Dena Eakles

Breathing as a Priority

The morning sky was cloudy and the sun was fiery red. The air was thick as the winds blew smoke from the over two hundred fires burning out of control in Canada. I thought of the People who had lived long before modern methods of communication and I wondered how they would have perceived this day. Would it have struck fear in them? Would it have generated concern for one another?

Head aches, raspy throats, blurred vision would surely have signaled some kind of pause, some depth of thinking. Perhaps even some request for help from something Greater.

But we live today and the information highway is overloaded with things to attract our attention. Unless the fires and the smoke directly impact us, it’s easy to become distracted. And for those whose air quality has diminished dramatically, do we even know how to help ourselves? Wearing a mask, staying indoors are the common mitigations, but they do not take on the larger and more implicit need of changing how we live. Cranking up your air conditioner may help in the short run, but what are the long-term damages to the environment using these kinds of solutions?

It’s time we take a pause and really reflect on the current status of the citizens of the earth. It’s time to understand that the perils that affect one, affect all, as we live in our interconnected web of life on this still marvelous planet.

I know I’m moving more slowly these days because it’s all my body can do as the air becomes less friendly and the preciousness of each breath becomes clearer.

And my hope is that enough of us care to make a change.

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Air quality below 100 is considered satisfactory. We have been ranging between 170 and greater for the past few days. Madison, WI is at 240 as I write this…

The photo is from our farm at 11 in the morning looking out over the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and Wildcat Mountain State Park.

Lead the Way

Researchers of carbon emissions are calculating the environmental costs of our propensity for war. The Russian attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure, the burning of forests, croplands and oil reserves are only a fraction of the consideration. There’s also rebuilding once wars conclude, and that is loaded with carbon emissions.

And then there is the destruction of farmland, with landmines and contaminants, forcing human migration. Or, as in the case of the ended war in the Tigray region of Ethiopia, farmers are cutting trees, including fruit trees, for fuel in an area once known for its reforestation efforts.

It is speculated that ending war games, ballistic testing and other non -defensive military operations would significantly reduce our carbon emissions. Surely we can agree to this and while we’re at it, why not agree to end all war?

I heard it said once that pigs would be constipated if it knew their dung would be used to make firepower. One has to believe that those who still mass-produce war have no sense of the preciousness of life, nor of the interconnectedness we share with the earth and all living.

So this is when I tell you hold onto your compassionate heart. Find people that support your dreams of coexistence and peace. Never doubt that the power of light can triumph over darkness. And if all you can do is wish for war to end, then wish away. Your wishing and hoping, prayers and actions can lead the way.

So at this time of Summer Solstice, when the light is the greatest and the days the longest, celebrate. Welcome in the light, bask in it and know the possibility for peace is still available to us.

Giving credit where it is due, the constipated pig comment was another of the gems of Prem Rawat.

The photo is of our newly gifted black lamb making friends with a great great grandma of our farm. We are thrilled to have this curious, brave lamb. Her mother had 4 lambs but has only one utter, so we are bottle feeding this little one and grateful to our friend for sharing her with us.

Use the Gift

Here we are in Pride month and as one would expect the rhetoric-vilifying non-heterosexuals is ratcheting up. Even Wisconsin Congressmen Van Orden and Tiffany got their anti-LGBTQ cracks in while addressing Canadian fires. One has to wonder who listens to this insanity and why it is lapped up rather than silenced.

Before I rail on the haters, I wish to thank the friends and allies who are unafraid of those who are different. I want to salute the people who have stopped laughing at course jokes and better yet have asked for voices of hate to stop. I want you to know that your words of support and caring have meant a great deal and I recognize there is a risk that you, too, will be erased by hate.

And what is this hatred? It’s nothing more than acquired bigotry that has been taught to us. We have the choice to reject it or to embrace it. But to encourage us to hold the course of hatred we are instilled with fear. Fear of other is solidified by the fear of hell. The grid of right and wrong is flexible when it comes to “Love thy neighbor”. Flexible because it’s OK to hate thy neighbor, if they’re different.

We’re spiraling downward, cloaked in religion and supported by the ignorance of laws and lawmakers. The ACLU is tracking 491 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States. And while not all will pass, the rhetoric incites violence and disrespect.

Choose, People. What kind of world do you want to live in? More importantly, how do you want to live in your own being? I’ve tried hate. It only made me sick.

While we have the gift of choice, let’s put it to good use.

Photo of 2019 Rzeszów Pride compliments of Silar – Creative Commons – Attribution Share 4.0 License

Change It!

