I didn’t have time to write this morning before I left for work. Gratitudes: 1. Last night, we saw a bat flying between the barn and the sycamore tree. Bats are some of my favorite people. 2. Tonight on our walk, we saw a frog on the road. When I reached to try to move it from the road, it suddenly zig-zagged between my legs and off toward the creek. 3. Working in the Herb Room today. I might be an airy-fairy sanguine personality and a fiery Leo birth sign, and have a special affinity for Mama Ocean, but when it comes to herbs, the things that gets me most excited is the roots. Earth seems to be my medicine: roots and stones. 4. Kittens! Have I mentioned the kittens? I love little kittens. And their mama. 5. Cucumbers. They’re refreshing.
May we walk in Beauty!
“We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.” ―Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“You say you care about the poor? Then tell me, what are their names?” —Gustavo Gutierrez
Those who don’t believe in magic will never find it.” —Roald Dahl
History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again. —Maya Angelou
“Doors closing, doors opening. Doors closing, doors I’m opening. I am safe. It’s only change. I am safe. It’s only change.” —chant (I don’t know the author)
Vine and branch we’re connected in this world of sound and echo, figure and shadow, the leaves contingent, roots pushing against earth. An apple belongs to itself, to stem and tree, to air that claims it, then ground. Connections balance, each motion changes another. Precarious, hanging together, we don’t know what our lives support, and we touch in the least shift of breathing. Each holy thing is borrowed. Everything depends. —Jeanne Lohmann, ‘Shaking the Tree’
Parker Palmer: “The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we’ve shown ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, “I am all of the above.” If we can’t embrace the whole of who we are—embrace it with transformative love—we’ll imprison the creative energies hidden in our own shadows and flee from the world’s complex mix of shadow and light.”
“It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.” —Mae Jemison
By the time I got to the end of the second sentence, and saw the words “friend” and “Nazi” in successive lines, it suddenly became impossible for me to search out any other phrase than “Nazi friend” to end the poem, but the order was transposed. Sometimes people use arrows to make such a puzzle work. I decided to get out my little knife.
I woke up this morning with this phrase in my head: “Hymns to The Unknown Civilization.” I might have to create some sort of poetry/art project with that title.
You know that feeling when you wake up, and the cobweb of a dream is still clinging to your consciousness? I always try to maintain that dreamlike consciousness while I stumble downstairs so it stays fresh enough to write down. The dream flotsam offers myriad gifts. Sometimes it’s a stark image floating in my mind’s eye, asking me to look and consider and contemplate. I especially love when it’s word or a song. Sometimes the phrase is so surreal that I can’t weave it into the meaning of daytime reality and I just enjoy its oddness, its quirky presence in my day. Other times, I feel like there are distinct and specific messages in the words and images and stories that appear at the ends of dreamtime.
Gratitude: The sounds of my walk yesterday: Greetings with friendly neighbors, the horses making that blustery horsey sigh, Barb’s goats calling greetings from up the hillside, bird twitterings in the trees, the deep glugging of the bullfrogs in the pond. Earlier, as I was riding my bike on the rail trail, I heard the wood thrushes calling across the path to each other.
May we walk in Beauty!
“If only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
“A woman must be willing to burn hot, burn with passion, burn with words, with ideas, with desire for whatever it is that she truly loves.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water.” —Albert Szent-Gyorgyi
“I can’t offer justice so I offer just trees.” —Kilian Schoenberger (who photographs trees and woods)
Dalai Lama: “There are only two days of the year in which nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow. That means today is the ideal day to love, to believe, to create and to live.”
