What I Believe
after Michael Blumenthal
I, too, believe there is no justice,
but that the deer moving slowly
through the woods are a message.
I believe that something moves the leaves
that quiver on the red oak on a windless afternoon,
and that my heart is blown open
by the winds rushing over the hillside.
I believe that the whirring
of a thousand starling wings filling the hollow
might shake me from my torpor,
if I am brave enough to feel it.
I believe that not all moths make it
out of the cocoon. Don’t promise me
everything will be okay unless you’re certain.
But I believe in the perilous pumping
of cecropia’s wings in the moonlight.
I believe my grandmother was stitching the future
with her needle, pulling threads through the layers
of a quilt of scraps from everyone’s old clothes.
Gratitude List:
Just one today: My colleagues. I love how people just offer their best selves. Usually on Mondays, we have crocheters and knitters club for anyone who wants to attend. We weren’t able to get the regular book club going this year, but this year we’re going to have a book club where we get together and read the book together. There’s a Wellness Committee that reminds us to eat our vegetables and to walk. Today our resident Plant Nerd gave us a workshop in plant therapy, and taught us to pot up houseplants. I went to that, which it was after a short tutorial in running the 3D computers on campus. Some people managed to go to both of those and squeezed in 15 minutes of chair yoga in the meantime. (Usually there aren’t so many things going on on one day.) One colleague always marshals the upstairs folks to decorate the halls for winter holidays together. Another colleague set up an ofrenda and invited us to remember our loved ones we’ve lost by putting them on the altar. Some of them help students tap the maple trees and actually boil the sap down for maple syrup every year. We have a standing breakfast date on Fridays for as many as can make it. Oh, and on top of that, they’re all skilled teachers. I am becoming a better person in this place.
“We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.” —Terence McKenna
“I am not free while any woman is unfree, even when her shackles are very different from my own.” —Audre Lorde
“Don’t operate out of fear, operate out of hope. Because with hope, everything is possible.” —Winona LaDuke
Our deepest fears are like dragons
guarding our deepest treasure.
—Rainer Maria Rilke
Praise Song
by Barbara Crooker
Praise the light of late November,
the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.
Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;
though they are clothed in night, they do not
despair. Praise what little there’s left:
the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,
shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow
of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,
the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky
that hasn’t cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down
behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves
that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,
Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy
fallen world; it’s all we have, and it’s never enough.
“Look at everything
as though you were seeing it
either for the first or last time.
Then your time on earth will be filled with glory.”
—Betty Smith
“To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to breaking of bread.” —James Baldwin
“May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.” —Nelson Mandela
For a day, just for one day,
Talk about that which disturbs no one
And bring some peace into your beautiful eyes.
—Hafiz
“Open your mouth only if what you are going to say is more beautiful than silence.” —proverb
“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun’s light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.” —Rumi
The magic of autumn has seized the countryside;
now that the sun isn’t ripening anything
it shines for the sake of the golden age;
for the sake of Eden;
to please the moon for all I know.
—Elizabeth Coatsworth
“. . .fairies’ gold, they say, is like love or knowledge–or a good story. It’s most valuable when it’s shared.” —Heather Forest, The Woman Who Flummoxed the Fairies
Mockingbird Chronicles 