2023 (#50) : Vivian Paley , Montessori , Emerson , I Ching , Numbers/Bemidbar 21:8-9 , Philolaus , Diamond Sutra , Sri Ramana Maharshi , Jung , John 15:4 , Derrida , Tehillim/Psalms 52:10 , Mathew 2:11 , Rilke

I am still listening to what the children say, but since the younger children disclose more of themselves as characters in a story than as participants in a discussion, I must now follow the plot as carefully as the dialogue. School begins to make sense to the children when they pretend it is something else. And teaching, in a way, makes sense to me when I pretend the classroom is a stage and we are all actors telling our stories.

• Vivian Paley

So today the child begins to be visualized as it should
be, as the connection, the joining link between different
phases of history and different levels of civilization.

• Montessori

we distinguish the announcements of the soul, its manifestations of its own nature, by the term REVELATION. these are always attended by the emotion of the sublime, for this communication is an influx of the Divine mind into our mind. it is an ebb of the individual rivulet before the flowing surges of the sea of life, every distinct apprehension of this central commandment agitates men with awe and delight.

• Emerson

When, in accord with this, movement follows the law of heaven, man is innocent and without guile. His mind is natural and true, unshadowed by reflection or ulterior designs. For wherever conscious purpose is to be seen, there the truth and innocence of nature have been lost. 

• I Ching , Hexagram 25

Moshe made a bronze snake and put it on the pole; if a snake had bitten someone, then, when he looked toward the bronze snake, he stayed alive.

• Numbers/Bemidbar 21:8-9 (“In the Wilderness”)

This is the state of affairs about nature and harmony. The essence of things is eternal; it is a unique and divine nature, the knowledge of which does not belong to man.

• Philolaus, Fragment DK 44B 6a

… such men will not fall back to cherishing the idea of an ego entity, a personality, a being, or a separated individuality. they will neither fall back to cherishing the idea of things as having intrinsic qualities, nor even of things as devoid of intrinsic qualities.

• Diamond Sutra

There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of God is absolute and requires no object.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

Christ reigns over all things as God, who, on the outstretched cross, reaches out through the four extremities of the wood to the four parts of the wide world, that he may draw unto life the peoples from all lands.

• Jung

Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

• John 15:4

of language to itself and to meaning, and so forth, it also tells of the need for figuration , for myth, for tropes, for twists and turns.

• Derrida

I am like a leafy olive tree
in the house of God;
I put my trust in the grace of God
forever and ever.

• Tehillim/Psalms 52:10

they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. 

• Mathew 2:11

awakens from the slumbering nectar
luminous twin significance
of sun and earth; presence and joy – immensense!

• Rilke

2029 (#49) : Emerson , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Mathew 5:7-9 , David Elkind , Luke 17:20-21 , Rilke

The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which, from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end. 

• Emerson

Attachment destroys courage. The giver is always ready to give. The taker is absent. Freedom means letting go. People just do not care to let go everything. They do not know that the finite is the price of the infinite, as death is the price of immortality. Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up, for nothing is your own.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.

• Mathew 5:7-9

Thoughts come into our minds by avenues which we never voluntarily opened. Character teaches over our head.

• Emerson

Many of us can easily observe the benefits of integrating play, love, and
work at home. During the first few years of their lives, young children are—in a quite literal sense—visiting a foreign country for the first time. Because kids do not think in adult concepts and categories, they often approach this “new land” from many different perspectives simultaneously. Metaphorically speaking, they observe water and sand, trees and woods, plants and animals, the moon, the sun, the stars, all of it, as if through the eyes of an artist, or a naturalist, or a writer, or a scientist. When we offer our children opportunities to explore
this new and exciting world in their own time and at their own pace, we open them up to powerful learning experiences they could not encounter in any other way. Why intrude on a time when children are instinctively learning with such joy and enthusiasm? Why rush babies and preschoolers and school kids into adult-led learning experiences.

• David Elkind

And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo, here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

• Luke 17:20-21

All these things at last play out:
darkness and brilliant light,
flower and book.

