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January 11 2025 Work Party
“Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allowing ourselves to move gently toward what scares us. The trick to doing this is to stay with emotional distress without tightening into aversion; to let fear soften us rather than harden into resistance. We cultivate bravery through making aspirations. We make the wish that all beings, including ourselves and those we dislike, be free of suffering and the root of suffering.”–Pema Chödrön, Comfortable with Uncertainty And a song for you.
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December 29 2024 Walk
Restful solitude, nourishing until the days wear into claustrophobic sameness. Glass door. Rain. Tea. Chair. Keyboard. Caretaking. Glass door. Rain. Thoughts pile up, crowd worn tracks, dress themselves up for disturbing nighttime scenes. I sleep for a day, stumble into an anatomy of melancholy, wonder if the tech billionaires have found a way into my busy brain. Still rain. Still genocide, still oligarchy, still authoritarianism rising, still greed and profit and planetary destruction, still not enough affordable housing, still a sixth mass extinction, still all the suffering I cannot control. I don’t want to move, but I do. I go outside, walk through the seasonal stream, across the swampy field.…
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December 14 2024 Work Party
The last work party of 2024: We excavated trash, dug Himalayan blackberry roots, pulled ivy, rooted up herb Robert and foxglove. We tucked in baby conifers with blankets of mulch stitched in rings, the Western red cedars in particular need of this tender care under climate change. We felt the wind rush around us, watched a murmuration twist and turn above us. We found a tiny Garry oak pushing out of the ground from an acorn planted on the winter solstice one year ago, put a kite in the air for a fleeting moment, brought a whole vibe. We made space, for the trees and for each other. We arrived…
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December 7 2024 Work Party
A song for you.
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November 29 2024 Work Party
This is what it looks like to be five.
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November 23 2024 Work Party
Thirteen loppers, 11 clippers, 10 root slayers, five little shovels. Four hundred harvested and supplied willow stakes, 116 potted plants laid out by the maintenance contractor. One snake skin, three copies of The Serviceberry, four steady goat feet. 105 Scirpus microcarpus, an unspecified number of harvested willow whips, an uncountable blanket of red cedar seedlings huddled under tiny rectangular skylights. Two fleeting moments of rain, so light it barely whispered. Three hours well spent.
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November 16 2024 Work Party
Steady rain. Muddy earth. Thank you.
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November 9 2024 Work Party
U.S. Navy Reserve members from all over join us. The large branch of a horse chestnut tree comes down, taking two folding handsaws with it. Baby conifers uncovered, trash exhumed. So many gifts, so much grace.
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November 2 2024 Work Party
On the precipice. All together now.
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October 26 2024 Work Party
