Green Tribe of Belonging

  A Bench of Living Wood Coming into Quaker meeting on Sunday, sitting on the beautiful old wooden bench, sliding aside the cushion so I am on the wood, connecting with the spirit of that former tree, I sit asking for an easing of my unrestive thoughts.  Let my criticism drift away, stop seeing in black and white. This climate of chaos and violence pulls me smaller, reactive, into harsh judgement. Trust seems a long-ago thing, lies have become the norm out there on the political scene. We can no longer count on honesty. And yet I need to remember a wider reality. Like imagining myself as part of the original tree of this bench. My branches are blowing around in the wind. I’m surrounded by a whole forest of trees connected to each other, communicating, functioning as a network of life, a living web. It is wide and beautiful in this reality, beyond human chaos, beyond greed and violence. It reminds me that no matter where our species is headed the earth that holds us and nurture...

  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...