• Rilke

2023 (#48) : Malaguzzi , Vivian Paley , Meister Eckhart , John 15:9 , William Blake , Derrida , Luke 1:18

We teachers must see ourselves as researchers, able to
think, and to produce a true curriculum, a curriculum
produced from all of the children.

What we so often do is impose adult time on
children’s time and this negates children being able to
work with their own resources.

• Loris Malaguzzi

Once again, the decisive factor for me was curiosity. When my intention was
limited to announcing my own point of view, communication came to a halt. My
voice drowned out the children’s. However, when they said things that surprised
me, exposing ideas I did not imagine they held, my excitement mounted and I
could feel myself transcribing their words even as they spoke. I kept the children
talking, savoring the uniqueness of responses so singularly different from mine.
The rules of teaching had changed; I now wanted to hear the answers I could not
myself invent. I Q scores were irrelevant in the realms of fantasy, friendship, and
fairness where every child could reach into a deep wellspring of opinions and
images. Indeed, the inventions tumbled out as if they simply had been waiting for
me to stop talking and begin listening.

• Vivian Paley

know God by becoming God-like, it is clear that this birth is the initial necessity.

• Meister Eckhart

 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

• John 15:9

Then Mary burst forth into a Song! she flowed like a River of
Many Streams in the arms of Joseph & gave forth her tears of joy
Like many waters, and Emanating into gardens & palaces upon
Euphrates & to forests & floods & animals wild & tame

• William Blake

a certain theater of forgiveness puts in place or brings light.

• Derrida

He will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from birth.

• Luke 1:18

2023 (#47) : Nietzsche , Tehillim/Psalms 119:130 , Emerson , Mark 3:35 , Montessori , Malaguzzi , Lella Gandini , John 4:34 , Eric Neumann

one returns newborn, having shed one’s
skin, with a more delicate taste for
joy, with a tenderer tongue for all good things, with merrier
senses, with a second dangerous innocence in joy, more childlike and yet a hundred times subtler than one has ever been
before.

• Nietzsche

The unfolding of your words gives light

• Psalms/Tehillim 119:130

Those who are capable of humility,

of justice, of love, of aspiration, stand already on a platformthat commands the sciences and arts, speech and poetry, actionand grace. For whoso dwells in this moral beatitude alreadyanticipates those special powers which men prize so highly.

• Emerson

Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.

• Mark 3:35

To stimulate life,–leaving it then free to develop, to unfold,–herein lies the first task of the educator —

• Montessori

What we want to do is
activate within children the desire and will and great
pleasure that comes from being the authors of their
own learning.

• Malaguzzi

Making learning visible is the process of documentation and assessment that takes place during experiences conducted by teachers and
children together. Documentation truly makes visible how teachers and children construct learning together through strategies that are in harmony with children’s interests and teachers’ shared intentions.

• Lella Gandini

the voluptuousness of a triumphant gratitude that
eventually still has to inscribe itself in cosmic letters on the
heaven of concepts

• Nietzsche

³⁴ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 

• John 4:34

His work consists in reuniting the parts that have been separated
from the godhead—the Shekinah, God’s female immanence
, which has been wandering about in exile
—with God’s transcendence. Man’s power to accomplish this by his mystical actions, this great work, which is a creative effort in regard to both world and godhead, constitutes the priestly dignity of man—and in Jewish mysticism
, of the Jew.

• Eric Neumann

the rejoicing of strength that is returning. of a reawakened
faith in a tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. of a sudden
sense and anticipation of a future, of impending adventures, of
seas that are open again, of goals that are permitted again.
believed again.

• Nietzsche

2023 (#46) : John Ashbery , Emerson , Malaguzzi , 2 Kings 5:22 , Luke 1:30 , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Emerson , Derrida

One of us advances on the bridge
as on a carpet. Life — it’s marvelous —

• John Ashbery

Every proverb, every book, every by word that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages.

• Emerson

Each one of us needs to be able to play with the
things that are coming out of the world of children.

• Loris Malaguzzi

Everything is all right

• 2 Kings 5:22

You have found favor with God.

• Luke 1:30

With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, nor attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and lovable.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

And this because the heart in thee is the heart in all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly an endless circulation through all men as water of the globe is all one sea and, truly seen, its tide is one.