“We cannot assume the sacredness nor spiritual livingness of the earth or accept it as a new ideology or as a sentimentally pleasing idea. We must experience that life and sacredness, if it is there, in relationship to our own and to that ultimate mystery we call God. We must experience it in our lives, in our practice, in the flesh of our cultural creativity. We must allow it to shape us, as great spiritual ideas have always shaped those who entertain them, and not expect that we can simply use the image of Gaia to meet emotional, religious, political, or even commercial needs without allowing it to transform us in unexpected and radical ways. The spirituality of the earth is more than a slogan. It is an invitation to initiation, to the death of what we have been and the birth of something new.” —David Spangler
Rob Brezsny reflects on Fuller and Socrates: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality,” wrote Buckminster Fuller. “To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Socrates said something similar: “The secret of change is to focus your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
Are they right? Or should we instead focus on unleashing our apocalyptic rage at the corruption and decay of the dying order?
For the past few years, I’ve been working in this book I found a few years ago. My found poems were pretty limp and predictable. I think novels offer better variety for found poems.
Here’s a poem from 2017:
We Bleed by Beth Weaver-Kreider
Indeed, Mr. President, we bleed. There is blood coming out of our ears, blood coming out of our noses, blood coming out of our eyes, blood coming out of our wherevers. There is blood coming out of our faces, our faces lifted long in anger, our faces we have raised in rage.
We bleed, you see. We bleed. We bleed, and yet we do not die. Blood pours from our angry eyes. Blood flows from our vaginas (there’s the real word for it, if you would care to know. We’ll take it back, if you please– and even if you don’t).
Women’s blood is our revolution. We’re bleeding rivers of blood, the blood of life and death– menstrual blood, flowing from our red tents, flowing down the river valleys of this nation to where you sulk and natter in your great white house.
Your mother, too, gave her blood to these rivers, when she gave you birth. And your wives gave their blood to bring children to life.
Our blood flows down the wide and gentle Susquehanna, down Columbia, Patuxent, down Delaware and Myakka, down the Dan, the Mississippi, the Arkansas, and Conestoga, down the Flat, the Tar, the Eno, down the gentle Shenandoah, down the Snake, the Hoh, the Wabash, and the blue Atchafalaya.
Our menstrual blood is running in the deep, deep waters of the Deep, down the Wissahickon, down the Schuylkill, Neuse, and Monoshone, down the Cape Fear, down the Waccamaw, and down the Olentangy, down Santa Ynez, French Broad, the Roanoke, Missouri, down the Guadalupe, Anacostia, Blackwater, and the Pee Dee, down Yadkin, Catawba, Nantahala, and Clatskanie.
Our blood courses down our grand unwalled Rio Grande, down the Pullayup, Colorado, down Kanawha and Snohomish down the fiery Cuyahoga, down the Brazos, and Skokomish, down the Nooksack, the Nisqually, the Pecos, the Sammamish, down Sciota, down Ohio, the Snoqualmie, and Duwamish. We bleed down the chemical-drenched waters of the New, and the Red, red as our blood, down the Elkhart and Potomac.
Even from Elsewhere, our rivers are everywhere: the Moselle, the Mara, the Danube, the Afton, the Nile. Our blood flows down rivers to the White House where you tweet and twitter on your golden bed, to the halls of power where dried up old white men, withered husks with no blood of their own, think that they decide our futures.
We write with our blood on the Earth. We write, “Revolution!” We write, “Resist!” We write, “Now you have struck the women, you have struck a rock. Now you have entered a river.”
With our own blood, we write, “We will not be trivialized. nor delegitimized by insults of an overgrown illbred bully-child.
Yes, we bleed, Mr. President, and our bleeding will overwhelm your smug and violent ramblings. We bleed from our faces, our vaginas, our wherevers, and you will be washed in the rivers of our blood. And justice will roll like the rivers we bleed.
