Green Tribe of Belonging

I just had a birthday and received lots of beautiful cards. My favorite said in colorful handwriting: I’m so glad to be going around the sun with you.”  And that phrase makes me smile every time I look at it. What a great sentiment. Stepping back from our crowded busy lives and seeing us as a collection of beings living on earth and traveling around the sun. Thinking more broadly like this helps me when I get wound up by reading the news. It is almost more than I can take to find that so many people in our country, intelligent nice people, don’t see what chaos is being wrought in our government. They think our president is doing fine. That makes me feel a bit crazy. How can humans see things so very, very differently? It’s like we’re living in a science fiction dream, and we’re moving toward the crisis. But then I take a deep breath, remember that after all, we’ve been here a long time. And sometimes we take wrong turns and then have to deal with the consequences. And then I look a...

  The Roots Go Down Softly, gently I lay these fragile roots of my small seedling into new ground. I carefully cover them with good soil, pat them firmly, and murmur a blessing for their future. Across the garden, a high weed is already firmly rooted. In contrast, my job now is to pull this plant out of its space. All the roots need to come out too, for even without leaves the vitality of a web of roots can push new growth into the sun. Though trees have deep roots, some of them decide to live above the ground. The oak’s tall majesty is supported by a wide spread of thick smooth roots, a visible living base that holds fast and nourishes. The dark world of underground roots hosts a wide diversity of life: fungi, tiny bacteria, egg nests, earthworms, beetles, ants, small mammals, all trading services, communicating with each other. If you happen to be a root, it is better for you if you’re not delicious to animals. Humans love carrots, turnips, and parsnips. Moles and chipmunks nibb...

  To All the Living World I’ve been thinking about you today, all my relations. It is a day on our home planet, where we are held in that caring web of life that surrounds us, nourishes us, protects us. Yet our home is in trouble and my own species has caused it. I’m sitting out in Nature, deep in a green prairie, wishing it were not so, wishing that we had done no harm, and wishing it were not too late to fix it. In the beginning of our species, like all of yours, we were innocent, finding our way in this earthly garden. It was only over time that our big brains expanded the perimeters of our lives, inventing things. If we had not forgotten our roots, our source, we might have worked on our projects in cooperation with the rest of the wide family of life. But somehow we decided we were the rulers. We were not really bad. But we were naive.  We thought we knew everything  and separated ourselves from our earth mother. We thought all other lives were only there for our use...

 At least 15 years ago, a couple of us started what we called the Earth Care Working Group. We urged the folks at our Quaker Meeting to join us once a month for an evening of education, fellowship, and a tasty dinner. It became an event that attracted many people outside our Quaker circles, and it lasted for a number of years. Then another group began doing the same thing, and we decided to leave it to them. That was before. But recently, with our world facing a host of challenges on every hand, we decided to start it up again. This time three Quaker congregations are joining to collaborate on it. And as before, we're wide open to anyone joining us. Quakers may have nudged this group into existence again, but it is definitely open to the wider community.  My own impetus for bringing these gatherings back to life is this: from where I sit in this increasingly chaotic and disturbing (if not scary) world, it looks like we really need to join together to find and follow paths that...

  This is a rainy day in Iowa, and rain is just what we need right now! We’ve been diligently watering a massive number of bushes and small trees that we’ve planted on our hillside, and rain would be a “godsend”. The sun has just come out as I sit by my south window, but if the weather reports are right, we’re due for some more rain tonight.  Because it was wet outside, I’ve been working at my desk, catching up on current events and doing some research on religion. What started me off was a post on Joe Biden, celebrating his ability to respect every person, putting no one ahead of anyone else, including himself. And I resonated with that. I know evaluating his term in office is a complicated thing, but his basic goodness is inspiring to think about. I don’t know anything about Joe’s religious beliefs, but I know that he cared about everyone in this country, whereas it is clear that the present people in office do not. And this made me think about the divisions that so often oc...

 On Mother's Day, I had the good fortune to be invited on a plane adventure with a pilot friend. He flew two of us on his small plane to Pella, Iowa - home of the famous Tulip Festival. The millions of tulips were long past their prime, but the buffet brunch we had at the Windmill restaurant was unforgettably delicious. After walking around the park and seeing thousands of tulips that were probably breathtaking a month ago, we drove back to the small Pella airport and flew home.  The tulips were no longer breathtaking, but for me, the flights there and back were breathtaking in the extreme. I sat in the front seat beside Dick, the pilot. I wore headphones to block out most of the huge sound of the engine, and I had a literal bird's eye view of miles and miles of Iowa landscape. I've flown in commercial planes many times, but the view on these is from so far up, and blotted out often by clouds, that only in taking off and landing do you get to study the landscape. On Sunday...