“We Are All Learning to Awake…”
“The hoped for outcome to a human incarnation is to become who you truly are. MC understood this down to her very bones and lived her life accordingly. She stressed the point in her creativity workshops which she dubbed “The Union of Opposites”, by speaking of a seed and the division within it that decides this part goes up into the light and this part goes down into the darkness. Wholeness resides in the union (re-union?) of the opposites. What we make of our lives, she felt, is our art.” – Martin Kennedy on his good friend, M.C. Richards
A photo of M.C. Richards with her own art in the background found on alchetron.com
Right at the time of Autumn, when our consciousness and our ability to think clearly intensify here in the Northern Hemisphere, we celebrate the festival of the archangel, Micha-el. Michael steps in at this time to lead us into a way of knowing beyond the cold intellect, a way that opens the thoughts of our minds to the living-spirit-thoughts that weave and work in all things.
It is also the time, in the North, when students return to begin a new school year. During this pandemic, attending school has suddenly become a question. If we can’t be in the same buildings together, if we can’t be in classrooms, are we no longer in school?
“Our planet is our school” writes, M.C. Richards in her ‘Opening Anthem’ poem, one that she wrote as part of an essay on the future of public education in 1979. Her poem would help us dissolve our fixed pre-conceptions about what – and where – school is and open us to the teacher of our time, our Zeitgeist, to feel ourselves in the greatest school there is: the school of life.
This thought that we are all here on the earth to learn – from each other, from our sufferings and struggles, from the challenges that face us – can shift something inside us, can open our hearts to the gifts of our experiences, of our time together. And few people I have ever met is more capable of opening our minds and hearts in a creative way that Mary Caroline Richards. To that end, we offer this poem:
Opening Anthem – by M.C. Richards
We do not scold the cock for calling dawn,
The cow for lowing when her day is done:
A time for rising, a time for bedding down,
A time for traveling to the town and home again.
Life has her seasons, teaches us her tides.
Says, “Wait! Reflect!” Says “Leap! Give all!”
We follow in her wake in little boats
Getting the feel of currents as we ride.
We put to sea or seek the shore with equal joy.
We climb the mast or set the grate below.
Our song is deep within us for the work:
To keep the faith, to worship and to grow.
The Vine winds through us, spring and fall:
Now lush in fruit, now wizened bough.
Wholeness we bear within us like a seed:
To die, to grow, to sleep and grow again.
It is the mystery of person and of world,
Of inner fire and flavor and respect.
It is our name, our home, our neighborhood.
We are its art. Its forming makes us good.
The schooling that we seek is full within.
It rises to the surface as we move.
It has the face of angels, human speech.
All present borderlines are lit with warmth
Like autumn maples tilting in the sun.
Our planet is our school, and far beyond:
Our church, our shop and study, and our fields.
We are all learning to awake:
Awake in dream, in meditation and in prayer.
Inspired awake! Inspirited awake!
We feel it thus: one mighty school, the teaching everywhere.
The poem was taken from this book, Opening Our Moral Eye
Mary Caroline Richards (July 13, 1916, Weiser, Idaho – September 10, 1999, Kimberton, Pennsylvania) was an American poet, potter, and writer best known for her book Centering: in Pottery, Poetry and the Person. Educated at Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and at the University of California at Berkeley, she taught English at the Central Washington College of Education and the University of Chicago, but in 1945 became a faculty member of the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina where she continued to teach until the end of the summer session in 1951. It was her teaching experience and growth as an artist while at Black Mountain College that prepared the foundation for most of her work in life, both as an educator and creator. Later in life, she discovered the work of Rudolf Steiner and lived the last part of her life at a Camphill Village in Kimberton, PA. In 1985, while living at the Kimberton Camphill Village she began teaching workshops with Matthew Fox at the University of Creation Spirituality in Oakland, CA during the winter months. Mary Caroline Richards died in 1999 in Kimberton, PA.
For more on M.C. Richards, see her books, Centering, Opening our Moral Eye and Imagining Inventing Yellow.
Be sure, also, to look into a higher education initiative headed up by Nathaniel Williams and the good people at Free Columbia that has her as its namesake.
Or check out the piece on her book, Centering, by the always in-depth, authentic and reflective Maria Popova at Brain Pickings.
This blog post was written by Patrick Kennedy, a priest in the Christian Community and director at the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. To learn more about what we are doing at the Seminary of The Christian Community, visit our patreon site for more content: The Light in Every Thing.
