The garden.... the great writ small and the small elevated to the divine

Gardening as spiritual practice, intellectual paradigm, & a love story

Raspberry Bee Balm or Monarda

I was explaining something to my husband, something charged and important, emotional. The reason for the tears or intensity are not relevant or even memorable, but typically this scenario is unlikely to go well -- me leaky and sore and him trying to help. But, on this day I used my garden as a metaphor to illustrate my point(s) and how I felt.   Into a grand garden-based simile went the mishmash of partially processed feelings, deep connecting ideas, and whim and I began to explain.  Using the garden and the gardener as metaphor -- spinning from concept to common practicality.

Admittedly I am prone to see (invent) large meaning from simple things.  A quality that when viewed generously is creative and exciting but turned on its tail can be exhausting (& tedious).   But, gardens are metaphors that do not run out. It is all there, the drama, the truth, the process.  The epiphany of the quotidian

The great writ small and the small elevated to the divine.
the earth and the sky - grounded and soaring - heart and intellect
A place where all of me can come and find a voice, an ally, or an example.

Everything I have learned from Buddhism, by being a Quaker, as a parent, from studying physics and the sciences, about love and how life works, is in evidence in my garden. If I want to be reminded of the Central Truth or any of the 1000 smaller neighboring truths, they are all on show and available in my garden. On this particular day using Great-Mother images of necessary-but-difficult pruning, the care of little shoots, the need for rocks as rest and edges as frames I was rewarded, my husband smiled-- little rootlets connect.

A couple of cattails at sunset

This poem came to me from The writers almanac is called "the gardener" by Ken Weisner and it speaks to some of these elements

The Gardner

by Ken Weisner
For Kit

You get down on your knees in the dark earth—alone
for hours in hot sun, yanking weed  roots, staking trellises,
burning your shoulders, swatting gnats; you strain your muscled
midwestern neck and back, callous your pianist's hands.

You cut roses back so they won't fruit, rip out and replace
spent annuals. You fill your garden dense with roots and vines.
And when a humble sprout climbs like a worm up out of death,
you are there to bless it, in your green patch, all spring and summer long,

hose like a scepter, a reliquary vessel; you hum
through the dreamy wilderness—no one to judge, absolve,
or be absolved—purified by labor, confessed by its whisperings, connected
to its innocence. So when you heft a woody, brushy tangle, or stumble

inside grimy, spent by earth, I see all the sacraments in place—
and the redeemed world never smelled so sweet. 

"The Gardener" by Ken Weisner, from Anything on Earth. © Hummingbird Press, 2010. Reprinted with permission
http://www.elabs7.com/c.html?rtr=on&s=fj6,mhln,dv,kvqx,d4h0,2m6n,mf9q

Rant for Booming-- mitigating the damage from oil blowout

Why O why aren’t we really Booming? Mitigating the oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico

I heard this as an audio and was galvanized.

There are things I know well, like Afghanistan, and disaster response (like refugee camps, post hurricane response) & on those subject I fing that watching people (us) do them poorly is an outrage, a pain, & a catastrophe. Like Katrina or the Afhgan war-- I shout at the television is despair and disbelief. The pain and frustration is unbearable. In fact, on those subjects I sound a lot like Ms. Fishgrease.




What I want to know is if it is too late to do good booming and if not what exactly is being done.

In case the suggestions or questions I have go past too fast in the video I have restated them here. Let me know if you have suggestions. I can only imagine how heartbreaking it would be to watch NOTHING happening as the oil rises on the gulf.

Based on what we hear here from this video, it sounds like there is a job we can do:
a. Get the experts to tell us what to do at this stage about booming & any other ways to mitigate the exposure to and effects of oil on the living things in the water and on shore.
b. Get boom made and delivered. If it really matters we can get the women and the equipment. Can we make more of it with sewing machines, a standard pattern, and the right “material”? If it is money-- get money and then watch it like a hawk.
c. Help in whatever way to get it in place, keep it right and use every means possible to monitor the process. Use google earth, airplanes, boats, word of mouth, radios, and real science.
d. Best I’ve found so far is called "skytruth”  Follow the oil catastrophe via Gulf Oil Tracker 
e. Maybe this is nuts and its too late. If so, tell us. But, tell us if there are other ways we can chip and do things that matter.
f. The Coast Guard is meant to guard our coasts. They should do that, we should demand that.

