Set a Pretty Table

We gather 'round this table, where bodies are renewed.

Where hearts appease their hunger, for we feast on more than food.

~ author unknown

To set a pretty table is to bring rhythm, beauty, warmth and our love to the moment.

When we slow down, simplify and connect our thinking with the feelings in our heart, it's easier for our actions to reflect our intent. To set a pretty table is to connect our intention of deeply nourishing our family with warmth and love with our attention to how we set the table. 

Each day we have the opportunity to set a pretty table, and do it with love. When we do, our family experiences the gesture and the feeling behind it, and finds nourishment of the body and soul at the table.

The arrival of summer makes it easy to set a pretty table. The season itself does most of the work, providing lovely blossoms and fresh greens. A few small, thoughtful touches are all that’s needed to add warmth and beauty to the table.

A tablecloth or placemats provides a base. The one you see in the photo above has served as a beach picnic cloth, a table cloth and a ceiling decoration. Pretty, simple dishes can be found at a thrift store. The white plates in the photo above are Syracuse china, made for restaurants, solid and durable, yet simple and lovely. They are oval shaped so there's plenty of room for the child who doesn't want their foods to touch, or for the adult who likes their salad to mix in with the juices of the main dish. 

Cloth napkins are inexpensive and will last for years to come. I have many from the early childhood years, a little faded yet still good to use. Something from nature, like a crystal, a pretty stone or some flowers brings warmth and beauty. The sea shells on the table in the picture we found at the beach. The flowers are from my garden. The children love to be the ones to go outside and select flowers for the table. 

Spring is a great time to bring in crab apple blossoms, forsythia or any other budding branches. Put them in a clean small jar, place them on your table and enjoy watching them open.

The little glasses are small canning jars. They're solid and hefty enough that they don't tip easily and children can really hold on to them. I used them with my children and with the children in my Morning Garden program. They're durable, just the right size and easy to stack and manage. 

Of course, there's a beeswax candle with its heavenly life giving smell and reminder that we're all in this together. That might be considered the splurge, one well worth splurging. 

The next time you feel rushed and in a hurry, take a deep breath and remember what my friend and former boss Haim at Café Liliane used to remind us, the staff, as we prepared food. "We eat with our eyes," he'd say. We are nourished by all our senses, what we see, smell, taste and feel on the table. We are also nourished by the sensation of warmth and love we experience when someone sets a pretty table for us. 

Wishing you and your loved ones pretty tables set with warmth and love!

~ if you are the author of the mealtime verse, or know who is, please let me know so I can give proper credit.  

Warmly,

Conscious, Connected and Creative

Celebrate the Rhythm of Life with Harmonious Rhythm + Soulful Parenting 

::

Seasonal Curriculum + eCourses

Homeschool Mentoring + Parent Coaching

Peace on Earth begins at Home

Rhythm and Routine: We Can't Have One without the Other

Rhythm and Routine

~ a series of articles to support rhythm in the home

#3

A few thoughts on rhythm and routine, and how one needs the other.

Rhythm is simply routine with recurring movement based on conscious awareness of the energy of the activity, the day, the household. 

That may sound odd. 

Try this ~ think of  rhythm in music, rhythm is the placement of sounds in time, in a regular and repeated pattern. The activities of our day have each have a quality ~ a sound, some may be rousing, some may be soothing or settling. The key to creating healthy family rhythms is to be aware of what type of energy is needed at what time of day, and in what order. 

For example at the end of the day, there's dinner, bath and bed. That's the routine - to have dinner, bath and bed, in that order. The rhythm is creating the mood around each of those activities, setting the pace and holding the course, keeping the routine flowing as if we were banks of the river providing the boundary for the flow of water. After dinner we may turn the lights down, and create a feeling of quiet in the home as the child transitions from dinner to bath, with clearing the table, washing the dishes, some quiet play, and preparations for the next day, such as setting out of clothes for the next day and organizing lunches if the child is going to be away from home at lunchtime. 

Routines are associated with time. Whenever time is connected to a word, think routine, as in breakfast time, playtime, story time, lunchtime, rest time, teatime, dinnertime, bath time and bedtime. To create a healthy rhythm, we can think about what we do leading up to these times and how we transition into the next one. We also observe the child, consider the family's needs and tweak as needed, always aiming for consistency as much as possible. 

Routine is doing something over and over again in the same way, in the same order - there's repetition.  Routine helps us remember and put things in order. Good routines involve a series of steps that help us create good habits. For example, a routine upon entering the house might be to take off our boots, put the boots or shoes on the mat, remove our jacket and hang it on a hook. Then we go into the bath room to wash hands, and use the toilet if needed or change the diaper of a little one. That's a routine. It's also a way of teaching a child through our example of how to take care of themselves, their clothing and the environment. It also gives the child a feeling of security to do the familiar as well as a sense of competence. 

First step _ remove boots

Second step ~ place boots on mat

Third step ~ remove jacket

Fourth step ~ hand jacket on hook

Fifth step ~ wash hands and use toilet/change diaper if needed

To create a healthy family rhythm, we need to look at the child's needs, and organize our child's day so that those needs are met, the practical needs of setting out clothing and preparing for the next day as well as the energetic needs of  quieting down the environment before bed, to help the child relax towards bedtime. 

