The sun of early May, slowing in its ascent in the sky, gave increasing warmth to the Earth. The Earth awakened into full glory, bringing forth the first gifts of life for the new season. Arugula, Mustard, Spinach, young lettuces thinned from thickly growing rows, as well as our first full season of Asparagus, all gifts of the awakening Earth.

We celebrated Mother’s Day with my stepdaughter’s family, including her husband, our granddaughter, both grandmothers, my wife’s son, and my stepdaughter’s sister-in-law. A celebration of life, I made a special meal of roasted beet, feta, and Arugula salad with local microgreens, asparagus quiches, garlic, rosemary, and olive oil focaccia, and a fruit salad. The celebration, with pleasant weather and a shared love of family and children, marked an annual tradition of May as the month of our Mother, a time when the awakening Earth is bursting forth with life. In honoring these mothers and the sacred act of bringing forth life through eternity, we experienced the joy of taking part in the Earthly river of life that flows through human and natural communities. In a quiet but very real way, we celebrated and honored life itself.

As the sunlight grew, so did unseasonably hot days and a dry spell, throwing the Arugula and Spinach into early flowering. The plants, sensing the heat and dryness, hurried themselves in fertility, like all youths fearful of lives that will be too short, too tenuous to receive the gift of a long and easy life. Replaced by early lettuces, Turnip, Mustard, and Beet Greens, and a nearly continual flow of Asparagus from our garden.

The flowers of May burst forth in celebration of the new season, celebrating new life as always. Deep Purple Siberian Irises, pink English Roses, white lilacs, pink peonies, as well as red and white peonies given as gift by a friend all offered beauty and sweet, abundant scents filled with the desire to celebrate and perpetuate life.

In the final days of May, heavy rains came from the sky, providing the much-needed water to sustain the new and growing crops of the garden. At the same time, our food club began its season with a very fortunate harvest from the auction, including a pound of asparagus and three quarts of melt-in-your-mouth strawberries. These simple gifts, provided by hardworking, gentle, and peaceful Anabaptists (Amish) in our larger community, give us sensual pleasure that strengthens our bodies and spirits.

While the Earthly world awakens, providing beauty and sustenance, the human world twists and turns in throes of suffering brought about by the acts of violent men. Ranging from international and civil war to very young men using the weapons of war to randomly murder wholly innocent people, including young children, violent men inflict immeasurable suffering while sensitive people weep from the tragedy. The month of our Mother ends with a holiday memorializing the violent men who have died in wars by our government; it is quite purposeful that the women, children, old men, and other “collateral damaged” who were lost in these wars are not memorialized, only the violent men who did the bidding of power-overful patriarchs and died in doing so. I do not mind memorializing all the victims of war, including violent men, but realize the focus solely of one nation's violent men's deaths is a way to distract us from the immense suffering war and violence does to all of humanity.

The ending of the month of our Mother has seen the human world filled with senseless violence by violent men. When gun users cause completely needless suffering to their fellow human beings, gun users insist that the problem is not the guns they love, but gun users who use them. I agree, and in my own words, the problem is violent men, many of whom seek to invade boundaries and do grievous harm—as the violent men of the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Germany, Russia, China, and Japan have done for centuries.

The power-overful nations of the world have built their pre-eminence on violence, with bullying leaders akin to the bullying violent men who wreak imaginable suffering on the innocent bystanders. It is the essence of the millennia of patriarchy that power-overful empires have arisen through the practice of evil works, achieving passing moments of so-called greatness, and falling victim to the inevitable return of the energy they inflict onto others. Each empire has celebrated itself as superior in some way to the other nations, using this superiority to justify their invasion of other people’s communities.

