Month: December 2017

Wishing You a Life of Loving

When people tell me things, I tend not to believe. Not because I don’t want to believe it is just that a lifetime of experiential learning has often taught me something different…

And now Louise is teaching me. Louise is the other half of Thelma. They were my first two sheep and if you know me you surely have heard the story. Nearly 15 years ago I put the four-month olds into the back of my SUV and said, “You must be Thelma and Louise, because this is your last ride.”

About three weeks ago Louise went down and could not get up without help. And if you know my sheep they are a hefty lot, so as she weakened, so did I. Cold setting in and knowing I would be gone for a week, I started to accept the words I had always been told, “When a sheep goes down, that’s it.”

While that may be true for some, it does not seem to be the case for Louise – at least not until she teaches me more about living.

thelma and louise

I took these pictures of Thelma and Louise in the summer, grateful that they had given me one more chance to photograph them together. You can see Thelma there saying to Louise, “There she goes again taking our pictures, enough already!” (They came to me with tails removed and when I realized how necessary their tails are I promised them that all of their children would keep their tails – and they do!)

I have laughed with them, cried and prayed with them. I have allowed them to teach their children and great, great grandchildren how to live with human beings, how to not be afraid and how to wrap us around their beautiful hoofs in order to get treats.

So when I realized a few weeks back that our time together was nearing it’s end. I cried bitterly while remembering what Annie had told me about death, “We cry for ourselves, not for them.” Once again I had to admit she was right.

Louise was teaching me what so many of my animals have taught me as they passed into that good night. She was teaching me about will, about how to flourish to the end, and how to draw upon each breath with the gusto of a newborn.

I doubted I would see her alive when I left one week ago for holiday time with family and friends and knowing I could not let them down by saying, “You see, Louise is dying and I need to be there with her…” I said my farewell to her, still hearing the words, “When a sheep goes down…” and I was determined to be joyful as I ventured on.

This morning brought the extreme cold of the past week in full force. It “felt like” – 28 degrees or so the weatherperson told us, and with some trepidation I returned to the barn. The animals were happy to see me, well cared for by my friend, and then I went to see Louise. She was still in the cubicle where my young Amish friends and I had placed her, surrounded by the bales of straw to keep her warm. Once again she raised her head to my call, eyes bright with wonder, and yes, I believe it is love that I saw there.

Still capable of raising herself on her front haunches, she let me know she was glad to see me and questioned me silently – where was her treat? Louise defiantly teaching me: it isn’t over just because a sheep goes down.

Now I am not for a moment suggesting that she will be up and at ‘em again, but her joie de vive is still infectious. Two of us struggled to move her and ensure her continued comfort. Briefly she stood after one week of being down. No, she did not stand without our help, yet in those sweet moments with her today she helped reaffirm the preciousness of life and rekindled in me the thrill of living.

This evening I whispered my promises to her and thanked her again and told her I would be back in the morning, whether she is here or not. It is her call. I left her with her dignity and she with mine. Grateful for all of our moments, certain my perception of life has once again been altered toward the Good, and knowing I will walk into this New Year ready to give my all.

It has been a year of loss as some of my best animal friends have passed on. Each has taught me a bit more about love and loving. Each I carry in my heart.

So to you dear friends and family, I wish for you a life of loving, tender hearts to carry joy amid the hardships, and a desire to flourish, not merely survive. Peace is possible in our hearts and in the world. We can do this. We can.

Much love to all from all of us here at Echo Valley.

 

The picture of the blooming orchid was taken today. It was my Mother’s plant and lives on, reminding me again…about love.

 

 

In This New Year

As we move into the New Year and before our glad tidings once again fall prey to divide and conquer, let’s take a moment to assess.

What have we learned?

For the past forty plus years we have swung between false visions of who we are as a people. The atrocities of the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights era were great Awakenings, yet we have surrendered the hopes and dreams of that time to sound bites of fear and stories that teach us to hate.

What could have been and should have been the beginnings of creating a new vision based on dignity, peace and prosperity have become a nightmare of innuendo and the tightening of power and control.

The storylines are dizzying and the “tell” of where we stand is alarmingly clear: the rise of suicide, the rampant use of recreational and pharmaceutical drugs, the willingness to destroy the earth and our insistence on war are all results of our negligence to foster peace.

You might say, “It is not my fault, I have stood up, I’ve voted, I’ve marched and signed petitions.” And I would say, “All good. But efforts are fruitless if the bitter cup of hate continues on.”

The blaming game has crippled us. The inability to trust one another has hindered our ability to galvanize a movement towards peace with any staying power. We fear those who are different and we are willing to dwell in the comfort of sameness.

