Amy Secrist

Tag: learning

  • A Sort of Spring Clean (Two Little Girls Share a Room)

    We clean the stuff off of dressers and out of drawers and find we’re overwhelmed. This is the cost of stuff. Pictures and drawings, cards, notes, crayon mandalas, each one a decision. We make piles: Keep, Give, Throw. We find dentist-office toys (plastic eyeballs), library-toys, (fluorescent bouncy balls) birthday party favors (fake nose and glasses, and…

  • Consistent Practice

    What is consistent practice?  What does it mean to miss a day (or two) (or three) in the midst of a twenty-one day discipline?  How do we begin again?  In her book “Ancient Prayer” Rachel C. Weingarten references centuries old rabbinic commentary on Exodus, “Kol Hatchalot Kashot,” All Beginnings are difficult.”  She writes in the…

  • Learning Wonder

    He grasps the peeled banana, gazing at it the way we might sweep our eyes skyward over the harvest moon. He is awestruck by oatmeal cookies, shocked into giggles by being handed them two at a time. Tractors.  Soup.  The afternoon breeze. Tell him these are not reason for pause and contemplation. I see him…