Green Tribe of Belonging

  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...