Milt Greek's Blog: The River of Life - Posts Tagged "the-essential"

Midsummer continues to be hot, but the daylight is slipping more and more into night and the woods around us have begun the preparation for the long season of cold darkness and Earthly sleep. The fertility of the season is evident in long rows of produce at the auction and food stands laden with vegetables, fruits, and much more at the Farmer’s Market. Muskmelon and watermelon, along with corn and tomatoes, have been staples in the last month in our shares from the food club. Our last share included three small watermelons and a couple of small muskmelons, providing cold, moist food to offset the heat of the days.

The abundance of rabbits—a new feature of the natural community in our neighborhood—has resulted in young rabbits making a home in our yard, providing delight to the toddlers that my wife cares for. The young human children feel a wondrous kinship with these young rabbit lives and are excited to see the innocent, beautiful creatures so closely. The rabbits, for their part, hop under the leaves of our perennials that we have left to complete their cycle of life.

Pink, red, white and orange zinnias that my wife sowed in the spring are now coming into bloom, aside the seed pods of hollyhocks and coneflowers that are fulfilling these plants cycle of life and rebirth. As years before, bright yellow and black Goldfinches are coming to our yard to feed on the coneflower seed and fulfill their partnership with the flowers by carrying away the seed to new locations.

In the hollow, Swamp Milkweed I planted in the waterway a year and a half ago are opening their seed pods while providing food for the yellow, white and black Monarch Caterpillars that they attract. As always, simply by sowing a few plants and allowing the natural community come to fruition, I am able to help our natural community become more sustainable and diverse. My effort and contribution is small, but the robustness of the natural community needs not great human effort to help it; most of all, it requires great human effort not to harm it. Industrial society, in its short-sightedness, foolishly acts with the belief that the Earth—that is so greater than we are—is our servant. Humanity’s egoistic self-worship lies at the heart of our modern errors.

A few years ago I read the Tao Te Ching—a very short book of adages that is at the root of Taoist philosophy. I thought it’s succinctness was helpful, but I realized immediately that children, the family and the smaller, private world where the traditional women’s culture has been sequestered into was ignored. For whatever value it had, this omission made it somewhat meaningless to me. I thought I would like to summarize some of what I have learned from women and the Earth in similar way. This spring, I wrote down a quick summary:

The Essential
The children must be cared for.
The community must help the parents in their work.
The community must live in lasting harmony with other communities.
The communities must live in sustainable harmony with the natural communities around them.

I also noted three important additions to The Essential:

Acting in daily life in harmony with The Essential brings joy.
Failing to act in harmony with The Essential or harming The Essential brings suffering.
Lives are free to do as they wish provided they do not neglect or harm The Essential.

Life is more than survival, so The Essential need not be the only aspect of life; however, neglecting or harming it is at the heart of most of our modern problems, both in the personal and the larger world. For all importance of family values, political leaders often give lip-service to The Essential way of life while using it as an excuse to oppress those they wish to scapegoat for our problems.

Being able to take part in the good works of life of The Essential—whether as a family member, a community volunteer, an activist, a healer or numerous other actions can bring great joy and fulfillment. That is why, for many, babies and young lives are magnets of attention and love—they are the sun of our lives, providing us the joy of their love of life.

For others, the deeply important acts of supporting communities, peace, justice, and moving towards sustainability with the natural world that determines our fate is a profoundly meaningful, if spiritually challenging way of life. It is ironic and significant that in patriarchy, our isolated, egoistic approach to life has estranged many of us from The Essential and filled our lives with lifeless things, meaningless accomplishments and little actual contribution to it.

In this culture, the magnificent work of life is set aside by many as “women’s work” and “domestic life” and activists seeking peace, justice and sustainable harmony with other communities and the natural world are condemned as “extremists” and “unpatriotic.” These are the ideas that will be tossed into the dust bin of history as the consequences from The Essential core of life catches up to the unsustainable patriarchy.

I was shown the humility of people practicing the essential tasks of life during midsummer.
During the week, I watched my wife valiantly come to the aid of both our family and the family of a dear friend. At the start of her week, she babysat for twelve hours in one day, followed by another full day of babysitting. On the third day, the mother of the young toddler in our family called before my wife had breakfast—she had injured her neck and upper back and was unable to lift her dear baby—could my wife come to help?

For the next three days, my wife was indispensable, caring for the young baby and the Mom, making food, arranging a massage and medical care, while the baby’s uncle and I did some secondary help as well and the father helped when he was off work. My wife’s week was spent deeply in The Essential life, a joyful but exhausting endeavor.

By Saturday, the young Mom was on the mend and the father was home from work, providing relief and support. My wife babysat for only a couple of hours and spent the most of the day resting, remarking how tired she was.

“How many hours did you babysit this week?” I asked her.

My wife made some quick calculations. “Forty-nine and a half,” she replied.

“You worked a fifty hour week, naturally you’re tired,” I said. Using a term I rarely use, I asked, “Aren’t you proud of how indispensable you’ve been to your family and friend’s family this week?”

“No,” replied my wife.

“How do you feel about your crucial work this week?” I asked.

“Mainly tired,” my practical, straightforward wife replied.

I cannot say how many times I’ve heard men crow about their accomplishments—many of which did nothing of real value to The Essential core of bringing forth life, some of which actually harmed this core. How important it seems to me that our culture truly values the accomplishments of families, community volunteers, activists and many others who directly better The Essential core of life through their good works. The vainglory accomplishments of leaders of patriarchy will quickly pass, often falling to ruin because the acts are out of harmony with The Essential core that will determine our individual and collective future.

Meanwhile, the quiet work of those in harmony with The Essential will foster deep, meaningful relationships and will, in the long run, stand the test of time. This belief is at the core of both my faith and my observations in the personal and natural world.

As the nights have grown longer the temperatures have dipped, allowing us to open windows and bring fresh, cool air into our home. Midsummer has begun to pass, and midsummer flowers such as purple Ironweed, bright yellow Goldenrod and other have begun to wane. In our yard, few flowers from the long summer season remain, but purple, red, white and yellow Zinnias, along with red and yellow Marigolds are still blooming, providing bouquets for our table.

The produce is still profuse at the action and Farmer’s Market, allowing us to make rich meals mainly from local sources. Cucumber-Tomato-Sweet Onion sandwiches with cream cheese, Curried Potatoes and Peas cooked in Tomatoes, Heirloom Tomato-Feta-Basil salad, Grape and Apple pie, and several other dishes have been featured in the last week.

Our garden and hollow is still productive after a midsummer lull, with our first muskmelons ready for harvest and the very first apples to be harvested from a tree I planted with my wife and our niece a few years ago. My wife has a close relationship with our niece, who we cherish and have shared many good times with.

When I first began to date my wife, I noticed that she had many intimate, close relationships with women. She would frequently speak with her friends and women in her family for an hour at a time, sharing their struggles and seeking to support each other in their journeys. As someone who grew up in an isolated and patriarchal family and community and had learned about the feminine only in an abstract, academic way, it seemed to me that it was good for me to be supportive of my wife’s web of life. I thought to myself, as I listened to my wife’s conversations with these women, that “Women’s relationships are the life-blood of the Goddess.” The strength of my wife’s connection to other women was valuable to moving her web of life forward in a positive, life-loving way.

