We all have helpers in seen and unseen realms.
Give them something to do.
Otherwise they will grow inattentive with boredom.
They can clean junk from your mind,
Dearest Beloveds,
I was calling as a volunteer for the Harris campaign the day before a rally. Our job was to tell people who had signed up for the rally three pieces of information: where the rally was taking place, when the doors were opening and closing, and that an email would be sent to them with more details. The email was going to be sent out within 24 hours of the rally. The email with directions, shuttle information, ADA information, etc etc etc.
When one of the volunteers asked why this information was being shared so last minute with the participants the answer was succinct. “Security concerns.”
Everyone understood - because “security concerns” have become normalized.
Dearest Beloveds,
Gone are the days of midnight feedings and chasing you around the kitchen - more physically taxing situations. Now I seem to spend a lot of time with mental situations. Where I need to figure out how much to share about the bigger world around you. It feels more and more that my job is less to tickle you and more to act as a buffer for your curiosity and fears as we enter the big world together.
Questions such as “How much does this cost?”
“Do we have enough money?”
“What are you all talking about?”
I don’t want to burden you with things like taxes and the minutea of your Mother’s health shenanigans. I also don’t want to lie to you.
As I have mentioned in the past, I am a big fan of when all of the fingers I am called to are pointing to the same moon. This spring Rob Wergin’s transmission shared this:
Life itself can be challenging, and we keep carrying all of this luggage. All of these bags full of past habits and memories and things like that that are triggering us. Life goes in cycles and if we don’t clear these blockages they get bigger for the next cycle and the next cycle.
Dearest Beloveds,
When I was in my early tweens I came home from school after a parent presentation from Senator Al Gore about the J curve and global warming.*
I was very upset and Baba took me on a walk. “Dad! There are too many people on this planet and not enough resources! Did you know there is trash in the ocean? There is rain that has so much acid in it that statues are MELTING!”
I remember him taking a deep breath and turning to me. “Don’t worry, Corinna, technology will save us.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, there are very smart people out there who are working on this now and it will be okay.”
My beloveds, I am never going to tell you that technology will save us from the mess we have made on our Mother: the Earth.
There are three reasons why: 1) the physical needs of technology directly harm the earth 2) technology separates us from the present moment 3) technology is the latest iteration of human supremacy that created the schism in the first place.
Backpacks were shrugged off as we reached the end of the gravel lane. Bean declared to her brother, “I look on the left - you look on the right.”
“I always look right!”
Let’s stop this before it balloons. I interjected, “I will look both ways too,” and waded onto the domed center of the asphalt road. High stepping with the thrill of illicit I called out as I scanned the horizons for cars. “Why is it so much fun to go into the road?”
The crickets sang to us from the tree line.
“Because it is cheating!” A big grin split Dragon’s face.
I laughed. “It is cheating.”
He continued, “because you are breaking the law and nobody knows!”
“I hear a car, let’s go back to the side. Don’t run.”
We have a long stretch of straight road on either side of our lane where we need to meet the bus. At least half a mile on either side keeps us safe during the slow traffic times in the morning.
Apparently when George Eastman invented the Brownie camera people did not understand why anyone needed a personal handheld camera. So he created a marketing plan and here we are 124 years later. People take pictures of their food for others to thumbs up on social media. Who knows what Eastman would think about that.
I understand wanting to have evidence of your life, your doings, your thoughts. That is, after all, one of my motivations to write letters to my children - but then I realized that my website, my postings, all of this is predicated on huge servers being kept cold with fossil fuels.
I was once in the audience for a panel of diary farmers. ”It used to take 6 weeks to harvest hay and bring it into the barn. Now with machinery, it can be done in a day and a half. The funny thing is, it is not as though I am sitting twiddling my thumbs for the extra five and a half weeks that I used to take haying.”
I was thinking about this recently when mowing around bits of fern pushing forth in the grass. I will come back later with the grass shears and unveil the rest of them.
A park, I found a park!
Envisioning a morning walk among the shade to greet the birds and buzzing friends, I set forth.
To find the patina of nature, the bare minimum to check the boxes
Uniform green lawn, uniform plantings of adolescent trees along the road, rocks without snuggling flowers*