Gratitude List: 1. The companionship of cats 2. Gentle morning birdsong 3. Finding poetry 4. Laughing with the family 5. This little air conditioner
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“The best way for us to cultivate fearlessness in our daughters and other young women is by example. If they see their mothers and other women in their lives going forward despite fear, they’ll know it is possible.” —Gloria Steinem
“It is time for women to stop being politely angry.” —Leymah Gbowee
“The heart is the house of empathy whose door opens when we receive the pain of others. This is where bravery lives, where we’ll find our mettle to give and receive, to love and be loved, to stand in the center of uncertainty with strength, not fear, understanding this is all there is. The heart is the path to wisdom because it dares to be vulnerable in the presence of power.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“The heart that breaks open can hold the whole universe. Your heart is that large. Trust it. Keep breathing.” —Joanna Macy
“Peace is not something you must hope for in the future. It is a deepening of the present, and unless you look for it in the present, you will never find it.” —Thomas Merton
“To stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.” —Pema Chödrön
From Joy Harjo— “Note to self today: Do not feed the monsters. Monsters are those thought threads that denigrate and disrespect self and others. Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a place to land and live. Some are sent to you deliberately or inadvertently. They can come from arrows or gossip, jealousy or envy. Or from just. . .thoughtlessness. Instead, have a party. Invite your helpers to the table. Give them something to do. They want to be helpful. And just celebrate. Feed the birds.
Second note: A positive mind makes a light slippery surface and anything not of it, slides off.”
“Sometimes we must surrender our own will for the greater good to come through. We are called to make ourselves vulnerable for a time, without answers, sacrificing our priorities to perceive more mythic goals. The word sacrifice is not, as we’ve been taught, synonymous with suffering, but comes from the root ‘to make sacred.’ We take a step outside of time, renouncing our urgency, giving up our plans and allow ourselves to be danced, to be sung, to be told like a story in its most vulnerable arc.” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.” —John Lewis
I keep seeing the faces of that couple standing in iconic pantomime on their lawn with their guns. He has the white-man deadpan I’m-in-control thing going on on his face. Don’t tread on me, or on my precious grass. Don’t let the Black people come too close to my massive white palazzo.
Her face is a lot harder to interpret. Is it anger? Is it fear? Her mouth has the petulant cast I have seen on children who are trying to convince you of their fierceness. She seems to be play-acting, her hand on the trigger of her little chrome-plated pistol, her eyes darting around. Is she dangerous? Or comical? Or pathetic? Or tragically sad? Why am I so obsessed with figuring her out?
I think it’s because she is a caricature of a caricature of something that is also me. Her angry/pathetic/frightened stance there on her lawn is the ultimate caricature of the Karen–the entitled white woman who uses her social power and connections to white patriarchal power to raise her own personal power. She’s the semi-comic (and terribly dangerous) end result of the remora of white female attachment to the shark of white male power, drawing a sense of strength and protection from her connection to the perceived most-powerful agent in room. She calls the police. She calls the manager. She notifies security. She feels unsafe. She feels ridiculed. She feels powerless. So she pulls the strings of white patriarchy to increase her own sense of empowerment.
In Ms. McCloskey’s case, that shark was pretty indiscriminate, pointing his machine gun at her on his way to aim at the protesters he claimed were about to burn down his home and happiness. That’s a whole other issue to unpack–the Karens are really only marginally more safe than the masses they are so desperate to separate themselves from, the black and brown people they would disempower in order to increase their own social standing. The shark has its own agenda at all times and no one is safe if his power is threatened (as it is in these times of change and transformation).
I like to deny that I have any Karen in me. I don’t remember a time when #smashtheatriarchy hasn’t been my rallying cry. I want to completely destroy the power of the patriarchy–in religion, in politics, in economic systems, in governance, in relationships. I think that is necessary in order to create a just future. Still, I cannot deny that my life has been privileged by the threads that connect me to white patriarchal systems. And those systems try to demand allegiance from those who benefit at any point up and down the power structure. I may not be explicitly accepting those connections or “calling the manager,” but I benefit in myriad implicit ways simply from my perceived connections to the shark.
My work is to keep finding those threads and disconnecting them, cutting them away so they hold no power over me and my sense of belongingness and wellbeing in the world, to find ways to connect whatever threads of power are bequeathed to me by my race and culture and education to those who were bequeathed fewer of those threads but who deserve them as vitally and as certainly as I.
