Easy as 1,2,3

Learning.

Stretching.

Awakening.

Failing.

Expanding.

These are verbs I get to engage with every, single day. I have spent much of my life engaging these actions in just one or two areas of life – music and theology. And now, here in the village, I get to apply my life-long love of learning into all sorts of unexpected and new arenas of life, arenas that stretch me out of the box of musician and remind me that I am capable of growth, transformation and newness...that's a helpful reminder these days.

So there is water colors, mitten making, ultimate frisbee clinics, snow shoeing and an exorbitant amount of knitting. Still, the craziest learning I've done so far is in the training of the Village Fire Brigade. Our village is very remote, hours and ferry rides away from emergency services, so we rely on village staffers to be trained in emergency areas; search and rescue, first responders, medic and fire brigade. Along with my other brigade newbies, I spent a week learning about things like how to read smoke, control a fire and incident command protocol. Then we donned the cumbersome turn outs and flowed water over high snow banks and learned about the different water streams and the damage they can do. We crawled down long hallways with blinders on, in full masks and worked with partners to drag bodies out of buildings. These skills were not always on my list of things to master, yet because of each crazy and new thing I learn and with every verb I engage, my world gets just a little bit bigger and richer than it was the day before. This kind of tangible, physical service is a nice change of pace from the somewhat vague and unmeasurable work I typically do. Plus, its a pretty great feeling to walk with a whole team of people down main street in the turnouts.

The princess is also doing an astounding amount of learning. There is all that she does at her amazing little school every day and then after school she is able to attend sessions like – the behavior of cougars, sewing lessons, loom weaving, piano lessons, bell choir, sledding, hiking and so much play time. She is also learning how to be a light-footed creature in this village. She cautiously takes food and cleans her plate so she doesn't add too much to compost. When we were out she chose her special toy based on the amount of packaging it did or did not have, because she walks by the landfill bin every day and is aware of what harm all that plastic is doing to our precious and fragile earth. And she is learning to spread her wings and fly away, she leaves me to practice piano and play with her friends. She hikes down to the pot shop to work on a new project and snow shoes to the top of the best sledding hill in the village. My precious princess is becoming a strong, young women with a gentle touch and fiery temper...and I find myself beaming with pride as she approaches another birthday.

And with every new experience an old saying becomes more and more true for me. It goes something like, “True wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” Damnit Socrates, turns out there is more learning to do...