• Emerson

… an invisible passage, always invisible, for the continuous flowing of blood, absolute, absolved in the sense that nothing seemed to come between the source and the mouth … I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe, a suction point rather than that very hard weapon with which one must inscribe, incise, choose, calculate, take ink before filtering the inscribable, playing the keyboard on the screen … no more toil, no responsibility, no risk of bad taste nor of violence, the blood delivers itself all alone, the inside gives itself up and you can do as you like with it …

• Derrida

2023 (#45) : Tao Te Ching , Emerson , Mark 1:8 , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , Karen Horney , 2 Kings 19:26 , Revelation 2:7

Do you have the patience to wait

till your mud settles and the water is clear?

Can you remain unmoving

till the right action arises by itself?

• Tao Te Ching (Translation: Stephen Mitchell)

Let man then learn revelation of all nature and all thought to his heart; this; namely; that the highest dwells with him; that the sources of nature are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is there.

• Emerson

He will baptize you with^[f] the Holy Spirit.

• Mark 1:8

In the immensity of consciousness a light appears, a tiny point thatmoves rapidly and traces shapes, thoughts and feelings, conceptsand ideas, like a pen writing on paper. And the ink that leaves a trace is memory. You are that tiny point and by your movement theworld is ever re-created. Stop moving and there will be no world.Look within and you will find that the point of light is thereflection of the immensity of light in the body as the sense ‘I am’.There is only light all else appears.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Self-knowledge, then, is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of spontaneous growth.

• Karen Horney

 like plants in the field,

    like tender green shoots,like grass sprouting on the roof,

• 2 Kings19:26

 which is in the paradise of God

• Revelation 2:7

He believes that he cannot escape from his good. The things that are really for thee gravitate for thee. 

• Emerson

2023 (#44) : Tao Te Ching , Sri Ramana Maharshi , John Ashbery , Heidegger , 2 Kings 22:6 , Revelation 1:15 , Mark 1:13

Empty your mind of all thoughts.

Let your heart be at peace.

Watch the turmoil of beings,

but contemplate their return

• Tao Te Ching

 the individual ‘I’ falls down abashed as soon as one reaches the Heart and immediately Reality manifests itself spontaneously as ‘I-I’. Although it reveals itself as ‘I’, it is not the ego but Perfect Being, God.

• Sri Ramana Maharshi

You slid down on your knees

For those precious jewels of spring water

Planted on the moss, before they got soaked up

• John Ashbery

 This responding is hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.

• Heidegger

the carpenters, the builders and the masons.

• 2 Kings 22:6

 His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters.

• Revelation 1:15

He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.

• Mark 1:13

Stitching the white of lilacs together with lightning

• John Ashbery

2023 (#43) : Loris Malaguzzi , Yesha’yahu , Derrida , Heidegger , Emerson , 1 Chronicles , Revelation , Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj , John Ashbery

The supportive atmosphere of the school in principle is open and democratic, inviting exchange of ideas and suppressing distance between people; thus, in all circumstances, the school maintains its effectiveness and a welcoming feelng to all concerned.

• Malaguzzi

Sing to Adonai a new song!
Let his praise be sung from the ends of the earth
by those sailing the sea and by everything in it,
by the coastlands and those living there.

• Isaiah/Yesha’yahu 

this faith without dogma which makes its way
through the risks of absolute night, cannot be contained in any traditional opposition,
for example that between reason and mysticism.

• Derrida

Man speaks in that he responds to language. This responding is hearing. It hears because it listens to the command of stillness.

• Heidegger

In ascending
to this primary and aboriginal sentiment we have come from
our remote station on the circumference instantaneously to the
centre of the world, where, as in the closet of God, we see causes,
and anticipate the universe, which is but a slow effect.

• Emerson

Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad

• 1 Chronicles

See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. 

• Revelation

There is no need of a way out! Don’t you see that a way out is also a part of the dream? All you have to do is to see the dream as dream.

• Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The bars had been removed from all the windows

There was something quiet in the way the light entered

Her troussaeau. Wine fished out of the sea — they hadn’t known

We were coming relaxed forever

• John Ashbery

2020 (#42) : Daniel Goleman , Loris Malaguzzi , Montessori , Luke 17:20 , Tao Te Ching , Derrida , Ruth 4:1 , Ruth 2:20 , John Ashbery

From the most primitive root, the brainstem, emerged the emotional centers. Millions of years later in evolution, from these emotional areas evolved the thinking brain or “neocortex,” the great bulb of convoluted tissues that make up the top layers. The fact that the thinking brain grew from the emotional reveals much about the relationship of thought to feeling; there was an emotional brain longbefore there was a rational one.

• Daniel Goleman

We need to know how to recognize a new presence,
how to wait for the child

• Loris Malaguzzi

Instead of the instinct of possession, on this higher level we see three things : to know, to love and to serve.

• Montessori

the kingdom of God is within you.

• Luke 17:20

All things are born from it
It nourishes infinite worlds,
yet it doesn’t hold on to them

• Tao Te Ching

– It is not a non-knowing installed in the form of “I don’t want to know.” I am all for knowledge [laughter], for science, for analysis, and . . . well, ok! So, this non-knowing . . . it is not a limit . . . of a knowledge, the limit in the progression of a knowledge. It is, in some way, a structural non-knowing, which is heterogeneous, foreign to knowledge. It’s not just the unknown that could be known and that I give up trying to know. It is something in relation to which knowledge is out of the question.

• Derrida

• “Come over here, my friend, and sit down.” 
• Ruth 4:1

Love, tender feelings, and sexual satisfaction entail parasympathetic arousal—the physiological opposite of the “fight-orflight” mobilization shared by fear and anger. The parasympathetic pattern, dubbed the “relaxation response,” is a bodywide set of reactions that generates a general state of calm and contentment, facilitating cooperation.

• Daniel Goleman

 “He has not stopped showing his kindness to the living and the dead.”

• Ruth 2:20

And when I specify that is is a non-knowing and not the secret, I mean that when a text appears to be crypted, it is not at all in order to calculate or to intrigue or to bar access to something that I know and that others must not know; it is a more ancient, more originary experience, if you will, of the secret.

• Derrida

1. And then? Colors and names of colors,

The knowledge of you a certain color had?

The whole song bag, the eternal oom-pah refrain?

• John Ashbery

2023 (#41) : Derrida , Mathew , Eric Neumann , Jung

Eating God’s words constitutes a parallel to the Holy Sacrament—here too, a divine transubstantiation takes place. And that has left its mark on modern hermeneutics, which of course has its roots in biblical interpretation

• Derrida

 “How blessed are the pure in heart!
for they will see God. –

• Mathew/Mattityahu – gift of YAHWEH

This heavenly tree that shines by night is also the soul tree of rebirth, in which every creature who dies becomes a celestial light and returns as a star to the eternity of the Great Round.

• Eric Neumann

7 How blessed are those who show mercy!

for they will be shown mercy.

• Mathew, Mattityahu, gift of Yahweh, 5:7

For me, there is no such thing as ‘religion’. Within what one calls religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or other religions — there are again tensions, heterogeneity, disruptive volcanos — sometimes texts, especially those of the prophets, which cannot be reduced to an institution, to a corpus, to a system. I want to keep the right to read these texts in a way which has to be constantly reinvented. It is something which can be totally new at every moment.

• Derrida

The identity of sea and night sky, the symbols of childbearing
motherhood, recurs in the symbol of the Shekinah, the sea of the godhead, which renews by night. And here too the tree of birth, rebirth,
and fate is related to these symbols.

• Eric Neumann

Depths and surface should mix so that new life can develop. Yet the new life does not develop outside of us, but within us.

• Jung

Then I would distinguish between religion and faith. If by religion you mean a set of beliefs, dogmas, or institutions — the church, e.g. — then I would say that religion as such can be deconstructed, and not only can be but should be deconstructed, sometimes in the name of faith. For me, as for you, Kierkegaard is here a great example of some paradoxical way of contesting religious discourse in the name of a faith that cannot be simply mastered or domesticated or taught or logically understood, a faith that is paradoxical.

• Derrida

And the childbearing tree may be further differentiated into
treetop and nest, crib and cradle.

• Eric Neumann