It’s ugly. To call myself one of them. To see that petulant set of the lips, that situating herself in the context of the patriarch’s emblems of violent maintenance of power, and say that there’s something of me in there too, in the pathetic, comic, tragic, furious face of a white woman grasping for power. Knowing that in the system she fights for, she too is expendable, that the only way she survives in the patriarchal system is to play their pantomime along with them, to do their dance.
No, of course I am not her. But yes, I am her, in some strange and twisted distant reflection. She is a caricature of a caricature of a caricature. . .that somewhere weaves very close in the tapestry to me. If I am to participate in this movement for justice for all people, for true equality, for the destruction of the white patriarchy, I need to recognize that connection and learn to face her in the hall of mirrors.
My wise and thoughtful friend Chris of Soulence has written a really powerful piece on doing this work of untangling these threads through unconditional love and doing deep inner work. She offers a grounding chakra meditation. You can find that here.
Gratitude List: 1. Working at Radiance again. It’s wonderful to spend time with Sarah and Laura, to be out in the world, to shape the sweet river grass baskets from Ghana and feel a sense of connection to the women who made these spherical containers. When I got home, I walked into the room with Josiah, and he said, “Mmmmm. You smell like Radiance again.” 2. A day ahead to sew and poem and tidy and create and cook. 3. Cucumbers are in season. I think my lunches for the next couple weeks will be cucumbers and cheese. 4. Tomorrow, time with beloveds. 5. I’m feeling a little fired up to begin designing my courses for the fall. I’m glad to get that energy now instead of on August 15.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“Keep strenuously toiling along this path, do not rest until the last breath; for that last breath may yet bring the blessings from the Knower of all things.” —Rumi
“A church that does not provoke any crisis, preach a gospel that does not unsettle, proclaim a word of God that does not get under anyone’s skin or a word of God that does not touch the real sin of the society in which it is being proclaimed: what kind of gospel is that?” ―Oscar A. Romero
“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering its a feather bed.” ―Terence McKenna
“Nature is alive and talking to us. This is not a metaphor.” ―Terence McKenna
“And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth.” —Raymond Carver
“Her imagination was by habit ridiculously active; when the door was not open, it jumped out the window.” ―Henry James
Orientation by Maya Stein
Just east of certainty. A little south of courage. A hair’s width from ease. Clicks away from ready. A turn or two from acceptance. A shuffle from faith. A set of stairs from achievement. A riverbed from happiness. A handspan from peace. A wink away from freedom. A few lines until the poem’s done. A highway, a night’s sleep, a phone call, a touch, a rotation of gears away from that certain yes that tells you where you are is exactly where you need to be. I know, the signs can look as if they’re missing, and the map so distant and unclear. But I’m telling you, you aren’t lost. You’re never lost. You’re always here.
Cloudbird. It was too big to fit in the frame, so its wings leak off the edges.
Just saying: If you don’t read the newsletters and internal memos and emails for the place you work for, and you miss something critically important, you can’t go around telling people you weren’t briefed. I mean, it’s happened to me. I’ve occasionally missed something important because I skipped over the newsletter, thinking I would come back to it later. And it was my responsibility to keep myself informed, not the responsibility of someone else to pull it out and mark it with a highlighter, and remind me to read it. And I am not the president.
With that sort of grouchy rant to start my morning, I suppose I should say something nice. 1. I’m going to work today at Radiance! That makes me happy and satisfied. 2. We thought that the things Jon planted were sort of a bust after the deer and groundhogs and storms raged through, but last evening, I harvested some wonderful zukes and cukes and beans, and Jon got a nice binful of broccoli. 3. Yesterday I took an online conference on Online Teaching, which is kind of the LAST thing I ever want to do again, but now I feel like I really might be able to do it, if it comes down to that. 4. That sky bird in the clouds last evening. 5. The people who ground me, who hold the strings when I go kiting off on a rant, who remind me to be nice.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.” ―M.T. Anderson, Feed
”I just watched a mosquito sip my blood, hover in the air like a ruby with wings, then leave the circle of my porch light for the dark trees. That’s me, that crimson speck rising like a campfire spark. My blood will feel at home in those perfect woods and my goodwill goes with it.” —Jarod K. Anderson, the Cryptonaturalist
“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.” —Alvin Toffler
”I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in your ear:
I’m not screwing around. It’s time. All of this pretending and performing—these coping mechanisms that you’ve developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt—has to go.
Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you’re still searching and you’re more lost than ever.
Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can’t live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It’s time to show up and be seen.” —Brené Brown
“Oh, what we could be if we stopped carrying the remains of who we were.” —Tyler Knott Gregson
“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life.” —Wendell Berry
We met a fellow seeker on the paths at Sam Lewis last night.
I took an online class on Saturday morning on redacted and black-out poetry. While I have worked with this format in the past, this two-hour session really inspired me. I’ve broken through a bit of a wall in the Found Poetry realm in the past few days.
Gratitude List: 1. Finding poetry 2. Toads in the leaves 3. Going rambling with the fambly 4. Looking forward to an educational conference (online) today. I am becoming increasingly worried that Pennsylvanians’ refusal to just wear the mask will mean we have to teach online during at least part of the fall semester, and I don’t want to go into that kicking and screaming. This should provide me with strategies for teaching, no matter what happens. (And yes, that was a gratitude infected by a snarky dig.) 5.The little air conditioner. I don’t tolerate the heat/humidity nexus quite like I used to.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“We live by mystery, not by explanations.” —Cecil Collins
“For we have, built into all of us, old blueprints of expectation and response; old structures of oppression, and these must be altered at the same time as we alter the living conditions which are a result of those structures. For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
As Paulo Freire shows so well in “The Pedagogy of the Oppressed”, the true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations which we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us, and which knows only the oppressors’ tactics, the oppressors’ relationships.” —Audre Lorde
“Live in the center of your life.” ―Sark
“Cluster together like stars.” ―Henry Miller
“Now that you’ve awakened. . .immediately take a nap! Naps are when the angels come out to take special care of you.” ―Sark
“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” ―Arundhati Roy
“Every child of ours needs to learn the simple truth: She is the energy of the Sun. And we adults should organize things so her face shines with the same radiant joy.” ―Rob Brezsny
“In mythos and fairy tales, deities and other great spirits test the hearts of humans by showing up in various forms that disguise their divinity. They show up in robes, rags, silver sashes, or with muddy feet. They show up with skin dark as old wood, or in scales made of rose petal, as a frail child, as a lime-yellow old woman, as a man who cannot speak, or as an animal who can. The great powers are testing to see if humans have yet learned to recognize the greatness of soul in all its varying forms.” ―Clarissa Pinkola Estés
“A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill except to be able to grow in rows” ―Doug Larson
White Friends, this is difficult and constant work that we’re doing, that we must do, and continue to do. How can we really know how deeply we’ve been indoctrinated into this culture of white supremacy until we know it? And then know it more deeply? And then again. It’s not like a Bandaid that you rip off, and deal with the sting, and then everything’s fine. It’s layer after layer after layer.
And yes, it’s exhausting. And yes, it’s painful. But we have to do this work. Now. And always. It’s exhausting and painful for BIPOC folks to have to deal with microaggressions and explicit racism and systemic racism and inadvertent racism every day. We have to do this work. And keep doing it.
There is so much to learn on the way: new ways to articulate powerful ideas, new ways of exploring our own difficult feelings, new ways to see people and the world, new ways to experience the history of all of us, new ways to become more fully human.
I don’t quote many Bible verses here, but there’s one that fits pretty perfectly in this rhetorical moment. It’s in Romans 12: “Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world. Instead, be transformed by the continual renewing of your mind, that you may discern the will of the Holy One: what is the good and acceptable and perfect.” The patterns of white supremacy in this (US) part of the world are institutionalized and powerful. It’s going to take some intentional and constant work to break and transform those patterns.
