Main Lesson: Creation Stories - Ancient Hebrews with Mr. Séamus

October 5-8, 2026

During the past week in the third grade we furthered our artistic speech work, practicing all almost all the way to the very end of the Tubal Cain poem, finding how Tubal Cain’s great strength and skill, though destructive when wielded for self gain was transformed into a unifying and uplifting revelation when he offered it up to the betterment of the world. 

“But he rose at last with a cheerful face, 

And a bright courageous eye, 

And bared his strong right arm for work, 

While the quick flames mounted high. 

And he sang - 'Hurrah for my handiwork!' 

And the red sparks lit the air; 

'Not alone for the blade was the bright steel made;' 

And he fashion'd the first ploughshare!”

We also completing memorization of the Shakespeare passage traversing anapestic, trochaic and iambic rhythms and feeling how those shifts in the meter are Shakespeare seamlessly and almost invisibly leaving us his stage directions on how to express this character the fairy of the woods, addressing her rival Puck, as they happen upon each other in the wilderness. The anapestic meter brings the action of being anywhere everywhere at any given moment- 

“Over hill over dale 

thurough bush, thurough brier…”

The trochaic carries a spell like weaving movement to the action of the words-

“And I serve the fariy queen

To dew her orbs upon the green”

Finally, the fairy drops into sharp iambic pulses bringing specificity to all the many task that must be attended to-

“I must go seek some dew drops here

And hang a pearl in every cow slips ear…”

These are all subliminal suggestions in the form and understood completely intuitively by the young actors in the 3rd grade.  

In addition we continued with practicing our ancient Hebrew speaking and the same passage in English and heard the powerful and tragic legend of Cain and Abel. This story reverberated in the air between us with compassion and recognition. We felt the deeply human challenge that we face in misunderstanding the gift of our life, as well as the impulsiveness and reactivity that can surge in our hearts when we miss-read the beauty of being born inherently onesided. We all have great heavenly gifts and we all experience earthly limitations. In the tension caused by this human juxtaposition, rage and envy can blaze up in us like a storm, even toward those who we love most dearly and who are the very closest to us. Still, the creative powers of the spiritual world continue to weave, forever calling us toward a greater love and a greater understanding of our shared existence. This is of course an attempt at putting words to something which lived as an unspoken experience as we worked on this ancient legend of archetypes together.

with gratitude, 

Mr. Séamus