Milt Greek's Blog: The River of Life - Posts Tagged "summer"
Summer Solstice and the annual life review
In our garden, Chinese Red and pink lilies, pinkish hollyhocks, golden and red marigolds, bright yellow coreopsis and golden Stella d’ Oro are blooming in abundance. The beautiful red lilies were a planted as a gift by my brusque, colorblind brother to our mother to beautify her yard two decades ago. When each of them passed on at young ages as part of a wave of deaths and illnesses over nearly fifteen years ago, I transplanted them into our garden and learned a lesson about how my brother expressed love.
Peas and lettuces have also been abundant, but heavy rains have delayed planting later crops. As June continued, our lettuce harvest changed from thinning of young plants, to harvesting full heads, to leaving the best heads to bolt and set seed. I have begun succession planting of tomatoes and basil in rows where arugula and spinach have bolted and set seeds, completing their lives by maturing the seeds I will use for next year. I have also sown Hutterite and John Allen Cut Short heirloom beans in the rows where the summer’s heat is slowly withering our Thomas Laxton heirloom peas. I have also saved overripe peas, especially those with many peas in a pod, to use as seed next year.
The Solstice marks a transition in our area from delicate, perishable crops such as lettuces, asparagus and peas to hardier, more lasting crops like beets, carrots, onions, tomatoes and kale. Replacing crops in succession planting and gathering seed from dying plants, along with my own life, has caused me reflect on transitions in my life from a larger lens.
Before the Summer Solstice, I conducted my ten day annual life review, a practice I started each June in 2015, to consider how I can improve. Looking over past notes, I saw that many of the issues that have affected our lives have been out of our control, but by pondering these aspects of fate I clarified what I do have some ability to affect. Ironically, though I think of myself as having free will, many of the things within myself that I wish to change are tenacious and appear in my annual reviews each year as works in progress.
Fortunately, many of the changes outside my control has been for the better, but there was a nearly constant wave of deaths, injuries and crises for a year and a half in our web of life. To our good fortune, this devastating wave was followed by a series of births of babies among friends and family. Like the garden, our lives are moving in succession, with young spirits replacing we who are incarnate now. Only when lives are lost young, with great suffering, or unnecessarily is the hardship of death not part of the flow of the sacred river of life of the Earth.
During my life review this year, I could see the unfolding of the streams of life of our families—our grandparents, our parents, ourselves, and the younger people in our blended family—along with the communities where we are living out our lives. From this intergenerational view, I could see that many of the events, for good or ill, have been part of inevitable flow of our family and community cultures. A slow motion flowering of the consequences of our histories and our own actions.
The good times have contained seeds of trouble and eventual crises that were overlooked at the time, like weeds in a garden that go unnoticed until they choke out the plants we have sown. During the crises, we struggled, cried and felt bitter remorse. During these hard times, I argued more with my wife and suffered from a lack of faith as we struggled to keep to a course that would maintain a happy, healthy family.
During these crises, we learned. We made different choices, sometimes out of bleak necessity, and focused our minds on managing events one by one. The wave of deaths, illnesses and crises brought to light my own failings and demanded solutions. Whether my choices during this wave were the best for my family will only be known in time.
As the wave of births and new lives took hold, joy returned from the shadow of death and our lives are now filled with the near-constant caring for young children who all-too-soon will venture away from their homes and into a human world not of their creation. They will succeed us, passing farther down the stream of life than we do, gaining from what we do right now, suffering from our mistakes.
For the most part, I have reacted poorly to the challenges. Yet, there has been a succession of good fortune and the bliss of new lives. If anything, most of the benefits that we have received have not been of my doing alone; rather they have been what skeptically-minded people would call luck or random chance and what—often in a self-serving way—some religious people would call grace.
In the larger human world, the dramas of princes and principalities have played out, as much out of the control of sensitive and ordinary people like me as the winds of the sky. For decades, my mind has been focused on the small human world around me—my family, community, and workplace—and I have put forth a lot of effort in that small world. It is in that small, precious world of loved ones and others who we share daily life with that I see my failures and good works have the greatest effect. It is in that world—where I have the greatest impact—that my annual life review focuses on.
In the larger human world of international trials and tribulations, the princes and principalities continue on, perpetuating mistakes and vainglory attempts to succeed through the Covenant of Bad Works. Like my own failings, whatever benefit these leaders seek through power-over-others will pass from them through the seeds of their own actions. The lesson in my personal world is the same: the more that I work to improve myself, to love in action those I care for, act with respect and consideration towards those in my community, pull my own weight at work and in my family, and to seek a sustainable relationship with the Earth, the more we all will prosper. The challenge is not in the saying; the challenge is in the doing.
As for my resolutions?—I have already failed in seeking to live according to them. Fortunately, I have the rest of the year to steer my course toward a better future for me and the loved ones who will succeed me in the sacred flow of life on Earth.
Peas and lettuces have also been abundant, but heavy rains have delayed planting later crops. As June continued, our lettuce harvest changed from thinning of young plants, to harvesting full heads, to leaving the best heads to bolt and set seed. I have begun succession planting of tomatoes and basil in rows where arugula and spinach have bolted and set seeds, completing their lives by maturing the seeds I will use for next year. I have also sown Hutterite and John Allen Cut Short heirloom beans in the rows where the summer’s heat is slowly withering our Thomas Laxton heirloom peas. I have also saved overripe peas, especially those with many peas in a pod, to use as seed next year.
The Solstice marks a transition in our area from delicate, perishable crops such as lettuces, asparagus and peas to hardier, more lasting crops like beets, carrots, onions, tomatoes and kale. Replacing crops in succession planting and gathering seed from dying plants, along with my own life, has caused me reflect on transitions in my life from a larger lens.
Before the Summer Solstice, I conducted my ten day annual life review, a practice I started each June in 2015, to consider how I can improve. Looking over past notes, I saw that many of the issues that have affected our lives have been out of our control, but by pondering these aspects of fate I clarified what I do have some ability to affect. Ironically, though I think of myself as having free will, many of the things within myself that I wish to change are tenacious and appear in my annual reviews each year as works in progress.
Fortunately, many of the changes outside my control has been for the better, but there was a nearly constant wave of deaths, injuries and crises for a year and a half in our web of life. To our good fortune, this devastating wave was followed by a series of births of babies among friends and family. Like the garden, our lives are moving in succession, with young spirits replacing we who are incarnate now. Only when lives are lost young, with great suffering, or unnecessarily is the hardship of death not part of the flow of the sacred river of life of the Earth.
