Green Tribe of Belonging

  Life on Earth Imagine her beginnings, this Mother Earth of ours. Hot and twirling elements slowly becoming a ball. Then cooling, cooling, the surface becoming hard, the inside molten, spinning from light to dark, circling the bright hot star we call the sun, as mountains rise and oceans are carved. For eons this hard round rock had no life, and then who knows how, the tiniest life emerged. And then, the explosion of Earth’s life was like a science fiction adventure, the bounty and grand complexity astonishing if we let ourselves see it. And now among the billions and billions  of living beings, with life in and on the ground and in the sky, I stop on a forest path and am awed by one small miraculous flower.

  What the heck?!! We’ve been dropped into serious times,  dangerous times. Suddenly our very ways of life  are being challenged. Our values and our freedoms  are in jeopardy. It’s hard not to feel stunned and numb,  on pause. How tempting  to bury our heads in the sand And hope we survive  the coming 4 years. But it’s no fun to feel  discouraged and powerless, As we shake our heads  in denial and disgust. Maybe it’s time to rev up  our resistance mode, Start playing music  from the 60s and 70s, Fan to life the embers  of our rebellious selves, And stand up to authority  with truth and courage. Hard times bring people together, And together we can do  so much more than alone. Singing songs of freedom and justice, Working for the good of our communities. Instead of being spurred into discouragement Let’s be spurred into action,  into hope and light Let the challenges of the times make us rise up Ready to work...

 It is autumn. Leaves are falling and many plants have shot up stalks of seeds. I carried some seeds back from our herb harvest the other day and there are more just waiting for someone (me?) to notice them. Right outside my front door is a tall tall spike of the big seeds of Black Cohosh, and I think of it as a very special medicinal. Yes, I tell that plant, I will collect your seeds and plant them in the early spring next year. (Note to self: Do it!) Most times of year, I don't think much about seeds. But as the whole world turns toward winter, with plants dying and turning brown, the value of seeds starts to sink in. Many plants are dying and they're annuals, not perennials. What would happen to the population of these plants if there were no seeds? They would go extinct. Thank goodness for seeds! We don't want to lose all those fine plants. This makes me wonder about the evolution of seeds. When the earth was young, when things were cooling down and life was just beginn...