Today, Beloved Soulkin, consider one anti-racist thing you can do. Don’t post about it on social media. Don’t look for congratulations. Take on comments that minimize racism. Start reading a book on anti-racism. Share resources. Amplify black and brown voices. Support black-owned businesses. Listen, listen, listen. Move something within your own soul.
Today would have been Breonna Taylor’s birthday. Demand justice.
Gratitude List: 1. You 2. You 3. You 4. You 5. You
Do justice, love mercy, walk humbly–in Beauty!
“I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen.” —John Steinbeck
“The poet or the revolutionary is there to articulate the necessity, but until the people themselves apprehend it, nothing can happen … Perhaps it can’t be done without the poet, but it certainly can’t be done without the people. The poet and the people get on generally very badly, and yet they need each other. The poet knows it sooner than the people do. The people usually know it after the poet is dead; but that’s all right. The point is to get your work done, and your work is to change the world.” ―James Baldwin
“I swear to you there are divine things more beautiful than words can tell.” —Walt Whitman
“We are called to assist the Earth to heal her wounds and in the process heal our own—indeed, to embrace the whole creation in all its diversity, beauty and wonder. This will happen if we see the need to revive our sense of belonging to a larger family of life, with which we have shared our evolutionary process.” —Prof. Wangari Maathai
“You cannot save people. You can only love them.” —Anais Nin
“One of our people in the Native community said the difference between white people and Indians is that Indian people know they are oppressed but don’t feel powerless. White people don’t feel oppressed, but feel powerless. Deconstruct that disempowerment. Part of the mythology that they’ve been teaching you is that you have no power. Power is not brute force and money; power is in your spirit. Power is in your soul. It is what your ancestors, your old people gave you. Power is in the earth; it is in your relationship to the earth.” —Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth)
Stop. Sit still. Breathe in and out, in and out. Now wiggle your shoulders and neck. Shift and straighten your spine. Drop your shoulders. Unclench your jaw. Breathe and breathe and breathe. What was that about? What were you holding so tightly in all those spaces and crevices and pockets? Rage? Anxiety? Disappointment? Fear? Name the Feeling People who inhabit your body. Ask them what they have to tell you about yourself in the world right now.
We need everybody’s voices right now. We need everybody working for change. Racism and white supremacy won’t be dismantled in a day. It’s been the defining principle for way too long, and people have been trying to break it for a long, long time. But there’s a movement afoot, and it need us all on deck, doing our parts. But you have to rest, too, sister. You have to tend your own tender spirit, brother. Now might be a good time to pick up a new spiritual practice that helps to anchor you in the midst of this transformative storm.
Pray. Make energy webs that knit and protect, that send along the message of change and justice. Meditate. Make art. Write poems. Pet a cat. Watch the birds. Drink lots of water. Stretch your body. Take intentional breaks from the streets, from social media, from thinking about it. You know you’ll get back to the work when you’re strong enough. Tend Your Spirit. We need you healthy and whole, working in whatever way you work best to help turn this massive ship in the direction of a just and safe future for all. It’s okay to look away for a little while, and breathe.
Gratitude List: 1. The young people who are galvanizing the movement. 2. Tens of thousands of people are in the streets demanding change. Don’t let the dominator’s narrative hide that fact. Let’s keep our language clear: This is not “The Riots.” This is a social movement demanding police accountability and an end to white supremacy. There are thousands upon thousands of people taking that word to the physical streets and to social media. That’s a great and marvelous thing. 3. Friends checking in with each other. Keep doing that. Keep making sure your friends are okay. Keep the network lively. Take care of each other. 4. All the resources! Books to read, wise thinkers to follow on social media, lists of black-owned businesses to support, ways to attack our own internal biases. Keep passing those around! 5. The graphic pattern of black and white on the back of that downy woodpecker, and the way his head is shining red.
Love Mercy. Do Justice. Walk Humbly–in Beauty.
“Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel. . .is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“Give yourself to love.” ―Kate Wolf
“So it turns out that the ‘blemish’ is actually essential to the beauty. The ‘deviation’ is at the core of the strength. The ‘wrong turn’ was crucial to you getting you back on the path with heart.” —Rob Brezsny
“For a breath or two, to have been inside this Ka‘ba of the heart, praying from the inside. Breathe in God, breathe out God. The one who adores is the One adored. The lover is the beloved, is love itself. Bathed in light Being with the one we love.” ―Omid Safi
“We become each other’s stories when we listen to each other closely.” —Mara Eve Robbins at TEDxFLOYD
“Come on Mr Frodo. I can’t carry it for you―but I can carry you!” ―Sam Gamgee (JRR Tolkien)
Glinda to Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz: “You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”
“Each one of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm, when we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other and empathize with each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.” ―Maya Angelou
In last night’s dream: I am trying to find my way to the second floor of the building I am in, but the stairs are really hard to negotiate. They a metal rail stair/ladder that starts four feet off the ground. If I can scramble up onto them, I’ll have to squeeze through a tiny little hole in order to get to the next story.
(Huh. Getting to the next story, eh?)
After I search all over, I finally find an elevator and stand there waiting with some others, and it suddenly hits me–within the dream itself–that this is a constant pattern in my dreamtime: I am very often trying to find the next level, the next story, and I am thwarted by challenging climbs and claustrophobic entrances. Occasionally, there are broad and wide staircases, or hidden safe passages, and there’s the occasional elevator that might just take me anywhere.
I wonder if I am experiencing a period of disjuncture between my heart and my head, unable to find my way safely between the two? That’s got a dream-worker’s reasonableness to it, and I will definitely explore that as an ongoing theme in my life with such a powerful symbol recurring again and again and again.
Or perhaps I feel myself and my world in a time of transition between one thing and the next, and the route from point A to point B feels particularly treacherous and difficult.
That last certainly suits my sense of the times. Here we are on this level where we’ve always done things a certain way (which has for so many, been tragic and deadly), and we need to make it to that next level. We need to climb and crawl and wriggle into the next story. In the case of our national dream, people’s lives depend upon it. We must get to the next story, and we’re going to have to help each other reach that ladder way up there, and when we get to the top, each of us is going to have to deal with our own discomfort and anxiety as we wriggle through the birth passage into the next reality.
Can we do it?
Gratitude List: 1. All the anti-racism resources for learning and growth that are floating around social media right now. Quite a lot of the books on the lists were already on my list to read, but I will make extra time for them this summer, and I am going to compile some lists to post in my classroom. 2. I don’t like taking allopathics if I can help it. I have, as usual, been trying all the herbal and other remedies and therapies for my allergies, but every once in a while, I just need something huge to calm down my body’s hyperactive response to defend me from tree pollen. I’m glad I have that option. My body has definitely shifted out of crisis mode for the moment. 3. The hospitable strangers of the Swann Street Siege. While a twisted tableau of faux faith was occurring down the way, Rahul and his neighbors–whatever their belief system–were acting in the way that The Good Teacher asked humans to act toward each other, harboring people who were frightened and harmed, feeding them and tending their injuries, and managing the boundaries of their homes to keep their guests safe. Hospitality has been a sacred trust between humans in many cultures around the world since first we knew ourselves human. 4. I am grateful for statements and resources being offered by institutions that I love and belong to. Mennonites as a group got it so wrong in the 50s and 60s, holding back, not speaking out (except for individuals). To read the Mennonite Church USA statement yesterday, supporting those who are demanding racial justice and explaining why All Lives Matter is tone-deaf and inappropriate was satisfying. My school has put out a statement of solidarity and a list of resources. The church I attend has formulated a statement of support as well. Yes, we have to put our feet in the story, too, but statements are like signposts for people to follow. 5. Lots of windows. I am on a critical lockdown at the moment, keeping the house closed and not venturing outside while the trees are in the height of their pollen-producing time. Still, I can look out and watch the squirrel with the excessively long tail, the chonky chipmunk, and all the wingfolk flashing by.