I think it is time we reach for discomfort. I think it is time we assess and take stock of beliefs we harbor that diminish our humanity and another’s. And it is time to let them go.

There is little left that we have not tried. Except this: We have not secured our right to peace. We have not yet learned the power of it. We have ignored the need of it for ourselves and for each other.

In this New Year, we can stand together for what is right, just and human. Let the love of the sacred and the awe of the earth call us back to the source of peace and dignity within us. There we will find compassion and resilient love, and there we will find the courage to act.

Let us try what has not been yet been tried; let us act together with one voice towards peace. Rise up. Make it a good year.

 

 

 

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This” Thursday December 28th.

Looking forward to everything this New Year brings. Love and Best Wishes to all

Tis the Season

I come to this time of year with a mixture of wonder and dread. Living close to the land one develops a deep appreciation for the earth shedding her skins and retiring to a long slumber.

The shortness of daylight and the brilliant stars lend themselves to this season often referred to as the time of winter stories. I like to think of it as a time to dream.

There are many cultures that have a deep appreciation for this time and while I appreciate the nuances I have delighted in my own personal discovery, created my own narratives and charted my own course. I have discovered the practical purpose of celebrating the season with lights and making sure there is green around me – it helps to remind that this seemingly bleak time will surely have an end and spring will again emerge triumphant.

But I have shied away from using this season as a time to shower loved ones with gifts. And I recoil from tired carols that herald a better time.

The temporary truces, the words of peace too soon forgotten are more than I can bear. And this is where the dread comes in. I always cry.

When the tender loving of the human spirit bursts forth for a moment from the hard shell of this uncivilized time – it tears me up.

I want to scream: “Get it? Peace is possible. Hold that thought”, but then I realize most are content with a few moments of sweetness. The thought about peace somehow erases the feeling of it, and as our thoughts go fleetingly by we are on to the next and the next…

But what if this year we don’t just wait for “It’s a Wonderful Life” to teach us what we already know? What if we discover the sacred and the sanctity of our time here and hold onto it for dear life – because that is in fact what it is.

For this brief moment we are given a dear life. Enjoy it my friends. Take it for all that it has to give – not materialistically, but where the memories and the feelings never die: in our hearts.

May peace hold us close, and may our tears be joyful drops of coming home.

 

 

This piece aired on WDRT‘s 2 minute segment, “Consider This”, which I have been fortunate to work on since June, 2017. You can hear it live or live-steamed every Thursday at 5:28pm CST or around that time…

Find a way…

The high number of white women (and men) in Alabama who voted for Roy Moore is a stunner. Somehow the violations against women and girls do not rank as high as the need to have “someone like me” in office, someone who thinks like me, who believes as I do. And while Doug Jones was a relative unknown to politics, the characterization of him as the “other” was enough to send the white world into a tizzy.

From where I sit the fear of “other” is part of a revisionist Abrahamic belief that “evil” exists as an outside force, one to be expelled, and one that exists solely in the “other”. I say revisionist, because I was raised in a Christian faith at a time when people did not hide behind this notion of external evil. We had choices of good and bad, both existed in us and we were expected to follow a moral compass that would guide us toward Goodness.

This blurring of free will and choice and the insistence of an external evil is, pardon my expression, the devil of convenience. Turning a blind eye to the travesties of our shared histories and excusing the behaviors of oppressors makes us complicit in these acts, not the “good people of faith” that we profess.

And then there are those who profess no faith in God, but exercise the same fear and loathing of the “other”. Herein lies our stalemate. If we cannot see the humanity in one another, if we cannot find a way to communicate with one another, then we are locked in a death wish embrace, because the stakes have raised too high, the consequences too great for anything less.

This, then, is my hope, for this New Year: that we can step into the reality before us. We are alive. We have a chance to do Good. We have a chance to make things better. We have a chance to heal.

It comes down to this: Shake off the BS, folks. We have a lot of work ahead.

 

The photo comes from Dream Catcher Reality

Challenging Center-Mass Shooting

Jason Pero died on Nov 8, 2017 when an Ashland County deputy’s bullets hit his heart and right shoulder. He was 14 years old.

Jason lived in the tight knit community of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. He was learning the traditional ways of his people. He was a drummer. He was in eighth grade. Home sick from school, police reports say he was walking with a knife near his home and that he was the one who had made the 911 call describing himself. The deputy tells us that Jason lunged at him with the knife and that the boy refused to drop the weapon on command.

There were eight minutes from the time of the 911 call until the fatal shooting. Eight minutes. Eight minutes of thoughts running wild. Eight minutes and the training to shoot a suspect at center-mass was executed.

