Posts

Reaching Out!

 It is hard to pay attention to what is going on in our country these days, as well as in the wider world. Of course there are positive happenings too. But what arrives in the news feed tends to be pretty unsettling. Clearly we are in troubled times, not only as Americans, or as people in general. Even if you're a tree or a polar bear, uncomfortable change is coming. And these developments, whether it is political or economic or climate-based, are coming more quickly than we had anticipated. Some days I decide to delete all the news updates coming to my email. I save them for another day. I only want the news to have a certain amount of foothold on my energy. A message that I keep hearing is to gather together in small groups. In just one day last week, I heard from three separate people who live far away and are not folks I see often. Yet they all told me of groups they had joined that were important in giving them support and stability. The groups had different focuses: art, musi...
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Indigenous Wisdom

 I have just signed off from our sixth session of the Resilience and Acceptance course. Last week, I must admit that I struggled with accepting the state of the world right now, accepting the reality that we are already heading for the sixth extinction, and that it is too late to prevent it. It felt so very sad, such a tragedy. This was not just a story, but something all the people living now will experience soon. I thought of my grandchildren, and of young people all over, just starting in their lives and having to tackle the unraveling of culture that has already started. All week I vacillated between being angry and being sad. And I didn't start our homework for tonight's class until this morning. However, it was just what I needed to shift out of that dark mood. The focus in this week's class was on indigenous wisdom. We saw video clips of many indigenous elders explaining their view of the earth, their guides for living, their long history and traditions, and their an...
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Connections

  Connections A phone charged by electric current. The bow sliding across cello strings. Baby rabbits suckling mother’s milk. Roots diving deep to find water. Middle C finding harmony with high G. Green vines winding around the fence post. White teeth crunching into delicious corn. A seed at last feeling the sun’s warmth. Eyes of strangers meeting and deeply knowing. A sense of connection across thousands of miles. Hearts touching even beyond death’s separation. Tiny thread woven into a great tapestry. Without connection, there would be only pieces. Each part independent and longing for more. With the force of touch, of contact, of closeness, we become a whole greater than all its parts.
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Resilience

 I am taking an online zoom course on resilience. The attendees are from multiple states and countries. Each week there is a lot of homework: videos and articles showing in many ways how our species on this planet is in big trouble. We have seen the projections for decades, warnings that if we keep our current strategies and lifestyle, our future looks increasingly bleak. It is a sobering experience, seeing each other in our zoom windows, acknowledging together the real situation of our culture, our lifestyles, our changing earth. Yet the purpose of this series of classes is not to make us scared and depressed. Instead, it is focusing on developing resilience. First we are nurturing resilience in ourselves. And then when we are grounded and strong, we are more able to reach out to the rest of our personal worlds in positive action.  This focus has had an interesting effect on my feeling about the world. On the one hand, when I go out to my favorite park and sit at a high overl...
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Choosing Our Paths

  Which Path? First time walking on this lake path since the big snow. Sun shining,  breezes warm, and white drifts almost gone. Good to stretch my muscles along this graveled public way. Further along, things become mushy and muddy. I begin walking on the grass beside the path, an intentional divergence from the expected route. And then even the side gets muddy and I am about to turn around. But as I turn, I notice a small unobtrusive path leading off to the right angling uphill. No sign, nothing to give a clue about the destination. Am I adventurous enough to try it? Striking out on my own, off the proper way?  Yes, I decide, urged on by a sense of curiosity and independence,  I will take this path, choosing the unknown, the unexpected, ready for discovery.  Up the winding trail I go, around a corner, through clumps of trees, and finally I’m circling a second lake until eventually the path leads to a paved street.  That’s enough for me, I think, and I tur...
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Listening

 Oh my. These are truly tough days here in this country. We are being bombarded with rhetoric that inflames hatred and division. The stabilizing parts of our government are daily being thrown overboard. It is hard to believe that a dramatic collapse is not imminent. And for us, the people, it is hard to know what to do, how to respond. Of course we want to find ways to support what we sentient beings crave: peace, cooperation, understanding, love, acceptance, smooth interactions, freedom of thought, a common foundation. But it is so easy to feel powerless and afraid. In the face of overwhelm, my instinctive reaction is to pull myself away in my mind from the human upheaval, and remember (like the name of this blog) that we all belong to something greater, a connected, vibrant universal web of life and sustenance. My imagination takes me to the soft leaves underneath a tree, where I curl up and listen to the earth breathing beneath me, knowing that I am a small part of it all, and t...
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Centering

  (I've been sick for a couple weeks, just beginning to feel good again. Here's a poem I wrote just before I moved from the farm to our cohousing community, and it seems a good one for us right now in our troubled world.) Centering I taught my two grandsons to use a potters wheel.  They were excited, ready to engage, imagining beautiful vases, plates, creations. And then they found out about centering, a challenge only one of them finally mastered. There is the whirling surface, and the hunk of clay in the center, wobbling and bumping around, all cattywhompel, uneven, rough and stubborn. What is needed is firm, strong hands, braced on stability, urging the clay down and in, resisting the pull outward, resisting the pull to disorder. It takes slow patience, easy breathing, focus, unflappable intent. And once the clay is finally guided to the still center, it spins beautifully, smoothly, unerringly in place. It is only then that the potter can begin to shape, to carefully, bit b...
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