In a World Where Everything is Sacred
 
“There are no sacred and unsacred places; there are only sacred and desecrated places. My belief is that the world and our life in it are conditional gifts.”
~ Wendell Berry


Why do we continue to imagine
we can mess with nature?
Somehow out-think
her millennial depths
of flat out oceanic smarts?*
 
You know the list already:
            plastic filled oceans
            petrol poisoned air
            chemically poisoned soil
            commercially poisoned dwellings
            corporately poisoned hearts.
 
We can only start from where we are
and that list is where we are.
 
So from the stillness of contemplation
and the urgency of converging crises
we can start to notice
the street lamp in front of our home
we can sit with it
honour the light is shines on our darkness
feel the pain it feels from its journey
from mineral in stone, from oils in holes
to a static end-game of majesty
standing temporarily before its demise in a dump
when we can grieve its passing
honour it for its loveliness and utility.
 
Then we can call into our sacred circle
the asphalt, the mailboxes, the fences,
the sidewalks, lonely street trees and the cars.
 
Imagine when we honour each bus shelter and storefront
and help them re-establish their holy places
in the midst of the mystery and the earth.
 
Notice what happens to the hearts
of parking meters and bridges
when they learn to love again.
 
Pretty soon all the spaces between things and the walls at the edges
are no longer distances and barriers that separate us
they’re what we have in common
what connects us
what we all honour
and we notice that we are starting to think like nature
acting from our stillness
and holding it all reverently.
 
* with inspiration from Wax Leader by Hannah Berry
 
 

Community Circle
Feb 21, 2017
 
How do you create
a magic circle
into which the world could turn?
 
An open space
held down
by its cryptic centre.
 
A cha-ordic vortex
of transformation.
 
A place
of inner pilgrimage
fueled by an inner economy
that pulls black cats
into the light.
 
Land
that dances its stories
into the brains
of the broken colonial map.
 
A nursery
of plants and children
that feed each other.
 
Adults
that grieve and play
their way into elderhood
creating circles
into which
the world could turn.

Sometimes, I've been fortunate to come across words written by someone else that articulate something that resonates for me as well. That happened again to me this morning as I took a lingering morning finishing Sarah Winman's A Year of Marvellous Ways. A lovely book.

I like to cook. I particularly like to cook when I have space to take my time. I rarely use a recipe, but sometime I'll scan several recipes on-line to get a feel for something new and then go do my own thing. Some things, like soup, I never use a recipe for and the results are never the same, but usually yummy. Sometimes it's awful. I've not exactly looked for a way to explain what I do when I cook, but when I saw these few paragraphs in Winman's book I knew I'd found it.

"Finally, the last thing he needed to tell her about was his recipes. He told her something he had never told anyone: that his secret ingredient was the life he had lived.

"Peace stared at him. What do you mean? she said.

"Wilfred leant in close and whispered, Everything goes into my bread. Names. Songs. Memories. Every batch comes out different to the next but what we are looking for is not consistency buy excellence. You have to risk failure to become excellent." p 214

When my daughter was tiny I used to nap when she did since neither of us slept much at night. Our next door neighbour got a puppy and would put him out in the back yard on a lead at about the same time as we napped. He would bark the whole time. It was making me furious. I was exhausted and really needed the sleep. I'd asked the dog's owner several times to put him out at our off-nap times, but she didn't do it. 

I was at my wits ends. I was so tired I was quite sure that a solid month of sleep and food and nothing else wouldn't be enough to regain any version of feeling awake and whole. Then I remembered a story about a violet, who, when stepped on responded by leaving a beautiful scent on the bottom of that person's foot. I was feeling pretty stepped on. I thought about how I too could be a violet. I made our neighbour a card using a wee footprint from my daughter as a picture on the front. She loved babies, including mine, and so I also included a photo of her. I wrote something like: I don't know when your birthday is, but please enjoy this card for today and all days, birthday or not. Then I signed it from my daughter and her mom. Then we walked over and put it in her mailbox.