In a similar way, while I watched the woman who is the young mother in our family grow up, I noticed that she had close relationships with girlfriends. I recall seeing a couple of birthday parties when she was in her early teens and noticing that she was surrounded by many girlfriends. I felt that this was important, but I didn’t understand exactly why.

Years later, the young Mom still has contact with many of her youthful girlfriends, some of whom still live in our community. The young Mom has also made friends with other young women, creating a community of young women who she shares time and activities with.

Following the very hard series of deaths and illnesses that shook our web of life a few years ago, including the loss of my wife’s dear mother, the young women around us underwent a wave of pregnancies and births, including with the young woman in our family. With several of the young women living nearby, the web of women friends has turned into a community of young Moms who share time, ideas and support to one another.

To me, this points to the first two axioms of life in the essential:

The children must be cared for.
The community must help the parents in their work.

The children of these young Mom are growing up in this community of mothers, meeting each other and becoming enamored with each other, sharing their Mom’s affection for each other. This community of young Mom’s is essential to fostering a robust, loving and healthy community of young families for their children to grow up into. Their many years of close connections form a strong web of life supporting the young infants slowly entering this hard and wonderful world. This community of grandmothers, mothers and children will provide a center—a womb of sorts—around the children as they grow up and begin to explore the world outside their families.

As part of the essential aspects of life, caring for children and supporting parents is crucial to the sacred re-creation of life. With a strong community of life-long and new friends for the children to grow up in, the children are receiving an advantage in life that many woefully lack. Looking back on my observation that my wife and the women in her family and web of life were in a strong, supportive community, I understand with much greater depth the importance of women’s relationships in the sacred river of life.

The web of life around these very young lives features these strong relationships between mothers and, for the most part, fathers who take seriously their roles as helpmates to the mothers of their children. Unlike eons of patriarchal fathers before, these younger men see themselves as equals to the mothers of their children. Unlike traditional patriarchal webs of life, where women and children are supposed to be subservient to a self-centered father, our web of life has empowered women in strong relationships with each other seeking to bring forth their children with the support of their partners.

I cannot know the future for these children, but I can see that whatever challenges they encounter will be softened by an inter-generational community of grandmothers and mothers, freer than past generations from dependency on egoistic, self-centered patriarchs. In that way, the journey that my wife and the other grandmothers in this web of life took to liberate themselves from being servants in a male-centered world provides a promise of a strength in the feminine that so many people are still denied. For all my worry for the future, I am comforted to see the strength this community of women provide to the vulnerable young lives who will replace us in the Earthly river of life.

The summer heat paused in late August and early September, providing cool nights and pleasant days for about a week. The cooler weather, however, has been followed by unseasonably hot and dry weather, a part of the warming climate that some do not have the strength to face.

Meanwhile, the harvests are still abundant and at the peak of production at the food auction and farmer’s market. Long rows of potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, winter squash, apples, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, beets and much more are filling the pavilion at the auction, leaving little room for the people who have come to buy the gifts of the Earth around us.

On Labor Day, we harvested Concord grapes from an orchard in the next county, as we have for about a decade, to make a mildly sweet, fruit-forward wine. At the orchard’s gate we were greeted with a huge display of beautiful pink flowers and large green Elephant Ears ornamentals. By the rows of grapes were beautiful apple trees filled with luscious fruit. We spent about an hour filling four baskets with darkly blue-black gems of sweetness. We relished the harvest and though we filled our containers to capacity, we wanted to linger to enjoy the beauty of the day.

In the afternoon, I attended the produce auction as the buyer for our food club and took the opportunity to buy ten pecks (2 ½ bushels) of Roma Tomatoes for my stepdaughter and my wife and I. Bought at the peak of the season, the high quality tomatoes were extremely cheap. It was meaningful for me to buy tomatoes not only for my wife and I, but also for my stepdaughter’s family, since our food club has helped the auction become more successful—my community volunteering has directly helped, in a minor way, provide a local source for healthy, high quality and inexpensive food to her and her family.

With the abundance of this season, I have been concerned that prices were not meeting the needs of the growers, but the auction manager told me that revenue has increased a lot with the higher volume. In fact, a grower told me that some of his family are moving to the area to grow food on his land next year, adding to the food being supplied to the auction. It is good news for the community, for the local economy, and for the ecology as well.

The following weekend my wife and I undertook a flurry of harvest season activities, including bottling 4 cases of homebrew beer and canning 27 quarts of tomatoes from our share of the harvest. We also processed the grapes, soaking them briefly in a bath to kill the wild yeast then destemming them and placing them in a nylon sack inside large ale pales. We took the grapes along with pizza and bottles of wine from the previous year’s harvest to our friends’ home, where we placed them in a freezer for the next month to help break down the cell walls.

Our friends and we ate a meal and drank the wine, discussing our lives and our families. We have placed the grapes in our friends’ freezer and shared the wine and a meal as part of our tradition for years, strengthening our relationship as part of the harvest of our work.

In areas such as ours, communities of friends and neighbors allows us the gift of sharing our lives and work with each other. The essential quality of these communities is often taken for granted and, for those without them, may seem foreign or a quaint myth from a prior time.

The importance and strength of community was recently illustrated to us when a dear friend and pillar of our community suffered a sudden and very serious injury. The woman, who lost her husband years ago but who has been a valiant, kind and deeply integral part of our community, returned from the hospital to a stream of visitors, well-wishers and people offering aid. Her refrigerator is full from gifts of food and many, including my wife and I, are offering to help in any way we can. The kindness and good will she has given others is returning, a direct consequence of her good works.

During my early childhood, my mother’s father, a farmer who had worked his way up to owning a small farm through sharecropping with horse and plough after his family lost their farm in the Depression, was struck by a serious illness in the middle of the season and was hospitalized for weeks. He was unable to tend his fields and wasn’t well enough to harvest them in the fall. For family farmers of the time, a single failed harvest could devastate the business and lead to ruin after decades of hard work.

The community of puritans would not allow this to happen to my grandfather, a kind, modest and soft-spoken man who was known for his gentle nature and his loyalty to others. The farmers around him tended his fields through the harvest, asking nothing in return. The community that my grandfather’s kindness and loyalty had built around him returned to him crucial kindness when he and his family were in need.

In our contemporary culture, strong communities like these are often lacking. However, my experience with the produce auction, which is supplied in large part by Anabaptists we refer to as “Amish,” has allowed a glimpse of communities even stronger than the one we are so fortunate to be part of. After a few all-too-short visits with an Anabaptist friend, I understand that his community is all-important to his family’s well-being. Instead of a culture that simultaneously worships and despises individuals on the top of huge hierarchies created by prestige, wealth and politics, the Anabaptist purposefully seek to live as small communities as deeply interwoven as the flowers, bees, seeds and birds that are part of the natural community around us. They do not seek anything but to live quiet lives at peace with a human world that is wrecking itself and natural communities for the worthless gifts of fame, fortune and short-lived power-over.

