Bird Droppings June 27, 2024

Is synchronicity a focal point on the pathway during our life experiences?

My first profound encounter with the idea of synchronicity was possibly at Mercer in one of my psychology classes, but I had forgotten about it, in all honesty. In a previous chapter, I discussed the impact of and found the book The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield (1993). Redfield led me to read further about Carl Jung and gain a deeper understanding of the concept of synchronicity. I started reading Thomas Moore’s books and James Hillman’s books in a period coinciding with the reading of Redfield. I began seeing the implications of synchronicity in my daily life. I sat down one day and jotted notes about the synchronous events in my past and current life.

My birth was a good beginning on All Saints Day (November 1) at Saint Joseph’s Hospital in Reading, Pennsylvania. I started with that point and jotted various happenings along the way within our family. One by one, these points added to my developing life experience and journey. Additional crucial points were the different colleges I attended and events that occurred, and finally, I moved to Georgia. My timeline was becoming rather intriguing. I met my wife Pat at another synchronous event. I was to work at Camp Martha Johnson in Lizella, Georgia, for the Middle Georgia Girls Scouts Council. Pat had been approved and was to go to Europe on a Girl Scout international exchange for the summer. Two days before she was to go, she changed her mind and decided to go back to work as a counselor at Camp Martha Johnson. I have often wondered, what if she went to Europe and we did not meet?

I have shared that I went to work in publishing and eventually teaching. There were numerous synchronous points along the way as I ended up at Loganville High School. It is easy to see each event coming up, a choice made, and the pathway that was taken as I look back. So here I am, many years along, writing a dissertation about teaching, storytelling, and learning. I admit I may embellish as I tell my stories, but the events and happenings have a basis, in fact. Perhaps my once nonfiction event is now fiction, but I will try to keep it as near to the actual events as possible.

My thinking was encouraged by friends and graduate school as the more I read, the more I questioned and searched for deeper meaning. Several good friends from high school were searching for answers about the same time I was and had also started reading James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy (1994). We would share authors and books and, in one case, a psychic. Some events I discussed previously and will only allude to; others have more significance in forming my education and teaching philosophy. My background in theology and religion drew me to Parker Palmer and my readings in Native thought combined. I began to see a spiritual connection with synchronicity and teaching others. Spirituality is not a good word to bring up in public schools, so finding innovative ways to make connections and provide opportunities for those connections has become a way of life for me as a teacher. I find ways to build relationships and trust with students’ interconnections.

Years ago, when working with Emotional Behavior-disordered students, I had an introductory exercise that I had started using with myself a few years prior. I would pass out a sheet of plain paper and ask each student to draw a line across the paper. I explained we would use the left side of the paper as a starting point and work across the paper to the right side. I explained this was very private and that only I would look over their shoulder as they worked on this assignment. I wrote the word synchronicity on the board and presented it to them. I tried to use several of my events to guide them in drawing their timeline. What events in your life impacted you, and where are you today? The first few minutes were always tricky, but once they realized how simple this was, some went to great elaborate detail. After everyone was finished, I asked if I could review that evening. I would not share with anyone. Only I would see the timelines.

That first night, reviewing what my students had written opened my eyes to how disconnected we, as teachers, are from our students. Some events, fortunately, were more joyful and made me feel a little better. My students wrote about jail, drugs, sex, death, and violence. I was able to have at least a rough idea of who these kids were beyond my second-period resource class. I realized in the first few weeks how significant it was to build relationships with the students by trying to understand what they are bringing to school each day that we, as teachers, do not see. My psychology kicked in, and I recalled an adage on behavior termed ABC, antecedent, behavior, and consequence. To control behavior, you must work with consequences and or antecedents. The antecedents are all that stuff they bring to school we, as teachers, have little control over. I even coined this the sixteen-hour syndrome. Teachers have students for eight hours, and society has them for sixteen.

Teach where the learning will be, not where it is. I wrote this down several years ago, paraphrasing a quote I thought was from the great ice hockey player Wayne Gretsky. Gretsky is still the all-time leading scorer in NHL history. However, as I researched this sometimes-overused quote, I found that Gretsky was not the author. In her article in Fast Company Magazine, Jill Rosenfeld, CDU to Gretzky: The Puck Stops Here! Clarifies that it was his father, Walter, who had been yelling at Wayne as a child. ” Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.” Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/40565/cdu-gretzky-puck-stops-here Like the hockey player Gretsky is addressing far too often, we get caught up in the past. We fixate on the content we taught yesterday or a piece of the curriculum we have for the state test. I think we all tend to do this in our lives as well. Focusing too often on the past can be a problematic cycle to break.

I spent the better part of yesterday avoiding my direction, so intent on the past I missed the current and future cues. As an empathetic human being, I get caught up at times in the emotions and feedback of the present. I can be a formidable teacher and advocate when I allow my wisdom to kick in and help determine the implications and directions. John Dewey writes about experiences past, present, and future and how they are reflected upon, interrelated, and interchanged (Dewey, 1967). In my first semester at Georgia Southern, I came to see curriculum not as simply the content of the course being taught but more like a river flowing. I am working on the notion of a continuous curriculum, not finite, as most teachers try and practice. William Pinar discusses the curriculum as running an ongoing course as it intersects with each aspect of life and time (Pinar, 1974). So, as I sit here today pondering my previous day, present moment, and future, I see the interplay that so easily can be hidden by focusing solely on the moment. So, I took a swig from my meditative mug of chai tea and read Eagle Man, Ed McGaa’s book Nature’s Way Native Wisdom for Living in Balance with The Earth, diving into it a bit deeper (2005).

“I do not write from mythology when I reflect upon Native American spirituality in this book. In my own opinion, mythology leads to superstition, and superstition has caused fatal destruction to millions of people over time. It is ironic, then, that Dominant Society accuses Native practices of being based on myth. (p.xiii)”

My wanderings, in general, are the result of my almost seventy-five years of life experiences over many thousands of miles of traveling, thinking, and observing humanity. A few nights ago, my son and I walked out to a choir of coyotes just a few yards away, deep in the pines. It was an opera of coyotes’ howls and yells. The sounds were an eerie reminder that even in a civilized world, nature was only a few feet away in its wildest. I was walking this past Sunday morning just in my backyard. I have been away from my quiet spot, which was cleared due to new houses going up, and the formerly untouched land is now a neighborhood beside my home. Around me, birds would occasionally fly into and out of the trees, but most of the time without a sound. I was essentially alone, sitting and listening while everyone else was inside. A few hours earlier, sitting on my back porch, I had a wonderful experience watching as the sun came up even on a cloudy day and starting to reread Ed McGaaa’s book Nature’s Way Native Wisdom for Living in Balance with The Earth.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

bird