Bird Droppings July 5, 2010
Searching for heart

It has been several months since I took a book to school to share a passage from with one of my students. Yesterday as I was sorting through my books I happened to pick it up and bring it home to use for my research. I have several students in advisement who are in technical classes working in health ops which is a preparatory program for nursing. The little book, Listening with Your Heart, is written by Dr. Wayne Peale MD, an Iroquois on his mother’s side.

“As a medical student I was being trained to hear hearts with my stethoscope, but found I was missing a great deal by not listening with my heart” Dr. Wayne Peale

I was giving or proctoring an End of Course Test last semester during the fourth period. One of the questions was from a poem or passage about a colt that was not winter-broke. I liked the term winter-broke. For those of us in the south perhaps it has little meaning and perhaps a culturally difficult passage. The term winter-broke is about being use to the winter, snow flakes, cold, steam from your breath and other idiosyncrasies of the cold. A baby horse new to the world would be spooked with a snow fall. Maybe chasing snow flakes or running from in the case of the story.
However as the question was answered for example was the author; D. empathetic to the plight of the colt. Other answers used words such as afraid, confused, etc. One of my students asked what is empathetic. Being a language arts test and such I could not tell the definition of an answer. But I saw my book on the table so much about empathy and my own desire to say the answer because I too lived by that word.

“The white man talks about the mind and body and spirit as if they are separate. For us they are one. Our whole life is spiritual, from the time we get up until we go to bed.” Yakima healer

Just prior to school being out for the summer I had been dealing with a situation and a student who was on the verge of being expelled and much of it from my own fault. The student is refusing to do a required program. In refusing to do the assignment he is getting irate and argumentative often to a point of school disruption. When you carefully look at the student’s disability each aspect of it is in responses that are given, lack of control, obsessive behavior, emotional issues, anger management issues and authority issues. A slight change and the problem could be solved. Why not do the same work in a different manner? Of course it was not in the confines of “the program” which would upset some administration. Should I have empathy for the student, stand up to or should I “try to stay in the box”. As Dr. Peale learned and discusses sometimes you need to teach from the heart as well.
One day perhaps I will study linguistics and language. I have always been fascinated with words and meanings. As I looked through Dr. Peale’s book a Navajo word caught my attention.

“Hozho (HO-zo) – A complex Navajo philosophical, religious, and aesthetic concept roughly translated as “beauty”. Hozho also means seeking and incorporating aesthetic qualities into life, it means inner peace and harmony, and making the most of all that surrounds us. It refers to a positive beautiful, harmonious, happy environment that must be constantly created by thought and deed. Hozho encourages us to go in beauty and to enjoy the gifts of life and nature and health.” Listening with your heart

In a recent writing seminar the lead teacher offered that reading a passage can aid in eliciting descriptive phrases and sentences, and to encourage students to illiterate and expound on ideas more so. Here is a word that has so many meanings. A simple word is hozho, yet so much meaning. I end each day with a Hindustani word and have several times offered the translation when people ask. Within its own language there are different meanings for different people. For some it is a salutation a simple hello or goodbye. If you go a bit further south in India you would only use namaste with reverence and literally bow your head pressing your hands together honoring the person you are speaking with, with your simple salutation. As I think back to a doctorial exam question about incorporating Elliot Eisner into the concept of John Dewey constructivism. Eisner was all about the aesthetic qualities of life and education that thinking also connects with hozho.
It has been a few years since I wrote about life and comparing it to making a rope strand by strand. A dear friend from up north wrote back thanking me and later in the day responded with this note.

“Thank you for sharing them with me. I sent this one on to my husband, my sister and sister-in-law and my best friend. Thru this most difficult year losing my beloved son, they have been constants in my life — united we stand thru this valley of darkness. Without their love and support, my grief would be unbearable. Peace my friend.”

Empathy is healing from the heart.

“…healing is a partnership with others – family members, community. A Native American healer once paraphrased Abraham Lincoln to me: ‘You can heal some things all of the time,’ the healer said, ‘and you can heal all things some of the time, but you can’t heal everything all thee time alone.’ Everyone needs a coach, a family a community.” Dr. Wayne Peale MD

Sometimes when I receive a note from the heart it is difficult to answer immediately. I have to sit sometimes even sleep on it. My dear friend lost a son. Many the times since hearing of her plight I have wondered what it would be like to lose a son, a daughter or anyone close. Empathy is a difficult word at times like these. It is a much bigger word than most would imagine.
Our house is such that our two of our boy’s rooms are up stairs and one is down stairs they literally go from one end of the house to the other. Being that my writing and reading time do not always correspond with normal sleep patterns the boys when home will be asleep when I am about to write or read. The what ifs have crossed my mind as I walk through the house early in the morning.
I come back to teaching in my thinking often as is it what I tend to do most of the year. Teaching is about healing, it is about community, and it is about family and most of all it is about empathy. It is about seeking and engaging constants in our lives so we can move forward and or change directions if need be. Teaching is always about learning. Sometimes as I came to realize yesterday and have so many times before as we are in our nice boxes we are supposed to teach from are not always the right ones. Sadly far too many teachers do not use heart as a teaching tool. Far too many parents do not or can not use heart as a parenting tool. Life and teaching are about listening with your heart, what a powerful message.
I do an exercise using a black and white picture of a bridge most will simply see a picture, while others have created fantasy worlds of trolls and fairies. Some simply explain their perception and how we each are different in what we see and hear. Often I will play the devils advocate and argue both sides. It is just a bridge to elicit responses or what if it was a work of art created by an immigrant iron worker as a tribute to his or her new freedom. Hozho, my new word seems appropriate.

“Every action should be taken with thoughts of its effects on children seven generations from now.” Cherokee saying

If only we would deal with kids with life that way. What if people in general looked at life that way? Please keep all in harms way on your mind and in your hearts. It is about being in your heart. It is about speaking from your heart. But most of all it is listening with your heart.
namaste
bird