OutDigest: [New post] Tending Seeds; Tending the Soul

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Tending Seeds; Tending the Soul

by mseddy

For traditional farmers, Winter is the time for staying in, hunkering down, and fattening up, because when Spring comes, there's work to be done. Among Michigan's First Nations peoples, wintertime is the time for gathering around the fire, remembering the wisdom of the ancestors, and sharing stories and songs. For me, the period from late October until my birthday, which is near the Celtic early Spring celebration, Imbolc, in early February, is a time of remembering the beloved dead and the wisdom of the ancestors; a time to deep clean and organize my home; a time to daydream; and a time to plan. Winter is when I tend the seeds of new ideas and try to create conditions where my ideas may sprout and eventually bloom over the coming year.

This winter, I'm gestating a new self. Since December 25, I have symbolically entered Earth Mother's womb by going to the basement every day and sorting through 25 crates of hanging files from my teaching career. Ever since I started student teaching, I've kept the lessons I designed and examples of student work, so that when I needed to teach similar content in the future, I'd have lessons on hand and wouldn't have to "recreate the wheel" each time.

When I left the classroom in 2019, suddenly and traumatized, I didn't have the energy to sort through a quarter-century's labors, so I brought all the crates home knowing I was bringing home LOTS of useless paper. As time passed, I sorted and organized all the crates with the idea in mind that I may like to teach again someday, so should the opportunity arise, I would be ready to go.

Now that I see the state of education in the USA, I don't even want to teach at the college level. I don't want to be associated with formal education ever again, as far as I can tell. As a result, a major purge is underway. So far, I've filled four paper grocery bags with lessons, hand-outs, and study prompts. As I work, the lines of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson in the play The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, as they become disillusioned with their professions, echo in my mind:

Henry: I shall never teach again.

Ralph: I shall never preach again.

I gave up preaching in 1986 and teaching in 2019; both are now fully in my past and there's no going back.

As I walked upstairs after sorting a very full crate of American literature lessons, from pre-Colonial, Indigenous texts all the way through to Contemporary literature, I realized that this sorting process will result in not only a new Archive, but a new self—a person who reads, writes, and studies for personal reasons, not in service of the growth and development of my students.