May we walk in Beauty! And Solidarity.
“We will not know our own injustice if we cannot imagine justice. We will not be free if we do not imagine freedom. We cannot demand that anyone try to attain justice and freedom who has not had a chance to imagine them as attainable.” ―Ursula K. Le Guin
“Each of us has lived through some devastation, some loneliness, some weather superstorm or spiritual superstorm. When we look at each other we must say, I understand. I understand how you feel because I have been there myself. We must support each other because each of us is more alike than we are unalike.” ―Maya Angelou
TS Eliot: “We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.”
“Authentic spirituality is always about changing yourself. It is not about trying to change anyone else.” ―Richard Rohr
“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” ―L.M. Montgomery
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” ―Jorge Luis Borges
What a dystopian movie I watched last night. I didn’t catch the name–it was something like Evening News. It was a powerful commentary on what happens when empire uses religion to prop itself up. The opening image in the movie is a birds-eye view of a park in a marbled city. There are clouds of tear gas wafting above the park, and crowds of peaceful protesters running to safety. There is the sound of concussion grenades exploding. Cut to a close-up of a man gasping for breath, holding his stomach, where he’s been hit by a rubber bullet. Through the veils of tear gas, you can see a phalanx of black-suited riot police with their shields up, moving in on the panicked crowd.
The nation in the film is experiencing an uprising of thousands and thousands of people taking to the streets to demand justice for ALL the people instead of just for the ones who had historically claimed power. There is looting and burning and violence, and there are thousands upon thousands of peaceful protesters.
There is a shift to a scene of the nation’s autocratic ruler ranting about using any force necessary to quell the violence and looting. “We cannot allow the righteous cries and peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob,” he rants, and you realize that the violent gassing and dispersal of the crowd in the opening credits was of those very “righteous and peaceful protesters.”
Cut to the dictator (it’s not clear in the movie what to call him, but he seems kind of like a dictator) walking with his minions and ministers (they all seemed to be men in the world of this movie) past barricades and marble buildings to a house of worship on the edge of the park. He stalks up to the front of the church, lifts a Bible in his hand, smirks for the camera, and stalks off again.
I actually haven’t seen the end of the movie. It’s still going on. But it was a brilliant piece of cinematography. The soulless look in the eyes of the leader. The blatant use of religious symbols and spaces to attempt to give validity to the violent quelling of protest. The lies about protecting the very people they were at that moment violently removing from the park so the dictator could use the religious building like a movie set.
I’m not sure how it’s going to play out. The religious people have to see it now, don’t they? The soullessness, the way their beautiful Teacher is being used as an agent of the violence of empire.
Usually in these stories, the people, after their hundreds of years of oppressive rule, throw off the mighty arm of the empire and create a new and better reality in its place. Sometimes everything is destroyed and the new and beautiful thing is built from the ashes of the violent past. I’m going to keep tuning in.
Gratitude List: 1. The marchers in Lancaster yesterday, and Michelle Johnson who filmed it all for five hours, live. There were some powerful moments when the police chief was speaking, and people began to yell their pain and rage, and he just handed the bullhorn over and listened. He said he had to go to a meeting, and somebody yelled out that they were there to march because they couldn’t escape this reality, and he nodded his head, skipped his meeting, and joined the marchers. 2. I got two emails from students yesterday about the current national emergency. I am so grateful that they’re reaching out, that they’re thinking and processing and deciding what their role in this world should be. I’m so proud of them. 3. Snugglecats. Really, every household needs at least one cat. One of mine is snoring. 4. Hummingbird dipping into the petunia basket, a strand of cobweb held in her claws. 5. People are finding their voices in the midst of this. Keep articulating. Keep talking it through. Keep speaking up.
May we walk in Beauty!
“The women said feel how we are not open fields waiting for their strike. They cannot not bury us deep, call us things of war and be surprised when we land mine.” —Kelly Grace Thomas
“The necessary thing is to be solitary, the way one was solitary as a child.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke
“Words are things, I’m convinced. They get in your wallpaper. They get in your rugs, in your upholstery, in your clothes, and finally, into you. We must be careful about the words we use.” ―Maya Angelou
“I’d rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.” ―Gerry Spence
“Life is a lot more interesting if you are interested in the people and the places around you. So, illuminate your little patch of ground, the people that you know, the things that you want to commemorate. Light them up with your art, with your music, with your writing, with whatever it is that you do. Do that, and little by little, it might gradually get to be, if not a better world, then a better understood world.” ―Alan Moore
These days demand such centeredness within ourselves and our intentions. There are malicious forces out there actively working to discredit and destroy. Check out the organizers of the protests before you go. Wash your hands. Go to the protests. Sit in the streets. Wear your mask. Social distance as possible. When white people in the crowds incite violence, don’t trust them. Protect each other. Learn how to tend to eyes that have been pepper-sprayed. Destroy white supremacy. Amplify black and brown voices. Admit when you’re wrong. When you make a mistake, own it, and do better. Stay on message: Black Lives Matter. No more police brutality. Justice for George Floyd. White Supremacy is an evil beast, and it isn’t going down without a fight. And when the marches and the protests are over, we still have more work to do, to overcome our own internal biases.
Gratitude List: 1. The people in the streets 2. New schedules. More spaces in the schedule with my name on them. 3. Books to read 4. People who do the right thing 5. Cool mornings mean cats are snugglier.
May we walk in Beauty!
“Sit quietly, and listen for a voice that will say, ‘Be more silent.’” —Rumi
“All wizards, including writers, are extremely careful about their spells.” —Ursula K.Le Guin
“We have always needed good art to sustain us, to strengthen us, even to console us for being born human. Where better can we learn to see through the eyes of others, to gain compassion, to try to make sense of the world outside ourselves and the world within ourselves? —Lloyd Alexander
“Language is the house of Being.” —Martin Heidegger
“And the women said feel the way we became campfire how we ghost storied into this dangerous beauty.” —Kelly Grace Thomas
“So often we armour ourselves thinking we are sparing others the burden of our pain, but the truth is that we are depriving them the opportunity to nurture. Our vulnerability is what brings out compassion in others. As Rumi says, ‘Where lowland is, that’s where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure.'” —Dreamwork with Toko-pa
“At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.” ―Rumi
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” —Helen Keller
“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.” —Rumi
“The soul of the Soul of the Universe is Love.” —Rumi
Gratitude List: 1. Yesterday’s Drive-by Graduation. 2. A day of rest that is truly rest–no obligations. 3. The articulate voice speaking for justice and change. 4. Making things with my hands 5. Time to read books.
May we walk in Beauty!
“God is our mother as truly as God is our father…. we come from the Womb of the Eternal. We are not simply made by God; we are made of God.” —Julian of Norwich
“Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth, is penetrated with connectedness.” —Hildegard of Bingen
“But we [writers] are crucial. That is what I hope you have learned. We listen for and collect and share stories. Without stories there is no nation and no religion and no culture. Without stories of bone and substance and comedy there is only a river of lies, and sweet and delicious ones they are, too. We are the gatherers, the shepherds, the farmers of stories. We wander widely and look for them and gather them and harvest them and share them as food. It is a craft as necessary and nutritious as any other, and if you are going to be good at it you must double your humility and triple your curiosity and quadruple your ability to listen.” ―Brian Doyle
“What if your drive to experience pleasure isn’t a barrier to your spiritual growth? Consider trying out the hypothesis that cultivating joy can make you a more ethical and compassionate person. Imagine that feeling good has something important to teach you on a regular basis.” —Rob Breszny
“Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems, You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,) You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books, You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me, You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.” —Walt Whitman (Happy Birthday!)
Look. I know you probably wouldn’t gas and burn your city’s police precinct station. I know you’re not a fan of the flaming and looting of private property, first and most sacred commandment of our common capitalist religion. But if cities inside you are not burning, perhaps you haven’t been paying attention. If it’s easier to condemn the people who make their rage into a massive public art demonstration, setting their symbols of oppression raging through the streets, than it is to condemn the smug and public murder of a man in those same streets, perhaps you need to get an education. Perhaps you need to study the whole cloth of an ethic of respect for human life. Listen to the rage. It has a reason.
Gratitude List: 1. Snuggling my shadows (I wrote this one last year, and while I forget the context, it feels right for right now). 2. Grades aren’t done, but I can rest for a day or two now. 3. Oh dear. I’m just copying and pasting bits of last year’s list. Call me lazy, but this fits right now, too: Curiosity. When people get curious about each other. Curiosity is a fine engineer, building bridges of gossamer web and light across chasms. But stronger bridges than you can imagine. 4. Living in layers of memory. 5. Even this one, slightly re-tooled from last year: Cool breezes. This means exactly what it says, because our house can get hot as a sauna. But then it means more than that because your poems and your wisdom and your presence in the world are cool breezes to me, my friends.
May we walk in Beauty!
“Jesus often said, ‘It’s very hard here. Have you eaten? Look―you all stick together, go to the beach and have some fish. Share what you have. We’ll talk later.'” ―Anne Lamott
Take the contradictions Of your life And wrap them around You like a shawl —Alice Walker
“Those who love peace must learn to organize as effectively as those who love war.” ―Martin Luther King Jr.
“A [person] should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a beautiful picture everyday in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of Beauty which God has implanted in the human soul.” ―Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.” ―Walt Whitman
“Empathy has no script. There is no right way or wrong way to do it. It’s simply listening, holding space, withholding judgment, emotionally connecting, and communicating that incredibly healing message of ‘you’re not alone.’” ―Brene Brown
“Don’t die with your music still inside of you.” —Wayne Dyer
“You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm.” —Colette
“Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is not stasis but the essence of giving and receiving. Rest is an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually, but also physiologically and physically. To rest is to become present in a different way than through action, and especially to give up on the will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals.” —David Whyte
“Soul is not a thing, but a perspective. It’s the slow courtship of an event which turns it into a meaningful experience. It’s the practice of trusting that if one sits silently and long enough with the absence of magic, the miraculous will reveal itself. Nothing is sacred until we make it so with the eloquence of our attention, the poetry of our patience, the parenting warmth of our admiration.” —Toko-Pa Turner
“It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. Because we are alone with the unfamiliar presence that has entered us; because everything we trust and are used to is for a moment taken away from us; because we stand in the midst of a transition where we cannot remain standing. That is why the sadness passes: the new presence inside us, the presence that has been added, has entered our heart, has gone into its innermost chamber and is no longer even there, – is already in our bloodstream. And we don’t know what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing happened, and yet we have changed, as a house that a guest has entered changes. We can’t say who has come, perhaps we will never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters us in this way in order to be transformed in us, long before it happens. And that is why it is so important to be solitary and attentive when one is sad: because the seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. The quieter we are, the more patient and open we are in our sadnesses, the more deeply and serenely the new presence can enter us, and the more we can make it our own, the more it becomes our fate.” —Rainer Maria Rilke
Gratitude List: 1. Last Day of School, and I think I am going to get everything done on time. Saturday is graduation, so I will get to see and say goodbye to so many students I love, so that’s some closure, even if this online business feels like leaving an open wound. (Hmmm. That seems to decrease the import of the gratitude, doesn’t it? It’s just that the yuckiness of ending this way is the reality I cannot escape, so I am grateful for an alternative method of closure that’s more real while still being safe.) 2. The smells! Yesterday I was walking and suddenly I was hit by a wall of scent. I know that they’re terrible for the trees, but one of the climbing multiflora roses whacked me in the nose with its scent as I passed. So beautiful. And then when I got home, I spent some time communing with the opening peonies. Their scent reminds me of the grandmothers. 3. The Faerie Grove. That little grove of trees down by Skunk Hollow Lane where the wild rose is exploding into bloom is where I have seen the cedar waxwings twice. At the base of the trees is the rooty log of another tree that fell years ago, with plenty of nooks and crannies for a hundred apartments for small living things. I often see goldfinches congregating there. And the vultures tend to kettle over that field. 4. Rain. It feels just right to have rain on the last day of school. Change, movement, shift. 5. The coming days are full. There’s so much writing to do, knitting and bookmaking, reading (so MUCH to read!), house projects, walking, hanging out with Jon and the kids.
May we walk in Beauty!
Words for Today: (and Maya Angelou reaches through the veils of time to hold us in the way that only she could)
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” —Sinclair Lewis
“I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned.” —attr. to Richard Feynman
”The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world—we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.” —Joanna Macy
“I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow. I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights. I’ve learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you’ll miss them when they’re gone from your life. I’ve learned that making a “living” is not the same thing as making a “life.” I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back. I’ve learned that whenever I decide something with an open heart, I usually make the right decision. I’ve learned that even when I have pains, I don’t have to be one. I’ve learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back. I’ve learned that I still have a lot to learn. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” ―Maya Angelou
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Yesterday, I watched that new Mark Rober video that everyone has been passing around the internet, in which he completely overengineers an anti-squirrel bird feeder, creating a ninja-warrior course and making friends with his team of squirrel subjects in the process. He learned things. The squirrels learned things. Everybody evolved.
I’m a fan of Mark Rober. I think he models open-hearted curiosity. He began the process in frustration: The squirrels, no matter what little modifications he made to his bird feeder, always won. He played the next step in the process as an attempt to outwit the squirrels, but by that point, his curiosity had already taken over. He was no longer really concerned about beating the squirrels. He realized that he had an opportunity on his hands here to explore something. Already his vision and his attention and his perspective had evolved.
(You have to watch the video. Note: No animals were harmed in the making of this video. Further note: You just may come away with a deeper appreciation of the animal life in your neighborhood.)
Watching the video brought into sharper focus for me something I believe, but haven’t explored very thoroughly in words, that open-hearted curiosity is at the heart of learning, and is a primary step in evolutionary processes. Lately, I’ve been hyper-focused on the way disruptions and challenges sprk evolution and transformation and change. We get pushed out of our easy status quo and we must adapt or flounder. So we adapt, sometimes kicking and screaming and lashing out at our neighbors who are having BBQs or our neighbors who urge everyone to be cautious and wear a mask.
How can I approach the frustrations and inconveniences, and even deep anxieties, of this experience with a more open-hearted and curious frame of mind? People aren’t squirrels, of course, but are there ways that we can engage each other more playfully that might bring about learning and evolution for all of us? I think we’re in a place–nationally and globally–where we have to evolve, and evolve quickly. If we can begin to approach the challenges with a greater sense of curiosity, hearts open to whatever possibilities the future holds, perhaps we can find our way through.
Gratitude List: 1. Sometimes my gratitude list becomes a little like a bird-watcher’s log, but here is a Big Joy from yesterday: On our walk yesterday morning, Jon and I saw a flock of cedar waxwings. Later, we saw them again, in the walnut tree by the barn. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen them in the hollow, but it’s been a long time. They’re so dapper and elegant, both in their coloring and their way of flying. It made me wish we had more early-fruiting berries. 2. Taking stock, and finding my way through a couple thorny things. I need to listen carefully to my own advice about curiosity and approach a couple of my current personal challenges less like a slog, and more like an interesting challenge. Can she do it? Can she make her way through the obstacle course of Issue X without falling? When she falls, can she get up again? It’s just good to have a plan. 3. Curiosity 4. Adapting, changing, evolving, transforming 5. The little joys that people share. It keeps everyone’s hearts softer and more open.
May we walk in Beauty!
“Let this be a voice for the mountains Let this be a voice for the river Let this be a voice for the forest Let this be a voice for the flowers Let this be a voice for the ocean Let this be a voice for the desert Let this be a voice for the children Let this be a voice for the dreamers Let this be a voice of no regret” —John Denver
“Just as we are taught that our universe is constantly expanding out into space at enormous speeds, so too our imagination must expand as we search for the knowledge that will in its turn expand into wisdom, and from wisdom into truth.” —Madeline L’Engle
A golden person peeked in my window this morning while I was writing about colors.
Here’s a little Noticing Exercise for today: Go outside, or stand at your window, and look around. Take a few deep breaths, of course. Feel your feet on the ground. Now, start naming the colors you see. Maybe start with the spectrum. Hang out with old Roy G. Biv for a few moments.
Find something red (it can be something human-wrought, but it’s especially satisfying to do this only with naturally-occurring colors). Breathe in red.
Orange might be harder, unless you have a family of resident orioles chasing each other across your view, but look really closely at the turnings of color at the tips of a patch of weeds, or the hidden shades of turned earth in the flowerbed. See if you can find it. Breathe in orange.
Yellow is pretty easy if you’ve got a dandelion patch, or goldfinches. Breathe yellow.
Green–it’s everywhere, but don’t forget to breathe it in.
Blue. Also easy, perhaps, particularly if the sky is cloudless. Breathe blue.
Indigo: We’re not really trained to notice indigo. If you have a bunting or a bluebird handy, the indigo is really the deep well of blue that pools beneath the flash and shine. Or look at a cloud–what we call the silver lining of a cloud is actually indigo. Really look at it. Then look into it. Without a cloud, you can do this with shadows. Indigo is the deepest layer of shadow. If you think you’re really only imagining it, you’re probably in the presence of indigo. Indigo is mysterious, almost elusive. Breathe in indigo.
Violet is in the gill-on-the-grass, the edges of asters, the pulsing life force in the newest branches. Find violet. Breath in violet.
Now you’ve breathed a rainbow. Won’t it just be a glorious day from here on out?
Gratitude List: 1. Things are zoomy and bright out there in birdland. In all the years we’ve been here, I really don’t know when I have seen such a healthy flock of local goldfinches. 2. Last night’s weekly Birding Club (I mean Family) Zoom call. If you think I talk a lot about birds, you need to meet my family. In the Before, I might sometimes go a couple months without seeing or talking to my siblings. Now, I talk to them Every Week. I just got a little teary writing that. Even when I am raging at the losses, here is a gift. Such a gift. 3. This is the last week of school. I am so terribly torn. There really is a part of me that dreads this. The lack of closure is extremely painful. It feels wrong. I think I have been keeping myself from anticipating the end of the semester because I don’t know how to close this out. But I so desperately need this break, the chance to re-group, to make art without feeling like I should be doing something else, the opportunity to write what I want when I want, and the movement out of this incredibly sedentary life. 4. Sunshine and cool breezes. Thermal Delight. 5. Color!
May we walk in Beauty!
“Perfectionism is a virus which keeps us running on the treadmill of never-enoughness. It is inherently deadening for how it strives and never arrives. Failure is embedded in its very pursuit, for our humanity can never be homogenised. The only antidote is to turn away from every whiff of plastic and gloss and follow our grief, pursue our imperfections, exaggerate our eccentricities until they, the things we once sought to hide, reveal themselves as our true majesty.” —Toko-pa Turner
“The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse when you beat your head against it.” —Douglas Adams
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” —Carl Sagan
“UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.” —The Onceler, Dr. Seuss
Mockingbird Chronicles 