Windows/Ways of Knowing
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Windows/Ways of Knowing
My father adored food.
Really. Really.
And reflecting back on his love and care and attention and reverence for food
I realize he modeled and taught me to be in relationship
with my senses and my intuition and to turn towards
what my heart loved at an early age. (Yay Dad)
It was a joy and delight to watch him fly slowly around the kitchen slicing garlic, stirring tomatoes, chopping herbs, tasting, and through his sense of smell knowing just a pinch more of basil or salt or…
It was an art and soul experience for him. The tending of food. The day was timeless. It was focused. It was a quality of presence.
It was intuitive for him.
He didn’t question these ways of knowing.
He simply lived them.
These were the windows of knowing he breathed. It was a beautiful quality of aliveness! You could feel his love beaming. And his sharing brought so much joy and yumminess, and connection to those he fed!
And watching him eat.
Oh my.
He didn’t scarf his food.
Slowly.
He savored.
He paused.
He rejoiced.
He smiled, sometimes dreamily.
He could even make bologna taste like gourmet food!
My favorite was his marinara sauce which he tended and simmered most of the day on many Sundays of my growing up years. No one I know has been able to match this amazing taste!
I remember walking into the house and breathing in the scents coming from the kitchen as it wafted into the entryway. I didn’t have to see it to know what it was. My mouth would water in readiness and I’d often slip off my sneaker and slide stealthily into the kitchen. There I would tear off a small corner of a loaf of Italian bread, dip it in the sauce, plop it into my mouth, and dive out the door when he wasn’t looking! There was an art to that too!
Does this ring any bells for you? Any time in your life when you or someone else lived these ways of knowing?
And
10 years ago I was reading Nature and The Human Soul, by Bill Plotkin, for the first time. I remember reading the part about the Windows of Knowing.
He references the work of psychologist Eligio Stephen Gallegos and his belief that each of these four ways of knowing, feeling, sensing, thinking and imagination held equal importance and power. He thought of intuition as a part of all those ways so didn’t separate it out. (and I want to acknowledge, that as many of us know, Indigenous cultures and others have held these other ways of knowing as sacred for eons---and more ways than these!)
For me that particular sliver of writing was a homecoming. I thought of those moments with my Dad. How he honored those ways of knowing.
And I felt a deep grief that I hadn't followed suit. That I had lost my way.
I had spent a lot of years trying really hard to fit into a culture that valued thinking most.
And for me, honestly, while I love my mind, the countless moments in my life when I feel most whole, connected, present and alive are when I am dropped into these other ways of knowing.
It’s like the heartbeat of the universe lines up inside me.
So I have found myself more and more curious about who we would be as a collective culture if we took these other ways of knowing and loved them up. Gave them attention and acknowledgement and time and space.
Who would we become?
And of course that meant being the change I want to see in the world. I have to tend to these ways, turn towards the sensory, creative, intuitive heart ways. And of course it's a journey of engaging and unraveling. (These missives do come from my heart and intuition and senses. It's why I love to write to you!)
And lastly----
As I was prepping for this presentation with the Co-Chairs what became really clear was their desire for participants to come home to themselves as we move out of the pandemic. To feel and sense and process things that got stuffed under all the stress and strain of nursing and rational and mandates and masks. The windows of knowing are setting the stage to explore through a writing practice.
That will come next week!
My hope is that you will take out a pen and paper and do some writing. See what comes through for you.
Many blessings my friends,
Carol