Ah, summertime. Everything is lush and green, summer crops are plentiful at the farmer’s market, and soon I’ll be picking black raspberries and cherries in my own garden.
Happy Fourth of July
everyone! Let us celebrate and plan to live lives of true freedom and independence for all—women, men, LBGTQIA, black, brown, white, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian, Jew, atheist. And let us care for our mother earth with kindness and respect, thanking her for all that she does to sustain us.
I’ve been needing to limit how much news I read and watch this summer. Otherwise I become overwhelmed with it all. I do stay in touch with what is going on but then I step back and out into nature to contemplate beauty, gratitude, and kindness.
It’s the only way that I know how to stay healthy and sane. There is so much anger, fear and judgment everywhere I look. The war in Ukraine, the ongoing effects of climate change, recent Supreme Court decisions, the economy, food shortages — people are suffering hugely all over the world and in this country.
To conduct a revolution of love, we must reconnect with the reality of our system and its victims. When we tear away the ideologies, the labels, and the rationalizations, we show ourselves the truth of what we are doing, and conscience awakens. Bearing witness, then, is not a mere tactic; it is indispensable in a revolution of love. If love is the expansion of self to include another, then whatever reveals our connections has the potential to foster love. You cannot love what you do not know.”
― The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
We Need New Stories
The stories we have lived by are unraveling and new stories have not yet taken root and grown enough to sustain us. I’ve taken to counting blessings and reasons for hope along with doing what I can to move us towards a more inclusive, generative story.
Before they are able to enter a new story, most people—and probably most societies as well—must first navigate the passage out of the old. In between the old and the new there is an empty space. It is a time when the lessons and learnings of the old story are integrated. Only when that work has been done is the old story really complete. Then, there is nothing, the pregnant emptiness from which all being arises. Returning to essence, we regain the ability to act from essence. Returning to the space between stories, we can choose from freedom and not from habit.”
― The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible
Here are some things that bring me hope…
- the NATO alliance to help Ukraine that has come together and so far is staying together in their support and assistance to Ukraine
- the networks of women who are working behind the scenes to help women in need
- the incredible resilience of nature
- good people that I know who are living their values
- listening to the the Jan 6th hearings (though sometimes shocking) I have hope that hearing the truth will open some peoples’ eyes and ears
The question my friends is not just what kind of country do you want to live in, but what kind of world do you want to live in? And how can we find a way to imagining, creating, and sustaining that kind of country and world?
Yet the knowledge of what is possible lives on inside each of us, inextinguishable. Let us trust this knowing, hold each other in it, and organize our lives around it. Do we really have any choice, as the old world falls apart? Shall we settle for anything less than a sacred world?”
― Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, And Society In The Age Of Transition
I have no great strategy to offer, only love, kindness, generosity, and gratitude.
Wishing you a joyous holiday weekend.
May you walk in beauty.
Note: All photos in this post from my walk beside Medicine Lake yesterday, except for last 2 photos which are from my yard.
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