. I have been a member for nearly 30 years and my husband has been a member for 15 years. Sahaj Marg (or Natural Path) is a method of raja yoga (yoga of the mind) adapted and simplified to suit the needs of contemporary life. In practice it is a silent meditation on the heart that gradually brings the entire human system into a natural balance with Reality. My husband, Paul, and I are both completely dedicated to the goals of the Mission and the teachings of its president and spiritual head, Shri Parthasarathi Rajagopalachari.
Family life and the education of our children are two elements of Sahaj Marg life with which my husband and I are deeply involved. The fruits of a spiritually based family life are very evident to us, with the responsibility of providing our children a natural or spiritualized education ever before our eyes. I have been researching what a natural education for our children might look like for 16 years now and for the past five years or so, my husband and I have been developing Sahaj Marg based curricula for our children, some of which are also available to other interested parents.
Sahaj Marg teaching emphasizes simplicity, naturalness and balance in all areas of life. My husband and I have found through years of practice that seeking what is truly natural in any arena of thought or activity is a transformative experience. In terms of education, we find our transformation taking place with respect to the goals of education, the content of education and the methods of education. While keeping our children home with us during their childhoods is a necessary second step in giving them a natural education (with the first step being to naturalize ourselves), there is also much more to be done. I would like to take a moment to briefly describe some of the thoughts and teachings that guide us with respect to goals, content and methods. (All text in italics comes from talks given by Shri Rajagopalachari and form a part of the Mission literature.)
The Goal: Our homeschool which we call The Lionsgate School “must strive to produce young ladies and young men who are balanced, with both the soul and the body working in unison, with the soul guiding the body in its activities, and especially, the mind working under the guidance of the soul. Intellect is not at all important. We can see how modern education has produced intellects like robotic machines. The computer is not the only example, but those who operate the computers are also examples of this materialisation—of what should have been spiritualisation.” The Lionsgate School was not established to “churn out intellectuals of whom we have enough in this world. Intellect alone divorced from moral values, has created all the havoc in this world, starting from the Middle Ages—wars of expansion, wars of acquisition, wars of destruction. And that is the way this world is headed.” Indeed, The Lionsgate School was established to give our children a channel along which to become balanced people. Shri Rajagopalachari tells us that “what this world needs today [is] balanced people. Not educated people, not intelligent people, not rich people, not geniuses, but perfectly balanced individuals who can shape the destiny of their future and the destiny of their world, by knowing how to do it without using any power, except the power that is in their heart which we call love.”
The Content: As the basic premise, we start with this. “He is in the heart of everything. He is in the heart of a piece of stone. He is in the heart of the earthworm, a cockroach, and also of the highest ever developed special personalities of this world. So why this exercise? Why are we not just content with saying, “Yes, He is in me; it is enough.” It is precisely because having Him there, we have lost touch with Him. We have lost the enormous support, inner support, moral support, life support that He can give us.”
We add to it this: “We are able to deal with the body of our students and with the mind of our students. The third, but the most important piece of education, the inner education of the science of the soul, the atma bodha [self-realisation], is not at all taken into consideration today, and children are just told, “This is enough, that is enough. You have a physical body strong enough to handle the factors of life. Go out and earn your money. We have given you adequate education.”
In India especially, education is only for the purpose of getting a job and earning money; there is no knowledge in it.” This is, of course, no less the case here in America. This modern trend of one-sided education needs to be rectified everywhere. The only way for my husband and me to fulfill this responsibility to our children in present times is to educate them at home ourselves where we can see to it that they will receive both an inner and an outer education simultaneously and where their position in the family will feel secure to them from spending so much time within it. By inner education I mean one that teaches morals, character development, regulation of the mind, sensitivity, the science of spirituality, a congruent relationship with the Self and so much more. “[A] proper system of education, what we call in our Mission a value-based education, should teach us there are inner values which are as important, if not more important than outer values.”
At the same time, our children’s “outer” education must be academically rigorous while also being suffused with the above idea that God is in everything. Nothing transforms natural science, for instance, like the knowledge that He is what enlivens that which is being studied. Nature is full of lessons for us. We must study it thoroughly and with discipline in order to develop the art of effectively listening to it. Public schools today are not only ill-equipped to teach in such a way but are legally prevented from doing so. My husband and I, on the other hand, are currently teaching in just this way at home with gratifying results.
The Method: We are taught in Sahaj Marg that the method of teaching anything is critical to a successful outcome. Methods of education must be spiritually and scientifically sound. Methods must be sensitive, natural and developmentally appropriate. Methods must not involve force or other artificial means. Children must be brought up within the bosom of the family with love and discipline. They must be educated in the broadest sense by adults who are dedicated to their own evolution and who encourage their children with love and by setting a sterling example. Those who act as teachers must be so sensitive to their children that they know what is to be taught, when and how. In my experience, meditative prayer is the most effective way to achieve this sensitivity. Further, teachers/parents must gradually bring their children along to their children’s responsibility to themselves for knowing what they have to learn and why and when. Eventually the responsibility is equally divided between the teacher/parent and the child. Such teamwork towards a balanced education can only take place in the home where individualized relationships can allow for such subtle development.
At this time, the foundation of Charlotte Mason type methods and standards together with wide ranging, high quality content choices that reflect our motto of “Self-Sufficiency, Social Service, Spiritual Knowledge” seems the closest in method and spirit to the teachings of our Mission. This combination carried out within vital one-on-one family/educational relationships encourages academic rigor, self-discovery through concrete homesteading and life skill building and an ever expanding spiritual knowledge and understanding. It combines ancient streams of education with modern concerns for a future that will hold profound and often difficult changes for everyone. It is also a basic tenant of the Shri Ram Chandra Mission that education is a lifelong affair. As such, the education of children should be so natural and such a part of family life that it will never occur to them that their “graduation” as seniors should have any effect whatsoever on the intensity with which they continue to educate themselves. As our children see their parents on a very steep learning curve every single day, there is no doubt they will carry a similar enterprising spirit and love of learning into their futures and pass it on to their children as well.
I will close with two more quotes from Shri Rajagopalachari which speak to both the strength that comes from keeping our young children close as well as the overall goal of all of our educating and parenting efforts:
“It is nice that you have free time with [your son]. Little ones must have all their time with mother, and even when they are six or seven years old, should not be separated for long. I think it makes them feel less lonely and frightened when they grow up. Love is such a wonderful thing, and if one is loved right from the cradle, such a person can become anything in life.”
And finally the quote my husband and I personally refer to over and over again:
“My Master wished our children to be model children, then model