My father had a way of getting me to change my attitude. Whenever I acted grumpy at the dinner table, he would take his hand and slowly pass it over my face. By the time his hand lowered I would be smiling.

My memories of this always made it seem like magic. But now I know better.

As chance would have it, I am currently co-caring for a five year old. Grumpy faces and sour attitudes show up when we aren’t getting our way. I tried the slow hand trick, but it failed. So I had to dig a bit deeper to find out why.

My little friend and I started to have conversations about how do we feel when we are angry or frustrated. We agreed we didn’t like the feeling. So I suggested changing it. The implication is that we can change it and that it is up to us to do so. We learned to stop the behavior, but the feeling lingered. Finally she looked at me and said, “I don’t know how.” Amen to that sister, most people will never acknowledge not knowing how. “Do you want to?” I asked. “Yes”, was the answer.

We began exploring ways to change the attitude. For her, running is one way. Taking a time out, by her choosing, is another.

The power to choose our way out is a human triumph. She’s beginning to understand that. And I am beginning to understand that there was more to the hand wave than magic.

There was my father’s understanding that I could change it, and his encouragement. And above all there was the peacefulness that I felt from him that told me it was possible.

We have a treasure chest full of possibility, if only we take the time to explore.

Rural America on the Chopping Block

It comes and before you even knew it was a possibility, it may be gone. That’s the political game being played and the game board is rural America.

“It” is the money allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act specifically targeted to rural electric coops. That money would come to us under the Empowering Rural America Program.

Sounds good, right? The first catch is to encourage your Electric Cooperative to make a pitch for the nearly $10 million dollars set aside for each cooperative. There are twenty-four in Wisconsin alone. That could be $240 million coming into the state to help offset our electric bills and to aid our transition to clean renewables. Our electric coops need only to create a plan in order to ask for the money. The money is available to those who ask.

But wait. You’ve heard of the deal made to keep the United States from hitting the debt limit. What you may not have heard is that one of the cuts Congress is asking for is the very same money that has not yet made it to us. It is, of course, the Empowering Rural America money.

Not only do you need to let your cooperative know where you stand, you need to remind your Congressperson that they are governing a rural part of the state and we could surely use that money.

If that were all that there was to this story, it would be a simple one. But there’s more. The farm bill’s Rural Energy for America Program is also being targeted in the House along with eliminating funding for climate research. Same old, same old.

Nothing will change unless we all care enough to take action.

Listen to this WDRT Conversation with Allan Buss, Board President of Vernon County Energy District to learn more.

photo from wikipedia commons thanks to Carol M. Highsmith

This One Chance

This week the NAACP found it necessary to issue a travel advisory to black and minority travelers to Florida. It was a simple one. “Don’t go.”

We’ve come to this. The division we have allowed has grown to be so violent and unpredictable that safety is no longer a given.

School children know this. Ask them about how they are trained to take cover. Ask them what it feels like to live in a state of underlying fears.

Blacks know this, as do Native Americans, Latinos, Asians and LGBTQ+. Sure there are the occasional movie stars, politicians, athletes and others who’ve climbed the ladder, but ask them about the fear and rage they’ve stifled. Ask them what systemic hatred feels like.

More than 80% of American Jews feel anti-Jewish sentiment is a growing concern.

We’ve come to this. We don’t want to teach the Holocaust, the violence of slavery or the repression of the Reconstruction Era. The claim is that it is just too much for young white minds to handle. We’d rather teach them about the kingdom of heaven and how to get a ticket to the pearly gates.

The classic gay flag now has a triangle that represents transgender. We fly it at the farm to let people know they are safe and respected here. In a world so ready to cast away, it’s important to draw people near.

I long for a time when kindness and respect are celebrated and love will rule. This will not happen without our effort and our choices. We can do this.We have this one chance, while we are alive, to get it right. Let it be so.

Cycles Come and Go

And just like that everything is green again. Despite the chilly nights Spring has arrived. Birds are back and gracing us with song. Rhubarb and asparagus are abundant, and spruce tips will become a favored drink. Nettles are welcomed here and we cook them with our morning eggs. Later they’ll be dried for tea. The ongoing battle to keep free-ranging chickens out of the garden is only topped by the numerous groundhog holes that are popping up.

So it goes. Life has its cycles. And we have our choices. Putting up fencing or getting some groundhog recipes are high on the list of choices right now. Neither of which we’ll do.

There are practical skills learned by living with the land. At some point you must decide which battles are worthy of your time and which are not.