During my life review this year, I could see the unfolding of the streams of life of our families—our grandparents, our parents, ourselves, and the younger people in our blended family—along with the communities where we are living out our lives. From this intergenerational view, I could see that many of the events, for good or ill, have been part of inevitable flow of our family and community cultures. A slow motion flowering of the consequences of our histories and our own actions.
The good times have contained seeds of trouble and eventual crises that were overlooked at the time, like weeds in a garden that go unnoticed until they choke out the plants we have sown. During the crises, we struggled, cried and felt bitter remorse. During these hard times, I argued more with my wife and suffered from a lack of faith as we struggled to keep to a course that would maintain a happy, healthy family.
During these crises, we learned. We made different choices, sometimes out of bleak necessity, and focused our minds on managing events one by one. The wave of deaths, illnesses and crises brought to light my own failings and demanded solutions. Whether my choices during this wave were the best for my family will only be known in time.
As the wave of births and new lives took hold, joy returned from the shadow of death and our lives are now filled with the near-constant caring for young children who all-too-soon will venture away from their homes and into a human world not of their creation. They will succeed us, passing farther down the stream of life than we do, gaining from what we do right now, suffering from our mistakes.
For the most part, I have reacted poorly to the challenges. Yet, there has been a succession of good fortune and the bliss of new lives. If anything, most of the benefits that we have received have not been of my doing alone; rather they have been what skeptically-minded people would call luck or random chance and what—often in a self-serving way—some religious people would call grace.
In the larger human world, the dramas of princes and principalities have played out, as much out of the control of sensitive and ordinary people like me as the winds of the sky. For decades, my mind has been focused on the small human world around me—my family, community, and workplace—and I have put forth a lot of effort in that small world. It is in that small, precious world of loved ones and others who we share daily life with that I see my failures and good works have the greatest effect. It is in that world—where I have the greatest impact—that my annual life review focuses on.
In the larger human world of international trials and tribulations, the princes and principalities continue on, perpetuating mistakes and vainglory attempts to succeed through the Covenant of Bad Works. Like my own failings, whatever benefit these leaders seek through power-over-others will pass from them through the seeds of their own actions. The lesson in my personal world is the same: the more that I work to improve myself, to love in action those I care for, act with respect and consideration towards those in my community, pull my own weight at work and in my family, and to seek a sustainable relationship with the Earth, the more we all will prosper. The challenge is not in the saying; the challenge is in the doing.
As for my resolutions?—I have already failed in seeking to live according to them. Fortunately, I have the rest of the year to steer my course toward a better future for me and the loved ones who will succeed me in the sacred flow of life on Earth.
The Abundance of the Earthly River of Life
As mid-summer is passing, the season continues to be rainy. While some growers have been affected and sweet corn is still sparse at the Farmer’s Market, local growers appear to be resilient in the face of the challenging weather. Meanwhile, our garden has been flourishing, with harvests of beets with luxuriant greens, dark green Heirloom Lacinato kale and elephant garlic. At the same time, the produce auction has been abundant and between our garden and food from the club, our refrigerator has been filled to capacity. We’ve made a half dozen or more dishes in the last ten days--Ratatouille, Pinto Bean and Beet Green soup, Potato Salad, Cucumber-Tomato Sandwiches, Peach Tart, and Sweet Corn, plus Kale and Romaine salads—all using ingredients almost entirely from local sources.
We are freezing and preserving the abundant extras, including blueberries, extra soup, Korean-style Kim Chi, and Kale leaves for winter soups and looking forward to additional dishes—Beets, Greens and Onions with Tofu and Turnip, Greens, and Mushroom stir-fries, Borscht, and many other seasonal dishes.
Bright red Bee Balm mixed with white Queen Anne’s Lace, pale purple Coneflowers and coral-pink Swamp Milkweed in the waterway down the hill have begun to flower, bringing hummingbirds and butterflies. Pinkish Hollyhocks and Golden Coreopsis are continuing to bloom, all of which provide food to insects and birds in partnerships of life. The Earthly River of Life flows together in natural communities through generations, and in our area reaches an abundance in summer like few other times of the year.
Our good fortune in terms of healthy, abundance sources of local food cannot be measured. In a world where hunger, malnutrition, poverty and curable diseases run rampant, the abundance of the Earth around us gives the chance for a healthy and sensually satisfying life. The challenge is to provide this same abundance in a sustainable way for our family and community.
Part of this is to embrace the new generation of young lives that younger women in our family and community have brought forth, providing new hope in the face of our own aging lives. My wife, after losing our beloved mother-in-law, has fully embraced the new lives through babysitting several times a week, including for a boisterous baby in our family.
We had a family gathering recently where the eight-month-old girl was a delightful center of the time together. My wife and I brought potato salad and kale salad and made veggie burgers, with the meal timed with a brief nap for the toddler. Toward the end of the meal, the baby awoke and cried out for company.
The father brought her to the table and we watched her as she fully woke. She became lively and despite her young age began to move about, so we went to the living room where she crawled and walked around a coffee table, waving her hands, seeming to dance to music, beating the table with a hand and excitedly calling out with delight as the family watched her every move. For over three hours she delighted the young parents, her uncle and my wife and I, merely by being a young, beloved life learning to move about on her own. She herself was full of vigor and joy, exuberant in the love of life and the new abilities of her growing body. Seeing the child’s growth from a newborn only eight months ago into zestful, joyful and strong child as part of the sacred flow of Earthly life into eternity has been one of the most profound, joyous experiences of our family’s life.
After the gathering, my wife and I reflected on the wonderful day and I said that in my family babies of that age were set aside in playpens and cribs during family gatherings. Rather than spending three hours being entertained and delighted by the new lives, they were put out of the way while the adults—particularly the men—discussed their outer world focus. In my family, it would be news, politics, philosophy, education, business plans and sports as the main topics, all of which were seen as more important than “child’s play.” Yet, many of these outer world, patriarchal centers do little to move forward the sacred Earthly river of life and some make our families and communities less sustainable, damaging the future of the young lives who are—tragically—not the focus of our daily lives.
In our contemporary, patriarchal consciousness, we are trained to focus our attention away from the river of life that flows through our lives and onto temporary attainments—business, military, political, media and artistic successes; accumulating money, gaining power-over-others, becoming better known—much to our long-term loss. Part of the greatest challenge of our culture is that it is at best irrelevant to the needs of sustaining the Earthly river of life of family, community and Earth around us; at worst, it harms that sacred flow into eternity, moving us away from the joys that radiate from that center.
