Green Tribe of Belonging

 As someone who has seldom had a problem sleeping when it is time for bed, it has been a new experience for me to suddenly have my sleep/wake schedule get askew and be awake at night. At first it was frustrating. I would lie in bed, wide awake, waiting, waiting for sleep. Sometimes I'd still be awake at 3 or 4, and though my body was resting, real sleep was elusive. Finally I took the experts' advice, and started getting up for awhile when I couldn't sleep. And then one night I decided to sit outside in semi-darkness, comfortably swinging back and forth on my porch swing.  What a different world it is at night! During the day, my awareness is on hundreds of things. I get tasks done, go to meetings, make my bed, feed the cat, take a walk, give a massage, clean the house, weed the garden, call my children, eat meals. In contrast, sitting outside in the dark in the middle of the night, I was just me, no chores, no responsibilities, surrounded by quiet and by darkness. And grad...

  Slipping out to the porch swing   in the wee early hours, I greet my brother the oak, my sister the owl, my father the rich earth, my mother the moon. Surrounded by family, I'm ready to go back to sleep.

 As I was talking to a plant this morning in my garden, I was reminded of something that Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. Wanting to learn the language of her native American ancestors, she began taking lessons in Potawatamee. There are only a handful of people now who grew up speaking that language, and they are very old. But fortunately there are younger people like Robin who realize there is more to language than words. There's a whole worldview at stake, and these younger folks are working to save the richness before it dies out.  As Robin became more familiar with this old/new-to-her language, she realized something very striking. It had to do with how the native language refers to things other than people, in contrast to how we do this in English. As we know, everything that is not human is referred to as "it" in English (though of course we tend to call our pet animals by "he" or "she" as well). When we grow up ...

 I just got back from visiting my daughter's family in Asheville. It was a wonderful re-entry into a world that is interconnecting again. I got to see my family in person, eat with them, play games with them, even hug them. What a relief that felt to my psyche! The unconscious part of myself that has protected me through these last 15 months, made sure I was wearing a mask, not getting too close to anyone, keeping a safe distance in all respects, that part of me has relaxed. Whew! It is such a relief. I went grocery shopping for the first time in 15 months in person today. It was really exciting! I rolled my cart down the isles and wanted to grab everything. It felt like an intoxicating freedom to be able to see all those shelves packed with choices and know that I could reach out and take anything. I probably did buy 2 or 3 times as much as the old usual. But it was so freeing, so exciting. And now I have a very, very full larder. One of the things we did while I was with my famil...

 I'm about to fly to Asheville today, and before I go, I'll copy a piece I just wrote for our Prairie Hill Newsletter about the frog and toad survey that I've been doing this spring. Here it is: (Woops, the first time I pasted this in, the formatting was crazy. Now it's better! Sorry. __________________________________________________________________________________ In response to alarm about the declining numbers of amphibians in the Iowa landscape, the Iowa Dept. of Natural Resources organized a yearly frog and toad survey in 1991. Data has been collected from 516 different sites around the state, and 15 frog and toad species have been identified. More volunteers were solicited this year, and two of our Prairie Hill women answered the call. Mary Ann and Nan went through an evening of training, including learning the calls of all 15 species. Fortunately, perfection was not required, just a willingness to go out once a month on nightly surveys to a fixed number of sites...

 Fifteen years ago, I went on a wonderful tour of England's sacred sites. We were a group of about 10, all women. Each day we went to a different place like Stonehenge and Avebury. Then we discovered that crop circles were appearing almost daily in our vicinity, and we found that the Crop Circle Cafe acted like an information center on the circles. Each morning we'd call to see if another one had appeared, and get directions. It was exciting to seek out these new circles before farmers mowed them down. The first time we visited one, we found ourselves wanting to lie down in it, though that seemed a little weird. Then our leader told us that everyone felt that way. So we did it, spread out over these massive designs, soaking in the (what? energy? atmosphere?). We found that it didn't work to take delicate electrical gadgets into the circles, for they got zapped or malfunctioned. Proof, I guess, that something unusual was happening there. These crop circles appeared in second...

 Now that culture is opening up a bit and we're all experiencing that change, our psyches are needing to adjust. Not only is it wonderful to be getting a little back to normal, but many of us are finding that it is also somewhat unnerving. This has happened to me more than once in the last couple of weeks. Something as positive and enjoyable as a family in-person get-together can leave me frazzled and disoriented. Psychologists predicted this, though it was hard for most of us to imagine it would be true of us. No matter what our conscious minds may be saying (i.e. Can't wait to see my friends!), the psyche has been in a situation for the past many months of isolating us from contact with others.  It was like there was a danger sign on everyone who was not someone in your household. Beware! Don't touch! Or even get close! My bodywork practice has been closed for more than a year, except for a few sessions I've given through Zoom. But this week I decided that it was time...