After Linda-Susan Beard's visit to our class on Thursday, i've really been thinking of silence in different ways. As I said in another post, I'm in awe at how "full" and "rich" silence is, and how she needs it in order to recharge. Listening to her speak, and watching the facial expressions showed me just how much she enjoys the experience of silence, whether she uses it as a way to confront aspects of her life that she needs to deal with or because it gives her the opportunity to do something she likes, such as gardening. Her visit left me with questions on this sort of relationship with silence is built. Is it something that takes a long time? Is it something that works for some but not for others? I would love to hear more from her about how to make silence an enjoyable experience used to recharge. I usually feel jittery and definitely notice the small moving clock, but I want a contemplative experience with silence that will leave me feeling rich and full.

For me our two field trips this past week to Ashbridge Memorial Park and our blind shuttle tour had a particular significance to them. In the last couple of web papers I have been trying to advocate new ecological teaching styles which are based on unorthodox experiences that take place outside the classroom. Although our fieldtrips were not based on accidental and personal experiences, they nonetheless still managed to encourage us to not limit our learning experiences to just the classroom. Rather the class field trips gave everyone the opportunity experiment with how we were soaking in the knowledge of our field trip.

The hawk swooped past above my head, and settled on a high branch above the path ahead of me. I couldn't tell if it was the same hawk, or even the same species of hawk, as the one I spent quite a bit of time quite close to, not far from here, a month or two ago. This one looked bigger, but maybe because the feathers were fluffed up against the rain. I find hawks hard to identify because they never look anything like the pictures in the bird book. Anyway this one was too high up to have eye contact with today -- but the feeling I got was of an individual, a particular hawk personage, coping with this rainy day, rather than an emblematic hawk. This seems to be what interests me lately: the uniqueness of each individual, of species other than our own. They are just as different from each other as people are. (I read in the Scientific American about some research into the personalities of individual fruit flies! Some are more aggressive, some more cooperative. The researchers mark each one with a different colored dot of paint in order to tell them apart.)

Also I'm interested in the uniqueness of each moment, of each series of moments, of each story...

For this week's assignment, I thought I would try to describe ecofeminism to a hypothetical male Haverford

student. But, seeing as I'm a teenager, I did it on 

Facebook.

It’s still very hard to believe we are coming to the last week of the semester and end of the 360 journey. However, even till the end, we were still able to explore silence from another perspective.

I really enjoyed visit of sister Linda on Thursday. Her stories offered me another opportunity to see the power of silence.

One point she mentioned really touched me about silence. She said silence is pregnancy not emptiness and through silence she can hear voices of God and fell unbelievably loved. Wow, what a beautiful state of mind and enlightenment she was able to feel through such silence. I was particularly moved by her choice of word of pregnancy. Pregnancy, from my point of view, is one of the beautiful processes to bring miracles to this world. She indeed viewed silence as her ways of holding many things she was not able to deal with.

I was shocked by her actual experience of not talking much for over a month. Such a long time of period of organizing her stuff to realize better understanding of oneself was absolutely wonderful. I envy her courage to be able to get away from all the trivial routines in daily life to just be with oneself.

I sit on the stone ledge in the cloisters, trying to jot down everything I see around me: worn-out grass still fighting to stay green, copious amounts of mud where the grass lost the battle to weather and wear, wet stone walls that look like they're crying in the rain, and a stone fountain, which is actually much deeper than I originally thought, empty except for a tiny puddle of rainwater. Today is the last time I visit my site for a site-sit, and I honestly don't know how I feel about it. On one hand, I will enjoy not having to get up earlier on Sundays to do this, but on the other hand, having to visit the cloisters weekly somehow worked for me.

I'm not sure exactly what I got from my site-sits alone, but one thing's for sure: I realize there is not way I can view nature without any interference of how I'm feeling at that moment. I'm trying so hard to appreciate nature when all I can think about is "the Greasepaint crew are taking apart the set of Reefer Madness right now; I'm gonna miss them" while I hum the melody of "Mary Sunshine" to myself quietly. I don't think I can ever consider myself an ecological writer because, for my own taste, I'm not being objective and rational enough, something that I find incredibly irking.

Let's talk about rain. Rain is a beautiful thing. Water gets everywhere. I miss rain like rain we had today. I spend so much time in my head trying to equate this place, Bryn Mawr PA, to my "home" in Portland OR. It's frustrating because the two places really aren't that alike, and a big part of this is rain. But when it does rain, hail to the rain gods because this place makes my brain come alive with notions of home. The reason I put HOME in parentheses the first time I used it is because "home" is probably relative, as in relation to your close relatives (this might make no sense but I saw a pun and I used it). My family is not in Bryn Mawr, does that mean I'me not at home? Or should I take a more individual-centric world view and decree that wherever I'm living is my "home?" Thinking about these things, and looking at the rain today took me away from Goodheart, away from Bryn Mawr, and I had strong, possibly physical aches that I would probably chalk up to homesickness. I don't always like to admit that to myself (sometimes I operate under this fantasy that I am the strongest and most flexible human being in the world, therefore, can never be homesick) but it is undeniably true. I spoke these words out loud at my sit, but I will write them to the world now, putting my seal of authenticity on the statement. I AM HOMESICK. Does saying it outloud and writing it here validate this feeling and make it more real? I don't want it to.. I don't want to be homesick at all. 

When I set out for my site sit today, some part of me is happy that this is my last one.  It is Sunday morning and everything is grey, everything is cold, and everything is wet.  I did not start out happy sitting under the bench near the labyrinth.  The only thing that cheered me up is, "At least I don't have to do this any more.  It's getting too cold for this."  But then, of course, I realized what it really means that this is my last site sit.  No more medatative hours just watching the world do its thing.  No more little squirrels hopping about.  No more labyrinth watching.  So maybe while it's cold I will keep away from any site sitting, but when the world warms again for spring maybe I'll come out of hibernation and enjoy the peace that is a site sit.

Questioning, Wandering, Learning

Why go to college? Why spent thousands of dollars and four years of youth for rigorous academic works? Conventional wisdom says attending colleges and universities is the key to a successful life. Young people can gain knowledge and skills they use for the rest of life. However, a recent survey by Pew Research Center show that 57% of Americans say colleges fail to provide students with good value for money spent. Herein is the problem I detected: when viewing higher education with narrow lens of cost effectiveness and monetary payoff, people are blinded from the real aim of higher education: to teach people to think ecologically, to see the conflicts within our ecosystem and to ponder the questions for the rest of their lives. I believe higher education is not limited to the several years of schooling but a life-long education, and higher education is not merely keys to successful lives but meaningful lives filled with curiosities, wanderings and new findings.