Our hearts go to all lives connected to the gulf of Mexico.  I've made a gallery of photos from there and add it it every day.  Hearts to the gulf

I for one would be willing to be a boom-tender.  Hopefully I would be better at it than making videos but, in both cases I am trying to improve.

Sharon

The Gulf is Your Fault -- A Story

I heard this story by Mark Fiore while listening to Best of the left podcast. It has a Grinchlike feel with humor and sharpness. I've been modifying various childrens songs with "relevant" content, so beware there may be more to come. But, Thanks to Best of the Left. This fits under "I wish I had written it" and "it only hurts when I don't laugh". We picked the Florida burrowing owl to compliment the Dr. Suess style.

I found this Entry by Kathy Gill at "the moderate voice" and thought she did a great job.  Thus, I am including it as-is with links to the original. 

At a certain point I carry the discussion towards photographs from the Gulf Coast in honor of the time we spent there, the people and all we have to lose.

This Is Not A Spill by KATHY GILL in Politics.  Jun 18th, 2010 

Words Matter.

ThisIsNotASpill.org seeks to change the framing used to talk about the BP explosion in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April 2010. Here it is, almost two months later (18 June 2010) and media are still describing this disaster with the word “spill” in both stories and headlines.

This is not a spill.

A spill is what happens when your toddler knocks over a tumbler of milk.
A spill is what happens when you turn over that bucket of soapy water while washing your car. It’s not what happens when you leave the water hose running for days. Or weeks. Or months.
A spill is what happens when a fixed quantity of fluid accidentally escapes its container.
Connotatively, spills are small.

The BP blowout is neither small nor fixed in quantity. Nor is the oil encased in a container, unless you think of the earth as a container. And by that definition, a volcanic eruption could be considered a spill!

There is a more precise noun that describes what is going on almost a mile below the surface of the ocean, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana: blowout.

A blowout, in the words of the OilGasGlossary, is “an uncontrolled flow of gas, oil, or other well fluids.” To substantiate my claim that we should be using “blowout” not “spill” to describe this disaster, recall that the exploratory well  blowout preventer, “a large valve that can seal off an oil or natural gas well,” failed. Blowout preventer failure = blowout.

This is not a spill.

It is a blowout.

And the sooner that the media begin using the true name to describe this disaster, instead of an innocuous euphemism, the more likely the enormity of the event — and what it means for our seemingly insatiable demand for energy — will permeate our collective conscious.

The author details things we can all do to reduce our consumption of oil in individual life-size increments and large community and national increments. Lets try them all. You can check out her suggestions at:  Ideas to reduce oil consumption

I aim to remind us also of what we are losing in wildlife, natural beauty, and culture. A memorial in photos and writing to the Gulf Coast. An apology to all who live along those shores whose lives have been brought into another screeching chaos of uncertainty.

Words are important, and so are pictures. We all own this.



This is the Atchafalaya swamp in Louisiana, the largest inland swamp and basin in the United States. They are working hard to figure out how to minimize the amount of oil into the area and to do all they can to prevent damage. As Don Shoopman the Senior News Editor at the "Daily Iberian"
said
My heart would stop if oil flowed into and past Morgan City into the heart of the Spillway.

(June 17, 2010)

To see more pictures of the gulf coast --- follow the link to the gallery.

Gallery in honor of gulf coast residents of all types

We have just started and will share updates and links.

Sharon

Share your thoughts on ways to inspire action and to reach out to those that live in the Gulf coast states and need to know we stand with them

The Help- Kathryn Stockett Audio on Amazon

This is a great read but, even better, it is a fantastic listen.  It was heartily recommended by a friend with the specific instructions that I should get the audio version.  Part way through the book she had to buy the audio version so she could keep "reading" while she drove cross country.   She recommended that I go directly to that version and, she was right, as usual.   I do not think my imagination could have done justice to the richness of the voices that these women, the readers and the author have created. Natalya and I have been listening to it over and over as we drive back and forth and back and forth and back and.... well, you get the idea, to Maine.  We are working on respectable imitations of the voices we have heard.