Whether one has children or not, there are many ways people contribute to the flow of life through eternity. Activists, community volunteers, good neighbors, child-care workers, philanthropists, healers, growers, and many others whose lives directly support a sustainable flow of Earthly life practice the essence of good works—to bring forth life in daily activity. This constant labor of life—which is oftentimes ignored yet given hollow, insincere praise by patriarchal leaders—is a center of the flow of life through eternity.
In a very real way, my own journey back to this wonderful center began when, in first seeking to practice feminism rather than claim to follow it, I began to help my Mom and Grandmother with holiday meals. I quickly discovered while oftentimes lazy men in the living room watched TV and pontificated on the way that the world should be, the women in the kitchen were sharing stories, catching up on family life, recalling family and community history and deepening their relationships while cooking a meal to feed our family. These first few ventures into the woman’s world began a decades-long quest toward that center of life that is the toddler walking around a table, exploring her growing abilities in her new world and delighting her family with the joy of abundant life. It is a journey of joy and love, still far from completion, towards a more sustainable family and community at peace with the human world.
We are freezing and preserving the abundant extras, including blueberries, extra soup, Korean-style Kim Chi, and Kale leaves for winter soups and looking forward to additional dishes—Beets, Greens and Onions with Tofu and Turnip, Greens, and Mushroom stir-fries, Borscht, and many other seasonal dishes.
Bright red Bee Balm mixed with white Queen Anne’s Lace, pale purple Coneflowers and coral-pink Swamp Milkweed in the waterway down the hill have begun to flower, bringing hummingbirds and butterflies. Pinkish Hollyhocks and Golden Coreopsis are continuing to bloom, all of which provide food to insects and birds in partnerships of life. The Earthly River of Life flows together in natural communities through generations, and in our area reaches an abundance in summer like few other times of the year.
Our good fortune in terms of healthy, abundance sources of local food cannot be measured. In a world where hunger, malnutrition, poverty and curable diseases run rampant, the abundance of the Earth around us gives the chance for a healthy and sensually satisfying life. The challenge is to provide this same abundance in a sustainable way for our family and community.
Part of this is to embrace the new generation of young lives that younger women in our family and community have brought forth, providing new hope in the face of our own aging lives. My wife, after losing our beloved mother-in-law, has fully embraced the new lives through babysitting several times a week, including for a boisterous baby in our family.
We had a family gathering recently where the eight-month-old girl was a delightful center of the time together. My wife and I brought potato salad and kale salad and made veggie burgers, with the meal timed with a brief nap for the toddler. Toward the end of the meal, the baby awoke and cried out for company.
The father brought her to the table and we watched her as she fully woke. She became lively and despite her young age began to move about, so we went to the living room where she crawled and walked around a coffee table, waving her hands, seeming to dance to music, beating the table with a hand and excitedly calling out with delight as the family watched her every move. For over three hours she delighted the young parents, her uncle and my wife and I, merely by being a young, beloved life learning to move about on her own. She herself was full of vigor and joy, exuberant in the love of life and the new abilities of her growing body. Seeing the child’s growth from a newborn only eight months ago into zestful, joyful and strong child as part of the sacred flow of Earthly life into eternity has been one of the most profound, joyous experiences of our family’s life.
After the gathering, my wife and I reflected on the wonderful day and I said that in my family babies of that age were set aside in playpens and cribs during family gatherings. Rather than spending three hours being entertained and delighted by the new lives, they were put out of the way while the adults—particularly the men—discussed their outer world focus. In my family, it would be news, politics, philosophy, education, business plans and sports as the main topics, all of which were seen as more important than “child’s play.” Yet, many of these outer world, patriarchal centers do little to move forward the sacred Earthly river of life and some make our families and communities less sustainable, damaging the future of the young lives who are—tragically—not the focus of our daily lives.
In our contemporary, patriarchal consciousness, we are trained to focus our attention away from the river of life that flows through our lives and onto temporary attainments—business, military, political, media and artistic successes; accumulating money, gaining power-over-others, becoming better known—much to our long-term loss. Part of the greatest challenge of our culture is that it is at best irrelevant to the needs of sustaining the Earthly river of life of family, community and Earth around us; at worst, it harms that sacred flow into eternity, moving us away from the joys that radiate from that center.
Whether one has children or not, there are many ways people contribute to the flow of life through eternity. Activists, community volunteers, good neighbors, child-care workers, philanthropists, healers, growers, and many others whose lives directly support a sustainable flow of Earthly life practice the essence of good works—to bring forth life in daily activity. This constant labor of life—which is oftentimes ignored yet given hollow, insincere praise by patriarchal leaders—is a center of the flow of life through eternity.
In a very real way, my own journey back to this wonderful center began when, in first seeking to practice feminism rather than claim to follow it, I began to help my Mom and Grandmother with holiday meals. I quickly discovered while oftentimes lazy men in the living room watched TV and pontificated on the way that the world should be, the women in the kitchen were sharing stories, catching up on family life, recalling family and community history and deepening their relationships while cooking a meal to feed our family. These first few ventures into the woman’s world began a decades-long quest toward that center of life that is the toddler walking around a table, exploring her growing abilities in her new world and delighting her family with the joy of abundant life. It is a journey of joy and love, still far from completion, towards a more sustainable family and community at peace with the human world.
Strong Webs of Life and the Wisdom of Trees
Midsummer, traditionally marking the beginning of the harvest season, has been filled with food, family and close friends, as well as the continuing beauty of the Earth. Rose of Sharon and Butterfly Bushes are blooming, bringing bees, butterflies and hummingbirds to enjoy their sweet nectar, returning the gift of the flowers by bringing new life for the shrubs. In the hollow, many more rabbits have emerged than in past years, quietly grazing on green grass and resting peacefully under evergreens we transplanted from live Christmas trees. Our annual harvest of onions from the garden has gone well, with over 150 bulbs dug up and placed in the hot sun to cure before being stored for the winter.
At the produce auction, row upon row of corn, tomatoes, muskmelons, watermelon, peppers, onions, potatoes, squash and much more are offered by local growers, providing the community with abundant sources of food in an area marked by poverty, malnutrition and addictions. The food club has been paying rock-bottom prices for the wonderful produce, a gift of the season of abundance. As regular buyers at the market, the food club is appreciated for the steady demand we give in exchange for the excellent food; we have been repeatedly thanked for our attendance at the auction.
