For Peter Yarrow

by Laura Parker Roerden I first met Peter Yarrow in 1998, when I attended a launch meeting at McGraw Hill in New York City for Operation Respect, an international anti-bullying program that Peter had just founded. I would be representing Educators for Social Responsibility (now Engaging Schools), where I was at the time the publicationsContinue reading “For Peter Yarrow”

A Prayer

by Laura Parker Roerden I am just human scaled, in a world that has become too big to hold. Here, this morning, a bird calls out to me, I look up and see an eastern bluebird alit on the fence. Its song is startling in the silence, as it has something urgent to convey. IContinue reading “A Prayer”

Youth Development in a Hurricane

(Previously published in The Disruptive Quarterly Journal) by Laura Parker Roerden Something about the way we’ve done youth development for the past few decades no longer feels right to me. The times have changed; and with it, so have we all. Ocean Matters, a service-learning program for teens, conducted an expedition in Grand Cayman, BritishContinue reading “Youth Development in a Hurricane”

Ocean Matters

Laura Parker Roerden’s work explores and promotes the development of social, emotional, and ethical development in young people towards creating socially-responsible adults, i.e. those who participate in democracy, positively contribute to their communities, and are stewards for the natural world. Research shows that nurturing healthy relationships with peers, adults in their life and with the natural world can provide young people with theContinue reading “Ocean Matters”

The Fireflies

by Laura Parker Roerden Last night the stars made our hayfield into a bed. Twinkling and turning from light to dark, and back again to light in the dark tangle of knotted weeds and swords of grass, sometimes in synchrony, but often as chaos. The perfect flat disk of a full moon spilled shadow everywhere,Continue reading “The Fireflies”

A Good Friday

by Laura Parker Roerden I wrote a poem: it isn’t much. It’s small like a bird, but it has hands that reluctantly open, palms up to receive shadow from starlight where monsters writhe and transform into angels through ancient story and song. I put the poem in a simple box and buried it; marked itContinue reading “A Good Friday”

All the Many Flowers

by Laura Parker Roerden A flower is not just a flower. It’s an invitation to dance, to fall into a time and a tempo not of your own wherein lies the meaning of being made of soil and sun, tapped lightly in place by fingers of rain. Don’t miss another post: including #FridayPoems and FromContinue reading “All the Many Flowers”

A Lonely Walk

by Laura Parker Roerden On a fine companioned afternoon, one never has to notice the stars shining side by side or a single blade of grass hunched over others, now safe as if the wind had thrown its weight, a thumb on a scale tipped for mercy. But in a stretch when lonely walks awayContinue reading “A Lonely Walk”

The Open Door

by Laura Parker Roerden There’s something available to us that sits beside hope, like an open door. Children know about it. You sometimes see them walk towards it. Often they carry it and place it on our laps, looking up at us with eyes flung wide open. “Here,” they seem to offer. “Take this.” I’veContinue reading “The Open Door”