Category: The Healing Journey

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Grateful for MORE Soccer

I’m temporarily without a yoga home and a skin infection is keeping me from jiu-jitsu. Soccer has long been my athletic comfort zone and this week I have been blessed by opportunities to play.

I joined a new team in a South American league and got a surprise invite to a pickup game. A total of four games this week, and that doesn’t include the masked matches I could have competed in. I’m not ready to mask up for soccer and not sure I’ll ever be.

I’m grateful for this physical life. It brings me back into my body and connects me with a childlike love of play.

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Grateful Deschooler

Deschool yourself, unteach yourself about what education is. It’s not an easy process to let go of the assumptions we have absorbed. “Preschool” wasn’t a thing 40 years ago. Kindergarten was voluntary in many places at that time too. The mandatory “school” mentality is shockingly new in human history, this isn’t how we have learned for millenia.

I don’t “teach.” I learn out loud, ask questions, model curiosity, model good behavior, model self care and self improvement, model good eating habits and physical fitness, and, most importantly, I listen. Listen to the child’s desires and needs, try to fulfill those and you will be on the right path. The hard part will be when his/her desires don’t match your expectations.

So that’s at the root of deschooling: releasing expectations and assumptions about what education looks like. I was public schooled for 13 years and deschooling is an ongoing process. We have been filled up with so many assumptions about the way things aught to be, when our hearts and minds know they can be better. That is the path to freedom.

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New Friends

I sat at my dining room table with three new friends today. These were home educating moms who had brought their children over to build in our Lego workshop.

We didn’t talk politics, Covid, nor any of the mainstream narratives. We discussed unschooling and our greatly varying paths to a similar mindset.

I don’t know if I would have met these amazing women if not for the Lockdown and happy coincidence. In the chaos of the new social divisions, I have sought out those who would think for themselves and be willing to meet and connect in honest exchange.

That has meant forming new groups and opening my home when so many doors are closed.

I am grateful for these opportunities to connect. I am more a social creature than most. These connections are lifeblood.

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Grateful Tears

“I haven’t cried in a while,” feels like a weird thing to say.

At a certain point you learn to feel the swelling wave of grief as it approaches. You don’t paddle away or try to hide under the surface. “Time to ride,” you might say to yourself. You’re probably out there without a board, but this wave is inevitable, so you throw your body on top of it. It might speed you to shore, or it might carrying you away into bawling reminiscing.

This morning, the wave came in the form of a video of a flash mob performing Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.”

Mary had a brother-in-law, Rich, who loved Zeppelin. He also died too young and I think of them in Heaven together, laughing and having a grand time at our expense. Rich was the funniest one in the family. He was brutal and loving and could give no shits about convention. He was a mountian man who could fit in at a hipster wedding, Eagles game (as a Raider’s fan), fancy party, or anywhere you please. He was a hunter and master mason who would keep you up all night drinking and laughing.

In a family with a lot of in-laws, Mary and Rich were each other’s favorites. He was my favorite too. I often imagine them watching my crazy life. I’m sure Rich has plenty to say about me dating, “You gonna let your husband do that? You should haunt those fuckers.”

“He’s not my husband anymore, Rich. Remember we’re dead?”

“Damn, why are you always bringing that up?”

“Anyway, she seems like a nice girl and I trust him.”

I’m sure Rich responds with something too crude to write here.

Music isn’t a minefield of emotion for me, it’s more like watching witches throw ingredients into a cauldron. Sometimes you’re ready for the splash and burst of purple (favored color of Rich and Mary) fire and sometimes the dragon’s tear or frog’s tongue suprises you with an eye-stinging smoke.

I’m grateful for the concoction and the tears it inevitably produces. It grounds, cleanses, and heals.

Rest in Fun, Rich Williams and Mary Zerbey. I may not want you to see all that goes on in my life, but I hope this video reaches to Heaven.

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Soccer Privilege

“Privilege” has become one of the words ruined by politics and those who understand that tearing apart words is how you destroy communication between well-meaning people.

I’m going to show gratitude for the privileges that soccer has allowed me.

My first experience outside the white, suberban soccer fields of Pennsylvania was in an ethnic league on a team of Italians. A Venezuelan kid my dad knew had been recruited and he brought me along.

High school was wrapping up and I was more interested (somewhat by necessity) in working weeknights than devoting all my productive hours to the school team.

These guys were recent immigrants and older than me. They welcomed me into their homes and snuck me into bars after games. It was exciting to dive into a different culture and get my first taste of how immigrants preserve their culture in a new land.

After a few seasons I returned to white, suburban club teams, but there was greater diversity than in school and I got to play with Turks, Irish, Swiss, and other ethnicities.

Maybe the most fun I ever had was working in a Japanese/Thai restaurant. Between shifts, the South American and Thai/Indonesian/Japanese employees would face off for parking lot soccer. I was designated Asian or Hispanic depending on which team was short a player on any given day. We laughed so much during those matches and the long days of work were worth it for that camaraderie.

Playing and managing adult teams into my 30s I played with innumerable nationalities. Learning new cultures and different styles of play and communication have become integral skills in my ability to build strong teams.

Now I’m in my 40s and struggling to find places to play without arcane and counter-productive Lockdown rules. Because of relationships I’ve fostered and an eagerness to support a diverse soccer community, I’ve been invited into a Hispanic culture that is independent of many of the restrictions imposed by the ruling classes.

There is privilege in being marginalized and there are always advantages to be had when the dominant culture doesn’t want much to do with you.

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My Curious Little Man

I’ll start with a small self-gratitude for my intentional and disciplined approach to media consumption. On Election Day and the day after, I didn’t see, nor hear, any news. I was focused on our lives as a family and we had a great couple of days without distraction.