I believe that it is likely that as the larger human world spins itself into problems and turmoil, that the strong, quick and short-lived force of power-over will eventually collapse and the slow, lasting works of compassionate people, such as those who seek peace and sustainability, will inherit the remains of the human and natural world. It is the loving strength of our communities that can endure through the self-destructive forces of greed and violence.

This view is told in the antiquated, sexist and racist movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Not only does the community save a nearly fallen hero, but in doing so it defeats that machinations of a greedy money-chaser. Despite the stereotypical depictions of small-town communities, which overlay the bigotry that is common in them, the story is not a glamourized work of fiction; rather it depicts the spiritual and community rewards of good works that we can witness in our personal worlds.

The second axiom of The Essential is:

“The community must help the parents in their work.”

This essential practice is necessary for our human communities to thrive and to be meaningful in our lives and futures. It is this focus on families and communities that is a virtue of puritans, as well as all others who love children, families, friends and neighbors.

The small community that rescued my grandfather was also marked by bigotry, petty rivalries and scapegoating of minorities that have been reflected in our society’s past and present since Europeans invaded this land many generations ago. The ordeals of today’s larger world are no more than the continuation of struggles of a long and ignoble history, reflected in traditional bigotries of many puritan, violent man and money-chaser communities.

This does not mean, however, that future generations do not need face-to-face communities to help them begin a new life, nor that the spiritual and community principles illustrated in “It’s a Wonderful Life” are vacant from modern life. Rather, it is for people like me, who were scapegoated and cast out by a strong puritan community, to build our own strong communities, open and generous to others and supporting a diversity of families and people.

Applying the wisdom found in “It’s a Wonderful Life” has strengthened my life and the lives of those I care about. Seeking to “love thy neighbor” is more than an ideal for goody-two shoes and hypocrites. It is a principle that outlines a practical approach to community building that can strengthen our lives and the lives of those we love. By building community, especially the community that surrounds our children and grandchildren, we provide a gift to our family and friends that returns in tangible, profound and wonderful ways.

The unseasonably hot, dry spell of September continued for long past the time that we normally have cool nights and cold mornings when I would see my breath. In place of the normal weather were temperatures as hot as July, mixed with drought. The leaves of trees, normally turning bright colors of yellow and orange, simply withered into brown and fell to the ground, fertilizing the Earth despite the ignorance and short-sightedness of the human world.

After weeks of withering heat, a wet cold front blew through, gratefully dropping two and a half inches of rain in 48 hours and bringing the unnatural weather to an end. The ground revived and in the strength of their deep roots, trees turned green overnight and began the process of autumn colors. I found myself speaking with coworkers about the weather and discovered, with little surprise, that they were unable to accept the gravity of the situation or the needs of their children. One fellow, who makes bets with coworkers over “who is right” about trivial matters, would not bet me that I could provide evidence that climate change was already occurring, yet is betting the love of his children for squandering their future in his prideful ignorance.

Despite the dry and hot weather, the produce auction has continued to provide a large amount of food, including many potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples, winter squash, sweet onions and pumpkins. The large buyers like ourselves have mainly ended their seasons, so our club found little competition for the high quality, local food. At one auction, we purchased 42 half-peck (5 lbs.) bags of apples, which sell for $5 to $6 each at our Farmers Market, for $2 a bag. At another auction, the buyer provided members with potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, tomatoes, peppers, winter squash and much more, still coming in under our budget for the season.

Despite the hot and dry weather, I harvested three Musqee de Provence squash (pumpkins) from our garden, the largest weighing twenty-one pounds. We have grown the heirloom squash, which originates from the southern part of France, for years, using seeds saved from previous harvests for the next spring’s sowing.

Seeking to find a use for the large fruits, I’ve learned to make pumpkin pies from scratch. Though many who have tried it have said they don’t particularly care for pumpkin pie, they all agree that it is “about the best pumpkin pie I’ve ever had.”

During the fall equinox, we hosted a friend who asked to see our garden. I said something like, “No, you don’t want to see the garden.” I explained that over the summer I had about five and a half hours of sleep a night due to work with the food club, babysitting, my regular work, and other activities, and had let the garden go, especially after the hot drought had withered many crops.

For our fall equinox meal, we opened a robust porter, but were unable to provide the IPA that our friend requested. My wife set Zinnias, Marigolds and Hosta leaves in small vases on our table and we made a large meal of local, Asian Indian style beans and rice, salad with apples and goat cheese, plum and apple tart, and several other dishes. Our muskmelon, grown in newly broken, clayish ground was tasteless and a disappointment, a testament to the challenges of gardening in the slowly improving harvests of sustainable horticulture.

The hot and dry weather brought up for many of us the challenges facing humanity and the denial that some people in the United States perpetuate, unable to face the injustice we are doing to future generations. In the four axioms of the Essential, the changes to the climate caused me to focus on the fourth key essential practice:

The communities must live in sustainable harmony with the natural communities around them.

To me, as someone who lives in a somewhat rural community and who witnesses the human-dwarfing majesty of nature, the idea that humanity must accept the Earth as greater than our meager strivings is as obvious at the effect of sunlight and darkness on the Earth around me. I recall hearing, years ago, that pagans were called “Heathens” because they were people living in the countryside—on the heath.

As a student of history, I learned long ago that urban areas, with their large populations, wealth and organized military force, dominated economically and culturally the rural areas around them. In my own explorations, seeing first-hand the overpowering strength of nature around me, I realized that in my everyday empiricism in “the heath,” I could see that the Earth was far greater than human endeavor.

Yet, in the harsh human world, the urban god of wealth, power-over and violence holds sway, exporting a patriarchal culture that worships an Abraxas—a god-devil that delivers wealth and power-over and cruelty and hardship. Overlaying the incredibly benevolent, abundant and beautiful life-giving Earth, harsh, tyrannical human kings have superimposed their own images, making many who feel love and sensitivity toward all life question the benevolent nature of spiritual realm.

As time proceeds on, I see that the crises which face humanity are caused by neither a harsh, imaginary urban god or a cruel natural world, but rather are the result of our own excesses. The Earth, quietly and gently continuing it’s cycle of life, sleep and new life, moves into the future with an abundance and strength that eludes many who proclaim humanity as greater than the ground upon which we walk.

The rapidly increasing darkness has turned our daily life from an abundance of sunshine and warmth to long nights of stars and cold, wet weather. Following the unseasonably hot and dry spell, late October has returned to a semblance of normality. Cold nights and frosts have brought out the beauty of fall, with dying leaves on maples, sugar maples and other trees turning bright yellow, fiery orange-red and maroon.

In the garden, long neglected due to other duties, I have harvested Hutterite, John Allen Cut Short and Trail of Tears pole beans, all heirlooms provided by a local grower and seed saver. Arugula and Kale are still doing well in the garden, despite my lack of attention, and a volunteer fennel plant is still providing seeds for our homemade bread.