As sensitive people witnessing the long history of failure after failure of the short-lived power-over of violent men, one of our greatest challenges is to remain sensitive people. It is the view of violent men that everyone should be violent, carry lethal weapons, and be ready to kill our fellow human beings. As sensitive people, we know that what goes around comes around—a restatement of the law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. If we resort to violence, we, too, will receive that violence. This reality horrifies violent men. Puritans of all faiths assure violent men that this will not apply to the violent men who follow their faith in a delusional rejection of that inevitable return, creating a cultural alliance between puritan religious patriarchs, power-overful political patriarchs, and violent men.

Many sensitive people, like my wife, cannot bear the thought of the violence that some men inflict on humanity. Her strength—imagined as weakness by spiritually empty violent men—makes her unable to pick up a lethal weapon, much less use it against a fellow human being. The challenge, in the face of a human world dominated by violent men, money chasers, and puritans, is to follow our hearts and expand our sensitive world with kindness, forgiveness, and spiritual strength. This is the work of life, the celebration of mothers, and the joyful labor of re-creating life through eons of passing time.

This includes supporting the Essential practices of re-creating life in our own daily lives. By re-creating the Earthly flow of life into the unimaginably distant future, we ally ourselves with all but the most damaged and lost of humanity. Who does not have a young life that they wish to see flourish in this hard and wonderful world? In seeing this practice among our so-called enemies, as well as ourselves, we can find common ground with those different than ourselves.

At the same time, being aware that patriarchy has infused in the male culture deep and abiding practices of one-upmanship, boundary invasion, and aggression that affects us at all levels of our lives. This includes in my young granddaughter. As she explores the human world outside our small family she is meeting a young neighbor boy her age who, for unknown reasons, wants to take her toys, push her, and dominate her. The parents, neighbors and friends, seem to accept their very young son being aggressive, waiting too long to set limits and boundaries on his extremely young attempts to dominate those around him. Even in this very small personal world, this baby man seeks to control and dominate those around him.

My wife points out that most of our granddaughter’s young male friends are gentle and do not do these things. In her circle, it is only this little boy who acts this way. A violent man might say that it is important that our granddaughter respond to the little boy with equal force—making her capable of equal aggression. A sensitive person would wonder what is wrong in the family or community of the young boy to make him aggressive. I am content to say, simply, that people are different, and some people grow up to be violent men and some people grow up to be sensitive. Whether this very young boy becomes more aggressive or turns toward greater sensitivity will only be known as his hopefully long and happy life unfolds. For my sensitive granddaughter, it is important that she be protected so that the little boy does not teach her to be intimidated by and kowtow to males—as patriarchy seeks little girls and little boys do from the earliest times of our lives.

My wife and I talked and agreed that I would talk to the Mom of the young boy. I will explain, gently, that as adults we need to be more attentive to the play of the young children. This is to prevent the young boy from intimidating my granddaughter or get her to accept being dominated and invaded by more aggressive children around her. For the sake of the Mom, who I like and have a friendship with, I will not explain the larger issues of patriarchal dominance and its parallel to violence men in our adult world. I will be brief, supportive of her, and gently but firmly protective of my granddaughter’s toys and freedom from dominance.

As sensitive people like us look out into the human world filled with violence at so many levels, we are prone to feel helpless. Our spiritual strength is in the essential acts of bringing forth life—as caregivers, community volunteers, family members, good friends, activists, artists, social workers, and many others—uniting us with the better parts of most of humanity, including many families of violent men, money chasers, and puritans. At the same time, we can look in the personal world around us and find situations where we can gently, firmly, and peacefully push for vulnerable people, including children, to be safe to be sensitive and free from bullying.

It may seem that such small acts are trivial in the face of constant violence by power-overful bullies and the young violent men who blindly obey them. Strengthening our communities through the essential acts of life while gently but firmly expanding the ability of vulnerable young people to be safe from bullying, we can act in concrete and meaningful ways to transform patriarchy from its senseless and ultimately self-destructive path. While we celebrate and honor the Earthly river of life, the power-overful empires of patriarchy will rise and fall in the inevitable outcomes of every action bringing about an equal and opposite reaction.