This new section of the website provides SPACE for lengthy pieces. Initially they will report projects created by various Community groups in the Ascot area. Subsequently .... we cast the net wide for Readers contributions.
Contact Anne theimaginationacts@gmail.com
Autumn leaves surround me
In the garden today.
The breeze whirls around me
Blowing those leaves away.
Birds cheeping in my ears
So sweetly they sing
A tree branch which looks rather strange
It looks like a large wooden fork or something.
Trees overhead shade me,
From the blazing sunlight.
I’m sitting in my first Magic Spot
And it is a wonderful sight.
(10 year old girl)
Magic Spots is the name given to an activity embedded in the Earthkeepers Programme of The Institute for Earth Education.[3] They are times of solitude in the natural world, sharpening nonverbal skills like ‘watching and waiting, silencing and stilling, opening and receiving’[4] reflecting on and articulating silence and interconnectedness. John Chryssavgis’ description of silence articulates what this experience can be for children:
“A way of waiting, a way of watching, and a way of listening….it is a way of interiority, of stopping and then of exploring the cellars of the heart and the centre of life…silence is never merely a cessation of words…rather it is the pause that holds together all the words both spoken and unspoken. Silence is the glue that connects our attitudes and actions. It is fullness not emptiness, it is not an absence but the awareness of a presence.”[5]
As part of their residential experience during our outdoor education programmes at Ringsfield EcoActivity Centre6 each child chooses a special place where they are comfortable and are not distracted by the sight of others. It might be in one of the woods, in the long grass of the meadow, or leaning against a tree in the orchard. They will return to this spot for at least two organised times during their stay, but also, of course, at any other time during their free time. This is their ‘Magic Spot’. It is part of their experience of the natural world; it is also an intentional introduction to silence and solitude. The time spent alone is usually about ten minutes for the first experience and lengthens to perhaps twenty minutes, or more, by the end of the week. The children go to their Magic Spots in silence and maintain silence until the group reconvenes for some reflective feed-back. They sit, look, listen, smell, feel, think, watch and, if they want to, write or draw in their diaries at the time or later. It is understood that the diaries, are private journals. No one will see what they write unless they wish to show some one. When they do share we insist that this is not the time to correct spelling, grammar or writing skills.
As soon as i started my magic spot, i knew that peacefulness had began. Silently i sat down trying not to russuel the leaves. Suddenly i found myself surrounded by stunning plant and flowers. I started to wonder how long i could keep this quiet.7
(8 year old girl)
Imagine that our children are yearning. Imagine that they are yearning to be at home in the natural world, nestled in the shelter of trees, peacefully enjoying the bumps, examining the soil, listening to the leaves and twigs, silently watching the bugs, appreciating even the stinging nettles and the quiet(s). This might not be exactly what we might immediately expect from young children but this is my experience facilitating and sharing Magic Spots with many, many hundreds of children. I discovered that over 60% of the children regarded Magic Spots as their favourite activity and over half of the children were still making time for Magic spots themselves at least once a week and this was three months after their visit.
Words to discribe my magic spot:
Bumpy, Soil, Twigs, Stinging netalles, Bugs, Trees, Quiets
(7 year old girls)
So these children, given the opportunity, discover they have a yearning, a longing to be a part of nature, the wild – “…wild not in the sense of being out of control, deranged, or barbaric but in the sense that we are terrestrially natural, as a wild flower is wild – native to its particular place, surviving and thriving in its ecosystem without deliberate introduction or manipulation by others…”[8].
Give them the wild, give them silence and the earth speaks:
Waves patter as sit there and relaxe. When i look around i see birds flying free in the sky and rocks seem to be talking to each other in a kind way. Although people talk to me i take no notice. I am too involved in watching and listening to the earth speak. After listening to the earth i try to listen to my friends, but all i can hear is nature calling me to listen.
(Ten year old boy in Australia)
Give them the opportunity for intense attentiveness and they experience open mouthed wonder:
Leaning against the rough bark of a gnarled oak tree I could hear the birds go twit. At the opposite end of the field there was an enormous spiky bush. The smell of the flower is beautiful. The flowers were as bright red as a red ruby which is really bright. The thing I thought was that I never knew it could be like this, it is amazing.
(9 year old girl)
After one Magic Spot a ten year old boy (we will call him John) came to show me the picture he had drawn (right). It was a rather childish drawing of a tree taking up the whole of an A5 sheet of paper, rough brown trunk with greenery in a ball over the top. At the bottom of the trunk was a very small stick figure, labelled ‘me’. At the time I was talking to his teacher who took the picture from me, looked at it and said, giving the picture back to him, “Oh John, surely you can do better than this, it’s all out of perspective. Why don’t you try again?” She then left to attend to another child. John, by this time head bowed, looked up at me, with sad, mystified eyes and said, “But I felt so small”. I said, “I know”. He went back into the woods with brighter eyes.
Give them space and they will reflect about themselves and their relationship with other species – the more-than-human-community. Give them time and solitude and they will become mindfully attentive:
I saw this amazing red thing on the back of a leaf, it was long, bright red and had two black legs sticking out from both sides.
A girl 8 years old (who had not written a sentence before but who clearly describes a Platycis minutus beetle!)
Quiets
You taught us how to be
motivated by how much you would sell.
We loved what you offered:
your digital war, collaborating
with the entrepreneurs of cash,
carrying your marketing of two for one,
your virtual living through sophisticated screens,
your fantasies of small horizons.
You taught us how to live this way,
we learnt there was no other way.
It is the only way the world works,
you said.
But you never told us about the quiets,
the epiphanies of connection
about discovering the secret
that is only heard in silence.
Why?
It would have made so much difference.[10]
GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO REV DR CHRIS WALTON
Chris Walton is a Trustee of the Quiet Garden Trust and Chair of the Trustees of The Ringsfield Hall Trust. A more detailed account and reflection on Magic Spots in an article Childhood awaits every person in the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality. For more information feel free to get in touch with Chris Walton at: chrisclownwalton@gmail.com
If you would like more information about working with children and nature connection explore the Quiet Garden Associate Scheme and join their mailing list – and for information about school and group residentials visit: www.ringfield-hall.co.uk
Notes: