Well, I’m back to life and living. I think. It’s been a challenging ten days. I would feel fine for a short while, and then I would just crash, my energy ebbing, leaving me stranded, stuck. Hmm. Sort of like a certain ship the world’s been watching for the past week. I’d lie there, thinking about how lazy I was, not getting anything done, not grading, just scrolling through Facebook and re-watching The Great British Baking Show. But my brain was foggy, too, and energy to think and process was also at a minimum.

I did manage some knitting and some mending while I was stuck in the Covid Canal, things that took only quiet movements, and little thought. That helped me to feel like I wasn’t completely out of commission. Isolation was hard, and I was feeling depressed and weepy by the last day. I had the erroneous idea that somehow walking out of isolation would mean I was suddenly well, as if it was the bedroom itself which was stealing my vim. Sunday was a hard hit with reality, realizing that getting out of isolation and getting well are two different things.

My doctor says I am one of those mysterious cases in which fatigue and exhaustion linger. No one knows quite why, but they do say that it tends to abate in a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, I am going to school, keeping the teaching parts light, getting them writing and researching and reading. I’m back to school today with a really light schedule, trying to conserve energy, to rest as I am able. It does me good to see my students again. They’ve managed extremely well without me, of course.

My doctor says I’ll need to sort of recondition my body to maintain energy for longer periods, to listen to it when it says REST. I’ll also need to recondition my breathing and sense of smell, she says, to train my lungs to remember that they can take in enough air for a full breath, to train my olfactory sense to pick up various scents and aromas again.

I tried to go back into the world with the double mask again, but I am so short of breath that I am just wearing one surgical mask for now, and breathing is definitely easier than with two. I suppose I really don’t need to double mask since I have both vaccine and active antibodies. I’ve been doing it because I am an example to my students, and I want them to see it as normal.

Gratitude List:
1. Cat love
2. Being back at school. Monitoring my flagging energy, but energized by my students.
3. So much care from my circles of Beloveds.
4. Spring. The riot of trees breaking into bloom. Forsythia setting fire to everything.
5. Some hints of smell returning.

May we walk in Beauty!

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“I do believe in an everyday sort of magic. . .the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.”
—Charles de Lint

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“My invitation to each of you—student, faculty, community member—is to find a story of someone who has made a change, small or large, whether the consequence was their life or their comfort, and I want you to share that story with at least one other person, something that inspires you to step beyond the boundaries of your courage into a new world beyond the measure you ever thought you could make.” —Kevin Ressler, in 2017 memorial for M. J. Sharp

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“What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.” ―Miguel Ruiz

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“My darling girl, when are you going to realize that being normal is not necessarily a virtue? It rather denotes a lack of courage.” ―Alice Hoffman

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“Sometimes I can feel my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer

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WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver from Thirst (Beacon Press)
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

(Oooh. It’s been over a month since I have posted. This business of trying to juggle all the balls means something tends to get set upon the back burner. Sorry, dear blog-space–you got the back burner this time.)

Irony, according to Mx. Google: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

Example: When Covid cases in your area have been going down, but you’ve continued to double mask, to keep your distance, to wash hands, and also, you just got your J&J one-shot special anti-Covid vaccine, and five days later, feeling a distinct malaise, you go get a rapid antigen test at your local urgent care, and come home with instructions to isolate yourself from your family and the world for ten days because you have contracted Covid. Somehow.

I have contracted a case of Covid, along with a distinct case of Irony.

Things could be so much worse. Really. It’s a pain to be out of commission in the final week of a quarter, but also, I can write my lesson plans for my most excellent substitute, and then catch up on the overdue grading that was weighing me down.

I’m not afraid I’m going to die. There’s that really weird thing I’ve read about the vaccines: that they don’t entirely eliminate your chance of getting sick, but they 100% reduce your chance of dying.

Three days in, and an acetaminophen for the headache, and I am feeling pretty good. I’ve got grading to do, and a huge pile of mending, books to read, a blog post to write, and poetry floating through my brain. The birds are singing their springtime arias outside (it IS spring today!), and the sun is flooding in my window.

The cats keep knocking at the door to be let in. And then let out again. And then let in again. The CDC papers they gave me at Urgent Care say pets pose minimal risk of spread, so we’re going with that. It would be impossible to keep them out.

I’m allowed to go outside and walk around and take springtime pictures, as much as my energy allows, and if I stay away from people. I mask up when I go out, even though we live in the country.

I miss my family, even though they’re here in the house. So much of our togetherness is just togetherness, not necessarily talking, so yelling “How’s everybody doing?!?!” through my closed door doesn’t quite cut it. Still, I can hear them out there, creaking floorboards, talking to their friends on the Discord server, and Jon brings me food and coffee.

Once upon a time there was a woman named Rapunzel. Her hair, unlike that of the fairy tale princess, was short and grey. She lived, for a time, in a tower in a little wooded hollow surrounded by rolling hills. Although witches get a bad rap in all the stories, and most of them really aren’t as evil as they seem (in fact, many of them are wise women), there is an evil witch in this story, named Covid. Every day three princes would bring Rapunzel food and coffee. Cats would come and go as they pleased.

I think Rapunzel will live happily ever after.

Also, and most importantly: A Joyful Spring to you! Blessed Ostara! The shining wheel of the year turns, and we stand poised, balanced, equal day and equal night. Breathe in the balance, the sun, the birdsong. Breather out hope, compassion, dedication to making the world a better place.

A poem from 2006, to celebrate the turning of the year-wheel into Spring.

Day Turns

The way maple swings its wings spiraling down shafts of dawn wind,
The way chickadee whistles on bitter March mornings,
The way lichen spreads grey-green lace upon the patient rocks,
The way the egg falls from jay’s beak to lie silent, cold, and whole upon the moss,
The way the wren defends her nest,
The way rabbit hints at her home and scratches the packed earth,
The way squirrel scolds her wayward cousin’s child.
The way heron stands more still than thought,
The way the pond reflects the orange air at sunset,
The way snake stalks the field mouse through gathering dusk,
The way the fields are washed in the milk of the moon,
The way dark midnight covers the farm like a blanket.

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Also this, from 2014:
“We come to that place, one of the quarter points we notice in Terra’s dance with Sol.  Equinox.  My head today is full of these complicated E-words: Equinox, Equator, Equilibrium, in-Evitable.  At these equal points of spring and fall, we are ever so much slightly closer to our star than we are on the outward fling of the Solstices.  Do-si-do, Sun.  Swing your partner.  Welcome, Spring, oh welcome, Spring.” (I’m not sure that bit about being closer to the sun at Equinox is quite accurate.)

---

And, from 2018:
Today, snow or no snow, our planet whirls into another season. Here in the western hemisphere, in the northern temperate climates, the early flowers have been up and blooming, calling to the bees. I have yet to see the early foragers this year, and it makes me anxious.

Someone must awaken the bees!
The crocus have opened their golden throats.
The windflowers have blown awake
out on the lawn.
Where are the Queen’s daughters?
Where are the melissas?
Someone awaken the bees!

On this first day of Ostara, the ancient holiday to celebrate the awakening spring, on the day when night and day are equal in duration, I like to ask myself questions to awaken my spirit:

What are the instincts and drives within me that must awaken, like the bees, to get my work done, to find the food I need to carry me through the season?
What new things are stirring within? What is awakening? What is hatching?
How do the forces of balance and imbalance work in my life? What can I do to bring more elegant balance into my daily rhythms? In what ways can I disrupt the balances which keep me caught in a rut?
This year, I keep coming back to the question of what calls me awake? When I fear that the bees will not awaken, I think about the sleepy spirit within me that likes to settle into sameness. It takes some effort to wake up, and then to wake up again, and to keep waking up, shedding the outer layers, like an opening flower.

Today, I will watch for the bees.
Today, I will keep my eyes open for the People of Feathers, who wing their way across the sky.
Today, I will feel the breezes on my face.
Today, I will keep listening for the voices of the bees, and for the voices of the young people.

Blessed Ostara to you! Happy Equinox! A Joyful spring. Walk in Beauty.

I am finding new rooms in the house of my voice while I write with Jindu. When I respond to something in one of his poems or something he has said, and then weave it into the sense and the sound of my next poem, the writing gets electric and lively in ways I can’t often set myself up for when I write simply for myself.

Heron Feather
by Beth Weaver-Kreider

On my altar are bones and
a blue heron’s feather a shard
of broken pottery a snake skin
five seeds three pennies and a
statue of an ancient goddess
I made from clay some milkweed
fluff a pen I love to write with and
a paintbrush tools of the trade
some sea shells and a stone
from the path to my house
in the village where I was born.

Some of this is a lie but all
of it is true and when I die
you may keep all my lies
but put the stone into my
left shoe so I will know
where to go and put the heron
feather in in my hand so I can
fly there but don’t make plans
for a long time yet I have lots
of magic yet to make I think
this is what it really means
to be alive.

---

Gratitudes:
1. Glad we decided to go to virtual learning when we did. My son and I were sent home early today because we were exposed. I’m grateful that my school takes tracing seriously. I hope I can get a test tomorrow.
2. My students are such tender and sweet-hearted folx. I’m going to miss seeing them in person, but I look forward to seeing their whole faces for a while on Zoom.
3. Writing with Jindu. I am learning so much about poetry from writing with someone with such a rich sense of craft and word-work. It is such an honor.
4. Wordplay and artplay
5. Lancaster’s ExtraGive. Every year my town has a day of giving, and people give to their favorite charities, together, and every year it raises more money for people do to good in the world. It gives me hope.

Stay safe, Beloveds!

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“…when women speak truly they speak subversively–they can’t help it: if you’re underneath, if you’re kept down, you break out, you subvert.
We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.
That’s what I want–to hear you erupting. You young Mount St. Helenses who don’t know the power in you–I want to hear you.” —Ursula Le Guin

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“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.” —Muriel Rukeyser

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“Oh to meet, however briefly, the greatness that lives under our surface. To summon enough bravery to be without armour and strategy, for the chance at meeting that irreducible power. Oh to make of our terrified hearts a prayer of surrender to the God of Love; that we remain safe in our quivering ache to be near that Otherness, even for a moment. To touch that ancient life who will never relinquish its wilderness, who lets instinct make its choices, whose knowing lives in bones and whose song is a wayfinder.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

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“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love.”
―Parker J. Palmer

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“November always seemed to me the Norway of the year.”
―Emily Dickinson

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“One of my favourite teachings by Martín Prechtel is that ‘violence is an inability with grief.’ In other words, it takes skillfulness to grieve well, to grieve wholeheartedly. It requires us to bravely, nakedly come to face all that is lost, keeping our hearts open to loving just as fully again.
“When we make war, lashing out in rage and revenge, it is because we are unwilling to make this full encounter with grief. It is easy to enact the same violence which has taken so much from us―including towards ourselves―but the greater work is to let that which is missing enlarge your life; to make beauty from your brokenness.
“Whatever you hold in the cauldron of your intention is your offering to the divine. The quality of assistance you can generate and receive from the Holy is governed by the quality of your inner offering. When you indulge in fear and doubt, you are flooding the arena where love is attempting to work.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

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“Our true home is in the present moment.
To live in the present moment is a miracle.
The miracle is not to walk on water.
The miracle is to walk on the green Earth
in the present moment.”
―Thich Nhat Hanh

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“An awake heart
is like a sky that pours light.” ―Hafiz (Ladinsky)

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“There’s a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.” ―Oscar Levant

Today is the first day of school. I don’t think I have ever begun a year with such a roiling sense of uncertainty, even my first year. My room looks ready. My slideshows look ready. I seem to have lesson plans in place. I have practiced Zooming and recording and publishing the Zoom.

I just have to trust that it’s all there, all in place, because something inside me feels like I am trying to stand on water. Or, as someone posted in a meme this week, building the plane while it’s in the air. Yeah, that.

One thing that I am certain of is this: The support and prayers and good energy I feel from my beloveds is so strong, it is almost palpable. Without that, without the good humored and earnest colleagues and administration and custodial staff, without the knowledge that I will be back among my students today, I don’t think i could do this. But these human circles make it possible, and even delightful, to step in and see what happens. This is my entire gratitude list for today.

If you’re looking for some concrete ways to be energetic support in these anxious times:
First and foremost, pray for the safety of students and teachers and staff at the schools in your area, that we and our families will be able to mitigate with enough intention and care that we will not make each other sick.

Then, perhaps just as important, pray that we will FEEL safe, that we will be able to re-establish school as a place of belonging and wellbeing. That we will be able to establish strong and healthy community. We’ll never be able to make it through the twisting pathways of the brain past the protection centers toward the higher level critical thinking skills if we can’t first feel safe.

Then pray that we will learn together, that we will be able to engage each one, especially those who are remote.

Thank you for being part of the village that raises the children of your community. In a year when it seems that every answer is the wrong one, we need to step in and BE the answers.

Blessed Be.

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“All the wonders of life are already here. They’re calling you. If you can listen to them, you will be able to stop running. What you need, what we all need, is silence. Stop the noise in your mind in order for the wondrous sounds of life to be heard. Then you can begin to live your life authentically and deeply.” —Thich Nhat Hanh

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“When you have to make a choice, and you don’t make it, that is itself a choice.” —William James

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“What do you promise your distant ancestors you will bring back into the world? What do you promise our cultural descendants you will bequeath them? Amid the ruins of a dying civilization, let us be clear and intentional in what we plant.” —Sean Donohue (FB post)

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“Educating yourself does not mean that you were stupid in the first place; it means that you are intelligent enough to know that there is plenty left to learn.” ―Melanie Joy

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“I hold the most archaic values on earth. . .the fertility of the soul, the magic of the animals, the power-vision in solitude. . . .the love and ecstasy of the dance, the common work of the tribe.” ―Gary Snyder

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“The words were on their way, and when they arrived, she would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.” ―Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

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“If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow: and without trees, we cannot make paper.” ―Thich Nhat Hanh

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“The study of silence has long engrossed me. The matrix of a poet’s work consists not only of what is there to be absorbed and worked on, but also of what is missing, desaparecido, rendered unspeakable, thus unthinkable.” ―Adrienne Rich

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“Be ready to be surprised by the crazy, wonderful events that will come dancing out of your past when you stir the pot of memory. Embrace those long-lost visitors.” ―William Zinsser

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“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” ―Bob Marley

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“Bare your soul of all mind, and stay there without mind.” ―Meister Eckhart

The last day of July is Lughnasadh Eve, one of the four cross-quarter points between the Solstices and Equinoxes, along with Halloween (Samhain), Groundhog’s Day (Imbolc), and May Day (Beltane)–their traditional Celtic names are in parentheses. Unlike the others, which have found their way through webs of lore and story to more modern and playful traditions, Lughnasadh (sometimes also called Lammas) no longer lingers in the modern psyche.

Lughnasadh is the celebration of the time of the sun’s heat, the mid-harvest, when the summer crops are plentiful and abundant, when berries and corn, tomatoes and zucchini, fill our bellies and our dreams, offering us coolness and nourishment. What we longed for in the stinging winds of February now surrounds us, almost numbing us into a cloying sense of enoughness.

I haven’t preserved much food for several years now, because the beginning of August is always the race to prepare for the beginning of school. But on social media, I am enjoying photos of friends canning applesauce, freezing corn, making pickle relishes, living into the traditions of their ancestors and creating a hopeful future from the abundance of the present. If you use your imagination, you can feel that sense of deep anticipation in the frigid dark of December when you go to the freezer and pull out a bag of golden kernels of corn, how you will bring the sunshine of this moment into the cold of the future.

My house is ancient, and we have a single air conditioner in the living room that keeps us cool on the hottest days. This summer, we put a second free-standing air conditioner on the second floor to make sleeping more bearable. Still, this pre-menopausal body is struggling against the heat, not letting me sleep. I sneak downstairs, open the door to the balcony, and try to sleep in the recliner with the cool night breezes that seem to pass by the upstairs windows. Funny how my February dreams of summer never seem to include the sense of overwhelming heat, the burden of humidity. Conversely, my summer self seems to forget the beauty of shadow, the silence of snowfall, the twinkling of winter starlight, in my memories of the unbearable cold. I’m so human.

Perhaps that is the main lesson of living by seasons, of making internal notes to carry us from point to point on the compass rose of the year: Remembering that we’re humans in a big, big world. These shifts may be semi-arbitrary in the ways that we mark them, but they remind us that we’re here in these human bodies to experience what matters. We are en-mattered, living by sensation, of cold and heat, of bellies full and empty, of muscle and sinew, breath and bone. Of sight and hearing, touch and taste and smell. Of pleasure and pain, ache and longing, desire and love.

Lughnasadh in particular was once a celebration of the bread. The first wheat had been harvested. People made elaborate designs with wheat to bring good luck and mark the year–the original corn dollies. Bread was made to celebrate, loaves fashioned, butter churned, and berries made into jam. The seeds were planted, the harvest was ready, and the work of saving the harvest began.

What will you make of the harvest in this coming season? How will you shape the loaves of your year? This year, we’ve hunkered down, masked up, read and learned about antiracist work. We’ve called Congresspeople, expressed our desires for justice, stood up, marched, learned some more. How do we make this real, save this harvest for the future, that it may feed those who come after us? We must not leave it in the fields to rot and die. The truth this season tells us is that there is abundance, enough for everyone. We must participate in its harvest and preservation, and make sure that everyone gets their share.

Yesterday, I caught bits and pieces of the funeral of John Lewis, and I plan to go back in the coming days and listen again, to plant the seeds of his words and deeds into my own psyche as deeply as I can, to take the yeast he has offered, and to work to shape loaves that are just and hopeful. Let us work to preserve the harvest of his work and legacy, so that his golden light may shine far into the future.

As he said in his final words: “Walk with the wind.”
Walk with the wind, soulkin, sun on your shoulders.

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Gratitude:
The life and work and legacy of John Lewis. Perhaps we have been called to these times, to follow his legacy, to take his work into the future, to make the United States what we dream it can be, a nation where all people–no matter their race or creed, their sexuality or physical or mental ability, their gender or national origin, their class or status or education–can be free and equal.

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“Morning prayer: “Release all bitterness. Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won. Choose confrontation wisely, but when it is your time don’t be afraid to stand up, speak up, and speak out against injustice.” —John Lewis

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Instead of trying to practice nonviolence,
let us try to practice the connections
that make violence both inappropriate
and impossible.
—Sharif M. Abdullah

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“Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
—Marcel Proust

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Naomi Shihab Nye: “You are living in a poem.”

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“Every woman must own her story; otherwise we are all part of the silence.” —Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International

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“Don’t just be yourself. Be all of your selves.”
—Joss Whedon

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“Some people have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder, and even ecstasy.”
—Abraham H. Maslow

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“You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby.

But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
—Margery Williams -The Velveteen Rabbit

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I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact I just said “shit” than you are that 30,000 kids died last night. —Tony Campolo

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“Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.” —John Lewis

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“Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.” —John Lewis

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“So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.” —John Lewis

I think that was a white fragility dream. Weird. I occasionally dream dreams where I am more of an observer than a character, like watching a movie. This was one of those.

The character in this dream was a man driving a car. In my dream-mind, I called him The White Man. He was trying to get to a place where he could get rid of the body in the back of his car. It was important to note, in the dream, that he was “innocent.” He believed he was not responsible for the death of the body, but there it was in the trunk of his car, and he had to deal with it. He knew that if anyone saw the body, or if he was stopped by police, he would be culpable, even though he had nothing to do with the body being in his car.

That was important in the dream–The White Man was totally innocent, himself. He just needed to get rid of this body in his trunk before he was caught with it, because he would not be held guiltless if caught. (sounds familiar, right? “But my ancestors didn’t own slaves!” “But I believe that everyone is equal!” “But. . .”)

I am working on doing my inner work, trying to be open and transparent with myself and others about my biases and unaddressed prejudices. My psyche had to throw up a movie-style story to get me to notice that I must be trying to hide my own biases, my own vulnerabilities, while I am trying to fix myself and my problem. I’m insisting on my own innocence, even while I am driving around with a body in the trunk of my car.

There was one significant clue in the dream, a clue that insisted that The White Man is me: He wore a little bag around his neck with his wallet and keys in it, just like I wear when my clothes don’t have pockets.

Time to work more seriously on vulnerability, on not hiding my ugly truths, on accepting that there really is no such thing as the innocence I insist upon as long as I am hiding a body in the trunk.

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Gratitudes:
1. Rest
2. Work
3. Exercise
4. Cool water and nourishing food
5. Dreams that keep me unsettled enough to keep moving

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

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“To be brave is to behave bravely
when your heart is faint.
So you can be really brave
only when you really ain’t.”
—Piet Hein

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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” —Upton Sinclair

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“You can never go down the drain.” —Mr. Rogers

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“Good People,
most royal greening verdancy,
rooted in the sun,
you shine with radiant light.” ―Hildegard of Bingen

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“Just living is not enough said the butterfly, one needs sunshine, freedom and a little flower.” ―Hans Christian Anderson

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“I have found that the greatest degree of inner tranquillity comes from the development of love and compassion. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater is our own sense of well-being.”
―Dalai Lama

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“You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder. It is good to remember that the planet is carrying you.”
― Vandana Shiva

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“You can tell people of the need to struggle, but when the powerless start to see that they really can make a difference, nothing can quench the fire.”
―Leymah Gbowee

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“I remember Hushpuppy at the end of Beasts of the Southern Wild, just trying to take some food home to her daddy Wink, finally turning to face the hideous beast on the bridge, facing it down and saying, “I take care of my own.”

“I take care of my own. You are my own, and I am yours—I think this is what God is saying, or trying to, over the din. We are each other’s. There are many forms of thirst, many kinds of water.”
―Anne Lamott

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“When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even of a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet, of some mute and inglorious Jane Austen, some Emily Bronte who dashed her brains out on the moor or mopped and mowed about the highways crazed with the torture that her gift had put her to. Indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.” —Virginia Woolf

Today’s Gratitude:
1. Getting back to a project I was dreading. I think two or three more days of work might get me finished with the scraping of the paint. Then we have to decide on the new color.
2. Kittens! We’re pretty dogmatic about not letting cats reproduce for the good of the whole cat-tribe, so the children have never had the experience of raising kittens. Since a local stray had kittens in the barn, we have had the pleasure of gently taming her, and now watching kittens grow.
3. All the local places to hike and bike.

Walk in Beauty!

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“…Labour is blossoming or dancing where
The body is not bruised to pleasure soul,
Nor beauty born out of its own despair,
Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil.
O chestnut tree, great rooted blossomer,
Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole?
O body swayed to music, O brightening glance,
How can we know the dancer from the dance?”
—William Butler Yeats, 1926

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“The Gospel takes away our right forever, to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor.” —Dorothy Day

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“Silence is the beginning of God purifying the soul.” —St. Basil the Great

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“Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” —Cesar Chavez

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“What a long time it can take to become the person one has always been! How often in the process we mask ourselves in faces that are not our own. How much dissolving and shaking of ego we must endure before we discover our deep identity—the true self within every human being that is the seed of authentic vocation.” —Parker Palmer

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“I am afraid to drive the demons from my life lest the angels also flee.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

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“What’s the greatest lesson a woman can learn? That since day one, she’s already had everything she needs within herself. It’s the world that’s convinced her she did not.” —Rupi Kaur

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“Choosing authenticity and worthiness is an absolute act of resistance. Choosing to live and love with our whole hearts is an act of defiance. You’re going to confuse, piss off, and terrify lots of people, including yourself. One minute you’ll pray that the transformation stops, and the next minute you’ll pray that it never ends. You’ll also wonder how you can feel so brave and so afraid at the same time.” ―Brene Brown

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“Sacred activism is the fusion of the mystic’s passion for God with the activist’s passion for justice―creating a third fire, which is the burning sacred heart that longs to help, preserve, and nurture every living thing. ” ―Andrew Harvey

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“What’s lost is nothing to what’s found, and all the death that ever was, set next to life, would scarcely fill a cup.” ―Frederick Buechner

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“Listen to the night as it makes itself hollow.” ―Rainer Maria Rilke

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Every blade of grass has its Angel that bends over it and whispers, “Grow, grow.” ―The Talmud

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“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

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“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” ―Elie Wiesel

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“The seduction in the wake of betrayal is to take up a thicker armour, to practice at expecting less of others, or to punish one’s own naïveté. But these are the same refusals from which our world is dying. Never should a judgement be made against one’s willingness to open the heart.” ―Dreamwork with Toko-pa

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“I’m so lucky we lived through who we were to become who we are.” ―Neil Hillborn

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“Grace bats last.” ―Anne Lamott

Gratitude:
It turns out that the feral tortoiseshell bobtail cat in the neighborhood is a female. Yesterday, we watched her in the front drive and yard. When we opened the door and called to her, she startled and moved off toward the barn, but then stopped and looked back. I suppose I am reading too much into it, but it sure did seem that she was asking us to follow. Josiah did, and discovered the box in the barn where she’d gone to nurse her three ginger bobtail babies.

This kid is loving the idea of taming a cat and kittens this summer. We’ll be looking for homes, of course. Oddly, a friend of mine has been asking me to help her find a kitten or kittens, and here they suddenly are. We’re hoping to be able to catch Mathilda (Joss has named her) by the time the kittens are old enough for families of their own, so she can at least be fixed.

May we walk in Tenderness and Beauty!

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“You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.” ―Pema Chödrön

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“Morning is the best of all times in the garden. The sun is not yet hot. Sweet vapors rise from the earth. Night dew clings to the soil and makes plants glisten. Birds call to one another. Bees are already at work.” —William Longgood

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“Elsewhere the world may be blustering or sleeping, wars are fought, people live and die, some nations disintegrate, while others are born, soon to be swallowed up in turn—and in all this sound and fury, amidst eruptions and undertows, while the world goes its merry way, bursts into flames, tears itself apart and is reborn: human life continues to throb. So, let us drink a cup of tea.” —Muriel Barbery, “The Elegance of the Hedgehog”

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“There is ecstasy in paying attention.”
—Anne Lamott

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“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.” —Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Here is an Interdependence Day piece I wrote a few years ago. For years, I felt uncomfortable on July 4th because I believed we had broken our ideals and our pact of humanity and equality, but now I realize that we never truly lived up to them. Some days, I still hope that we can become the Good Force that we have sort of thought we were. I recognize that this is a painful conversation for some of my beloveds, that to question the root truth of the nation that you have given your lives and your families to feels like a terrible betrayal. I only ask that you consider that the whole idea of the nation has been a terrible betrayal for those we enslaved since before we even became a nation, and for those who lived here in the Before, who were decimated and tortured, whose land we stole in order to make a nation at all.
***
I recognize that today is the United States independence day. It’s always crunchy for me.

I don’t celebrate war and war “victories.”
I don’t celebrate a freedom that was borne on the backs of slaves.
I don’t celebrate the genocide that wiped out, marginalized and impoverished the people of the first nations.
I don’t celebrate a freedom that ignores our slave-owning and genocidal history to proclaim us all-good and all-powerful, evidence to the contrary.
I don’t celebrate the increasing calls to close us off, to keep out those who seek sanctuary in our borders.
I don’t celebrate throwing candy to the rich while grabbing bread from the poor.
I don’t celebrate the rush to destroy this beautiful part of the Earth, to call her gifts “resources” that must be maximized and used until she is played out.
I don’t celebrate the fear-mongering that I see, the use of fear to keep people in their places, afraid of each other, afraid of their own freedom.
I don’t celebrate “America First.”
I struggle to celebrate when the country itself is in crisis, when those who were chosen to administer our ship of state have instead chosen to rule like the king we thought we had freed ourselves from those centuries ago.

I can celebrate human community.
I can celebrate the spirit that longs to break the bonds of tyranny for all peoples.
I can celebrate the spirit of that statue that stands in our harbor, her lamp held high in welcome for all who seek refuge.
I can celebrate the strong spirit of resistance to tyranny that continues to pull people to demand rights for ALL of us.
I can celebrate the beautiful diversity of us, and the way we find connecting points, the way we so willingly wear each others’ stories.
I can celebrate the music, the foodways, the arts, the dialects, the histories, of us in all our many colors and shades and tones and temperaments.
I can celebrate inTERdependence.
I can celebrate the hope that we will stand up to the greed-mongers and the fear-mongers and the hate-mongers, that we will work to create a nation where all can be free, where all can expect justice.

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Gratitude, today,
for the awakeners,
for the story-sharers,
for the truth-speakers,
for the one who walk into the fire,
for the ones willing to change and to make change.

May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

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“If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.” ―Lao Tzu

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“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

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“You are something that the Whole Universe is doing, in the same way that a wave is something that the Whole Ocean is doing…” ―Alan Watts

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“You are beautiful, and I have loved you dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can tell.”
—Roger Whittaker

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“It’s a matter of discipline. When you’ve finished washing and dressing each morning, you must tend to your planet.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery in “The Little Prince”

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“To cope with losing our world requires us to descend through the anger into mourning and sadness, not speedily bypass them to jump onto the optimism bandwagon or escape into
indifference. And with this deepening, an extended caring and gratitude may open us to what is still here, and finally, to acting accordingly.” —Per Espen Stoknes

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. . .if truth is to be taught, then teaching and learning must take the shape of truth itself–a community of faithful relationships. Education in truth must bring teacher and student into troth with each other, into the very image of the truth it hopes to convey.” —Parker J. Palmer

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“No matter what they ever do to us, we must always act for the love of our people and the earth. We must not react out of hatred against those who have no sense.” ― John Trudell

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“I celebrate independence anywhere it happens. The question here is how. When a diversity of peoples is destroyed or diminished in a holocaust of outrageous proportions for independence, does this truly result in liberty, justice and freedom for all? In a few generations indigenous peoples of America have been reduced to one-half of one percent. Imagine Africa with one-half of one percent Africans. We have been essentially disappeared in the story of America. Our
massive libraries of knowledge, rich cultural and intellectual gifts have been disparaged, destroyed and broken by interloper religions and a hierarchical system of thought in which indigenous people exist only as savages. What then does this say about liberty and justice in this country?

“For healing the wound needs to be opened, purged and cleansed. Our stories need to be allowed. Our traditional ways and languages need to be honored. This country needs to
apologize and reparations must be made. We all need to come together, every one of us to make a true plan for liberty and justice for all. As long as indigenous peoples are disappeared and disparaged, or surface only in Hollywood movies like The Lone Ranger, this country will remain as a child without parents, who has no sense of earth, history or spirituality.” —Joy Harjo

Every day is a new opportunity to begin again.
Was yesterday harsh or difficult?
Did you find yourself (like I did) complaining and grousing and expecting the worst of people?
Did you miss the chance to get outdoors and breathe fresh air?
Did you put more time into stuff and money than into people and ideas?
Did you forget to notice the green, the birdsong, the summer cast of sunlight?
Did you write or say something you wish you hadn’t?
Today is a new day, a fresh slate, a blank sheet of paper.
Choose your pathway with determination and lightness of heart.
Begin, begin, begin again, beloved.

Grateful for the always freshness of beginnings.
May we do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly in Beauty!

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“Always we begin again.” —St. Benedict

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Thomas Merton: “There are only three stages to this work: to be a beginner, to be more of a beginner, and to be only a beginner.”

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“If the Angel deigns to come it will be because you have convinced her, not by tears, but by your humble resolve to be always beginning; to be a beginner.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

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“One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me.” —Louis Pasteur

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“Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.” —James Bovard

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“We must ask ourselves as Americans, ‘Can we really survive the worship of our own destructiveness? We do not exist in isolation. Our sense of community and compassionate intelligence must be extended to all life-forms, plants, animals, rocks, rivers, and human beings.” —Terry Tempest Williams

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Jan Richardson:
did you not know
what the Holy One
can do with dust?

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“I have woven a parachute out of everything broken.” —William Stafford

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“There are years that ask the question and years that answer.” —Zora Neale Hurston

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“Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions.” —Hafiz

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“One puts down the first line. . .in trust that life and language are abundant enough to complete it.” —Wendell Berry

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“Speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee.” —Job 12:8

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“Sometimes the truth depends on a walk around the lake.” —Wallace Stevens

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“Tell all the truth, but tell it slant.” —Emily Dickinson

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“The contemplative stance is the third way. We stand in the middle, neither taking the world on from another power position nor denying it for fear of the pain it will bring. We hold the dark side of reality and the pain of the world until it transforms us, knowing that we are both complicit in the evil and can participate in wholeness and holiness.” —Richard Rohr

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Clarissa Pinkola Estes on the Curanderisma healing tradition: “In this tradition a story is ‘holy,’ and it is used as medicine. The story is not told to lift you up, to make you feel better, or to entertain you, although all those things can be true. The story is meant to take the spirit into a descent to find something that is lost or missing and to bring it back to consciousness again.”