Spare The Rod?

My son has a school project that is due tomorrow. A diorama of the ocean. We have worked on it for weeks, me more than him, me 'pushing' him to ask questions and seek answers.

It's a pretty nice piece of work. Not only does it go over the biome (living zones and interconnectedness) of the oceans, but it also brings up the 'Eighth Continent', the large balls of plastic that are in the oceans because of all the plastic waste from consumers being put together by the currents, and not sinking to the ocean floor to decompose. (did you know one plastic shopping bag from the grocery store takes one hundred to four hundred years to decompose? And most of the trash in the oceans comes from the land, to the rivers, then to the sea. Here is a nice link for you teachers: http://www.maudfontenoyfondation.com/en/)


Dad was a teacher.

Today's topic comes from mom.

Here's what she has to say:

Dad thought it was criminal to give the kids so much work after a long day at school.

Whenever he would try to back down on the amount of homework he was handing out, after a while, the complaints would come in--from the parents!

They would say, 'Mr. (our last name), I see you are giving less homework to our child. Don't try to favor him or let him off easy--give him lots of work so he can learn.'

So he would give more.

My sister and brother-in-law, according to mom, spent hours and hours with my nephew to get him to understand and complete his homework.

That's why I have a hard time with my son, too, she thinks. I have to be 'on' him to get him to study. And he asks a LOT of questions about everything, so practically I do his homework for him.

My niece, apparently, was like me. She never had a problem. She always understood and did what was expected of her. And now she is the one who spends a lot of time helping her brother with his homework.

Mom says the times where you went to school to have fun and learn are over.

Studies show that the interactions that take place between the teachers and students are more like 'a business' than a classroom.

This makes sense because at my sister's school district, the parents have to pay the school forty-dollars for every missed school day; this is to make up for the state funding that is lost when there is an absence. Even when my niece and nephew are sick, she takes them to school for the first hour or two, so the school won't count it as an absence, everyone gets their 'funding', and the sick kids are able to go home.

Mom says there is talk about lengthening the school day to eight hours, just like a day at work.

The teachers are fighting against it.

When is there time for sports and after-school activities?

When is there time to just go out in the yard, play with the kids on the street, or ride your bike like I used to?

Mom says she gets to know some of the neighbor kids on her street. She talks to them when they come home from school. She used to work the playground as a guide to watch over recess, and she is comfortable with kids.

She says she talks to them, and they talk openly and honestly with her.

There's something new she's noticed in the past few years---

--they all say they HATE SCHOOL.

It's boring. It's too much work. They just don't like it.

Kids are so used to the computer that they just can't read a book from cover to cover.

Mom says we used to have busy kids before, who might look out the window, but they could concentrate on a task, and comprehend what the teacher was telling them and teaching them.

Nowadays, the kids just don't comprehend. Their minds are not QUIET and able to Focus, Mom confided.

What are they doing to our children? she asks.


I don't know, Mom. I don't know.

But I think you may be on to something...something very important for all of us to know.



Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,

Reiki Doc

A Teacher's Daughter's Christmas Memories

Yesterday I saw boxes of cherry cordial candies at Target while I was shopping for stocking stuffers.

Instantly I was transported back in time, to when I was six.

Daddy was a teacher, and back in those days, all the students would give their teacher a present.

Daddy came home that last day before vacation with arms loaded with presents, all of them opened! And my eyes filled with delight and wonder at all the generosity of his class. He would show us each gift, and share with us a little something about who gave it. He knew what families were not as well off as the others, and he would explain the great sacrifice it took for them to give him their gift.

He got cologne, aftershave, trinkets, tools, clothing (once a really nice suede jacket), candies, pens, a globe of the earth, wallets, belts, socks…he was very well-liked and was a favorite of the campus.

You see, our gift was to share our father with all of these children who sometimes did not have the best of fathers, or even ANY father in their home. There is a deep psychological need for a father figure as we grow up.

How do I know? By the ones that stayed in touch over the years. By all the weddings the entire family was invited to, not just him and mom.

And by all the phone calls I made when mom asked when he died, telling all of his former students and colleagues he had passed.

They came to his funeral.

And they cried.

Daddy never wanted me to become a teacher like him.

There was no money. The restrictions and rules got the best of him in the end. It no longer puzzled me why he advised me to not enter his profession. When he retired he suddenly looked ten years younger; it was that hard on him.

But the cherry cordials!

He would let me eat one and let me open the box.

And when no one was looking, I would eat two more!

