Siblings, friends, a candidate, people young through middle age. More English hawthorn comes down, we reclaim ground from blackberry grow back. Humans walk through. Dogs walk through. Blackberries are plucked from cut brambles, wheelbarrows are loaded with root balls and branches, tender attention is payed to native trailing blackberry. We fill one small patch of earth with love.
Cleaver seeds ride along. English hawthorn fall. You point out the musical clatter of dry canes and sticks as they rake across the ground. Now I delight in it, too.
I made a mistake. And you made it work out anyway. Thank you, thank you for the grace.
A song for you.
New friends, familiar friends. The Molina Crew. We know each other by our names, by the water nearest our homes, by our popsicle flavor preferences. We find shade. Popsicles drip. Mango is deemed best. Pogo shovel jumps, you move downed trees and bond over tech burnout. We collectively fall in love with the weed wrench, you discover it pulls up blackberry as well as anything else. The sun embraces us, the work is everything all at once, we are right where we are meant to be.
You were all so very kind and generous. And I thank you for it.
“The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.” –former Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson
In 1970, Gaylord Anton Nelson, a United States Senator from Wisconsin, organized the first Earth Day as a national demonstration to raise awareness about environmental issues. At the time, there was no Environmental Protection Agency, no Clean Air Act, no Clean Water Act, no legal or regulatory mechanisms to protect the environment.
People across the country rallied on April 22, 1970, spurring the United States to create the Environmental Protection Agency by the end of that year, and that day, April 22, is now an annual celebration that honors the achievements of the environmental movement, reminds us of the importance of protecting and caring for the earth, and calls us to action.
This Earth Day we reflected and shared with one another:
What are some of the environmental issues you care about the most? What environmental issues can you see playing out in your community? How can we protect and restore local ecosystems?
I am so honored to be in this work with you. Happy Earth Day!
What a joy and delight to meet such heart-filled people and work alongside them for a better today and tomorrow. What a balm to now know that they are out there living their values of community and connection in all they do.
Thank you Jim, Teresa, Noah, Peyton, Sid, Karen, Cameron, Kaitlyn, and Alby. Your hearts are now forever part of mine.
To lean more about these fine humans, visit Tinte Cellars.
A song for you.
You arrive, the Elders arrive, two Christophers from Texas find their way to us through separate winding paths. We build protective cages, secure them with wooden stakes, pull ivy and wrestle Himalayan blackberry from the earth. Betty and Thelma race side-by-side through the muddy field to rest at the center of a prickly pile of English hawthorn branches. You hold a far-ranging course for two in science and nature and culture, maybe untangling a theory of everything beneath the osoberry blooms. I hear just enough to be intrigued, not enough to really know. We prop up a listing conifer. You snuggle Betty and Thelma, they gaze with beseeching eyes, give you sloppy kisses. Layers shed, skin scratched. Beautiful, watchful forest dog a witness to our comings and goings. How does this happen? How are we so lucky to be spinning through this universe together?
“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” –Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachman
The feedback feels personal and harsh, landing hard after more than a year of working diligently to be present to partner needs and desires. The path with this child feels dark and thorny. And this world. We cannot seem to change in the face of overwhelming evidence that things are not well.
Delusion gets in the way of clear seeing, of knowing the questions to ask, of discernment. We grasp for the one perfect something we believe will erase all our suffering. We cause ourselves so much suffering.
“This moment or this place is as perfect as it can be.” –Father Richard Rohr
Happiness can only be given in this moment and this place, with the hard feedback, with the conflict with this child, with all that is wrong with how we have organized our lives together. Winding among these things, inextricably entwined, is all the joy, love, empathy, belonging, courage, and everything good we could ever hope to find.
“This is a tale about the brilliant betweenness that defeats everything, corrodes every boundary, spills through marked territory, and crosses out every confident line.” –Bayo Akomolafe
Here in this brilliant betweenness we create together, we can see with fresh eyes. The scales drop, we are allowed to be, nothing is wrong. Here we accept the invitation to rethink everything, to meet ourselves as if for the first time, to not only imagine but also to create the more beautiful world of our yearning. We do this in fits and starts, separated by days and weeks, both pressing out and inviting in the world from which we’ve come.
Today we have come together doing our clumsy best to use the tools of that world to sculpt something new. We plant trees, making sure their roots are not tangled, protecting them with mulch and metal cages. We practice hope. It is magic.
Then all too quickly the mulch pile is tidied, the tool trailer packed away, and we’ve fallen apart to rest and to take the magic we created in the brilliant betweenness to other people and places.
A Red-breasted Sapsucker rat-a-tat-tats on a metal park sign.
This can be yours, I say. I am all okay with all this being yours.
There is peace in letting go.
There is joy in traveling together.
Until next time.