If you hear a new thing that challenges and unsettles you–about white supremacy, or privilege or fragility, or about taking a new look at US history and ideals–I urge and challenge you (me, us) to not begin in defensiveness and argument, but to simply sit quietly a moment, and ask yourself (myself, ourselves) how it applies, how the integrating of this idea might be transformational and renewing. And then begin to rip off that bandaid.
There are doorways all around us, leading us to places where we can be more fully human and humane, and right now there are constant opportunities to see them, to walk through them, to learn and to grow. Let’s join the Good Work, beginning with ourselves.
Gratitude List: 1. So many good and challenging things to learn. 2. Watching a thunderstorm from the shelter of the pavilion by the River. 3. Good exercise. Moving my body. Healthy, limber, and strong: That’s my mantra for the summer. (It includes a lot of aches and pains on the way, but they’re the good ones.) 4. Toads. They’re such wise and ancient folk. 5. Finishing projects
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“You are a pure Soul in darkened soil.” —Rumi
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.” ―Helen Keller
“What we need is here.” —Wendell Berry
“Million-to-one chances…crop up nine times out of ten.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
“Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation.” —André Gide
“Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” —Ms. Frizzle
“We stand guard over works of art, but species representing the work of aeons are stolen from under our noses.” —Aldo Leopold
“It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done. A person ignorant of the possibility of failure can be a half-brick in the path of the bicycle of history.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
“Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.” ―Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites
My camera phone is pretty grainy, especially at distances, but if you look closely, you can see the spotty white breast of the wood thrush against the trunk on the lower left, and the curious deer in the trees on the upper right.
Last evening, we went for an evening walk up at Sam Lewis State Park. It’s easy sometimes to forget the glorious gems of we have in our own backyards. There is a series of walking trails through the woods around the crest of the ridge, over rock tumbles, through piney groves, along meadows, between mountain laurels and pawpaw trees. Massive oaks and maples stand sentinel at the edges of the woods.
I never really quite know where I am going when we set out on a trail at Sam Lewis. It’s probably no more than two or three miles of trails total, and they wind around and cross each other, and they’re all completely familiar. There’s no chance of getting lost, but I often think I am going to emerge from the woods at one point, and find myself at another point altogether. It’s not disconcerting or frustrating, partly because its so contained. It’s just a tiny bit mystical and dreamy. Probably it’s just me and my strange sense of direction, and maybe if I start walking up there several times a week instead of once every few months, I’ll develop an inner map of the place. I’m not sure I want to. I like the slight and utterly non-anxious disorientation, the sense of discovery.
It was a grateful and grounding walk. It was St. John’s Eve, and I found a patch of St. John’s Wort at the edge of the meadow. Down on the piney path near the big meadow, we encountered a wood thrush, who seemed completely unfussed at our presence, and sang a call and response with a friend further up the hill. At one point, we were caught in currents that carried scent of pine, wild yarrow, and the freshly-opened buds of milkweed. On a trail that wound around a group of giant boulders, we found some mountain laurel still blooming. Around one bend in the trail, near one of the frisbee baskets, we met a deer. I’m not sure who was more interested in whom. At the very top of the bald, where people like to go to fly kites, and where you can see the whole river valley laid out before you, evening breezes came tumbling up over the ridge. The paths go from gentle ramble to strong and steady upward climb. My legs and lungs were glad of the exercise.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“Inside a moment, centuries of June.” ―Emily Dickinson
African proverb:, “When death comes, may it find you fully alive.”
“I think there ought to be a little music here: hum, hum.” ―Mary Oliver
“Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” ―Albert Einstein
“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations or let others define my worth.” ―Sonia Sotomayor
“Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.” ―Buddha
“I have something that I call my Golden Rule. It goes something like this: ‘Do unto others twenty-five percent better than you expect them to do unto you.’ … The twenty-five percent is for error.” ―Linus Pauling
Last year at this time, I was spending the better part of a week at the Jesuit Center in Wernersville with my favorite trees. The Jesuits are planning to close and sell the property in another year, so I will need to make one last pilgrimage in the coming year. The grounds require a great deal of upkeep and maintenance, as does the marvelous old building. The community of men who live there are aging, and there aren’t many of them anymore.