In years of abundance like this, when our region’s crops have been plentiful, I worry that we are paying too little for this gift of life. Unlike typical buyer-seller relationships, we do not necessarily wish to get the lowest price possible; rather we want to pay our fair share, to provide a good deal for our members while sustaining the livelihood of the growers who we depend on. We want the communities of producers to thrive and sustain themselves in exchange for sustaining our community of consumers.
As midsummer approached, our refrigerator and kitchen table was full of food from the auction, the farmers’ market and our garden. We contacted our family and suggested we bring a midsummer meal to the home of the parents of our family’s newborn child. The parents agreed and soon a meal was planned with the uncle, aunt, the aunt’s daughter and the daughter’s partner joining the new parents and their baby. We brought a meal including local dishes of veggie patties with marinara sauce and cheese on top, sweet corn, two kinds of beet and potato salads, and much more.
After over an hour of visiting, we ate the meal while the baby slept briefly. The young one awoke and cried out to join us. She was sat in her high chair and fed while we continued to enjoy our meal. Afterwards, we went to the living room where, as times before, the newborn entertained us with her love of life and zest to move around, play and explore the world new to her.
During a pause, the young Mom brought books on pregnancy she had to her niece, who is pregnant with her first child. They chatted briefly and the pregnant young woman took the books to prepare herself for the time to come. This small, simple act of kindly family consideration is at the heart of the traditional women’s culture and speaks volumes of the value of family and love.
After a full day of visiting and celebrating the gift of family and life that we have received, we returned home, remarking on the beauty of the day. The newborn’s uncle said that he thought his sister was the happiest she has ever been and we agreed, thankful for the gifts of good health and love we have all received.
As midsummer continued, we opened an IPA brewed for the hot weather of August, enjoying the light taste in the summer heat. After years of brewing beer, we have found recipes that we enjoy for each season, with the lighter beers of Pilsner and IPA for the summer and dark beers such as Porters and Stouts for the cold of winter. Like the seasonal food, we choose our beer in harmony with the time of year.
As the midsummer continued, we also shared a seasonal meal with a boy who my wife and I babysat several years ago whose family has since moved away. As part of a week with his grandmother, the eleven year old, his grandmother and a friend joined us for a meal of ratatouille and pesto with other dishes. The mélange of tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, onions, and garlic seasoned with fresh basil and parsley—all from the produce auction or our garden—was a filling meal to share. With his grandmother the young boy made a bread pudding and watermelon salad for desert, returning our gift of food with his own offering.
At the end of the visit, we wandered down to the hollow to show the young boy the place he’d played and sledded in years before. With trees growing tall and rabbits in the field, the abundance of the Earth—created by the good works of trees and other plants and animals bringing forth life from the inert soil—was evident. The hollow provides food, beauty, a place for children to play in and adults to enjoy nature, all in exchange for us allowing the Earth to peacefully re-create life with as little interference from the human world as we can allow. As time passes, the Earth makes the hollow a more sustainable, richer and stronger web of life, through simple, joyful acts of butterflies and bees gathering nectar and birds, rabbits and others mating and raising young.
Even as midsummer reaches its peak, the signs of fall and the cold season of Earthly sleep are appearing. The leaves of Black Walnut trees are turning yellow and falling, soon to be followed by Box Alder and others. Sweet autumn apples are ripening, as are grapes in local orchards and vineyards. The time of sunlight is fading, soon to be replaced by rapidly growing darkness.
As the elders in our families, we are privileged to share in the beginning of new life with younger family and friends, providing us true joy as we become more aware of the shortness of our lives. I take comfort that I can see, for all my failings, some of my actions as a family member, a friend, an activist and a member of my community has helped strengthen the web of life that children around us—whether human, rabbit, trees or others—are born into. Regardless of my isolated, personal fate in some other, unknown realm, helping to create a stronger natural and human web of life is a gift that my faith in good works has helped provide. For the next generation, that is what is important.
Across the street from where I work, a natural field of grass and trees, some decades old, has been razed and turned to dust, with earthmovers destroying the natural community to provide buildings for the university’s medical college. The natural community, based on gift-giving of life by plants and animals, is being replaced by lifeless concrete and steel, soon to be followed by roaches, mice, and other urban members of the industrial human community that is based on consumption.
Our region needs skilled medicine, but the destruction of the natural community and the many people I know who have found remedies to health problems that providers of western medicine could not solve makes me wonder how much wisdom will be taught in the near-lifeless hallways of concrete and steel. Will it compare with the wisdom of trees and flowers offering their gifts and good works to insects, birds and animals? How much can humanity itself learn, were we to turn away from urban, human teachers and consider other sources of knowledge in the abundant, joyous Earth?
At the produce auction, row upon row of corn, tomatoes, muskmelons, watermelon, peppers, onions, potatoes, squash and much more are offered by local growers, providing the community with abundant sources of food in an area marked by poverty, malnutrition and addictions. The food club has been paying rock-bottom prices for the wonderful produce, a gift of the season of abundance. As regular buyers at the market, the food club is appreciated for the steady demand we give in exchange for the excellent food; we have been repeatedly thanked for our attendance at the auction.
In years of abundance like this, when our region’s crops have been plentiful, I worry that we are paying too little for this gift of life. Unlike typical buyer-seller relationships, we do not necessarily wish to get the lowest price possible; rather we want to pay our fair share, to provide a good deal for our members while sustaining the livelihood of the growers who we depend on. We want the communities of producers to thrive and sustain themselves in exchange for sustaining our community of consumers.
As midsummer approached, our refrigerator and kitchen table was full of food from the auction, the farmers’ market and our garden. We contacted our family and suggested we bring a midsummer meal to the home of the parents of our family’s newborn child. The parents agreed and soon a meal was planned with the uncle, aunt, the aunt’s daughter and the daughter’s partner joining the new parents and their baby. We brought a meal including local dishes of veggie patties with marinara sauce and cheese on top, sweet corn, two kinds of beet and potato salads, and much more.
After over an hour of visiting, we ate the meal while the baby slept briefly. The young one awoke and cried out to join us. She was sat in her high chair and fed while we continued to enjoy our meal. Afterwards, we went to the living room where, as times before, the newborn entertained us with her love of life and zest to move around, play and explore the world new to her.
During a pause, the young Mom brought books on pregnancy she had to her niece, who is pregnant with her first child. They chatted briefly and the pregnant young woman took the books to prepare herself for the time to come. This small, simple act of kindly family consideration is at the heart of the traditional women’s culture and speaks volumes of the value of family and love.