One of the rewards is the chance through the story to talk deep history with my daughter.  Another is to remember those years-- to feel, again, the nuanced but unyielding divisions that existed; maintained through thousands of tiny gestures and unspoken supports.  At the risk of playing into some horrible cultural gaffe let me say that my ears were hungry for the timbre, rhythm, and resonance of a black woman's voice.  

It is a kind book, one that makes me stop short when I realize I cannot talk about it with my mother. A heart stopping realization. There was such pleasure in finding things that I knew down to the marrow  of my bones would make her laugh or cry.   There is so much to it and savoring all that is in it, even the hard parts, is a pleasure.  We would have, my mother and I, talked about all the invisible lines, the guy wires that support a terrible injustice making it huge, impossible to ignore, and obscenely invisible.  A society spends enormous energy pretending not to see large injustices. There is a next wave of the civil rights movement that belongs to those of us that are of "mostly-European-American" race.

There is much to be said about race and class. Regrettably, it has become difficult to talk about and therefore to learn. I believe Ms. Stockett has contributed to the possibility of conversation. 

Have you read the book?
Sharon

Health promotion

 

Activities to promote and produce health among individuals and populations

Here is an example of a health promoton activity 

 Amazing seat belt Ad

This is the type of the thing BEST HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD would make.

Gorgeous and riveting.  It is from the UK and the Sussex Safer-roads Partnership.   Nothing like a group of average citizens with fire in their belly and something important at stake + support. In the US we call them a) public service announcements and show them at 2am since they don't sell anything important or, b) A pharmaceutical commercial and then apply our best minds and science into promoting the idea that we are sick and that one can buy(do) something about it.

Note recent CDC reported that despite the increase in "health related" activities such as exercise and diet change (jogging or guilt about jogging and diet coke) that the proportion of Americans that say they are in excellent or good health is falling.  The question, called "self-reported health", asks people who they would describe their health words such as: Excellent, good, fair, poor".  The question has been asked for over 30 years on national surveys and it is a robust little bugger that predict future health problems and death more reliably than almost any lab test or risk behavior.  Tis a little eerie but fascinating.

The ideas we promote the stories we tell ourselves matter.

If you want to know more there is more to tell. If you have thoughts or ideas do tell.

Welcome guest author Jane Flink from Columbia Missouri.   

The "Raging Grannies" Youtube video (see earlier post) and their rollicking response to CBS "right to life" advertising funds inspired Jane.  She mobilized her inspiration and wrote a wee story called "Gods Idea" and I have included it below.  

GOD HAS A GOOD IDEA - By Jane Flink

God is sitting in the Garden of Eden, contemplating all that s/he has made. “I want another experiment with Persons,” God thinks.  S/he wants to create a tiny Person.  S/he will call it a Baby and Adam and Eve will learn about themselves as they watch the Baby grow to be like them.

“Where will I put this Baby I will create?” God wonders.  “I could hide the Baby under a large cabbage leaf in the garden and when the Persons come out to gather food, they will find the baby.  But will they understand what a Baby is if they find it under a cabbage leaf?”  And God says, “That is not a good idea”.

I could drop the baby from the sky, God thinks, perhaps from the beak of some large flying bird.  But the Baby, as I envision it, would not withstand the fall to earth.  “So that,” God says, “ is not a good idea.”

God thinks longer.  “Perhaps I should first create a council of elders, made in the form of Adam, and when they open their council meeting lo, a baby shall be in front of them, and these wise elders can decide what to do with it.  But for all their wisdom, will they understand what a Baby is, and what a Baby needs?  God thinks it likely a council of elders would find a Baby only something more to argue about.

God’s mind roams over his/her creation. “I could give the baby to Adam, but he is always jumping and plunging into streams to swim and climbing tall trees.   Adam might not understand how to grow the Baby to become a Person, male or female, as I have created them.” 