I long for someone to buy the place who could work with environmental groups to make it a nature preserve, to maintain the building as a spiritual retreat center, to keep caring for those holy trees.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“In one of the stars, I shall be living. In one of them, I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing When you look at the sky at night.” ―The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you.” ―Octavia Butler
“The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.” ―Henry Miller
“The greatest danger to our future is apathy.” ―Jane Goodall
Prayer for the World by Rabbi Harold Kushner
Let the rain come and wash away the ancient grudges, the bitter hatreds held and nurtured over generations. Let the rain wash away the memory of the hurt, the neglect. Then let the sun come out and fill the sky with rainbows. Let the warmth of the sun heal us wherever we are broken. Let it burn away the fog so that we can see each other clearly. So that we can see beyond labels, beyond accents, gender or skin color. Let the warmth and brightness of the sun melt our selfishness. So that we can share the joys and feel the sorrows of our neighbors. And let the light of the sun be so strong that we will see all people as our neighbors. Let the earth, nourished by rain, bring forth flowers to surround us with beauty. And let the mountains teach our hearts to reach upward to heaven. Amen.
Look at that violet and indigo swirl of cloud above the barn.
Not much to say today. I’m going to make masks, make zines, create writing prompts for a project, crochet the arms of a doll I started over the weekend. Read. Make a cherry cobbler with the sour cherries my neighbor gave me. Watch for Beauty. Plot the Revolution. Pet cats. Stretch and walk and learn some more Spanish. I suppose that’s my Gratitude List for today–looking forward to a week of making and noticing and working on inner transformation in order to keep participating in world-changing events of the day.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!
“I sometimes visualize the ongoing cycle of racism as a moving walkway at the airport. Active racist behavior is equivalent to walking fast on the conveyor belt. The person engaged in active racist behavior has identified with the ideology of our White supremacist system and is moving with it. Passive racist behavior is equivalent to standing still on the walkway. No overt effort is being made, but the conveyor belt moves the bystanders along to the same destination as those who are actively walking. But unless they are walking actively in the opposite direction at a speed faster than the conveyor belt—unless they are actively anti-racist—they will find themselves carried along with the others.” —Beverly Tatum
“The Holocaust was not the holocaust until it was too late.” —James Regier
“People are hard to hate close up. Move in. Speak truth to bullshit. Be civil. Hold hands. With strangers. Strong back. Soft front. Wild heart. ❤️” —Brené Brown
“We cannot tire or give up. We owe it to the present and future generations of all species to rise up and walk!” ―Wangari Maathai
“If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” ―Joseph Campbell
“Every person who has ever achieved anything has been knocked down many times. But all of them picked themselves up and kept going, and that is what I have always tried to do.” ―Wangari Maathai
“It is the people who must save the environment. It is the people who must make their leaders change. And we cannot be intimidated. So we must stand up for what we believe in.” ―Wangari Maathai
“How many kinds of beauty exist in nature? A sunset’s beauty is not the same as a river’s beauty is not the same as a newborn’s beauty is not the same as a kind act’s beauty is not the same as an old oak tree’s beauty. And yet, they are the same. Why do you think that is?” —Jarod K. Anderson
“The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. . . . To protect what is wild is to protect what is gentle. Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands.” —Terry Tempest Williams
“The extremists are afraid of books and pens, the power of education frightens them. They are afraid of women.” ―Malala Yousafzai
“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.” ―Edgar Allen Poe
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ―Mark Twain
“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth and in the contemplation of her beauties to know the sense of wonder and humility. ” ―Rachel Carson
“…drink in the beauty and wonder at the meaning of what you see.” ―Rachel Carson
Mockingbird Chronicles 