I have a friend who’s looking at major life change.
Actually all my friends are looking at major life changes right now.
It feels like a time of massive global transition – in part forced on us by coronavirus – though perhaps she was just a symptom of a larger disease? That of humanity failing to recognize its limitations, its impacts, and what it needs do next to move forward in a good way?
My friend and I spoke of readiness.
We spoke of grief and letting go.
I remembered… Grieving is an expression of gratitude.
- Gratitude for what is being let go.
- Gratitude for what all we’re letting go of has done to make us who we are.
- Realizing that even as we let go – of the many things we let go of throughout this life – we’re still us.
It’s still me – the spiritual being inside of this body! This body which has produced another spiritual being… inside its own body! And for that, I am ever grateful.
I’m finding more and more today, as much as we ridicule or laugh in frustration at the mention of “thoughts and prayers”… that perhaps that might just be the best thing I can do.
- Is there not energy for good in my thoughts and prayers?
- Is it not true that the thoughts and prayers of others have been a part of what has pulled me along this path even when I felt I couldn’t go on?
- Is it possible that in those moments of greatest despair – when peace suddenly finds a way to me – that it might be because of the thoughts and prayers of others?
- Whether through a chickadee landing in my hand to eat a seed… or an eagle visible in a tree as I pass down the road… or a hawk flying low to snag a bit of dinner… and lucky me as I witness this everyday part of life: eating to sustain ourselves as living beings… are these not answered prayers?
Is it coincidence that these examples coming to mind quickly are all of flyers?
Is that because they are closer to Creator than me?
…because they are high in the sky where so many of us feel Afterlife is… Creator is… Spirit is?
Or is it simply because they live their lives trusting in the universe of ecosystem around them… and in each other… and maybe they even trust in that seed lady who holds out her hand?
Or is this why we think Creator and Afterlife are in the sky? …because we see the freedom of the birds? We see how they rely on the day-to-day universe for their nourishment… for their homes… and for their livelihoods. Are they not the same as us?
I’m learning… more and more these days… to go with the flow…
to do what is really necessary and trust that what I’m doing is the truly necessary…
to free myself… more and more… of the distractions… meant to disrupt… designed to pull me away from those things that truly are most important.
Breathing clean air
Drinking clean water
Eating nutritious food
[Unspoiled by chemicals…
or as unspoiled as any of it can be…
in a time when all of our water contains PFAS?]
And LOVE…
is she not perhaps the most necessary for a happy and healthy life?
It’s like that song from Urban Cowboy… Looking For Love in All the Wrong Places.
“I bless the day I discover… Another Heart… looking for love.” ~ Johnny Lee
[Is this true for us all?]
We’re programmed to be consumers here in America. We seek love in fashion… and decadence… and what we like to call progress. Things that money can buy.
But doesn’t money come from working ourselves to death… in a job that maybe we don’t even like… or don’t even believe in… but do because it pays the bills?
And is money truly what we need to exist? In our natural world, greenbacks are irrelevant. So why are so many giving money and stuff such a focus? It seems we’re addicted to our own destruction.
We’re staring at our own existential crisis and it’s becoming more and more part of the news every day. The United Nations Secretary-General called the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change “a litany of broken climate promises” showing the world is “on a fast track to climate disaster.” He succinctly noted where we are right now and what “leadership” is doing – nothing really… but stringing us along. We’ve heard the truth from scientists since the 70s [from the 50s if you were a scientist for ExxonMobil, eh?], yet this “news” has been followed by empty promises from leaders… for decades now. What makes us think that they’re going to change and do the right things that save humanity now?
We don’t really have control over them though.
All we have is control over ourselves… and often times, we don’t even have that.
So this is a year of continuing the journey to simplify life and lighten my load on Mother Earth… as best I can.
We’ve built a home that is far more sustainable than any home we’ve ever lived in… though it too could be improved. It still relies on electricity, which for now… for us, still comes from the burning of fossil fuel.
And much of our food still comes from a process heavily laden with fossil fuel use; much of what we eat arrives in containers made of fossil fuel by-products.
As such, my goal this year is to spend a day every week at the organic farm working for food as I did in pre-Covid days.
I miss the feel of the small seedling as I place her into the soil… tucking her into a bed of beautiful black Earth… Earth full of life itself. I miss adding that first drink of precious sacred water she will have as she begins life in her new homeplace. And as she works to grow – living her full life – I will continue to add water and protect her from invaders: The weeds… simply doing their job of living… breaking up the soil – as has been their duty over millennia. The same soil that I pack down to give my seedling friend a new place to start… the weeds quickly come in to loosen.
Can I thank each of these weeds as I pull them this summer?
Can I thank them for their lives as I push them aside… killing them to maintain a place… where this life that will bring me life, can have her space?
I will allow them their short life and then their death will return them to the soil again… creating food as they incorporate into our ecosystem: the system of life-and-death is never-ending.
We live within these same natural laws as humans… though we like to pretend that we do not.
As long as we continue to ignore the natural natural law we will continue to destroy the life on this planet that sustains us.
It is only when we recognize ourselves as small cogs in the ecosystem of life that we will know our true place and begin to live in harmony with the rest of life… on which we all depend.
