Category: Uncategorized

Power has been out for 14+ hours. I’m on Day 30 of the Wim Hof Quarantine Challenge and I have no fear of a cold shower.

I’m growing each and every day to face the small and large challenges of living my best life.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Eat ice cream

Doze in the sun

Dance with caution tape

When I began homeschooling my sons I was constantly filling with expectations and assumptions about what we should be achieving. Those turned into disappointments for myself, my wife, and my sons. Happiness and peace became ever more elusive. We were floundering when I finally gave up on “teaching.” I became a facilitator, there to carefully listen to and watch these young humans whom I loved, and to take them the places they needed to go. Whether it was a book, museum, nature program, road trip, or simple playground, my role became to observe their thirst and lead them to water.

I slowly learned that I had to trust in their self-navigation, not only allow them to go down seemingly useless avenues, but to encourage their journey. I reminded each to own it.

Each avenue is paved with questions. Humans are natural question-making machines and we are so much better at this fundamental skill when we are young. By watching and listening I have rediscovered my own passion for discovery. I’ve gone down the paths cut by my own questions. I’ve allowed myself to be carried along and have found ever deeper questions.

These skills: listening, watching, and questioning in love have changed the way I interact with people. I’m quieter, I see and hear more. I try to treat everyone as someone I could love. It’s remarkable to listen to someone as if they are your closest family. Intimacy becomes something beyond physical touch. It becomes an act of vulnerability, a moment you can share with a near stranger. If you find a person who is willing to string enough of those moments together, you can create a space where physical intimacy is an extension of the loving attentiveness. Listening, watching, and questioning in love without assumptions.

The last benefit I expected to accrue from unschooling was to become a more complete romantic partner. As I apply the principles of love and trust to more of my thoughts and actions, I am consistently rewarded and continually more capable of caring for those I love.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

Some moments are perfect.

Westen is ten years old. He sat with me at our campsite this morning before anyone else got up. We talked generally about what “philosophy” was and I threw out some examples of big questions as I used a dictionary app to make sure I got my terms right.

He came to my bed this evening with his own big questions and big tears in his eyes. He wanted to know why humans were put on Earth. It wasn’t the only thing bothering him. We had an active weekend with some intense moments. He got to see the best and worst of my parenting. I’m sure he was wondering why some humans are taken away sooner than others too.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

How do I wrestle with the insecurities stirred up by dating mistakes and failures?

Grab my sons, and an extra boy or two, and head out for another Zerbey adventure. This weekend we’re camping, spending a day watching vintage beach racing, attending a fine craft festival, and firing new neurons while getting into just the right amount of trouble.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

I called it a dance yesterday. I didn’t even half-lament the circumstances that got me here. I was fully enjoying the absurdities and discoveries. And then I found myself being cruel. I didn’t exactly plan it, but I didn’t surprise myself either. I made a public show with an attractive female friend in front of an ex-lover. To what effect? Was I trying to hurt someone I love? It certainly didn’t come from a place of love or compassion. At best it was game-playing, an attitude I had denounced not 10 minutes previous.

I consciously chose to do the wrong thing. I don’t know how to make that right.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

I’ve been scared to write. I’m experimenting in the present, listening to God, and trusting Him with the future. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know if I’m being reckless, or if I’m yet to fully embrace the insane heart of my being.

I’d had an eye to the future since I was ten years old. I wanted a wife and children and a career as a continuity editor for comic books. I got all that (okay, not in the comic industry, but I have put to use the skills I practiced instead of reading the required middle school texts).

I’ve had it all. How would it not be selfish to ask for more future? How would I tempt fate to ask for more blessings?

It could be said that few things are more terrible than losing your wife and the mother of your young sons. But in our years together, the children we shared with the world, and the life we built for ourselves…our dreams came true and we had more than most people get in a lifetime.

I’ve been scared to write. I’m scared this doesn’t make sense or that it sounds like giving up. I’m scared of my tendency to change tenses, like I don’t know if I’m in the past, present, or future.

I’m more scared of knowing than not knowing. So much of what I thought I knew has been dismantled by home education. Seeking truth is a lot harder than assuming you’ve already got it. I KNEW I was Mary’s husband. That was important knowledge, but maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe I got too cozy comfortable in assuming that knowledge, that identity.

I want to be a little braver. I want to spend the next 30 days sharing things I’m learning (like my first kundalini yoga class tonight), but more importantly, sharing the things I don’t know (chakras, for one, or five, or whatever).

I don’t know how to write about the things I don’t know, so this should be an interesting October.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason

My dream/fantasy/self exploration world just got stranger.

I imagined that wormholes actually consisted of sub-dimensional creatures that opened at both ends to allow travel through space and time. As I envisioned this, it became clear that the worms were not opening for passage, but had been a single creature severed an uncountable number of times.

Reality is built on the foundation of a mutilated past. I had heard this, but never seen it in my mind this way.

What was surprising was what I found as I spent time in this subcutaneous layer of reality: a heart. A Franklin Institute-sized, translucent blue, radiating, human heart.

I touched the heart and it infused me with a warm, crackling energy. It felt like love.

God bless and thank you for reading,

Jason