It is raining; the kind of rain we had per usual when I was young. Not a downpour, not a deluge, just steady, gentle, reasonable, life-giving, rain. Even after the rainstorm a couple days ago, the place I live is still very dry. Lawns are going brown and gardens are thirsty. This rain is a blessing. I am grateful.
Our sisters and brothers in Western Europe and Great Britain are sweltering in the grip of a terrible heat wave. The heat is a consequence of the way we live, of the carbon we take from the ground and spew into the atmosphere. That science (no matter what the ignorant say) has been settled since the 1970’s. It has been settled in my mind since the 1990’s, when I learned about it. Now, animals (human and nonhuman) are suffering and dying from it. Now, trees, and whole ecosystems, struggle to survive it. Now, the heat-storing oceans are flipping the script and releasing the heat back into the air. Now, we are reaping what we have sown.
Once, summers were the season of abundance and thriving. Now, they are becoming the season to survive: seasons of fire, scorch, and heat. We have managed to do this by trusting money-makers over our common-sense and communal well being. I hope our children are taking a lesson from our failure. Their future depends upon it.
Often, it seems that the things I can do to set the world aright count for nothing. My votes are often cast for someone who does not attain office; and even when they do, they do not tackle the roots of the issues, but only cover them with small bandages and call it progress. Our politics are become defunct through their own corruption.
The small acts of building resiliency: like growing and sharing food, choosing love instead of hate, practicing courage, supporting local farmers and markets, and not using poisons and chemicals on my property, may help my family and friends a bit, but do not inspire my neighbors to change, do not clear the poison from the rivers and streams or public discourse. I am a only a blip in the matrix of the human world. If you read here, you probably are a blip, too. Maybe blips do more than I can see. Maybe. I do have faith even when I cannot see.
What I know is that I will continue to blip, because that is my nature. I will continue to be a haven for Mother Nature, and a human-heart-home for Mystery, a woman guided by her ancestors. I will continue to listen, learn, and practice a grounded, embodied, love for as long as my soul is embodied.
Just before waking I dreamed a dream that ended with someone I love deeply calling me a cab because it was time to leave our relationship as it has been, and begin the relationship as it will/must be. Before I could go, though, I had to put on a new pair of shoes. I had to walk into a new relationship in new shoes. The old, comfy ones would not take me there.
That is where a “dream for the dreamer,” became, in part, a “dream for the people.” We must change our shoes and walk as changed people into a future we ourselves have made harder. Our old, comfortable shoes/ways have brought us to this time and place; they will bring us no further.
Courage my dears. May we lace up our new shoes and walk with one another. May we love one another. May it be so. May it be so.