The dog was never out at our nap times again.
​

Gravity
 
It is a privilege to learn something
and a responsibility to know it.
 
Knowing comes with weight
            over time
a gravitas of substance
that is held in the field
like lovely stone
            sure
            solid
            present
 
Maybe that’s why it’s called
the cloud of UNknowing.
 
Unknowing
            floats.
 
It’s beautiful too as it
            murmurs
            into and out of shape
mysteriously aloft in
liminal space ‘midst pulls
            of gravity.
 
Not yet knowledge
unknowing is held in silent trust
not yet able to be shared
and still without heft.
 
Not knowing
insubstantiates itself,
until,
it knows.
 
Then with speed and certainty
knowing drops to earth,
plants itself in a body
            of wisdom
is held gently mute
until it’s time
to share it
with those
privileged to learn.
 
originally written April 12, 2015
 
 

The Silence of the Little Things (2)
 
Every morning I take
my wee dog Peace
out into the yard
where he releases the night’s accumulation
of water back into the earth.
OK. Ya.
He pees.
 
Today his tiny friend
Matilda was there
with her grey/white yin/yang face.
 
I crouched to greet her.
With the silence of the little things
she stood on her back feet and smelled my face
her paw almost not touching my knee.
The sweet force of her curiosity
toppled me back
and we laughed
as Peace held the space
and Matilda winked.

originally written October 2015

I’m No War Monger
 
Early today
Water
showed up on my doorstep
asking me how I was going to vote.
 
Water!
Can you believe that?!
I was honoured and humbled to say:
I’m voting for you.
But I admit I was a little star struck.
 
Later
a small group of children came too.
They were arm in arm
with Tree, Prairie Grasses, Wolf, Salamander
and I’m sure I saw Honey Bee hitching a ride on Wolf’s ear tip.
Lazy bug.
 
They asked too,
that holy crew,
How are you going to vote?
I squirmed a bit when I said Water,
but they put my heart at ease when they wisely pointed out
that a vote for Water was a vote for them.
Then they partied on over to the next house.
 
An hour or so later
I was startled by the arrival of
Dirty Whirlwind
(a ferocious couple: Earth and Air)
who blasted their way to my home.
 
Settling on the porch
into a noble pile of rich soil
and a lovely breeze,
they too asked me how I was going to vote.
 
Wow! I thought,
Air AND Earth asking ME, little ol’ me,
this important question?
When I told them Water
a breeze of relief wafted over me
and Earth left me a tiny gift of mycelium strands.
 
I didn’t event have a chance to say Thank You!
because just like that,
they whirled away.
 
I could see where this was going
and I wasn’t about to wait for fire to show her face
so I picked up my purse
and like my mother before me,
and her mother before her
(during whose lifetime it became possible for me to do so)
I went to vote.
 
I’m no war monger
but today, and all my days,
I will fight for all these visitors.
 
originally written October 19, 2015
 

The Silence of the Little Things
 
When I was 12
a robin
crashed into the cathedral glass
knocking itself cold.
 
I picked it up
and placed it in a small box
lined with soft.
 
I put the box on the porch
and watched.
 
Soon revivified
it blinked with shock
tumbled and fluffed
then settled in
with the silence of the little things
sourcing life’s energy
from mystery
            calm
            and time.
 
Later, with not even a split second’s notice
or a small nod of thanks
it stood
and flew.
 
originally written October 2015

Weak In. Weak Out.
 
With what do you feed yourself?
What passes from without
through your lips, eyes, ears and heart?
What nourishment fuels
the fires you build
the structures you errect
the words you set down
the touch you give
week in and week out?
 
From where comes your strength, your depth,
your care and your light?
Substantiality, ferocity,
open hearts and grief
aren’t built in a day.
They emerge in the chaotic order
of consuming the goodness on offer,
in amounts enough,
just enough.
 
Or, let’s just put it this way:
White bread, coffee and bad news
fuel fluff, hype and fear.
Weak in. Weak out.
 
 originally written April 2014