After a full day of visiting and celebrating the gift of family and life that we have received, we returned home, remarking on the beauty of the day. The newborn’s uncle said that he thought his sister was the happiest she has ever been and we agreed, thankful for the gifts of good health and love we have all received.
As midsummer continued, we opened an IPA brewed for the hot weather of August, enjoying the light taste in the summer heat. After years of brewing beer, we have found recipes that we enjoy for each season, with the lighter beers of Pilsner and IPA for the summer and dark beers such as Porters and Stouts for the cold of winter. Like the seasonal food, we choose our beer in harmony with the time of year.
As the midsummer continued, we also shared a seasonal meal with a boy who my wife and I babysat several years ago whose family has since moved away. As part of a week with his grandmother, the eleven year old, his grandmother and a friend joined us for a meal of ratatouille and pesto with other dishes. The mélange of tomatoes, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, onions, and garlic seasoned with fresh basil and parsley—all from the produce auction or our garden—was a filling meal to share. With his grandmother the young boy made a bread pudding and watermelon salad for desert, returning our gift of food with his own offering.
At the end of the visit, we wandered down to the hollow to show the young boy the place he’d played and sledded in years before. With trees growing tall and rabbits in the field, the abundance of the Earth—created by the good works of trees and other plants and animals bringing forth life from the inert soil—was evident. The hollow provides food, beauty, a place for children to play in and adults to enjoy nature, all in exchange for us allowing the Earth to peacefully re-create life with as little interference from the human world as we can allow. As time passes, the Earth makes the hollow a more sustainable, richer and stronger web of life, through simple, joyful acts of butterflies and bees gathering nectar and birds, rabbits and others mating and raising young.
Even as midsummer reaches its peak, the signs of fall and the cold season of Earthly sleep are appearing. The leaves of Black Walnut trees are turning yellow and falling, soon to be followed by Box Alder and others. Sweet autumn apples are ripening, as are grapes in local orchards and vineyards. The time of sunlight is fading, soon to be replaced by rapidly growing darkness.
As the elders in our families, we are privileged to share in the beginning of new life with younger family and friends, providing us true joy as we become more aware of the shortness of our lives. I take comfort that I can see, for all my failings, some of my actions as a family member, a friend, an activist and a member of my community has helped strengthen the web of life that children around us—whether human, rabbit, trees or others—are born into. Regardless of my isolated, personal fate in some other, unknown realm, helping to create a stronger natural and human web of life is a gift that my faith in good works has helped provide. For the next generation, that is what is important.
Across the street from where I work, a natural field of grass and trees, some decades old, has been razed and turned to dust, with earthmovers destroying the natural community to provide buildings for the university’s medical college. The natural community, based on gift-giving of life by plants and animals, is being replaced by lifeless concrete and steel, soon to be followed by roaches, mice, and other urban members of the industrial human community that is based on consumption.
Our region needs skilled medicine, but the destruction of the natural community and the many people I know who have found remedies to health problems that providers of western medicine could not solve makes me wonder how much wisdom will be taught in the near-lifeless hallways of concrete and steel. Will it compare with the wisdom of trees and flowers offering their gifts and good works to insects, birds and animals? How much can humanity itself learn, were we to turn away from urban, human teachers and consider other sources of knowledge in the abundant, joyous Earth?
Not Knowing
The summer light has reached it’s peak and begun a slowly increasing descent into night. The warm temperatures and abundant rainfall have provided us with many wonderful meals during the season of abundance. Corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, green peppers, cabbage, potatoes, peaches, berries of all sorts, and much much more has made me aware once again of the good fortune of living a small, rural community surrounded by hardworking growers.
I often think about how little I know. Why I am in the life I am, rather than a child suffering through tragedies, a hungry, homeless person, or a victim of abuse—I do not know.
There is so much in the human language that speaks of things we cannot understand: “Infinity”, “eternity”, “fate”, “luck”, “deity”, “grace”, “galaxy”, “universe”, “immortality”. All attempts to put words on things that are beyond our life experiences to grasp.
I happened to send a friend some scribblings—two poems and one prose piece—that were some of my favorites. As art, they are dull concepts, with little flare or value. But, in a sense, I realized they expressed a central part of what I understand: that humanity is in a state of not knowing the sacred flowing of Earthly life into “eternity”.
Mortality
A songbird’s song
A waterfall’s cascade
A rainbow’s colors
--alchemy of sunlight and raindrops
How sweet to think an unseen rainbow remains
after sun and rain have gone away
Earth
Hurry on past
the bird singing in the tree
Hurry on past
the woods at the end of your street
Hurry on past on a sunny Sunday
morning
Go and worship
a man-god in a man-made temple
Hurry on past
the Deity you wish to meet
The Flowing of Water
In a forest no one has ever seen, a waterfall formed on a twenty foot high rocky ledge. The water cascaded over the rocky wall and fell onto the rocks below. As time passed and seasons came and went a pool formed at the base of the waterfall.
About the waterfall grew tall trees, grass, and moss, all fed by the flowing water. As the years passed the trees died and fell and in their place grew new trees, the children of the children of the trees once living there. Sometimes the falling trees let in the sunshine and in the mist of the falling water a small rainbow formed.
On the ground the rotting trees formed mulch and loan upon which the tiny flowers of spring grew, their scent given to the wind and their nectar to the bees of early spring. During some springs the waters of the falls flowed so heavily that they swept away the flowers, the loam, and the mulch, leaving nothing but the bare, hard rock. In time, other trees fell and formed mulch and loam and flowers again grew in the mists of the flowing water. Again and again heavy waters swept away the loam and flowers and again and again new loam formed.
As the ages passed, the flowing of the water wore down the hard rock wall and dug deeply into the bedrock below. In time there was no more wall, no more rock, no waterfall, rainbow, or flowers. All that was left was a gully and the flowing of water. In the long and full time of the waterfall no person ever tread in the forest surrounding it nor knew of its beauty, perseverance, or death.
Considering Self-Assertion at the Beginning of the Season of Abundance
As the sun approached its apex in the northern sky, waves of very hot global warming days, separated by times of more seasonal temperatures, provided an early start of the summer’s heat. Paired with frequent downpours, the season of abundance began with a flurry of growth. In past winters, with snow on the ground, I have repeatedly told our granddaughter that “the Earth has gone asleep” to have “a long winter’s nap.” In the spring, I told her that “the Earth is waking up” and we are receiving “early gifts of strawberries and asparagus” from that source.
