Category: Humanity

Indomitable Spirit

It is -7 degrees F, and I am wondering how Louise is doing. Today is January 13. It is the coldest of the cold snap that will hit us this week. We had a break for a while and the temps hit 40 degrees F. I have begun to give Louise massage and physical therapy on her hind legs since she showed me that she had no desire to leave the planet just yet. (This might be the moment that you want the back-story posted on Dec 30.)

Louise is a sheep who I have had the good fortune to know for nearly fifteen years. She had been down for nearly three weeks. One of those weeks I was away and she had not gotten up at all. What I didn’t realize is that she was often moving her legs to push herself closer to hay or maybe she did it knowing she had to. I do not know. What I do know is our friendship, our communication and our relentless spirits are enjoying this time that we share.

Over the past few days she has stood up on all fours, with help of course, and has taken a few steps. The boldest steps took her outside of her pen into the warming sun. She had to step down a bit. She did it. And all the other girls came round to check on her and to see what goodies she might have for them to eat. They had been noticing that her water is warmed, and her apples cut. They had also caught on that if they were close to her pen there was hay left for them and sometimes a piece of squash came their way. Oh, and they definitely smelled the grain. They only get a bit of grain at shearing time, so that caught their attention as well. They are an observant lot.

The camaraderie does her good. I have contemplated putting her with the others but sheep lack the niceties of proper company and would never give her time to eat. I think she knows that, too. So a bit of time together – not meal times – works out well.

Many of you ask about her and I tell her that you are thinking of her. I am cherishing this time. I am continuing to learn about indomitable spirit and the sweetness of each moment. She is strengthening me as I help her. I am still under no illusions. But like my good friend and best veterinarian on the planet, Dr. Burch said with a giggle as we acknowledged the unlikelihood of this moment, “She just isn’t ready to go yet.”

So that is your update as I go to the barn, heavily layered and knowing one thing for sure: Wear your woolies. The sheep got it going on. She is so warm in her au naturel. And today will be brilliantly sunny. That is Nature’s way of compensation for the deep cold. I erected a plastic door to let the sun shine in on her. I feel her gratitude as I learn about her needs. So very grateful to have this moment. Very Best to All.

 

 

 

Our Moral Currency

The moral currency of this country is bankrupt. Do not look to leaders to do what each of us must do. And what is it that we each must do? We must live. We must live with a passion towards life that is undeniable. Life is for the living, not the dead. We are letting the dead lead. Why? We are accepting intolerable inhumanity as if we have no choice. Why? We are spinning with isms and making one another sick. Why? We fear diminished capital, but not diminished humanity. Why? We are content to shake our head and wring our hands, but unwilling to change the course of our lives. Why?

The solutions are simple and are right in front of us. They require the heart and the will to manifest. Respect one another and the earth and yes, live in kindness.

You want to change the course of a river? Go to where it sources itself and put your finger there. Stop making this so difficult. Change your thoughts, your actions, your patterns, your lifestyles…learn or re-learn to walk in Beauty. Celebrate the living, not the dead. We have to help one another out of this mess. And the clock is ticking…

I am no longer surprised by the ignorance of a few. I am stunned by the silence of the many. And I long for the company of the living.

And here are some living words; words that will forever outlast ignorance. These are the kind of words we need right now and we need to share:

“Somewhere somebody must have some sense. Men must see that force begets force, hate begets hate, toughness begets toughness. And it is all a descending spiral, ultimately ending in destruction for all and everybody. Somebody must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate and the chain of evil in the universe. And you do that by love.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

photo / meme from Business Insider

 

 

 

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.