The food club’s season ended with an abundance of the harvest, so much so that I took a picture of one of our hauls of produce, waiting to be distributed in shares to the members. I attended a late auction after the food club’s season was completed, buying Mums, Turnips, Candy (sweet) Onions, Daikon Radishes and other seasonal crops at rock-bottom prices. Toward the end of the auction, while I waited for the sale of pumpkins to provide to a friend and his family, a bag of eight five-pound butternut squashes was bought for quarter a squash—two dollars for forty pounds of food. The buyer turned down the second bag of squash and the auctioneer appealed to the crowd for someone to buy it for the same price. I threw up my hand and said I would take it.

“You can have mine as well,” said the woman who bought the first bag out of charity to the growers.

“I don’t want it either,” I replied, “But I won’t turn it down.”

After the auction, while my stepdaughter was visiting, I dragged the forty pound bag of huge squashes from our unheated basement to show her the bounty.

“It was two dollars,” I said. “I couldn’t turn this down for that price.”

“So it can rot in your basement,” my frugal stepdaughter wryly replied.

While whether I am able to use all the squash over the winter remains to be seen, purchases that we make at the local produce auction and farmer’s market mutually strengthens our town’s community of consumers and the outlying communities of growers. This mutual dependency and lasting relationship is central to the sustainability of our human and natural communities.

We have taken grapes, harvested on Labor Day from the orchard of a grower at the farmer’s market, from our friends’ freezer and begun the process of making wine. I’ve squeezed the grapes to speed them turning to juice and added sugar, pectin enzyme, yeast nutrient and wine yeast. The grape juice and ingredients are fermenting quickly, soon to be racked off the sediment into clean glass carboys to allow the wine to finish fermenting and begin to age before bottling in January. In doing so, we continue an annual tradition that unites the grower, our friends and our families in the work of life.

The weekend before Halloween, we hosted a family-friendly costume party as part of the celebration of the season. We opened our Rye Stout ale, aged for over six months, and made Pumpkin Ice Cream using some of the butternut squash. Following our large party this summer, our Halloween party was small, made up mainly of friends that my wife has known for over thirty years, with a few people, like me, who she has only known for twenty or more years. Our face-to-face community, decades old, is a gift in the modern age of distant family and friends connected, if at all, largely by text messages, emails and social media.

Just as local natural communities of trees, flowers, squirrels and birds depend on harmonious relationships with other natural communities, our community of family, friends and neighbors depends on harmonious relationships with other communities, such as the Anabaptist growers at the food auction. Unlike some places in our world, where civil wars rage and religion, class and ethnicity are literally matters of life and death, in the abundance of our community we can set aside our differences long enough to have harmony. In other communities, and other ethnic groups, people are not so fortunate. The harmony offered to me as a white male in the US is far greater than the harmony and peace offered to many to people of color, women and immigrants.

This harmony, often taken for granted, is essential for the well-being of future generations. In the present time, the abundance found in supermarkets and the wealth of our homes can blind us to the essential need for harmony between communities. Just as my family has increasingly become dependent on the food grown by Anabaptists living without electricity or phones and traveling to and fro in buggies and wagons drawn by horses, the well-being of our children depends of the essential harmony with communities around us.

The Essential sums this up as:

The community must live in lasting harmony with other communities.

At its core, this axiom points to the futility of the patriarchal vision of the superman or the man in conflict with society. Those who seek to survive without a community or by oppressing those around them suffer the downfall of the nemesis of hubris. Again and again, the story of the rise of the arrogant, oppressive man and his seemingly unforeseen fall is the story of the covenant of bad works, repeating itself in history through generations living in patriarchy. Likewise, when communities claim superiority and oppress others, it sets into motion their own demise.

Just as my town’s community cannot survive without the food grown in other communities, the harmony of communities is essential to the well-being of our children and grandchildren. In this contentious and hard time, strengthening the relationships between our community and communities of people of different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds is the means by which the meek can inherit the Earth—not through violence and power-over-others, but through harmony from commonality with people who share a love of the well-being of all the children of the Earth.

The long nights and short days of the early winter season have been unusually warm and with little snow, causing concerned people—mainly Moms—to worry about the future in a world of global warming while others—mainly men—have expressed appreciation for the unnaturally warm temperatures. As the days lengthened, it seemed that there would be hardly any snow for the children to sled and make snowmen in, threatening not only the winter play of the young but the crops of local harvesters of Maple syrup and orchard owners who rely on the steady winter weather to slowly wake their trees from their dormant sleep.

Midwinter came with little change in the warm weather and we had our midwinter meal, opening a Robust Porter bottled only a few weeks before. Having been busy with other things, we didn’t give the porter enough time in the bottle and it was a little harsh at first. A week later, the porter has mellowed and is better with the extra time.

Scurrying for time, we also brewed a Honey Golden on Candlemas, planning to open the ale in the longer, warmer days of May. We hardly had time for the brewing, with our lives full of activities, including caring for the young toddlers who fill our days with joy. With another young life soon to come into our family, my wife has been working steadily on a beautiful quilt with pastels of blue and pearl and pictures of furry, young animals of the woods.

My wife wished deeply for snow, to allow the young toddlers a chance to play and to enjoy the beauty of winter. Soon after midwinter, her wish manifested, with a steady, slow falling of snow that coated the ground and trees in a blanket several inches thick. We walked in the beauty of the day, being sure to feed the birds that rely on our feeder for a steady supply of winter seeds.

Babysitting for two young toddlers, my wife told me that the one and a half year old was fascinated by the sight of the birds at the feeder, watching them with amazement and awe as they flew about. The young lives, if taught that the Earth contains sacred life that works in harmonious balance with itself, will have their natural love of life extend to the Earth on which humanity depends. If taught, on the other hand, that humanity has been given dominion over the Earth and may do to the natural communities whatever we seek, the suicidal hubris of patriarchy to enslave the Earth—who holds our destiny in its hands—will continue to its inevitable, karmic end.

This concept of patriarchal culture—that the urban, human god of power-over-others holds the fate of the Earth which surrounds it—seems to me deeply rooted in our daily thinking. Scientific thinkers, scoffing at the superstitious thinking of puritans, will still look at a small, wooded area and consider it to something to be destroyed and built upon, rather than a place of joy and beauty where sustainable natural communities can thrive. The urban, human god rewards those who gain money, power-over-others and prestige, none of which can be provided by natural communities that humanity depends upon. Scientific thinkers, for all the claims of objectivity, are oftentimes the servants of money-chasers and violent men who perpetuate the ways of the urban god.

In the face of patriarchy-as-normal, filled with ignorance and rewards of wealth and power-over-others for betrayal of the essential principles of life, having faith can seem as foolish. Acting on faith, by taking risks and pushing the limits of what seems possible and safe, seems akin to devoting ourselves to making snowmen who will melt rapidly in the warming air. If the urban god of power-over holds sway over the Earth and all life on it, how do we dare defy it by acting on our faith in good works?