Now, as flowers bloom and the fields and gardens provide us with abundant food, I tell her “The Earth has awakened and is giving us many gifts.” Pink early Lilies, bright yellow Stella d’Ora and Coreopsis, vibrant orange Day Lilies, and fiery Chinese Red Lilies mixed with deep-hued red Bee Balm have followed one after another in the progression of days. The red Lilies, a gift of my hard-bitten, colorblind brother to my silently self-victimizing Mom were salvaged from her yard after she passed, only a couple of years prior to my brother’s passing, serving me as a reminder in this season that love can be expressed so subtly behind the defensive masks we wear that it is sometimes only visible in the reflection of our shared pasts.
June has provided many gifts from the Earth, including an ongoing abundance of Asparagus, Lettuces, Sylvetta Arugula, Kale, Turnip Greens, early Tomatoes, and many other foods, including a surprise of a robust and perfectly shaped Chicken of the Woods mushroom. The season has provided numerous salads, Udon Noodles with Tofu and Arugula, frequent servings of Asparagus as a side dish and in Quiches and other main courses, Turnips, Mushrooms, and Turnip Greens stir fry, Potato and Beet Salad, Peas and Cauliflower Masala, and Hungarian Mushroom Soup. The gifts of the season’s abundance, likely to continue into the peaks of mid-summer and the harvests of fall, begins a luxurious time of our daily lives.
This has been the first year of full harvest from our Asparagus patch, which I set in with my stepson three years ago. Last year I ceased the harvest at 40 large stalks to preserve the patch’s growth in anticipation of this year, a gift my younger self gave to this year’s harvest. The abundance of this year’s harvest has surprised me, beginning in mid-April, and ceasing in mid-June—though more would have been possible—and gave us over 160 large stalks, with another 15 taken by deer.
In his victory garden book, A Manual of Home Vegetable Gardening, Francis Coulter wrote, “When a gardener cuts the first substantial asparagus stalks of his own planting and growing he may be said to have graduated in the art of vegetable cultivation. He has shown his skill and demonstrated that his interest is not the fleeting enthusiasm of a single season but is supported by the patience of all true gardeners, so that he is content to work for a deferred reward and looks forward to producing for many years one of the finer luxuries of the table” (pp. 84-85).
For me, I just wanted to supply my family with produce that they all loved. A byproduct of this has been a lesson in sustainability, reflecting the intelligence of squirrels who have for eons sown gifts of forests of nut trees for their descendants. At the same time, patriarchy’s urban god-kings have veered humanity into an unsustainable lifestyle while flattering ourselves as brilliant compared to the tiny-brained squirrel’s stewardship.
The beginning of season of abundance has been paired with my annual life reflection and atonement for my failures in the past year. This year I reread notes from the reflections of the years since 2015, when I began the practice. Reading the reflections were interesting in that many of the challenges I spoke of and feared seven years ago have changed, been met, or passed through losses, such as the passing of my dear mother-in-law a week after the passing of her beloved and only sibling. Yet, for the profound losses, our family and community has received the mysterious gifts of abundance and growth, largely moving on from the challenges and worries that haunted my mind.
I noticed that challenges appeared, fell into crises, and prompted us into action. This time-immemorial approach of humanity—to avoid sowing gardens until hunger threatens and ignore threats to the essential needs of life until we cannot sustain ourselves much longer—threatens us individually and collectively. It is the profound, mysterious, and somewhat random luck given to our family for many years that our challenges have largely been resolved. Seeking to reflect on this past, I looked at the events of past years and my role in them.
After reflection, I came to the surprising but not-so-surprising recognition that central to my failures in the past has been a lack of self-assertion when it was needed. To gently, but consistently, advocate for my family and our needs, as I did in fits and sometimes temperamental piques in the past. While I did attempt this, there have been times I failed miserably, making difficult situations worse or failing to achieve what my family needed.
My wife has said that in the marriages she feels are best the women are strong-willed and outspoken and the men are milder that most men. I see this a little differently, harkening back to the early years of my relationship with my wife, during which I learned a lot about what was needed from me to support a strong and loving family, setting aside the crude and self-obsessed pursuits of my younger self. Reflecting on this with another family man, he and considered our transformation from youthful, self-centered, and sometimes impetus men seeking to “take the world by storm” and being drawn through our desires for companionship, love, and sex to mature into men who seek to be helpmates to our lifelong partner and the family and friends that came to surround that center.
In fact, I do not view myself as mild per se. Rather, I seek to be extremely passionate and persistent, using the resources we have while avoiding bluster and fits—if I can control my temper—and sustain a life around my family and community that builds the future of our lives. My challenge is to assert myself in the way that a squirrel grows an abundant forest for her descendants, providing them a gift of stewardship and the habits and resources to sustain them for eons in the joyous Earthly river of life flowing into eternity.
Now, as flowers bloom and the fields and gardens provide us with abundant food, I tell her “The Earth has awakened and is giving us many gifts.” Pink early Lilies, bright yellow Stella d’Ora and Coreopsis, vibrant orange Day Lilies, and fiery Chinese Red Lilies mixed with deep-hued red Bee Balm have followed one after another in the progression of days. The red Lilies, a gift of my hard-bitten, colorblind brother to my silently self-victimizing Mom were salvaged from her yard after she passed, only a couple of years prior to my brother’s passing, serving me as a reminder in this season that love can be expressed so subtly behind the defensive masks we wear that it is sometimes only visible in the reflection of our shared pasts.
June has provided many gifts from the Earth, including an ongoing abundance of Asparagus, Lettuces, Sylvetta Arugula, Kale, Turnip Greens, early Tomatoes, and many other foods, including a surprise of a robust and perfectly shaped Chicken of the Woods mushroom. The season has provided numerous salads, Udon Noodles with Tofu and Arugula, frequent servings of Asparagus as a side dish and in Quiches and other main courses, Turnips, Mushrooms, and Turnip Greens stir fry, Potato and Beet Salad, Peas and Cauliflower Masala, and Hungarian Mushroom Soup. The gifts of the season’s abundance, likely to continue into the peaks of mid-summer and the harvests of fall, begins a luxurious time of our daily lives.
This has been the first year of full harvest from our Asparagus patch, which I set in with my stepson three years ago. Last year I ceased the harvest at 40 large stalks to preserve the patch’s growth in anticipation of this year, a gift my younger self gave to this year’s harvest. The abundance of this year’s harvest has surprised me, beginning in mid-April, and ceasing in mid-June—though more would have been possible—and gave us over 160 large stalks, with another 15 taken by deer.
