Just add peace and stir

"Reading 'Just Add Light & Stir', then the link-following that follows has saved me from negative-mind-spiraling quite often recently."

—Caren Knox

She wrote that after having quoted this:

"The more local and personal peace there is, the more peace there will be in the world."

—Sandra Dodd

Knowing Peace
photo by Sarah Dickinson
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Sunny and dry

Look for usefulness.

Look for beauty.

Hang out, you and your laundry.



SandraDodd.com/howto
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Choose to live lightly

I think to move toward humor, live lightly and not so ponderously.

Problems can be seen as temporary setbacks instead of life-ruining horrors, if you remember to choose to live lightly.

Humor (chat transcript)
photo by Julie D
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Change in ourselves

"Unschooling is *much* harder than school at home because it takes a great deal of self examination and change in ourselves to help our kids and not get in their way!"

—Joyce Fetteroll

SandraDodd.com/quotes
photo by Megan Valnes
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Two things, two words

I wrote "two things, two words" as a title but most things have more than one name, most words mean more than one thing, and "two" is too small a number for this. I've brought a photo by Lisa Jonick to help you consider this. If you try to say in one word, or two, what the photo shows, you will leave out three or four important parts. What is the glass? Mirror. Window. Barrier. What is the cloth? Backdrop. Projection screen. Drapery. Is the tree touching the cat? Not really, but it envelopes him and his eyes turn to tree. Behind the cat is the reflection of mountains. It seems to be a continuation of his back. And as this is not "a photo of the mountains," the mountain seems to be inside the house, with the cat. Lisa saw this, photographed it, saved it, shared it. There will be many things in your life that you see, or fail to see. Seeing, thinking, naming, all have to do with thought, and categorization, and learning. Take a moment to see what you see richly, and deeply.

SandraDodd.com/mindfulofwords
SandraDodd.com/wonder
photo by Lisa Jonick

Don't taint the ice cream.

It creates a trap, a trick question, an adversarial relationship, an opportunity for failure, if there is "a right answer" to the question "What do you want to eat?" Or if an overjoyed "can I have some ice cream?" is met with a sigh, and eyes rolling, and another sigh, and a dirty look, and a summary of what the child has already eaten that day, and a reminder of when the next meal is, and a head shake, and a mention of ingredients... or even ONE of those, it taints the ice cream. It harms the relationship. It makes the child smaller. It does not, correspondingly, though, make the parent larger.

SandraDodd.com/eating/peace
photo by Sandra Dodd

Thinking and wondering

"Sometimes people just want to wonder, rather than *know*. Or maybe they will want to know in the future, but right now they're just thinking on it and wondering." —Tam Palmer

SandraDodd.com/exploration
Laughing and wondering might help, too.
photo by Colleen Prieto
"Barn Swallow fledglings — Rye, NH"