Eight minutes and now an eternity to understand why… The why that we may never know…

But there are some things we can know. No child should be cut down in the street.

We can send people to the moon, we can transplant human organs, but we cannot find a way to stop an assailant with a knife, or perhaps someone who is frightened or mentally distraught, by any other means than a lethal shot to center-mass?

I believe the time has come to end this dogmatic practice by our police forces or to at least begin a healthy dialogue on the possibility of ending it. The life of a 14 year-old boy is over and the life of the 24 year-old deputy will be forever changed. A community is reliving the trauma of centuries of occupation and people are once again blindly defending the actions of authority.

The time to remember our humanity is now. There are solutions that can be enacted but we must have the will to allow them to emerge. We are better than this. Our children deserve more than this.

The storyline will always be second to this fact: Jason Pero is dead. It’s time we care. Let us begin a conversation about the misuse of power, acknowledging that it is detrimental to the abuser as well as to the victim, and above all, let us find a way to quell the fears that too many of us harbor towards one another. Let us rekindle kindness. It’s time.

 

This piece aired on WDRT’s “Consider This”, Thursday, December 14.

The photo is of forget-me-nots.

But Not a Drop to Drink…

Most likely today you reached for a glass of cool refreshing water. If you took it from the tap it is because you are certain it is government approved, scientifically tested and safe. If you grabbed a designer bottle you are also trusting you will be getting the one thing that after air is the most essential for life – clean water.

Me, I drink water from a spring and enjoy some of the best tasting, cleanest water I have ever had…but then, this isn’t about me and my good fortune, it is about what is happening to far too many people in our country and around the world.

What if you lived in Flint Michigan, where elected officials consciously provided tainted water for nearly two years? Or the Reservation in South Dakota, where the recent oil spill has people questioning the unknown – how long does it take until oil seeps into the aquifer and harms drinking water?

The Nebraska PSC has approved the Keystone XL pipeline to course tar sand oil through their state – from Canada to the Gulf to be sold on the foreign market. We will get a drop of the $$ exchange – but not enough to run the risk of polluting one of the most important aquifers in North America – and jeopardize the water for millions of people and life there.

But before I glaze your eyes over with details… My point to you is this: the most sinister of all factors in this ugly assault of man over earth and greed over common sense… is about the fact that far too many of us do not care. We have our glass, it is easily filled and what’s a little oil spill in Nebraska or the Gulf have to do with me?

The enemy, my friends, is not the oil or the faulty pipelines or the lies about energy security and jobs…the enemy is that we can turn our backs on one another. The enemy is that we are willing to debate that which is not debatable: we all need clean water.

We still have a chance to get this right. Let’s make it right.

 

This piece aired on “Consider This” Dec 7. You can listen in to WDRT 91.9FM every Thursday at 5:28 pm CST.

photo: compliments of NOHO

End Game

“You have seen my descent, now watch my rising”. – Rumi

It seems the moment has finally arrived when the victim finds the courage to confront the aggressor. It is never a pretty moment and it likely comes from a depth of despair and disgust that a woman feels after rape or the degrees of dehumanization that come from being body identified. It is not only happening here in the United States, it is happening world over, as if a switch were suddenly turned on lighting up the dark corners, and bringing the courage that only light can give.

There are many men and women hoping this cup will pass them by without their names dragged through the mud. Leaders caution that we should not be hasty in our judgment, and too many women are still fearful of the backlash that will surely come.

Some anxiously await the moment the next perpetrator – victim might be exposed. With an appetite that borders on voyeurism, we devour the news and ironically it seems the focus is once again on the perpetrator. The one who has always been in control. The one who has mattered most.

I am over being shocked. I am not interested in vilifying or being titillated by this new form of porn. I am much more interested in celebrating the women, girls, boys and even a few men, who have come forward breaking the silence and exposing some of the deepest rooted sicknesses of our kind.

I am interested in saluting the strength that it takes to come forward at this time while the pinnacle of ignorance in patriarchy reigns.

I am interested in listening to the voices of young women who are calling out not only rape culture but also a culture of pedophilia that has grown up around most of us for the past few generations unchecked.

I am interested in keeping the cut open allowing the pus to drain. I am interested in this healing for ourselves, our children and for our ancestors as well.

Peace is not possible without transparency. Not in our being, not in our family, not in our community, not in our world.

We are not victims. We are human beings who have been violated. It is time to restore dignity. Thank you to all who find the courage. It is for all of us.

 

This piece aired on 91.9 FM WDRT’s “Consider This”, Thursday, Nov 30, 2017. You can live stream “Consider This” every Thursday at 5:28 pm CST.

photo compliments of NOHO