Inclusive Devotional: You Are Allowed to Just Be

LEARN This episode names the particular weight homeschool parents carry — the pressure to constantly justify their choices, to themselves as much as the world. Drawing on three traditions from three very different corners of the world, it offers a different way of holding that weight. Mary Oliver’s poem Wild Geese opens the door. Lao Tzu’s concept of wu wei reframes rest as working with, not against. And Desmond Tutu’s ubuntu reminds us that belonging is not a performance — it’s a given.

TALK — Conversation Starters

* For younger kids: “What’s your favorite thing to do just because it makes you happy, not because it’s for school or because someone asked you to?”

* For older kids/teens: “Do you ever feel like you have to earn the right to rest? Like rest has to be deserved first?”

* Any age: Read them Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Ask which line stands out. Wait. Don’t push.

* Any age: “Tell me about a moment this week when you felt really like yourself.” (Not an achievement — just a moment of being.)

* Any age: “If you could spend a whole afternoon doing exactly what you wanted, with nothing on the schedule and no one watching, what would it look like?”

DO — To Ponder or Practice

* Sit with the voice. The next time you stop and the voice says you should be doing something — notice it. Name it. You don’t have to argue with it. Just recognize it as a voice, not a fact.

* Write out one line. Copy a single line from Wild Geese that landed for you and put it somewhere you’ll see it this week. On the fridge. In your planner. Anywhere.

* Try the ubuntu greeting. In the Zulu language, sawubona means “I see you” and the response sikhona means “I am seen.” Try the practice with your kids this week — not necessarily the Zulu words, but the intention: look at them and say “I see you.” Mean it.

* Read Wild Geese aloud to your family. Don’t introduce it. Don’t explain it first. Just read it and see what happens.

Sources & Further Reading

* Oliver, Mary. “Wild Geese.” Dream Work. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1986.

* Lao Tzu. Tao Te Ching, Chapter 48. (The Stephen Mitchell translation is widely praised for readability — Harper Perennial, 1988)

* Tutu, Desmond. No Future Without Forgiveness. Doubleday, 1999. (Source of the ubuntu quote used in this episode)

* Buckingham, Will. “Desmond Tutu, Ubuntu and the Possibility of Hope.” Looking for Wisdom, 2022. — https://www.willbuckingham.com/ubuntu/

Additional Reading

* Oliver, Mary. Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver. Penguin Press, 2017. (The best single-volume introduction to her work)

* Mitchell, Stephen, trans. Tao Te Ching: A New English Version. Harper Perennial, 1988. (Very short — can be read in an evening)

* Tutu, Desmond and Mpho Tutu. The Book of Forgiving. HarperOne, 2014.

Key Ideas

* Wu wei (无为) — A Taoist concept meaning “effortless action” or “non-striving.” Not passivity, but the practice of working with rather than forcing against. From Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching.

* Ubuntu — A philosophy from the Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa: I am because we are. Your humanity is not self-created or earned — it exists in relation to others. Belonging is not a performance; it is a given.

* Wild Geese — A 1986 poem by Mary Oliver. Its central gift: you do not have to prove your worthiness. You already have a place in the family of things.