Cherry is one of my favorite things to eat--any way I can eat it! LOL

Did I buy a box of those cherry cordials? I probably should have. It would be a nice tradition to pass on to my son.



Aloha and Mahalos,
Namaste,

Reiki Doc


P.S.        

For all of you out there who work hard and bake the holiday cookies, Mahalo. Our mother did not bake. Your gifts on holiday paper plates and beautiful bows on the plastic wrap, brought our family so much JOY! I felt the love as we ate them the morning of Christmas. That's how special they were.  Our family was poor. Most of my gifts were from Thrifty's--the stationery set or the bubble bath. It wasn't like my friends who got the cool Schwinn bikes. Those cookies gave me hope that things would get better. And they have, so many years since…

I do not bake although I have all of the tools and an impressive collection of cookie cutters--it's hard to find the time with my work hours. But this memory inspires me to make time for me and my son to make some in memory of your kindness. May it live on in both of our hearts...

Pie In The Sky--Dream Come True!

Yesterday I had my Reiki Dream come true: I taught Reiki to my coworkers in the Operating Room.

What motivates me is to Heal the Healers. In regular anesthesia work, I am the one many doctors, nurses, and staff request when they have surgery. They ask for me. I am that good at it. They have their friends and family ask for my services too. *

Two RN's, a Surgical Technologist (who WANTS to be an RN) and her boyfriend came to Reiki 1 I taught yesterday.

Another dream, a Pie In The Sky Part 2 Dream, is for Reiki instruction to be given to children, like in a Montessori school, so they may grow up never 'forgetting' their connection to Source. My son's teacher came to Reiki 1 class too! She also confided that my boy has been teaching HER Reiki, the symbol CKR already! And when Nathan hurt his knee, my son was right on it giving Reiki on the playground. The teacher asked Nathan did it still hurt? And Nathan, after getting Reiki, said, 'No.'

Both dreams are well on the way to becoming Reality.

All five were Starseeds, I felt it. Two were Pleiadian, one very strongly so. I felt it during the attunements. Another is a Yoga Teacher and RN!

Hummingbirds kept looking in the window. They are my Totem. They represent Joy. All day long they kept coming. The students noticed it, and enjoyed it very much too. All the trees and birds singing and breezes were like Spirit giving their Blessing, just to let us know They were Present.

The same exact moment one student lay on the table for the first Reiki demonstration, we heard the sound of shattering glass upstairs. We thought perhaps the easel with the flip chart on it, the flimsy twenty-five dollar one that kept falling, broke the sliding glass door. It wasn't. It was the rice jar. It fell off the counter in the kitchen.

I was horrified. Broken glass. Spilled rice. It was a sign but I was not sure what.

I also felt oddly like Sleeping Beauty at that moment. I knew somehow I was going to get cut by the glass. Everyone helped to pick it up. I swept up the rice. We vacuumed. But when I went to pick up the cardboard six-pack holder of tiny glass bottles of coke (my son loves it, and I ration it out very sparingly) as I was trying to adjust it to keep the rice from spilling out, I felt glass on my right pinkie finger. A shard about two by three inches had slid in vertically between the cardboard handle and the bottle necks. There was no way to have seen it in advance. Calmly, I set it down and looked at the cut. About four millimeters, it looked like a paper cut.

Then it started to bleed. I bleed more than most people--I have a bleeding condition and I have to take medicine for it. It looked awful. What is this? Broken glass, spilled rice, AND blood?!?

But then I noticed:

• we worked together like a unit to fix the spill so we could walk barefoot again in the kitchen
• one RN is a mechanical genius--she changed the bag on the Miele vacuum cleaner, my new one, easily even though she had never seen one before.
• everyone gave me Reiki. I could feel it from their hands. It worked. I still needed a bandage due to the bleeding, but today it is almost all the way healed.

Then to celebrate, only three could make it. We went out to our favorite vegan/raw restaurant together. 

The power was out.

How odd is that?

Everything worked out for the best. It helped us grow closer together as healers, all of us, even the owners of the place. Like the broken glass, everyone worked together as a team to save valuable frozen food items. It was like a volunteer fire department!

Ah! There is a hummingbird right now taking a bath in the fountain.

Thank you Spirit.

Namaste,

Reiki Doc

* you can request my services too at time of scheduling surgery if you live in the area. Contact me, on my Facebook page Doctors With Reiki by messaged. Tell me your surgeon's name. If I know and work with them, I will provide information so you can request me to be in the OR with you. But only under my professional name, not as 'Reiki Doc'. Work does not 'know' yet this is who I am. I appreciate all confidentiality with this. Mahalo.