Green Tribe of Belonging

  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.

 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...

  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...

 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...

  (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...

 This is the time of year, at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, that makes us dig deep. As my acupuncturist says, we need to hold steady from the root. Even though our planet is warming in general, and it is not at all a good thing for our future, some of us are feeling that this winter has been especially cold and hard. It may be because there is so much dread and uncertainty in our lives since our new president has taken power and is making decisions that threaten our future in so many ways. It is harder than usual to feel hope.  For many years, in late winter I've begun planting in January. Here at Prairie Hill I cover my front stoop with 25-30 planted flats of prairie seeds. These seeds need to be "stratified" before they can germinate (be out in the cold for a couple months). They'll begin to break the ground in April. I'm hoping to get this first planting done this weekend. Those of us on the Native Prairie Subcircle at Prairie Hill collected...