First time

Last night I showed kids the Milky Way for the first time.
Today I took kids deep into a forest for the first time.
Taught them how to build a camp fire for the first time.
Explained global warming for the first time.
Explained how commercials bombard us with things we don't really need for the first time.
Guided them to sit alone with a tree for the first time.
Children ate leafs straight off a plant today, por la primera ves.
Lots of goodness being brought down into the world over here.
I feel honored to have even a little hand in it.

Ten kids circling in the forest around a tiny broccoli seed, Amazed at potential to grow.

Before Breakfast

This morning I got up at 7:30.
Some people where praying/meditating in the Gazebo by the lake. I walked alone along the misty morning lakeside trail with a mandolin and made up songs of thanks that my soul decided to rejoin my body again this morning. A man on a porch overheard my Melody and pulled out his ukulele and began to strum. We joined forces on the porch. I didn't know his name, but I knew so much about him from his heart song. We played and played and a woman come through the door on the porch. She was conducting a morning course on "what is happiness" in the room next door to a group of 20 teen-agers and the group had consensed that the two old friends making music through the window on the porch was their ideal of happiness. She asked if we would come in and share ourselves with the group. Of course we did. I told about how happiness for the most part was a bunch of tricks you pick up. Tricks for staying appreciative. Tricks for being true to yourself. How a rich person is one who's content with what he has. And then I played them the happy song. It was a delightful way to start the day.
My first batch of Kiddies come tomorrow!

Head in the clouds

The transition back to America slightly psychedelic as I didn't really feel like I was in my body for the first week back. I felt like a gold fish wrapped in a plastic bag, getting moved from the store to a new warm home.
"So.....How was Israel?"
"uhh.....neat....." I'd reply.
"So what did you do there?"
"yah know, different things..."
What to start talking about? Sometimes I would reply that I spent a lot of time at a place called heaven where i had an organic circle garden, and slept in a tree house that sat above a sauna which was next to a mikva, where the poppa of the land built biblical king David style harps and the Momma of the land was a natural healer and where the jackels howled at dusk. This answer would normaly throw peolpe for a loop. And is it cool to just tell someone that you came from a war? Does the Diner lady really want to know that?
"what did you do?"
This was always a hard answer to muster, even when I was in Israel. Each day was usually filled with endless spontaneous adventures. If you asked me what I did yesterday I'd usualy be hardpressed for an answer (although yesterday I did make fire from rubbing sticks...no matches)
For the last few weeks I've been out here, tucked in a forest on a hillside by a lake, with a community of conscious, spiritual, musical soul rebels, and my feet feel like their on the ground again. We've been training and hiking on the A.T. and finally on Monday our first batch of kiddies come to town. To me, the main thing we are doing here is waking them up, and getting them to start making conscious decisions. Its a wake up from consumerism, detachment, apathy, spiritual emptiness, environmental neglect...We get em diggen on nature, and water cycles and decomposition and we teach them how Judaism jives with all of these concepts.
I'll be up here for a few months....
The best time to dupe me is on the weekends.
Be Good,
Come visit