Green Tribe of Belonging

  The Personhood of Rivers This will require a basic shift in attitude. Even though I love the earth, advocate for our fellow living beings, work on dismantling our superior pedestal, it is a stretch to think of a river as a person. But I am trying. I respect the elders who are urging this change in our culture. They urge us to stop treating water as a commodity, to honor its being, to free it from constant entrapment. Children have the open and curious minds to see a creek as a friend and teacher, to sit on its banks or paddle down its current and merge with its personhood. If I can remember with my child's heart, and open my eyes, my ears, my mind, I'll set off to befriend a body of water, its twists and turns, its seasons of life, and celebrate its freedom and intention as it runs through our world. Let it be so.

 I've been sick for the past week or so, apparently not covid because I test negative, but with something similar to covid's symptoms. For someone usually busy with all sorts of things, it is a challenge just to rest all the time. My body is not up to doing anything, but it feels so terribly lazy to lie around! I listened to audio mysteries for a few days. But I found that being sick, I was more vulnerable to the scary, murderous parts than usual. They freaked me out. That was a little weird. Going to my laptop for some research on viruses, I read that sometimes a virus can affect your cognition too. Your brain can get swollen and inflamed just like the rest of your body, and that can cause a foggy brain. A positive outlook seems to have a good record for improving health, and even though I usually like murder mysteries, they were clearly the wrong influence right now. So I started watching nature shows on my new smart TV. That change in venue was wonderful! I'm still not w

Wolves howl Geese honk in flight Whale calves sing in water Mother chipmunk calls her babies Listen! The other night while I was flipping through channels, I stopped on a PBS broadcast of a symphony orchestra playing from Austria. I had not planned on watching this program, and yet from the first moments of the performance I was riveted to the music. It seemed amazing that a bunch of people with a variety of instruments could create such enthralling sounds. The melodies, the rhythms, the harmonies, the variations in volume, combined with the faces of the musicians caught at my heart and pulled me into the experience and the feeling of the music. My profound reaction to this concert made me start to think about sound in a different way. And then the very next night I attended a local concert by Emma's Revolution. That was a different kind of experience, although just as gripping. The two singers used words, which were missing in the symphony. So not only the melodies and the rhythms