Emergence

Emergence has been a theme for a long time in early years education. Emergent curriculum. Allowing a child’s day to unfold just as their interests take them rather than a day following my plan. It took a while to adjust to after years as a primary teacher.

In my life, finding emergence has been something I have enjoyed without really noticing and naming. I have been a free spirit, taking opportunities and possibilities when they have appeared. Not really following an expected path.  Enjoying being a bit different. It took more thought to find the learnings and the path after burning out. I think I took the path before I ever realised what it was that I had learned. And my path is taking me to places that I wouldn’t swap for anything.

It feels right, the idea of emergence, as I learn how the word tastes in my mouth.

This, I realise, is one of the ways Elaine does things. Water has her ways and so do I. Looking back, looking now, looking forwards, seeing the flow, seeing the patterns, seeing the path that is bigger than I am, bigger than I control. How do I do things? I am open about my worlds; I keep my own rhythms; I remain free from the imposed; I am an individual, holding myself independently to allow   loyalty to all.

And I think that there is an element of this being how one walks by faith and not by sight. If I believe that I am created and that I am purposed; if I have discovered that the light I am created to shine is moonlight and that I am called to be a pathfinder and pathmaker; if this is something that my whole path towards now has brought me to, and I have a way ahead that is unknown, unmapped, new terrain; and if I believe that my way will unfold before me as I walk one step at a time…

Then faith is trusting in emergence, it is trusting in the unfolding and The Unfolder, it is trusting in myself to hear the whisper that shows my way, the whisper in my spirit of The Spirit. Because we make our plans but God has the last word.

And it is good for me. For here I am, connection after connection after connection, reflecting on emergence and realising how impossible the chances are of this happening by accident if I let it happen by accident.

“I always tell people that you’re always practising things. So it’s not like you go from not practising to   practising. It’s, are you practising things on purpose? Are you practising things you would want to practise, or are you practising what someone else has told you is the right way?”

Adrienne Maree Brown