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Hi there
I hope your summer is going well!
It has been a challenging few weeks since I was last in touch. Violence in the news has been heartbreaking and politics have been frightening. Uggh. Discussing these issues with my 10 and 14 year old daughters is also very taxing. Trying to explain things like violence and cruelty while trying to maintain a baseline of sensitivity and hope can feel impossible. I’ve found myself saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know why. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” more than I would like.
So, I find I need the medicine of nature more than ever. Spending time outside in bare feet and taking in the gorgeous abundance available at this time of year has helped me remember the beauty and peace of the world. Even in a drought; the earth is still providing and the plants are still growing and making food and the birds and crickets are singing.
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I went blueberry picking with one of my daughters last week and it was very satisfying. (The people who run Kenburn Orchards http://kenburnorchards.com/ were kind and welcoming; I highly recommend a trip there if you are local.) The berries were beautiful, dusky blue and plump. We picked and ate and I remembered reading a quote from a naturalist declaring that berries want to be picked. They are made to be picked and eaten so their mother-plant’s seed will spread. They are juicy, warm and easy to pull from the their branches because their job is to entice us and the other animals that feast of the them in the hot sun; bears. blue jays, and scolding cat birds.
We are made for each other.
In challenging times in can be such a relief to feel the earth supporting you.
Tapping has also been helping me during this chaotic summer. Doing a round or ten when I am overwhelmed and feeling sad about the news. Remember, letting yourself feel the feelings of sadness while tapping allows them to be released so they don’t build up and lead to despair. Releasing the pain and enjoying the beauty of the world around you does not deny that things are difficult right now, but it allows some light to pour in and reminds you that it’s OK- things have been bleak before. It is part of life on this planet. As Annie Lamott wrote recently, “Life has always been this scary here, and we have always been as vulnerable as kittens. Plagues and Visigoths, snakes and schizophrenia” her post continues and is beautiful. Read it here: https://www.facebook.com/AnneLamott/posts/894203970709247
So, I hope that you are taking care of yourselves and each other and remembering that the earth, even in a drought, is taking care of you.
Below is a Wendell Berry poem about finding peace in nature that I love.
Summer blessings to you,
xoxo
Katherine
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998. Published and reprinted by arrangement with Counterpoint Press.
Source: Collected Poems 1957-1982 (Counterpoint Press, 1985)
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