I cannot claim the virtues of those who have acted successfully on their faith, risking livelihood for the chance to make the human world a better place. However, during the midwinter, after months of discussion with my wife, I resolved to seek a career doing good works, which, naturally, will pay less than my trivial work as a computer analyst. Rushing about to make the change, I went headlong into the uncertainty of commitments to leave my job sooner than later, so that I could take advantage of possibilities.

Time will tell if the efforts will result in a successful transition to a better career. Acting on faith, however, has help calm my inner self and relieve my conscience from an often-repeated refrain that while others suffer, I live in material abundance while contributing little to the essential tasks of life. It is these essential tasks—caring for children, being part of a community that supports parents and others in that work, working for harmony between human communities, and moving toward sustainability with the natural communities that will determine the fate of humanity—that are the center of the river of Earthly life flowing into eternity. My own actions, to try to increase my contribution to the essential good works of life, might seem senseless and foolhardy to those following the urban god of money and power-over. In my heart, however, I know this choice is long overdue.

In the quiet time after I made commitments to pursue this path, when the rushing about of changing directions was finished, I took time to make a wintertime favorite of my dear, late mother-in-law. With the snow of mid-winter finally falling, I gathered sunchoke, onions and potatoes from winter storage in our basement, combined them with cream and vegetable stock to make a thick puree that would warm our bones in the delightfully cold winter weather. Serving it with a salad including local lettuces and Arugula grown in a high tunnel greenhouse, sweet onions stored from the summer, and local Feta Cheese and with our robust porter, my wife and enjoyed the warmth of our home in midwinter.

Soon after we made the soup, the parents of the toddler in our family called and said that the Mom was sick with flu, the baby was sick again and the father was taking time off work to care for them. Knowing they felt overburdened and exhausted, we dropped off soup, salad and a few other items to lighten their load. The next day, the Mom and baby were feeling better and we babysat the young one while the Mom rested and the father worked. In these small ways, the essential good works of life makes our lives meaningful. Considering the strength of love I experience in our home life, having the courage to pursue a career of good works does not seem foolish; rather, it seems the path that life teaches me to follow.

Since mid-winter, we have had colder temperatures with fleeting, light snow, quickly melting in the following warmth. While cooler than the first half of winter, February has been marked by short cold spells with warm, rainy weather quickly cycling afterwards. Without the normal extended cold, our winter has been more like a rainy season than our normal winter season.

I encountered an old friend of my wife’s in a store and she said that her allergies, which normally lessen in the cold of winter, had acted up much more this year. We agreed that without the normal cold of the season to limit growth, the molds and other sources of allergies were more active this year. As with all things involving the Earth, changes in climate are much more profound than simply the warming of the seasons.

I have noticed carrots at our local Farmer’s Market, which diminished in past winters. The growers, hearty and resourceful, are adapting to the changing climate even as skeptics deny the reality about us. At the same time, local greens grown in high tunnel greenhouses have flourished and, as always, apples harvested in fall and kept in near-freezing temperatures in coolers are still in supply at the market. Crisp, flavorful and moist, the apples are far superior to those at supermarkets at any time of year. The greens, likewise, are fresh and flavorful, a testament to the skill of the local growers.

As during previous winters, we bottled our wine made from Concord grapes harvested at the orchard where our apples also come from. For a decade, we have traveled to the orchard in September to gather the luscious, sweet bluish black gems from the vines and process them into wine. This coming fall, as in previous years, we will open this year’s harvest and enjoy the simple pleasures of life.

Despite the warm winter, the birds began to sing territorial songs on sunny days around midwinter, as they have in previous years. The males call out, “I have a place for us, come join me, let us fall in love, build a home and raise our children in this wonderful world.” Like so many that live in balance with the natural community around them, birds focus on the simple joys of life as they flow with the Earth in the river of life.

My wife has been using tomatoes we canned last fall as the base for sauces for pasta that we take to the young parents in our family as part of the support we give to them. Their child, some sixteen months old, delights everyone with her spattering of words and her wonder at all the ordinary parts of life that adults take for granted. Meanwhile, the parents scramble to care for their child, earn the income they need to live, and do the chores of a household. Fortunately, they have family and friends nearby, so they receive some of the essential support they need.

Importantly, another new life has been brought into our family. A boy, barely seven pounds, delivered by another young woman in our family, bringing grandparents, great-grandparents and others into an orbit around a new center of life. My wife, who has made a number of quilts over the years, worked for hours on end to create a beautiful quilt for the baby, completing it just a couple of days prior to the birth.

After the parents and baby returned home from the hospital, my wife and I drove up to the parents’ new home and, along with grandmothers, brought food to help with the family’s needs. My wife gave the new Mom the quilt in a colorful gift bag covered with colored tissue paper, with the underside of the quilt—where the baby’s initials and birthdate were embroidered in a corner—showing out. The mother marveled at the underside of the quilt, which is a beautiful pastel fabric with images of furry baby animals and a diamond-shaped patchwork center of blue and tan panels, then turned the quilt over to find a remarkably beautiful patchwork of hand-sewn pastel pieces. Furry baby animals—rabbits, baby bears looking like teddy bears, and foxes—adorned the top. The young Mom, weary from a hard labor and sleepless nights, cried with joy at the site of the work of love for her and her child.

A few days later, my wife and I made a meal for the other young parents in our family. Using our winter stores of food, I pulled the white tendrils of stalks from the wrinkled potatoes I have kept in the paper bag in our unheated cellar since last fall and cleaned and chopped the potatoes for soup. I also used onions bought at the produce auction in October, cutting away some rotting pieces and chopping up the stems of new growth that shoot up from the center of the bulb. Adding soaked and boiled beans from our garden and a local mill, I made a thick cream of potato and bean soup, pureeing some of the vegetables and adding cream and flour to thicken it. My wife made a tart from local apples and we added a salad of local Arugula and Spinach. We took the meal to the young parents and helped babysit their young daughter while the parents did chores.

As the younger couples among our family and friends have brought new life into the world, our lives have become more and more about the care of young ones. We are watching these innocent lives grow and expand, feeling joy in sharing their love of life. The nearly four year old child of a close friend who my wife has babysat since he was three months old is continuing to grow in ability and personality. Recently, he completed a major accomplishment for his age: with only a little help from me, he constructed a large multi-story house from magnetic plastic tiles. I took a picture of the house to commemorate his achievement.

The children in our lives are tremendously vulnerable, as all young lives are, and wholly dependent on the family and community around them. Fortunately, these children have many family and friends around their parents, providing extra help with these all important young lives. This essential community to help the parents is part of the river of Earthly life flowing into the unknowable future, part of eons of generations that have lived on the Earth in the past. Taking part in this river of good works by bringing forth life is like sipping the cold, crisp water of a deep spring, quenching the thirst for life of all but the most hardened spirits.

During this time of deep spiritual satisfaction, I found myself encountering a version of my younger self and, in seeing my own youthful failings, thought of my wife’s philosophy that “most people just want to live, but some people want to rule.” Through work I am beginning in the community around these young lives, a meeting was arranged between myself and a young college graduate who had started at the university in town five years ago. The young man, who had stayed in our community for a year after he graduated, is hard-working, analytically intelligent, and very political in his approach to life, much as I was prior to psychosis knocking me off my college career path.

