community research

It seems that we have much to be grateful for looking back over the first phase of this year.
Our recent harvesting from the garden immediately confronts you with the abundance that is right before you.
Shifting into the perfect situation for right now also feels sweetly serendipidous.
And the girls regularly being thankful that "our house didn't fall on our head" and "that we are all together," underscores our fragility.

So figuring I could follow up on this thread of engagement, I suggested that we might want to make a "Gratitude Banner" to bless our new home.
Ruby had another idea. She suggested we take it down to the Community Garden and share it with people there.
Aha, I thought, another community project! This girl is onto something.
And so that is what we did.

We walked and collected leaves. We blissed out with watercolours. We made stencils from the leaves, cut out the shapes and found some wool.
Yesterday amongst the gardening, the meetings and birthday celebrations people contributed to the banner.
They wanted to.
Of course none of the comments mentioned material possessions. They mostly mentioned relationship.
Major earthquakes seem to do that to you: they sort the essentials from the fluff.

Ruby now has other ideas leading from this.
She has thoughts about using it as a way of collecting information about big questions she has.
Community research you might say.
Self-led, self- designed and arising out of an authentic context.
Intensely difficult to achieve in a classroom.
Naturally evolving when engaged with your own life and with time to explore the possibilities.