appreciating the past: beaver,pa

Good Morning Everyone!

I just did a whirlwind 36 hours back to my past. The effects are stunning. I have come away remembering some things, but more I realized for the first time how much I gained from those 4 brief years spent in Beaver, Pa from age 12-16. The occasion of this trip was a collective class birthday party held at Two Mile Run Park.

Beaver, Pa on the Ohio River

Beaver, PA has become a jewel along the Ohio River. However it was also the site of Fort McIntosh during the Civil War.

However, what I value is the great Quality that this community added to my life during my time there, which is still there. It was, looking back, a Camelot experience. In Beaver I had the great good fortune to be taught by a school system that placed a high value on quality. I learned to love music. Not just love music, but I was taught how to play the instrument and had my first experience of creating music whist playing Igor Stravinsky’s, Firebird. At that time three men ran the music department, Robert Jones, Mr. Schwartz and Mr. Howarth. While they nourished my Spirit in music, Mrs. Hughes was busy enlivening us with her interpretation of Caesar’s Commentaries and Pliny in Latin. Ms. Coleson was passionately instructing us in grammar, insisting that proper grammar was essential in clear communications and accurate personal expression using the written word. Mr. Payne was mad about math, and excited even the most marginal students to understand and use algebra in everyday encounters. On and on, each teacher was inspired and inspired us.

But another thing happened in Beaver. We students never became competitors with each other. There were many excellent students. Yet even all these many years later we agree that we were somehow inspired to become better rather than compete with each other. It took a visit back to remember this and check in with my old classmates to verify if my perception of this time was theirs, as well. And it was. Now I understand that since then, I have been looking for this same Quality of experience: Love, support, all for one and one for all, community of appreciation for the individuality of each as complimentary to the Whole.

How blessed I am to have had this Quality benchmark so early on in life. There’s enough for everyone; everyone is Valuable; and Joy is the essential experience be it in math, Latin, music or business. Most certainly this was the birthing grounds for Applied Spirituality.

Thanks for reading!

Kath