May has had a long cool spell, extending for most of the month, all the while the sun has been slowly reaching towards its zenith in the northern sky. Despite many days of cloud cover and rain, the month of our mothers has seen a myriad of flowers burst forth. Beautiful bluish-purple irises, a gift from a neighbor, bloomed in early May, followed by wonderfully fragrant pink English roses, a gift from another neighbor in our friendly, close-knit community. Along with these many flowering trees, bushes and vines have made May full of beautiful colors and scents.

The weather has slowed the garden’s growth, allowing early spring greens like Arugula and Spinach to last longer than usual. Along with baby Red Romaine thinned from a row of lettuce, the Arugula and Spinach has provided many salads.

On MayDay, I took a meal to my stepdaughter’s family to share with them, my wife and stepson. The seasonal meal of Arugula, canned beets and local Feta, along with our Honey Golden Ale and homemade Garlic-Rosemary Focaccia, was so enjoyable that it was requested a week and a half later to be part of our Mother’s Day celebration. We also found a seasonal spring salad of Arugula, Spinach, Strawberries and Feta cheese online, which we served later in May.

Saddleback mushrooms grew from the rain, allowing us to make a favorite spring meal, Hungarian Mushroom Soup. While saddleback mushrooms are as flavorful as more famous counterparts, we have made delicious mushroom soups and omelets from the bountiful harvests we’ve received for over a decade of it growing on the remains of an ancient Elm that sadly passed years ago. We transplanted a young Elm next to the huge trunk of the older Elm as it showed signs of passing and, fortunately, that young offspring—perhaps a child or grandchild of the elder—has grown wonderfully in the past fifteen years and is providing shade, beauty and supporting the natural community in our back yard. As always, life passes yet flourishes, as it has for unimaginable eons of time on the Earth.

Robins built a nest under a gutter on house and gave life to their babies, making us careful not to frighten the meek birds. Later in May, we saw Robins eagerly procreating, part of their joyous work of life to bring forth more offspring in this hard and wonderful world. May, the month of fertility, continues to offer that gift despite the many challenges that humanity faces.

In mid-May I went to our local gardening store for extra compost and noticed that the seed racks were virtually bare—at least 90% of the seed was out of stock. Gardening, which like the food club has seen a surge in activity, has stressed the supply lines and caused shortages. I mused that my work in local foods and gardening over the past decade included accumulating Heirloom seeds from our own crops, including lettuces, spinach, arugula, pumpkin, muskmelon, beans, peas, and a few others. Over the years, the seeds have piled up, so that I have stores of seeds selected for color, size and being slow to bolt that we can rely on. Participating in this wonderful cycle of life has prepared us for the ongoing crisis, making our work of life all the meaningful and significant.

Our food club has ramped up for new season, with new members filling the club to its limit. The club’s summer schedule begun in late May, spending over five hundred dollars buying strawberries, asparagus and other items for the thirty households in the cell.

As time allows, I am returning to work on a short book, the second in my self-empowerment series given the daunting title of “Fulfillment.” The book, behind schedule, was set aside for other work, including the rush for the food club caused by the pandemic.

As I reviewed the text, I realized that I had failed to fully cover an important part of fulfillment, which is to be thickly embedded in the work of life, moving my life, family and community more toward the center of the river of life flowing through the Earth over time. My own bias as a young, patriarchal man seeing himself as an isolated entity seeking to make his mark on the larger world had affected my view of fulfillment, decades after my journey toward the rich life of the Feminine started.

I respect the teachings of Buddhism exemplified by the Tibetan people and their leaders in exile, however, I diverge in that the crucial concept of “emptiness” as I understand it: that we are the creation of outside energies, without which we are empty of a true self. Accordingly, our attachments to our momentary connections to the short-lived, mortal world are deceptions that interfere with our eternal spiritual purpose.

From the vantage point of my journey toward the Feminine, this view pulls us away from being embedded in our families and communities. These “attachments” are not transitory to me, but rather are part of the essential re-creation of life of the human and natural soul clusters I share my journey with. It is in the work of life that fulfillment is truly attained.

As many people struggled with the emotional consequences of the crises caused by the pandemic, I found myself and my family experiencing deep fulfillment. Our lives in our close-knit family and community have been brought into deeper focus. My wife, babysitting for three days a week in her daughter’s family home, has experienced a connection with her family that many seek. My work in the community with the food club has given me activity and strengthened our organization as we helped with the work of life. This depth of life is in strange contrast to the trials and tribulations of the larger world. We simply deepened our roles in crucial life-giving good works, providing us with even more joy in our personal lives.

There is a wisdom that the idea of emptiness and non-attachment teaches, however. Because I am the creation of my surroundings, my soul might have been born into any other life: as a woman, a child raised in poverty or in an “enemy” country my nation has turned into a war zone, as a African-American or a Native American, as someone developmentally disabled, or many other challenges that I do not face. The teaching—that those we are taught are inferior or an enemy to us could in fact be our own souls in another incarnation—is at the heart of compassion and understanding spiritual consequences. Undoing the injustice of patriarchal history is a way to strengthen our future by embracing the lives of those we might have been incarnated as.

This wisdom of emptiness teaches that not only do I need to embed myself deeply and lovingly in my human and natural family and community, but also to minimize harm as much as possible. This allows our abundance to be shared throughout the wide and deep Earthly river of life. This practice is not only a way to lessen the injustice brought on by the cruelty of patriarchal invasions, dictatorships, slavery and other evils, but to embrace life more fully by extending our love of life outside the small family and community we celebrate our lives within.

Eastern religions teach that personal attachments only set the stage for suffering in our mortal world. This is undoubtably true. To love in a mortal world is to know we will lose the most important parts of our lives: our family and friends. Yet, by taking part in the work of life and embedding ourselves deeply in it, our daily lives gain a joy that cannot be given by any other gift. This reward of the work of life is the essence of fulfillment.