Homeschool Easter

Homeschool Easter. You don’t have to be Christian to connect to its mythos and find value in its celebration. Of course, Christianity imbues this spring holiday with rich imaginations, but that’s not the point. The point is the resurrection of life as shown in these common symbols:

• Bunnies symbolize procreation.
• Eggs symbolize new life. They also represent a food that Lent-observing Christians could eat during this time of sacrifice.
• Lilies symbolize purity and the promise of everlasting life.
• Soft pretzels were invented 1300 years ago as another Lent-friendly food.
• Butterflies symbolize the transformation from one state to another.

In this post, I give some indications for how you could enrich your homeschool easter.

The Breathing Cycle of the Year

Anthroposophy sees the seasons in an artistically scientific way. In spring and summer, the earth breathes out. Her peak exhale occurs at the summer solstice. In autumn and winter, the process reverses, and the earth breathes in. Her peak inhale occurs at the winter solstice. We could also say the earth is most excarnated at high summer and most incarnated in deep winter.

We can see the out-breathing process in the way the sprouts, flowers, leaves, and ultimately fruits push up and out towards the cosmos. Earth breathes these – her dreams from winter – out into physical form, and they reach enthusiastically towards the sun and stars. We can see the reverse process beginning with the withering, decaying, and dying process of late summer/early fall. Quite literally, we can see in the falling leaves and seeds the earth calling her imaginations back into herself. She inhales the leaves back down to herself from their cosmic reaching activity of summer. She also at this time recalls the sap back down her trees’ trunks to store in their roots for the winter. (We can see the first signs of this in the withdrawal of chlorophyll from her leaves revealing brilliant golden, orange, and red hues.)

We can work artistically with this yearly breathing process in verse, song, and visual art. Together with our students we can make nature mandalas to each of the seasons, honoring the earth mother with symbols indicating that we see and understand her. Celebrating the seasonal festivals in ways that connect them to nature will also teach your children to think in truthful imaginations. This will make their thinking more holographic as they grow.

Death and Life in the Human Journey of Incarnation, Part I

We are accustomed to thinking of ourselves as alive when on earth and dead when in heaven (or wherever we go after here). Anthroposophy suggests an interesting polarity to this. While earth life may be alive for biology, we can see it as death for the spirit. Why? This is because the human spirit is an infinite thing. Naturally, if an infinite thing is brought into a finite situation, it will naturally fall asleep to its true nature. It will forget its infinite nature in the maya of sense reality.

This spiritual sleep is necessary for we human beings to become individuals. Think about it, if I am infinite, that means I interpenetrate all other things and beings. In such a state, how could I come to know myself as an individual? That would be impossible. Therefore, this death of the spirit we encounter in biological earth life is necessary for the human self to wake up to itself.

Death and Life in the Human Journey of Incarnation, Part II

While we can thank our biology for giving us the opportunity of selfhood, knowing ourselves as separate, embodied human selves is not enough to satisfy us. For that, we need to rediscover who we are, spiritually.

How do we do that? Well, the human being lives in tandem with the earth. Recall how above we described this breathing process of the earth – exhaling in summer, inhaling in winter. We can extend this by saying the earth sleeps to herself in summer and wakes to herself in winter. So too is this breathing process is like the contraction and expansion of our spirit. Earth life is like a winter for the human spirit and heaven life (for lack of a better word) is like a summer for it.

What if we learned to awaken that infinite spirit while on the earth, however? What if we learned how to expand this fully awakened human self to experience its infinite nature while still here on earth? If we grasp that, we can approach the meaning of easter.

Conclusions for Your Homeschool Easter

Ultimately, the first most important thing in celebrating your homeschool easter is to imbue yourself with the rich thoughts, feelings, and imaginations of this holiday. As I said before, you need not be Christian to derive great value from this. All you need do is think perhaps a little more deeply than usual about the human journey on earth. Your 8 or 10 or 12 year old is not going to understand all that I have just said. They are still working on waking up to begin with! However, when you are imbued with such thoughts, you will know how to bring it to your specific children at their stage of development and within the context of your tradition.

Every human soul is on this path of contraction into form and expansion into spirit. We could also call it falling asleep to our true nature and waking up to it. I don’t think it matters what your religion or non-religion is. This is part of the geometry of being human.