Keeping the inner light

Have you ever thought about what is truly good and what is truly evil? And when you understand what that means to you, how do you teach your young children in a way that they can understand and discover for themselves what those words mean? Good. Evil. Light. Dark.
I believe that children are born innately good. There is a light that shines from within them that is a piece of heaven still remaining. And if we can nurture that light through imagination, stories, wonder, and magic then they will carry that light for the rest of their lives.
This week in our home we are preparing for the festival of Michaelmas. It is a particularly special festival for our family, and is the first that we will celebrate for our school year this year. We celebrate it with stories of Michael, stories of shooting stars and stories of apples. We seek to find balance with light and dark as is the reflection of the year and season around us. We learn to be grateful for the harvest time.
So in reflection to start the week, we went looking at all the harvests from the local farmers market. And there we found what mama was in search of. The berries...

(On a side note farmers market is a wonderful introduction place for our Little Bruns to learn about money and selection of produce. We love letting Little mr 6 and Little mr 4 pick out and pay for the food we purchase. They take much more pride and interest in the food and are even willing to try the unexpected occasionally...
"You want to try a pepper? Ok...
Wait you LIKE peppers?? Ok...
Wait you are going to eat the WHOLE pepper???
-and yes, that did actually happen... )

But back to those berries... Yes mama was on a mission because this week we are going to attempt to make blackberry cobbler for our baking day to go with our "light" version of the story of Michael and Lucifer. The story is that when Michael threw Lucifer from heaven he landed in a blackberry bush and he was so angry that he spit (or in some stories peed!) on the blackberries. Some even say he returns every year on the same day to do it again for he is still so angry at being defeated.
Because of this folklore, people would not eat blackberries after September 29th and would gather all the berries beforehand and make wonderful cobblers and pies and preserves...
We hope that if we give our very little ones nurturing ideas and stories then their inner light will shine with truth, and love for their whole lives.

What we learned today:

-To be grateful for harvest, (because berries taste SO yummy!!)

- That not all bills of money are the same number. Little Mr. 6 figured out very quickly that the $5 bill buys much more than the $1.

- That raspberries make your lips RED! 

May your day be filled with light and love.

~ The Little Bruns