The young man has volunteered extensively with local political leaders and on various community boards, building up his resume and pushing for political solutions through his connections at the top of local hierarchies. He sincerely believes his efforts will improve our community and he is gaining influence with leaders, all the while having little contact with ordinary people in our community, except when he canvasses for political campaigns.

I met with him to discuss a plan he has been advocating with his political connections, but the meeting ended quickly and badly. I asked him how long he intended to stay in the community he is working so hard to affect and he indicated that he might leave within six to twelve months. I argued with him that if he wanted to affect a community he should do the work he is advocating be done and live with the consequences of his own actions.

I advocate this with everyone, since protection from the consequences of our actions results in narcissism. Hierarchies, carrying out the will of people who rule, protect the rulers from these consequences, leading to spiritual corruption perpetuated by the covenant of bad works. The young man, who sincerely has good intentions, is using his privilege as a well-to-do, well-educated and ambitious white man to seek to change a community he is not really a part of nor is likely to stay in for long. Like my younger self prior to psychosis, he is seeking to rule over people for their own good, to use the principalities of power-over-others to enact his will, but will never truly know the effect of his actions.

As I came to understand his view, I should have immediately asked him to leave. Instead, I became angry and insulted him, resulting the meeting ending quickly, much to my satisfaction. After the meeting I reached out to others more connected to the political and organizational hierarchy and found he was fairly well known to leaders, but unknown to ordinary people in our community.

In doing this, I realized clearly how foreign the views of ordinary people who “simply want to live” are to the hierarchies of “people who want to rule.” In our human world, the idea that leaders should live with the consequences of their actions is simply impractical. How can leaders of hierarchies—affecting communities throughout the world—possibly know their effect in meaningful terms? Yet how can anyone seek to control their own fate without interacting with the hierarchies that channel money and power-over-others?

One of the most faithful things a person can do it to support our families and communities in bringing forth life without seeking to control other communities and other people. Can ordinary people like us who simply want to live avoid being the tools of people who want to rule while also avoiding being their victims? In the millennia of patriarchy, the worship of the man with power-over-others has become deeply embedded in our culture; our larger culture and traditions knows little else. Our culture’s solution is for the righteous to mount these hierarchies and right the wrongs of others. Paths into the higher reaches of these hierarchies are walked by young people with good intentions and an ignorance of corruption that power-over-others breeds in those who the urban human god gives it to, perpetuating our sad history.

As a young person, my own journey toward the centers of power-over-others was aborted by my psychosis. In looking at my younger self, I tend to see not only the good intentions that I spoke so passionately about, but also my unconscious desire for power-over-others. From my older vantage point, thickly embedded in a family and small community that is seeking to bring forth and celebrate life, I am grateful that my early failures led me to people who just want to live and away from people who want to rule.

As sunlight has ever-so-slowly diminished following it's peak during Summer Solstice, the normal heat and humidity of early summer has returned, bringing on white and bright pink Lillies, red Bee Balm, purple Coneflower, white Queen’s Anne Lace, red Trumpet Vine, deep purple Morning Glories, pale blue wild chicory and purple Butterfly Bush. The warmth has caused mid-season crops to burst forth, providing summertime favorites like corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions. In addition, harvests of garlic, turnip greens, lemon balm, zucchini, yellow squash and a myriad of other foods has filled our homes and dinner plates with wonderful food. In place of the cooler and more tolerable temperatures earlier, the joy of the season is now in the luscious, fresh and healthy food provided by local growers.

With the change in my schedule, I have had more time to accompany my wife on her work as a babysitter and helper with my stepdaughter's young family. I have pitched in with some yard work and preparing some meals, a couple of weeks ago including local sweet corn and tomatoes. The choices seemed popular with my stepdaughter, so I brought more the next week. After telling her this she said, "I was hoping you would bring corn and tomatoes." I was glad that this simple gift of the abundant season pleased her and her family.

Despite the plentiful harvest, the effects of the pandemic have challenged produce buyers in our food club. Normally, the club will pay wholesale prices for wonderfully healthy and tasty food sold in large lots by the local growers at the auction. This year, however, global and local supply lines have been shifting rapidly. While some restaurants and suppliers have closed or lessened orders, there has been an influx of large food clubs and emergency food aid grants, bringing many more big-budget buyers to the auction.

Our community’s local food donation hub was approached by a ten-county community organization given emergency aid money to food security to many dislocated workers. As a result, the hub is now bringing two large buying accounts to the auction. Meanwhile, a nearby medical provider began a large food club, buying food for nearly 150 households and providing bidders a buying budget triple our club’s substantial clout. As a result, for the first time in the auction’s history, prices for premium products like sweet corn, tomatoes and other items have doubled or tripled from previous levels and are at or above the prices at our local Farmer’s Market. The auction itself has reached out to additional growers, some of whom have seen their markets close, seeking to meet the upsurge in demand. As I left the auction after buying for our club, I sincerely thanked the auction manager for his more than decade-long work to develop this crucial local food source. He kindly thanked our club, since our participation over the past decade has helped ramp up the auction’s capacity to serve our region during this crisis.

Ironically, while the growers at the auction are for the first time since its inception receiving fair market prices for their wonderful, life-sustaining produce, the rise in prices creates huge challenges for our club, which markets itself as an affordable source of local produce. Our buyers are discussing strategies and options as we seek to supply our 60 or so households with the same amount of high quality, local produce that we have consistently provided for nearly ten years. Despite the challenge and worry, it is a deep fulfillment to be a decade-long contributor to a vital service in the midst of a world-wide medical and economic crisis.

Meanwhile, in my spare time, I have reflected on my career change, which includes returning to college to gain credentials to work full time in the field of mental health and recovery. It is area I have devoted many hours to over the past two and a half decades, volunteering, researching, writing books and providing training and presentations, but it is one that I have not been able to work in full time. For the past two decades, well-meaning and good-hearted people suggested that I pursue a career like this, where there is so much need, and I have long felt guilty that I have led a more financially rewarding path while failing to do good works in my career. I imagine that more than one person has felt the change was long overdue.

In the spiritual abstraction of good works, I can see the argument that I should have made these changes sooner. After all, advocating good works is about more than urging others to be kind--it is about living a devotional daily life. However, in the context of my life, I felt that my responsibility was first and foremost to provide a stable foundation for my chosen family.

For years, my wife's family including caring for my very dear and kind mother-in-law, who in her later years provided joy and love to all her knew her. It also includes my wife's chosen family, who have kindly accepted me as a somewhat goofy, odd-acting person from a foreign family culture far different then their own. Where they have practical skills, my original family has educational theory; where they have humor, my family has sober reserve; where they have diverse musical and artistic talent, my family is centered on words, numbers and news.

Yet, they could see, for all our differences, I struggled to help my wife and her family from the earliest times of our relationship. This was the application of an early lesson from my experience of patriarchal arrogance, which had been deeply, but unconsciously, ingrained in my youthful ambitions.