In his victory garden book, A Manual of Home Vegetable Gardening, Francis Coulter wrote, “When a gardener cuts the first substantial asparagus stalks of his own planting and growing he may be said to have graduated in the art of vegetable cultivation. He has shown his skill and demonstrated that his interest is not the fleeting enthusiasm of a single season but is supported by the patience of all true gardeners, so that he is content to work for a deferred reward and looks forward to producing for many years one of the finer luxuries of the table” (pp. 84-85).
For me, I just wanted to supply my family with produce that they all loved. A byproduct of this has been a lesson in sustainability, reflecting the intelligence of squirrels who have for eons sown gifts of forests of nut trees for their descendants. At the same time, patriarchy’s urban god-kings have veered humanity into an unsustainable lifestyle while flattering ourselves as brilliant compared to the tiny-brained squirrel’s stewardship.
The beginning of season of abundance has been paired with my annual life reflection and atonement for my failures in the past year. This year I reread notes from the reflections of the years since 2015, when I began the practice. Reading the reflections were interesting in that many of the challenges I spoke of and feared seven years ago have changed, been met, or passed through losses, such as the passing of my dear mother-in-law a week after the passing of her beloved and only sibling. Yet, for the profound losses, our family and community has received the mysterious gifts of abundance and growth, largely moving on from the challenges and worries that haunted my mind.
I noticed that challenges appeared, fell into crises, and prompted us into action. This time-immemorial approach of humanity—to avoid sowing gardens until hunger threatens and ignore threats to the essential needs of life until we cannot sustain ourselves much longer—threatens us individually and collectively. It is the profound, mysterious, and somewhat random luck given to our family for many years that our challenges have largely been resolved. Seeking to reflect on this past, I looked at the events of past years and my role in them.
After reflection, I came to the surprising but not-so-surprising recognition that central to my failures in the past has been a lack of self-assertion when it was needed. To gently, but consistently, advocate for my family and our needs, as I did in fits and sometimes temperamental piques in the past. While I did attempt this, there have been times I failed miserably, making difficult situations worse or failing to achieve what my family needed.
My wife has said that in the marriages she feels are best the women are strong-willed and outspoken and the men are milder that most men. I see this a little differently, harkening back to the early years of my relationship with my wife, during which I learned a lot about what was needed from me to support a strong and loving family, setting aside the crude and self-obsessed pursuits of my younger self. Reflecting on this with another family man, he and considered our transformation from youthful, self-centered, and sometimes impetus men seeking to “take the world by storm” and being drawn through our desires for companionship, love, and sex to mature into men who seek to be helpmates to our lifelong partner and the family and friends that came to surround that center.
In fact, I do not view myself as mild per se. Rather, I seek to be extremely passionate and persistent, using the resources we have while avoiding bluster and fits—if I can control my temper—and sustain a life around my family and community that builds the future of our lives. My challenge is to assert myself in the way that a squirrel grows an abundant forest for her descendants, providing them a gift of stewardship and the habits and resources to sustain them for eons in the joyous Earthly river of life flowing into eternity.
Natural Justice in Natural and Human Communities
As the sun’s light slowly ebbs of the sky, we are in the heat of the “Dog Days of Summer”—late July and early August. The normal heat of summer, exacerbated by global warming making our temperate climate more subtropical with its weather. With hot, humid days punctuated by frequent and sudden downpours, our area has a preview of what will become more common for our children and grandchildren.
The global climate change, precipitated by urban humanity’s imbalanced consumption of the abundance of nature, is a dreaded outcome for humanity that is the procession of natural justice. Though incomprehensible to people believing the arrogance of urban god-kings who insist the Earthly world is a servant of humanity, it is a grim reminder to humble people that this Earth has made us, rather than was made for us.
The contemporary god-kings of the larger human world jockey for power-over through war, politics, and money, all the while maintaining that their cause is righteous and noble while the causes of their rivals are evil. The common people at the bottom of hierarchies struggle to survive in the midst of war zones, climatic change, and impoverished and oppressed communities, all abandoned by the god-kings as necessary sacrifices to their “higher” causes. For many common people, facing the natural justice of our collective future is too much, resulting in delusional visions that hide reality from our arrogant, human-centered minds. Yet, seeing the slow, predictable workings of natural justice, it is obvious that many current political and military conflicts are marked by the overreach of patriarchs trying to re-establish a world and cultural order whose time has passed.
Meanwhile, in my family’s personal world, the beginning of the season of abundance has brought us many gifts of food waiting to be processed. Cauliflower, Potatoes, Cabbage, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Onions, Zucchini, Garlic, Kale, Turnip Greens, and more are filling our home, waiting to be turned into meals to feed out bodies and spirits. We have had meals of Turnip Greens and Tofu in Peanut Sauce and two Punjabi Indian Cauliflower meals, one with Potatoes and one with Peas, as well as turning Kale, Garlic, and Cheese into Toscano Pesto to be frozen for future meals. Cabbage has begun fermenting into Sauerkraut with Caraway and Garlic and Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Basil, and rice has been turned into Basil-Tomato Salad. In addition to Cucumber Sandwiches nearly every day, we have also made an Ethiopian Stew, Coleslaw, and Ratatouille.
By sharing our community with skilled, hard-working growers and a natural community to support their efforts gives us the gifts of healthy, fresh, and tasty food in our daily lives. Despite the hardships of the larger human world, our family and community celebrate abundance that many long for. We wish this for the whole world.
In our small, human community, we’ve also seen a miracle of natural justice through the hard and faithful work of a kindly and meek neighbor. Our neighbor and her husband moved in near us and next door to a troubled single father who seemed to delight in upsetting people, sometimes frightening them, and was said to be a serial date rapist. Despite a series of unnecessary and purposeful conflicts with neighbors and sometimes police, the man was supported by an enabling and apparently well to do Mom who bailed him out of trouble, sometimes literally, while he antagonized people and seemed committed to living the rest of his life in a community where he was locally infamous. Normally, such people will eventually wear out their welcome and decide to leave, but with his steadfast pleasure in causing conflict and being disliked, it seemed that he would never leave.
Meanwhile, his kindly and devout neighbor sought to work with him, set aside grievances again and again, and find ways to gain his trust and, potentially, influence him. Though the woman and her husband practiced peace and compassion with him, it seemed fruitless and there must have been many nights where their faith in natural justice was sorely tested.
Then, by a series of ill-fated moves, the neighborhood nemesis hired roofers who mysteriously disappeared while working on his roof, leaving holes in it while there were heavy rains. Whether this was purposeful on their part, perhaps in retaliation for some injustice he did to them, no one seems to know. However, the effect was devastating. The inside of the house, already in decline, was ruined by the pouring rain, making the house unlivable. Natural justice caught up to him and his mother’s stratagems, forcing them to sell the wrecked house and him to leave the community, much to the relief and joy of many.