As God is thinking, Eve strolls down a path near the place where God is sitting. She has built a raft to cross a stream to gather berries and along the way she finds a young rabbit, one of God’s newer Creations. Eve is playing with the rabbit, feeding it bits of lettuce from the garden and she and the rabbit roll over together in the soft grass.  When the young rabbit grows tired, Eve nestles it against the hollow of her throat. Carrying the rabbit, Eve finds a soft tussocky place under the shade of a tree and she and the rabbit curl up together, and they sleep.

God loves them all -- s/he loves the cabbages and the high-flying bird, and Adam and the Council of Elders, and Eve and the little rabbit and so it is  hard to know where to put the Baby he is planning to create.  S/he looks again at Eve and the rabbit.  When she found it in need of play and food and sleep and love she gave the rabbit all of them. The Baby God is thinking of would need all those things, not just for an afternoon; not just in cabbage season; not just when high-flying birds cared to carry cargo, or when councils of elders sat down to disagree. For the Baby, God wants love that will never die.

Finally, God decides.  He gives dominion over the animals to Adam.  But he gives dominion over the Baby to Eve, to carry inside her body until it is strong, until God himself can breathe life into its nostrils and make of it a living soul.  When God tells Adam about the animals, Adam leaps with joy. But when he gives the Baby to Eve, her head is full of visions of the blessing of life given and the sadness of life taken and the need for a love that never dies.

The sun closes down the day, casting shadows of blue and gold and God sits quietly, looking with satisfaction over all her/his Creation. “The one about the Baby,” God thinks, musing  –“that was a very good idea,”

The End....

Abortion politics is nasty business and unsteady ground.  It has divided and hurt us for so long.  In the middle of Jane's story I felt suddenly disorientated as if air was rushing into my mind bringing me a sense of space.   Into this space came laughter and its near companion, compassion.  We need all the questions, all the wisdom, and all the humor that we can muster for this collective heart-sore. 

Then, Jane added in our email exchange, "At any rate, God's decision carries everything I believe about how necessary and delightful and strong and needy and merciful and fun-loving and caring women are, and I have thought, since my first pregnancy, that God was a pretty wise old guy to put the Baby where he put it.  And if there are times when Woman finds she cannot give the Baby what it needs, and must part with it, I believe with all my heart that abortion is her decision and hers alone -- not only do I believe that, but I think God believes it, too. All those televangelists can't fool me!"


Thanks for being the inspiration for something i have long wanted to write!"    Love, Jane 

Ah but the honor is mine....Love Sharon 
and
Thanks to the Salonistas in Missouri and to other warm hearted strong minded women who have inspired us to continue to explore, talk, and listen.

If you haven't seen this one yet you should. Allow me to contribute to this going "viral" on internet.

The 'Devil' Writes Pat Robertson A Letter

6:03 pm

January 15, 2010

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune published a letter from Satan to evangelist Pat Robertson, responding to his comment that Haiti's persistent troubles, including the earthquake, are due to a pact the nation made with Mephistopheles.
Actually, it wasn't Satan who wrote the letter but Lilly Coyle of Minneapolis writing in the persona of the hellish one.
I think she got it down pretty well. What say you?

Dear Pat Robertson,

I know that you know that all press is good press, so I appreciate the shout-out. And you make God look like a big mean bully who kicks people when they are down, so I'm all over that action.

But when you say that Haiti has made a pact with me, it is totally humiliating. I may be evil incarnate, but I'm no welcher. The way you put it, making a deal with me leaves folks desperate and impoverished.

Sure, in the afterlife, but when I strike bargains with people, they first get something here on earth -- glamour, beauty, talent, wealth, fame, glory, a golden fiddle. Those Haitians have nothing, and I mean nothing. And that was before the earthquake. Haven't you seen "Crossroads"? Or "Damn Yankees"?

If I had a thing going with Haiti, there'd be lots of banks, skyscrapers, SUVs, exclusive night clubs, Botox -- that kind of thing. An 80 percent poverty rate is so not my style. Nothing against it -- I'm just saying: Not how I roll.

You're doing great work, Pat, and I don't want to clip your wings -- just, come on, you're making me look bad. And not the good kind of bad. Keep blaming God. That's working. But leave me out of it, please. Or we may need to renegotiate your own contract.

Best, Satan

LILY COYLE, MINNEAPOLIS