My big gratitude is for the little bugger who wrecked my plans. My older son, Westen, got curious about who won the election late on Wednesday. I told him I didn’t want to know and I didn’t want him searching for the answer.

Luckily, he’s a Zerbey and would never listen to an incurious authority figure. While I played soccer, he looked up the results. Of course, he couldn’t find anything satisfying and told me after the game. I’m not the best dad I can be at night after a workout, so I chided him for disobeying my request. It took me a few minutes to apologize and tell him that he had done the right thing, that if you have a desire for knowledge, you should let no one stand in the way. I told him I would have done the same thing.

I’m blessed by my rebels. They humble me and teach me everyday.

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Grateful for These Strange Creatures

Of course I love my boys and think they are, objectively, the best humans. That should be a given with 9- and 11-year-olds who have had half decent parentage.

But these boys are special. They lost their mother almost three years ago and bring her spirit alive every day. Isaac, the younger, struggles with fading memories of Mary, but he has no idea how much he embodies her compassion and warmth. He’s a half-grump and slow to wake up, just like mama. He’s always thinking of little things to do for people. He gets overwhelmed by the nuclear energy that emits from his dad and older brother. He loves music and art and when he’s in the present, no one else is more present.

Mary and Isaac would have been best friends. They would have built fires and cuddled in front of them. They would have cooked and baked together. They would have slept in on Saturdays while Westen and I went on a morning adventure.

There’s sadness in those “would haves,” but I am grateful for the connection his existence creates with his mother.

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A Month of Gratitudes

I’m a couple days late on this fine November trend, but I don’t mind. I’m grateful for this blog and my freedom to express myself when I wish.

I begin each day with intentional Wim Hof breathing techniques that take 15-20 minutes. I have a hyperactive mind that often distracts me from the meditative space created by this practice. One of my favorite solutions to the busy thoughts is to direct my attention to God and thank him for all of the wonderful and difficult aspects of my life.

This practice has become especially comforting as my place of worship has remained closed throughout the Lockdown. My prayer life has grown and lifted me through dark days. Today is distinctly special as I am rising out of a second wave of depressive pressure since March when the Lockdown began. I am thankful for His steadfast hand through my personal storms. The waters always calm, even if only for a few moments. The more often I return to that clear, cool lagoon of peace, the more I see that the storm will pass.

The sun is rising behind me, brightening the room as Enoch Light’s music reminds me of the fanciful pleasures of this world. God’s creation is truly a miracle full of beauty.

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Not Imposing My Will on Others

I don’t determine my potential by who is in elected office. I am the driving force in my life.

I participated in politics for 20+ years. Voting, phone banking, volunteering for the Republican National Convention in Philly in 2000, attending city council meetings, speaking at school board meetings, Tweeting wildly in the pre-censorship days, watching C-SPAN and listening to Rush Limbaugh at age 16 and spinning that into a 24-hour TV news habit, and generally believing all those activities were important.

Then I had children.

I turned off the TV. That’s adult stuff, right? I don’t want to poison there minds with that…yet.

Then I came home to take care of those children and facilitate their development full time. That was around 2009-2011 and I was sure Obama was our greatest villain. He and Hillary were getting us into unnecessary conflicts in the Middle East and I was with the Right on all the arguments against him. It took me a long time to unwind my hypocrisy.

In that period, I was working out my principles and how to pass them on to my sons (as I thought that was my job as a parent). I hadn’t found faith in Jesus Christ yet and had no easy source for answers. I was working on my simplest truths.

I decided to formulate how I would explain my support for Bush’s wars and opposition to Obama’s (and both Clintons’) wars to my sons when they were ready. I couldn’t do it. The Golden Rule kept getting in the way. How could I act one way in my life and support the opposite policy in my political beliefs? Lesser of two evils? That’s a false choice. The near term cost may be great, but good is always an option.

It was a slow, quiet, and internal process. I had wanted to be a dad since I was ten. I had put a lot of thought into it and this was the first time I felt the Holy Spirit telling me that I was in the right place. I was learning at least as much from my sons as they were learning from me.

As we grew into a homeschooling family, I discovered Tom Woods and libertarian philosophies. My wife and I were taking on a task that many assume is the role of government. If we could be responsible to educate ourselves and our sons, what else could motivated individuals accomplish? What could they NOT accomplish?

The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP) was the concept that cleared away contradictions in my mind that I had been trying to reconcile. It is the articulation of the Golden Rule in political terms. I was finally able to say that I had been wrong and that I can be right going forward.

In 2016, I was driving my young sons to vote in the Presidential Primary in Delaware. Our polling place was in the church that I would eventually join as a follower of Christ’s Way. Trump was on a roll and it seemed that Ted Cruz was the only one who might stop him. I was torn and discussed it with my sons. I told them war and education were my biggest issues. Cruz was better on education and Trump was better on war. My seven-year-old asked, “You have to decide between war and homeschooling?” Crap. Simultaneously, he exposed the false choice and gave me the answer I still give today, “If the people are dead, you can’t educate them and you can’t move their hearts.”

I’m pretty slow, so I didn’t absorb all of that before pulling the lever for Trump that day. I was more right than I knew, Cruz eventually tried to meddle in homeschooling from the Senate and he (or Hillary) certainly would have given us more dead bodies through military conflict. But that would be the last vote I cast.

I came to learn that democracy is one group of people imposing their values on a larger group of people (most Americans do not vote for the winning candidate) through force of law. I could no longer support that system of aggression.

Today, my sons have their own political ideas. They discuss candidates and issues with their friends in a juvenile manner that isn’t far off adult conversations on the topic. I see my role as always advocating for the opposite position as best I can. Freedom and voluntarism extend into my parenting. I’m not here to direct their thoughts, but as a stone for them to sharpen their blades upon.