As a young man, I placed my career plans ahead of any relationship, including with a young woman who I thought I loved. This, of course, is not uncommon in patriarchy, where the fathers have announced that it is the will of the god of the universe that women serve men, especially as obedient wives.

Though I thought of myself as a liberal, pro-feminist young man, I was narrowly centered on my personal ambition, causing me to act with little regard for those I claimed to love. This was simply an extension of the patriarchal culture in which men usually see ourselves as in a personal struggle with the larger human world, seeking to take the world by storm and assuming happy relationships and harmonious families as our birthright.

Forced to face my arrogant shadow during my psychosis, I realized that I had little actual understanding of the Feminine or women I knew. Seeing the importance that I, as a man, embraced the Feminine, caused me to spend many years earnestly learning from the women around me and studying the philosophy and spirituality of modern women theologians. Eventually, my journey led me to my wife and her family. It is a gift that few men truly receive and fewer appreciate.

Applying my abstract ideals to our lives, I decided that I would try to be a helpmate to my wife in strengthening her family. This made intuitive sense--I knew that as our family thrived, my wife, and thereby me, would be happier; as the family suffered, so would my wife and I. In time, I expressed this journey as the first two tenets of The Essential:

The children must be cared for.
The community must help the parents in their work.

Since my wife was the primary caretaker of her family, I was to be her helpmate, though I was not their biological father. This was of no matter; their fates are intricately interwoven with ours. The essential failure of patriarchy is that the wife is to serve her husband and their children are to be under his domain, draining time, energy and strength from the family center and into centers created by patriarchy, such as the pursuit of war, money, partying, religion, abstract education, sports, and other things. These male-dominated centers often have no real value to the children of the world and, in some cases, are anathema to the needs of a happy home.

As an arrogant and privileged young man in patriarchy, I sailed expectantly into one of these centers, constantly complimenting myself on my supposed virtues and assuming my personal ambitions would automatically make the world a better place. These lofty goals were more important than my brief and emotionally distant but often sexual relationships with the young woman I dated. I did not need to really think about the relationships around me, or consider those whose lives I touched, because I thought I was acting on “higher ideals”.

This essential failure of the patriarchal culture blinds many into a way of life with little concern for future generations. A partier need not worry for the hearts he breaks or the children he fails to care for while fulfilling his lusts; a money-chaser need not worry about his carbon footprint to be become rich; a violent man need not consider the "collateral damage" he does to win his "glorious victory"; a puritan need not consider the harm done by abusive husbands and fathers to fulfill his view of holiness; a thinker need not consider the harm his discoveries do in the hands of violent men and money-chasers to be a respected scholar. In these male-created pathways, rather than serving the family and future generations, individual men and compliant women have created an unsustainable larger human world as a direct consequence of the pursuit of their goals.

On the other hand, a childless gay man may seek to reduce bullying of youths; a childless feminist may work tirelessly to help women and children escape abusive families; a childless straight man like me may seek to help his wife's children. Our lives are made better for the effort and our family, friends and community around us are strengthened. The promise of acting in accordance with The Essential principles is the good works will return to us in some way. Moreover, it makes daily life joyful because it brings us into the true center of Earthly life.

The privilege my past career has allowed me to provide a financial foundation for my family, focusing my good works on that center. It has brought a depth to my relationships because it was paired with sincerity and vulnerability. The greatest risk is that I would become a corrupt money-chaser, forsaking good works and the well-being of my family for the pursuit of money. For all his anger and arrogance, my younger self would maintain that is exactly what has happened to the older man who has led a largely materialistic life.

In looking back at the unhappiness and stress I felt in my old career, which common among of the money-chasers I worked with, I can see that my change into a career of good works for much less money is essential. A true money-chaser, prizing acquisition above all else, would have worked many years in declining health and bitter unhappiness. He would have found that not only he can't "take it with him", but that he also never really attained true happiness. The Feminine's reward I’ve received over the years is that by following The Essential principles to care for my family and community I’ve experienced the deep happiness of taking part in the Earthly river of life. Had I walked this same path primarily for acquisition and satisfaction of my own ego, I would have never experienced the bliss I have been given. It is this true happiness that must, as is commonly said, be given to be received.

As the sunlight rapidly fades from the evening skies, the darkening night has brought cooler temperatures and morning fog to our area. After the long, hot summer, people have been outside more, enjoying the cooler temperatures and seeing first hand the beauty of the Earth around us. Several people have remarked to me that fall is their favorite time of year because of the cool weather and the beautiful colors of changing leaves.

On walks with her granddaughter, my wife has gathered an abundance of wildflowers growing along the road near my stepdaughter’s home. Bringing the colorful flowers back “for Mama”, my wife and our granddaughter have brought in fall flowers of bright yellow Goldenrod, pale blue Asters, tiny white wild Daises and black and yellow Black-eyed Susan. As the dying light fades from the sky, the Earth still celebrates the beauty of the re-creation of life.

Our food club, adjusting to the heavy competition for local food, was able to complete the second half of the season with a number of successful auctions. Corn, potatoes, melons, cucumbers, green peppers, onions, and many other items were bought at near wholesale prices and split out to our members. While the outside world struggles with pandemic, conflict, and hatred when humanity faces a common foe, our family and community have continued in the deep joys of the essential work of life.

Relatively untouched by the hardships of the outer human world, our privileged skin, economic good fortune, the safety of our small, diverse community, the abundance of the Earth around us and the strength and joys of our family has made the cataclysms our the outer world more poignant, more senseless and eternally distant from our heavenly moments. While we have watched hatred rise higher and higher, the simple joys of our close-knit family and the abundance of the Earth have made us deeply appreciative of all that we have been so mysteriously given.

It is the nature of the essential work of life, of raising children and surrounding the caretakers with a community supporting them, that there is a joy in every day and a profound gratitude and wonder for the miracle of the re-creation of life. Everyday tasks of making food, choosing clothes for the baby to wear, walking with the young life, and reading stories become a string of blissful moments, united by growing feeling of love for the circle around the newborn. The essential tasks of raising a family and providing community support around are deeply joyful work, a gift for all.

A week after Labor Day, we made our annual trek to the orchard where we gather Concord grapes for wine. To my surprise—though perhaps I should not have been—the orchard had been picked nearly clean of Concord grapes. Many people, worried for the winter of pandemic and conflict, had come to the orchard as never before and taken the gifts of luscious grapes to provide for them in the worrying future.

The owner, a kind, generous man whose father had begun the orchard over seventy years ago, treated us to a ride in the woods he and his wife are preserving, showing us several ancient trees. The man, kind, simple, happy and contented, munched on a poorly formed apple damaged in the spring by frost, and discussed with awe and wonder that “a million lives are centered on each of these trees.”

Raised by his parents on the orchard, raising his children on the same orchard, and providing the community with abundance and joy in the re-creation of life, the man’s essential life work gave him a profound happiness that cannot be bought at any price. After we left, I told my wife, “He’s trying to preserve the woods, so he could be a Democrat, but he’s a small businessman in a rural community, so he could be a Republican, but either way his work is the work of life.”

