Green Tribe of Belonging

  Technology and the Living World I was checking my phone this morning, wondering how cold it had gotten last night (below zero!) and what the forecast is for the next few days. When I went outside, I looked at the thermometer on my porch to see if it agreed with the weather report. And I bundled up when I went to the common house to get the mail and up to the trash shed to take up my garbage. Brrr! My body knew the truth of the temperature better than any machine, little or big. We are so accustomed to let our technology take care of these things, guiding us to think ahead, to bundle up, to know exactly what someone’s superior measurement equipment can tell us about things like temperature, wind, clouds, rain or snow. And it is very convenient to have these sources of information! If you let your mind explore this, there are so many things in our cultures that keep us on track: calendars, clocks, phones….. As I was walking outside, looking at the ice on the sidewalks, the snow on ...

  Looking for Good Standing on the streets of the Ped Mall, among hundreds of others whose anger matches my own, in commemoration of a good woman whose last name was Good, I feel surrounded by others looking for expression during these times of chaos and violence. It is so easy to read the headlines, and explore the depravity of national officials. In defense, I try to guide my senses to widen and expand, wider than politics, wider than war and greed, wider than our own species. It is with relief that I bring into focus the trees, the skies, the seasons, and two fluffy young kitties, curled up at my feet, innocent and joyful, tumbling around in their world, caring for each other, purring their contentment. They are reminders that not everything is corrupted. It is true that we are probably on the edge of some sort of collapse. The quickening of climate change, the abandonment of morality, the divisiveness of our fellow humans…. It may be too late to save our hospitable earth home. ...

 Christmas has usually been a happy holiday for me. As a kid, we siblings would come down the stairway early in the morning to discover what had appeared under the tree and in our stockings. It was exciting and a sweet tradition. And singing Christmas carols has always been a joyful group experience for me. This has seemed the season of giving, of honoring each other, of love. But I found myself unexpectedly pulling away from Christmas this year. I have been so dismayed by all the terrible things people in our country have been doing in the name of Christianity recently. No, I do not want to kill people in the name of Christianity, or deport them, or arrest them, or degrade them. I want to have no part in this cruelty! Of course, I do realize that politicians will use whatever they can to dupe followers into their own agenda. So using our tendency  toward intolerance and fear of people not like us, and making it into a Christian value, can work in the short term to push a poli...

 It is New Year's Eve, and I should probably be writing something profound and celebratory. But I've been struggling with anger for several days, and when I tried to write a nice poem for my poetry group last night, all I could manage to write about was anger. Hmm. Even though it's not an emotion that we often welcome, it may be a common one for us living through the past year. So I'll paste my anger poem below, with the hope that as we enter 2026, there will be hope that things get less bad, that we'll feel more hope than frustration, and that we'll take a turn for the better. Fingers crossed..... GRRRR! My mother always told me I was hiding behind the door when they passed the patience out. She told me this, of course, when I really wanted things to move along more quickly. Then I read that folks like me who were born under the sign of Gemini had little patience. So I had an excuse! But the book didn’t say how angry I was capable of getting. These days my ange...

 We're having a Winter Solstice bonfire tonight at Prairie Hill. Our common house was already scheduled with something else for the two nights closest to this cosmic event, and it was too cold then to do something outdoors. But today it is much warmer (in the mid-forties!) and perfect for an outdoor bonfire. I don't know about others here, but I need this focus on something much bigger than ourselves. When I look at the news, it is hard not to be shocked by how our species has gotten so screwed up! It is the Christmas season, but what people are doing in the name of Christianity in our country is making me recoil. And then I over-react and don't want to hear the Christmas carols that I've loved all my life. I imagine I'll love these beautiful carols again, but right now I need to go back further in our history. Humans started celebrating the Winter Solstice over 10,000 years ago in Neolithic times. Ancient cultures were much more connected to the rhythms of the eart...

 It's been too long since I've written on this blog. I usually try to write something at least somewhat inspiring, something in the world that I've discovered and want to share. However, my last three weeks have been kind of a nightmare, and it has been hard to think of anything very positive. But it is definitely time to write something, so I guess I'll write some about my last three weeks, and hope that by the end, I will come out with something positive. I know we're all suffering through hard times just now, if not personally, then in the wider world. And we're all connected in this. Even if someone never watched the news, or lived deep in a forest with only deer and rabbits as friends, I think there is something in the atmosphere in this troubled world that would affect us even then. We've gotten off the healthy track, and everything is diminished. Here's how my tough last three weeks started. When you've grown a child in your own body, there is...