I think everyone should take at least a one-year stint of living on a farm and attempting to be sustainable. If you’re fortunate you’ll learn about what is precious, and if you’re really paying attention you may even remember what is sacred.

The notion of progress has defined us as “modern people”. The irrational pursuit of wealth has crippled our ability to care for one another. The simplest joys elude us as we join the rat race and leave the human race behind.

It doesn’t have to be that way. In our heart of hearts, we know it doesn’t have to be that way. But we’ve been conditioned to follow the leader to the exclusion of what we know is possible. It’s time for that to change.

Cycles come and cycles go. If we would allow the longing for simplicity and the need for peace to lead once more, this cycle of darkness would end.

Bring Back Cooperation

The rise of the rugged individual has over shadowed common sense. What began as a movement toward self-reliance swung into a backlash of community. We have slipped into a “me” culture supported by top down leadership and unchecked capitalism.

The result is that we have all suffered.

By most accounts human beings are at their best when in community. We have an inherent need to feel connected. We thrive when we are all doing well. This need to belong coupled with rugged individualism has given way to perverse alliances. Too many of us no longer feel the connection to the entire human race. And the alliances we choose are often in competition with one another. Cooperation is considered less important, even trivial. Too many look to the top dog, or covet that position.

In Beloved Community (as explained by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.), there is no top dog. There are unique individuals who recognize their own self worth and are willing to accept that in another.

There can be no strong and healthy community without unique and self-aware individuals.

The contemporary focus on outward strengths and power strategies cause us to relinquish our inner strengths. These strengths are universally available. Clarity and self-awareness help us navigate the world in which we live. Empathy and compassion allow us to recognize other human beings as similar, not different. There is more waiting to be tapped, if only we will take the time.

I’m grateful for the circles of communities that I dwell in, and I’m most grateful to those individuals who remind me we are one planet, one people.

Let’s bring back cooperation. Let’s find our uniqueness again.

Recognize the Sacred

Land acknowledgments have become more common over the years. Acknowledging the story of the land that we now occupy and the people who inhabited it long before the time of conquest is critical to understanding that we all are one people today.

The tendency for dominant cultures to eradicate the “other” and to steal their resources and plunder their culture is not new. What is new is the push back that we are witnessing, as People emerge resilient and determined to be counted in.

And that push back is not really new, but technology and travel have allowed for greater perspectives to take hold.

The dominant culture is being called out on everything. From lies told in history books, to broken treaties, to the ignorant lumping of all tribes as one, we’re being confronted to learn the truth.

And while we may be learning facts, we’re still far from discovering our humanity.

I often think about how different our lives would be if the early colonizers had recognized the humanity of the Native People they encountered. If instead of imposing the patriarchal and capitalistic paradigms, we could have explored the world anew – and glimpsed it through the eyes of our Native brethren. Instead of being bent on usurping the resources we could have learned from the ones who had lived here the longest. We could have maintained the garden. We could have lived in peace.

To free our selves from dominant thinking and to honor the earth with respect and deference would be the greatest land acknowledgment. To recognize the sacred and temporal existence of the land would give us all a second chance.

It’s never too late to undo what has been done.

The Earth can heal and so can we.

Valuable, Capable and Loved

“People need to feel valuable, capable and loved”*. Those were words I heard in a conference decades ago and they’ve never left me.

Sounds right, doesn’t it? This very simple recognition of something so very basic to human life – but how is it achieved? It can’t be a mantra that we run around and say to one another, because it has to be felt. There are lots of words we know are true, yet we’ve not taken the time to unearth their deeper meaning by feeling them.

And what if each individual could feel their value and could comprehend their preciousness? How would it look in the world that we live in today? For one, when we understand our uniqueness and can celebrate the gift life affords us, it must be nearly impossible to harm or judge another human being for the color of their skin or because who they choose to love.

This simple act of respecting another would have massive implications. It may even create a tidal wave of love and kindness that would upend the cruelty we are faced with daily. Regardless of life choices or life’s circumstances each of us can come to this recognition. But we must take time to feel it.

And what of those who transgress upon us? Should they feel valuable, capable and loved? Or is there some dividing line of right and wrong that makes that impossible?

This is where it gets a bit tough. This is when one begins to realize that our punitive systems and our judgmental natures are out of control. This is when you know its time for change.

One sunrise, one heartbeat, one breathe at a time… discover you are loved.

*My recollection from a conference with Prem Rawat in the late 80’s.

Author: Dena Eakles