At my previous worksite, I worked with a couple of violent men-money-chasers who sought to contribute to their community and thought of themselves as family men. They attended church, did volunteer work, and sought to be good fathers to their children. In that way, they were doing the work of life, but they did not have the deep, contented joy of the orchard owner. Despite their work for their community and their family, these angry men were actively hostile and hateful towards outsiders and those they saw as inferior. Rather than experiencing the profound love of life that the work of family and community has brought us, they are bitter and mean-spirited.

The third axiom of The Essential is The community must live in lasting harmony with other communities. By working for their families and their church communities but hating outsiders, these bitter men destroy true happiness in two ways. First, they spread hatred out from their lives, harming and damaging the lives of those who wish for happiness but suffer hatred of being “the other.” Their hatred of others, not only damaging the happiness and strength of other communities, returns to them and their communities, resulting the generations of traditional hatreds still being played out in the larger human world. Also, through natural justice, their hatred destroys their own true happiness, tamping out their joy of life and filling it with bitter remorse. For all their family and community efforts, they do not experience true happiness. While they attempt to find solace in material gains and short-term accomplishments, these are hollow and valueless attainments. They reap the bitter harvest they sow.

In the declining light, spiders weave their fall webs and my wife creates beauty from natural wreaths and dried flowers from past joys. Even in death, the joys and beauty of life are evident. As natural justice moves forward, slowly, inevitably overcoming the machinations of power-over-others, many worry that “justice will not be served.”

It is true that the arc of justice is slow, proceeding through generations. Regardless of today and tomorrow, the hatred sent out by those with power-over-others will, eventually, bring ruin to those same bitter rulers. The Essential Earthly river of life will continue, sweeping away those living out of harmony with the essential axioms of life. Meanwhile, doing the joyous work of life without hatred for others opens the soul to profound heavenly moments on Earth. As wise people of color have said, “Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

The rapidly increasing sunlight has continued from the spring equinox through mid and late April, bringing with it a succession of beautiful flowers, blossoming trees, and young sprouts. We gathered self-seeded Arugula that had wintered in our garden along with wild onions that grow throughout our town, followed by ramps, a garlicky early green that we used in omelets. In our garden, tender young plants including peas, red romaine, and oregano are rising from the still cool soil towards the life-giving light. The first asparagus stalks from a bed we started three years ago are appearing, hopefully marking the start of years of productivity.

The spring in our area, always beautiful, has been remarkably so this year. Pale purple periwinkle, bright yellow and white daffodils, beautifully scented ivory hyacinths, and lemony Forsythia have been followed by reddish purple money plants, yellow tulips, Virginia bluebells, white Star Magnolia, and pinkish-purple Sugar Magnolia. As usual, the beauty of the Sugar Magnolia trees was suddenly cut short by a hard freeze in early April. However, following the cool-down, the warmth returned and the Earth blossomed in earnest once again with abundant flowering Crabapples, purple Redbuds, and White and Cherokee Red Dogwoods. Amid the beauty, we experienced “Dogwood Winter” in true form—a cold snap that brought light snow to our area, forcing us to cover our tender young greens.

I asked another gardener whose family is from southern Virginia if she has heard of Dogwood Winter and she quickly spoke of her Mom’s “three winters of spring”—Redbud, Dogwood and Blackberry. Since Redbuds and Dogwoods bloom at the same time here, I imagine that her Mom’s Redbud Winter coincides with the hard cold that normally freezes our Sugar Magnolia’s in early or mid-bloom in late March or early April.

“My Mom insisted that there were three winters in spring,” she said. So far this year, her Mom appears to be correct.

In the midst of Dogwood Winter we drove out in the early morning to pick up our Granddaughter from her parents’ home. Patches of mist and fog came up from rivers and streams, shrouding the budding trees in velvety, white-blue clouds. As we drove the toddler back to our home, we pointed out the fog, the beautiful blooming trees, and cows and horses on the hillsides. The child was delighted with the new experiences, as we shared the beauty of the Earth with our young loved one. Seeing the Dogwoods, Redbuds, and other trees amidst patches of fog through her young eyes, we felt the magic of the living world that she is experiencing for the first time. And, of course, her friend Peter Rabbit came to our feeder, providing the youngster with even more delight—a gift that our older, more calloused hearts could experience through her love of life.

Paired with this beauty was a correspondence with an old friend, who I had not heard from since my early days of college. She comes from a puritan background, as many of the people from my original county do, but she and I have always had an affinity, a forthrightness, and a mutual sense of trust and kindness towards the other. Quickly we began to catch up on decades of life passed and to my great grief she related very hard trials endured in childhood and adulthood.

At the outset, I told her that I was glad that her faith had survived her trials, since I have known that faith can be a source of strength to all people. Long ago, I realized that our spiritual beliefs are rarely chosen. Rather, the connection that we have with the sacred is chosen for us by circumstances and our deepest natures. Her trials, like so many women and some men, were caused by hurtful, selfish men, and we found, despite our differences, a commonality that women should be empowered and older women should be respected, rather than tossed aside by the mainstream patriarchal culture.

As we talked, I saw that the universality of patriarchal oppression in the family frequently unites many of us across political divides—the divides themselves are ways that fellow travelers like my old, trusted, and kindhearted friend and myself are separated by patriarchal polarity.

The unity of oppression of the family and women by patriarchs and men of all political stripes—regardless of the lip-service so many men pay to respecting women and children in liberal or conservative ways—struck me. I considered that in my own frustration, I have vented about political issues without acknowledging the ideals of others.

Accordingly, when my old friend mentioned frustration with politics, I asked her to tell me of her ideals and how she applied them, knowing that we would again find common ground. We did so once again in the ideals of caring for children and others around us in a conscientious, family-and-community-oriented way.

Reflecting on my perspective, I emailed her this simple summary:

What I try to say, when I am doing it well, in my writing and blog is "Take part in 'Woman's Work' in daily life--it is a good thing to do and it will make your life happy and fulfilling."

My old friend, hard working and conscientious, far from me in background, culture, and other aspects of life, wrote back:

“Ah, well forgive me I have worked the last 3 nights and days so I am a little slow. But truer words were never spoken.”

As always, the modesty and simple acceptance of women doing the work of life speaks volumes for the casual disregard that our culture gives to bringing forth life in our personal world—yet none of us would have grown to adulthood or have experienced true happiness had not others, mainly women, provided it in abundance to us.

A twelve-step group I am a part of makes it clear that the group is focused singularly on the problem of addictions, explicitly saying that it does not endorse or support any other cause, political, religious, or otherwise. As I consider the commonality of my friend and fellow travelers through patriarchy, I wondered if there could be a way to singularly focus on the empowerment of the Feminine in the family, particularly of the women and children who so often are taken for granted at best and, tragically, frequently harmed by varying forms of abuse by bullies, who are mainly men. A common part of the essential is that our children and families must be supported and protected by our communities. If this goal and this goal alone were attained, it is likely that most of the unnecessary suffering we endure would fade into the past.