However, the miracle of natural justice laid not only in his being expelled from the community; it also occurred in the form of the young man who bought the wrecked home. The young man, industrious and mild, was a friend of the brother of the kindly and devout neighbor who had sought peaceful co-existence with the entitled adult brat. The new neighbor, seeing that the peaceful and faithful couple have young children at home, made a point of asking them when the children’s naptimes were, so that he would know when not to use power tools during their sleep.
“I thought, ‘Wow,’” recounted the young Mom, “’This is going to be a big change.’”
As part of the reclamation of our nearby neighborhood, several new neighbors have bought houses in the last couple of years, living next door to people who have lived here for several decades. To celebrate the revitalization and welcomed change, my wife and I hosted an afternoon get together with the new and old neighbors. Much to our happiness, we found the neighbors enjoyed each other’s company very much, sharing food and conversation for three very pleasant hours.
As chance would have it, the only day that would work for the gathering was on my birthday, which normally is a low-keyed and somewhat private day for me. For my wife and I, the timing was part of the mystical nature of this welcomed moment. More importantly, we were privileged to see that the seemingly impossible attainment that “the meek shall inherit the Earth” was made real through the peaceful strength of the devout neighbors. The miracle of natural justice, so often overlooked in our troubled human world, provided us with more than we would have hoped for only a couple of years ago.
The global climate change, precipitated by urban humanity’s imbalanced consumption of the abundance of nature, is a dreaded outcome for humanity that is the procession of natural justice. Though incomprehensible to people believing the arrogance of urban god-kings who insist the Earthly world is a servant of humanity, it is a grim reminder to humble people that this Earth has made us, rather than was made for us.
The contemporary god-kings of the larger human world jockey for power-over through war, politics, and money, all the while maintaining that their cause is righteous and noble while the causes of their rivals are evil. The common people at the bottom of hierarchies struggle to survive in the midst of war zones, climatic change, and impoverished and oppressed communities, all abandoned by the god-kings as necessary sacrifices to their “higher” causes. For many common people, facing the natural justice of our collective future is too much, resulting in delusional visions that hide reality from our arrogant, human-centered minds. Yet, seeing the slow, predictable workings of natural justice, it is obvious that many current political and military conflicts are marked by the overreach of patriarchs trying to re-establish a world and cultural order whose time has passed.
Meanwhile, in my family’s personal world, the beginning of the season of abundance has brought us many gifts of food waiting to be processed. Cauliflower, Potatoes, Cabbage, Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Onions, Zucchini, Garlic, Kale, Turnip Greens, and more are filling our home, waiting to be turned into meals to feed out bodies and spirits. We have had meals of Turnip Greens and Tofu in Peanut Sauce and two Punjabi Indian Cauliflower meals, one with Potatoes and one with Peas, as well as turning Kale, Garlic, and Cheese into Toscano Pesto to be frozen for future meals. Cabbage has begun fermenting into Sauerkraut with Caraway and Garlic and Tomatoes, Cucumbers, Basil, and rice has been turned into Basil-Tomato Salad. In addition to Cucumber Sandwiches nearly every day, we have also made an Ethiopian Stew, Coleslaw, and Ratatouille.
By sharing our community with skilled, hard-working growers and a natural community to support their efforts gives us the gifts of healthy, fresh, and tasty food in our daily lives. Despite the hardships of the larger human world, our family and community celebrate abundance that many long for. We wish this for the whole world.
In our small, human community, we’ve also seen a miracle of natural justice through the hard and faithful work of a kindly and meek neighbor. Our neighbor and her husband moved in near us and next door to a troubled single father who seemed to delight in upsetting people, sometimes frightening them, and was said to be a serial date rapist. Despite a series of unnecessary and purposeful conflicts with neighbors and sometimes police, the man was supported by an enabling and apparently well to do Mom who bailed him out of trouble, sometimes literally, while he antagonized people and seemed committed to living the rest of his life in a community where he was locally infamous. Normally, such people will eventually wear out their welcome and decide to leave, but with his steadfast pleasure in causing conflict and being disliked, it seemed that he would never leave.
Meanwhile, his kindly and devout neighbor sought to work with him, set aside grievances again and again, and find ways to gain his trust and, potentially, influence him. Though the woman and her husband practiced peace and compassion with him, it seemed fruitless and there must have been many nights where their faith in natural justice was sorely tested.
Then, by a series of ill-fated moves, the neighborhood nemesis hired roofers who mysteriously disappeared while working on his roof, leaving holes in it while there were heavy rains. Whether this was purposeful on their part, perhaps in retaliation for some injustice he did to them, no one seems to know. However, the effect was devastating. The inside of the house, already in decline, was ruined by the pouring rain, making the house unlivable. Natural justice caught up to him and his mother’s stratagems, forcing them to sell the wrecked house and him to leave the community, much to the relief and joy of many.
However, the miracle of natural justice laid not only in his being expelled from the community; it also occurred in the form of the young man who bought the wrecked home. The young man, industrious and mild, was a friend of the brother of the kindly and devout neighbor who had sought peaceful co-existence with the entitled adult brat. The new neighbor, seeing that the peaceful and faithful couple have young children at home, made a point of asking them when the children’s naptimes were, so that he would know when not to use power tools during their sleep.
“I thought, ‘Wow,’” recounted the young Mom, “’This is going to be a big change.’”
As part of the reclamation of our nearby neighborhood, several new neighbors have bought houses in the last couple of years, living next door to people who have lived here for several decades. To celebrate the revitalization and welcomed change, my wife and I hosted an afternoon get together with the new and old neighbors. Much to our happiness, we found the neighbors enjoyed each other’s company very much, sharing food and conversation for three very pleasant hours.
As chance would have it, the only day that would work for the gathering was on my birthday, which normally is a low-keyed and somewhat private day for me. For my wife and I, the timing was part of the mystical nature of this welcomed moment. More importantly, we were privileged to see that the seemingly impossible attainment that “the meek shall inherit the Earth” was made real through the peaceful strength of the devout neighbors. The miracle of natural justice, so often overlooked in our troubled human world, provided us with more than we would have hoped for only a couple of years ago.
The River of Life
We are all born into a river of life that has created us from unfathomable generations of life before us and is likely to continue in some form for eons past our own time. Taking part in this Earthly
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