Category: Gratitude

A Blessing On …

a kinda sorta valentine heart – Canadian style

a blessing on the meals you cook
as democracy collapses

a blessing on your healing hands
that mend what empire breaks

a blessing on your quiet mornings
when you choose to rise again

a blessing on the stories you preserve
when others would erase them

a blessing on your vigilant heart
beating steady through the storm of cruelty

a blessing on the seeds you scatter
in neglected spaces

a blessing on your fierce protection
of all things small and wild

a blessing on the wisdom you gather
from elders and from earth

a blessing on your careful documentation
of what must not be lost

a blessing on your mutual aid networks
flowering in capitalism’s dank shadow

a blessing on your kitchen table strategies
where sly revolution simmers

a blessing on the wild songs you sing
when courage starts to falter

a blessing on your strategic joy
deployed against despair

a blessing on the future
being born in what you do

a blessing on the bridges you build
between wounded communities

a blessing on your sacred rage
that fuels the work of redemptive justice

a blessing on the hope you sustain
when vulgar bullies assault hope

a blessing on your children’s children
who will know what you defended

a blessing on the future
you dare to imagine now

– Rob Brezsny , Facebook, February 12, 2025

How much worse will it get?
I hardly have words for the rage. The fear. The bitter sadness. The grief of it all.

A book I read decades ago, When Corporations Rule the World (1995). A book written by David C. Korten, in which he shed light on the infracture and policies leading to now. Only now, it’s beyond corporations. We are witnessing the dismantling of the world with a penstroke, at the whim of a few inordinately wealthy, self-serving men.

And so when I don’t have words for the foreboding in my belly, a foreboding shared by many, I am grateful to those who do. I take solace inĀ others’ words that have echoed mine, blessing the future being born in what we each do, dare to imagine, and stand up for now.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. May it be a blessed Valentine’s Day.

It’s Like This

“What can I say that I have not said before?
So I’ll say it again.
The leaf has a song in it.
Stone is the face of patience.
Inside the river there is an unfinished story
and you are somewhere in it
and it will never end until it all ends.”

– Mary Oliver, “What Can I Say”

Finally, feeling 90% better after a wicked chest cold that made for sleepless nights, where once home, I was grateful for the guest room in which to retreat, and the prescribed puffer to lessen the coughing. Almost three weeks’ duration, the symptoms so much like the time I came home with Covid after walking the Portuguese Coastal Camino in 2022, I wondered.

Finally, through the first month of a new year, that has felt particularly dark and heavy with foreboding. While the days are lengthening, noticeable in the late afternoon, the heaviness, experienced by many in my country and beyond, persists. I don’t have to name its source. Suffice to say, I feel a gut deep fear that we are witnessing the intentional takedown of the world as we have known it.

Finally, back here writing. A friend nudged me with an email last week, wondering if I was still sharing my thoughts here, that she missed them. I have been doing the work of writing: revising, editing, and collating poetry for submissions to several chapbook contests and literary journals. I read my poem, “Epiphany,” (my last post) on that day’s Open Mic. But here, in this space, it’s been a long, fallow month.

Since returning home in mid-October from my last long-distance walk, with the most recent variant of Covid as a souvenir, my experience has been one of wandering in the liminal. Vague and restless, moody and melancholic. Missing the rhythm of daily long walks in nature. Sensing inexplicable shifts within me and the world. Seeing more apparent the contours of my “eldering landscape” with the passing of friends, and again the worry as my mother suffered another health crisis just as we headed off to celebrate Sig’s birthday on a hot and sunny Pacific coast beach. (I suspect the aforementioned chest cold a consequence, compounded by the resort’s air conditioning.) Not one typically to write it out here, instead I need to mull, ponder, and give time for subtle impressions to emerge with words.

Re-reading this post, I think I’ve simply been embodying the transition of seasons. I need to say it again to remind myself: hibernating, wintering, keeping low, deep, and quiet. And now, finally, feeling the rising energy and clarity of this new month. Despite human machinations to the contrary, February’s stirrings are an ancient signal to the promise of spring’s rebirth. Its hope echoed by my thanks to the editors who have already this year accepted and published my work… to my friend’s nudge to get back to writing here… to finding my way to my rhythms.

To remembering the world needs us. To placing my faith in the unfinished story that will never end until it all ends, despite the  man-made maneuvering and power-play posturing.

We are needed, dear friends. Much love and kindest regards. And to you who have recently subscribed, a warm welcome and heartfelt thanks.

Gratitude

thankful for the still flowering gift from my friend

“Gratitude is so much more than a polite ā€œthank you.ā€ It is the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance, the knowing that you have what you need. In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer, The Serviceberry

I had no idea what to write for this, my last post of the year. I’d read some favourite bloggers who, too, wondered, knowing social media would be replete with eye-catching memes, inspirational quotes, thoughtful musings, and the perfect poem. But walking with Walker yesterday, noticing how much colder the temperature after a week of balmy days, and nearer to the horizon the mid-afternoon sun, I listened to an Emergence Magazine podcast wth Robin Wall Kimmerer reading her essay, The Serviceberry (known in these parts as the saskatoon berry). The above quote stood out as I struggled to keep the earbuds snug and the leash loose, my first time time navigating both since Annie’s passing. I knew I had a way in to writing, even if it meant I’d be adding more of the same to the year-end mix.

Looking back on this year, with its highs and lows, loves and losses, misunderstandings and reparations, I knew gratitude’s strong and persistent thread had, as always, had carried me across chasms of felt separation into the folds of belonging. I knew that by writing poems, walking long distances, seeing beauty in the imperfection and photographing its shimmer, I was saying “thank you.”

As I continue to walk the uneven and unpredictable terrain of the “eldering landscape” – a phrase I coined at the beginning of this year – I know with growing certainty that I am companioned by others. Friends and family who, further along, offer guidance and point out it waymarkers, and folks yet to cross its inevitable threshold. For this I am thankful, for it can be an arduous and sometimes lonely trek.

In the coming days, duing the great pause between exhaling this year and inhaling a new one, may I remember that infinite possibilities reside in its vast unknown. May I remember my sovereign capacity to shape a kinder, more generous and grateful future. May we all.

“Openness of hand, tenderness of embrace, spaciousness of heart, graciousness of home, blessedness of earth, vastness of sky, for all the spaces that bid me welcome, I give you thanks.”

Jan Richardson

Dear friends, thank you for companioning me here on these pages. I appreciate knowing my words matter.

Much love and kindest regards…