October 2024 (Vol. XXXVII, No. 9)
Dear Friends ~ I wish to speak about joy. In this season there is plenty to be joyful about: crisp mornings, mist rising from the river, trees bright with autumn glory, the faces of children sticky with caramel apples. Yet even as the scent of cinnamon lingers in the air, and grandchildren snuggle in for a fireside story on a gently darkening evening, we know that all is not well in our world. The trouble we are in as an Earth community is severe and seemingly inexorable. This is when joy ripens beyond a heartfelt response of wonder and gratitude and deepens into an act of resistance: a fierce joy rooted in humus, in sorrow, in edges, in life Herself, in the One whom Nan Merrill called the Beloved. This is the joy that enables us to live fearlessly and robustly, to set out boldly to make a road by walking, to laugh immeasurably though we have considered all the facts.
my salvation,
whom shall I fear?...
One thing have I asked of Love,
that I shall ever seek:
That I might dwell in the
Heart of Love
All the days of my life,
To behold the Beauty of my Beloved...
Call upon the Beloved,
be strong and trust
in the heart's courage.
Trust in the power of Love;
the Beloved's unconditional and
everlasting love for you.
In the universe there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are doors.
Is sorrow the true wild?
And if it is—and if we join them—
your wild to mine—what's that?
For joining, too, is a kind of annihilation.
What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying.
I'm saying: What if that is joy?
at the edge of this ploughed field
where sunlight catches meadow grasses
and turns them silver-yellow....
I prefer it here, at the line
where the forest intersects
the field, where deer and groundhog
move back and forth to feed
and hide. On these juts and outcroppings
I can look both ways, moving
As that crow does, all gracelessness
and sway....
This life is not easy,
but wings mix up with leaves there,
like the moment when surf turns into
undertow or breaker, and I can
poise myself and hold
for a long time, profoundly
neither one place nor another.
How can we meet these unpredictable times with any sense of presence and faith?
To do so, we must become fluent in the manners and ways of soul. We are required to develop another set of skills and ways of seeing as we descend ever further into the collective unknown. We are being asked to hone the faculties of soul that will enable us to navigate through the Long Dark....
Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker, there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.
An expression of faith
In life Herself
Is to sow seeds into dark soil
Not knowing what awaits.
Returning to the patience
Reverence
Grace
Humility
Practiced by our ancestors...
Reminding me to wake up amidst the confusion
To do what must be done to feed the children.
To tuck vibrant seeds into fertile soil
And patiently tend the garden,...
The garden that our ancestors left for us is beautiful.
May we water it well with our tears and our laughter, our stories, and our songs.
Today I choose to plant seeds of hope into the winds of an unknown future...
It's a New dawn.
The time to be those ancestors our grandchildren are waiting for is upon us.
What seeds are you sowing?