When my partner, George, died in October 2020, one of the things I dreaded was the coming rainy season. After my brother’s death in June, I was consoled by the beautiful blue and yellow days. By the long soft evenings, the silken roses in overflowing gardens. In October, I feared I had only darkness and […]
Rain: beauty and magic Read More »
After reading my last essay, A Year of Love and Death, on the losses of 2020, both personal and worldwide, my brother-in-law sent me a poem by John O’Donohue called For Grief. My partner George’s Irishness was a wild and wonderful force in his life. In the years before his death, he explored Celtic spirituality with
here is the deepest secret nobody knows(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life…) and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart~ E.E. Cummings ~ In mid-October, I was sitting at the deathbed of my beloved, thinking about love.
Songlines 2020: a year of love and death Read More »
The dying down of the zest for life is the greatest danger to the whole human venture and to the whole venture of the planet. ~Thomas Berry~ This is my fourth celebration of the September-long Season of Creation, and a year when keeping zest alive and well is profoundly challenging. Yet I agree with Thomas
Love against all odds: celebrating the Season of Creation Read More »
A friend who offers occasional guided meditations begins each one by asking us to imagine ourselves in a nurturing place in nature. I am invariably sitting on a forest floor. Trees reach high above me, leafy branches arching overhead, sunlight glinting through the openings between the leaves. That is peaceful enough, but the most important
Ferns: the deep consolations of survival Read More »
Since my brother’s death in June, words have been hard to come by, for writing, speaking, even reading. Poetry has been a companion; so much meaning in so few words. And, on these bright, blooming California days, the tender mercies of beauty have been deeply consoling. Perry, who started his landscaping business in college, told
It became an instant cliche as the 2020 pandemic revealed the threadbare fabric of our culture. The essential people who make day-to-day life possible are often the ones in the most precarious and low-paid jobs. I am grateful to have professional people in my life But I depend completely on the people who grow, harvest,
It couldn’t be clearer: the power of interrelatedness Read More »
I am sent to heal the brokenhearted….To comfort all who mourn….To give them beauty for ashes. ~Isaiah, 61~ I am blessed, in this time of forced absence and fearful presence, to live with beauty. As long as I’m willing to climb some steep hills, I can walk among embracing trees, with unfurling ferns and delicate spring
During the impeachment hearings in 2020, I was as miserable as I’d been in a long time. Not because any of it was news to me, but because institutions are failing in ways we never imagined. We’ve never seen them tested this much before. That same week, the Trump EPA added to its boundless failures
Weathering the storm: living with the power of cataclysm Read More »
In a world increasingly governed by western notions of progress, people can find rights of nature an alien concept. Since the founding of ancient Rome, we have safeguarded property rights — the ownership of land, people, capital, resources — even when such rights work against the common good. Or even, as in the case of
Becoming: the power of emergence Read More »