What quality of activity does the child need at a particular time of day? That depends on the child's age. Young children all needs plenty of time for movement and free play both indoors and out. They also need a time to draw inward and unwind or digest their more rambunctious or stimulating experiences. Does the child need to go outside and run and jump and roll around? Does the child need to settle in close for a story and some snuggle time? What does the child's age and developmental need call for? Does an activity bring us inward to a quiet place or does it have an expansive quality?

To create a good rhythm means to bring conscious awareness to the energetic qualities of the child's activities of daily, weekly and seasonal life, and set them up to meet the child's needs - as well as to create repetitive experiences that unfold in the same familiar way every day. Rhythm and Routine work together.

Conscious Intention and Conscious Attention
Now we return to where we started, that rhythm is all about the conscious intention and conscious attention given to balancing the energetic quality of activities (rousing-calming, inner-outer, challenging-soothing, quiet-loud) and transition moments that infuses routines with rhythm. We implement a new step with intention and bring our conscious attention to the moment to help make it happen. We are the change makers. 

This may sound so simple, and it is, one step at a time. Implement one small change and repeat until it comes easily. Then try another. One step at a time. It takes time to build up strong healthy rhythms. 

Read Article #1 Routine in the Waldorf Home:: What is it?  here
Read Article #2 Why Routines?  here
Read Article #4 When Rhythm + Routine Work Together  here


Earlier Articles on Rhythm
Rhythm here
Rhythm ~ Waldorf Style here

Peace on Earth begins at Home. 

Feeling Bad You Didn't Celebrate Santa Lucia?

If you didn't celebrate Santa Lucia today by rousing your family with a crown of flaming candles on your head,  singing songs and carrying a tray of warm coffee and Lucy buns to each family member still in bed, no worries.

It's okay.

You're okay.

You are good enough.

Plenty good enough.

It is a beautiful festival, and for those who celebrate it, wonderful!

For those who do not, it's okay.

In Waldorf schools, the festival of Santa Lucia is typically a celebration that is carried by the Second Grade Class, the grade when Waldorf students spend a good part of the year studying saints and sinners. (Saints and Sinners is a phrase I picked up from Eugene Schwartz of Essential Waldorf. Isn't it a perfect description of what the child is wrestling with at this age?)

The Second Grade Class, sometimes with the help of the class parents with the baking and the clothing adjustments, prepares the goods, learns the songs, appoints a student to serve as Santa Lucia and wear the crown of flaming candles, (for the intrepid, the more cautious use battery lit candles) and then, in the morning, the class sings and serves its way around the school. It's beautiful.

It's a festival that lends itself well to groups.

The kindergarten is sometimes visited, but not always.

It's a festival that meets the particular developmental age of the child.

It's a festival that is celebrated in specific parts of the world.

If you didn't celebrate it, don't worry.

You are good enough.

Plenty good enough.

Manners, Courtesy and Gentle Politeness

As adults we know what it is to be treated courteously and politely. We  know the basic rules of civility, of how to get along with others in the world, at least in public and most of the time. Yet with children the lines are more easily blurred.

Others, and particularly strangers and family members, may not know our child well enough to know that our child's play is simply play and may at times take behavior to be offensive. Loud squeals may hurt someone's ears in the grocery store and a fast moving tricycle may be dangerous around the legs of an older person walking with a cane.

How do we give our children free rein to be children and respect others at the same time?

When it comes to behavior with children and others, I often reflect back to the basic rule of three:

1. You may not harm yourself. ( a discussion on the perception of harm might follow among us adults)
2. You may not harm others.

3. You may not harm property.

Yet there is something missing in this rule of three, some nuance between the lines that is not exact and not easy to codify. It's that behavior that might be acceptable outdoors but not indoors or the rising voice in the grocery store or the use of certain slang in public. It calls for a discernment of the environment and of the audience and of what makes people comfortable and puts them at ease. This is what manners boil down to, putting people at ease in social situations.

And so appears the notion of courtesy. The word courtesy according to Wikipedia means, "gentle politeness or courtly manners." It arose from the days of the royal court and was codified in books of etiquette. I like the term gentle politeness. Somehow the word gentle which means, "of or belonging to the same stock, clan or race" brings warmth to the term. We are all human and worthy of consideration by others, all of the same clan- the human one. 

With children so many opportunities arise for reflection on language and behavior in social situations. From being in close quarters and noticing the rising volume of sound or being inside or waiting in line with a small child who needs to move and finding the lack of space for free movement or the blurting out of words or phrases that make me want to turn invisible and vanish from the spot. How to respond to that? 

I've come to use the words at ease and uncomfortable as in, "that makes others uncomfortable" or "that puts others at ease" in discussing behavior and language with my children. When my youngster starts raising his voice in the store I remind him that others might not like to hear the loudness. Or when my older child tells me that the F word is a good word, everyone uses it, I agree that it is a powerful word and when used discerningly has a great impact- and I remind him that some folks might be uncomfortable with it and encourage him to discern if his audience and his environment are at ease with his use of it.

Manners and courtesy had their origins in discernment, in discerning the social group to which one belonged, and in doing so, discerning those who did not belong. Today, in a time that acknowledges the dignity of all human beings regardless of all factors that once were considered social dividers, it seems possible to plant seeds in our children and to remind ourselves that the experience of others does matter and sometimes it is in the relating to the other human or humans that meaning is made rather than in some absolute right or wrong of the act or the word.