a generous storm

So many people hate winter, hate the cold, hate the dark. Get depressed. We live inside an unrelenting capitalist construct that denies winter as a factor in our day-to-day existence. And that construct seems more real to us than actual seasons. So real that we don’t change our routines to match the seasons. Maybe though we hunger to slow down in the winter, turn inward in absolute coziness; hunker down for a spell or at least take on different routines. Instead, we strive to stick to the same 24/7/365 schedule disregarding winter’s invitation to slip into different habits for our mammalian bodies. I wonder if it’s actually our modern lives that we’re averse to because they prevent us from experiencing winter in nourishing ways.

In the recent snow, I found myself grateful. I live on a block where neighbors watch out for one another. Helping shovel, sharing homemade cookies, offering resources in case the electricity goes out. I myself love free exercise. So of course I relished shoveling the driveway I share with a neighbor, the sidewalks in front of the houses on either side of me, the steps of those houses. I also loved the opportunity to hibernate.

When I didn’t feel like shoveling, I laid on the couch and read; my cat contentedly purring on my chest. I simmered soup on the stove. I baked pies and quiches with leaf lard from a local farmer. My crust was transcendent! I watched the snow. I was quiet. I was content. I had more alone time than expected-a generosity of solitude. I loved the wide-open space to feel what my body wanted and follow my own rhythms of stillness and activity. All this abundance, provided by a winter storm. I didn’t spend my time wishing for something other than what was happening or complaining about the IS I was inside of. I savored the confluence of circumstances that allowed me to explore winter’s call for hibernation. What a generous snow storm.

do you see what I see?

seed season

Hello friends,

There's so much to talk about. First, I want to invite you to the fun writerly stuff I have coming up. You can find that on my home page.

Second, I want to share the video from my October 8 presentation with Big Muddy Speaker Series titled, Coming Home: Liberating the Environmental Movement from Supremacy. It was a terrific event in which we looked at how the charactertistics of supremacy inform the stories we have about ourselves, other beings, and Earth. We then considered how to create new stories so that we could relate in more expansive ways with ourselves, other beings, and Earth.

After you watch the video, please share what resonated with you. I took a big risk with the Muddy Speaker Series presentation. Heretofore, I'd focus on scientific facts, sociopolitical systems, and justice issues. I didn't speak fully from my heart. I didn't share what I consider mystical experiences with Earth because of internalized supremacy: facts are more valuable than non-quantifiable experiences or feelings. But is my deep pleasure to facilitate conversations that evolve relationships, within and without. Thus, I am reworking my workshops on ecology with that intention. Loosely quoting Robin Wall Kimmerer, 'we must re-story ourselves in order to restore relationship.'  Also, are you affiliated with a community interested in exploring ecology from a spiritual perspective? Please consider having me present to your group.

Which leads to the last thing I'm sharing. What restores and re-storys me is communion with specific places in nature. Like any relationship, I spend time with certain place-friends regularly. In that way, we become intimate, bearing witness to one another as we flow through seasons (Earthly and otherwise) together.

Much of what happens for me with my place-friends is healing awareness. Wandering topography I can almost navigate with closed eyes, I see something new each time. Not just with my physical eyes, but with inner sight. Each sighting feels truly like an opportunity to the re-story and restore. I'm eager to share what I see with you here over the next few posts.

I walk weekly at Jerry Smith Park (the largest remnant prairie within KCMO city limits), a practice started New Year's Day, 2023. My last post was from this beautiful place. It is also where I caught the above image of common milkweed loosening seeds to the wind.

As a woman nearing sixty, nothing reminds me more that human ideas of beauty are ridiculously restricted and restrictive, than seeing the myriad ways myriad species experience the autumn of their lives. False blue indigo, switchgrass, goldenrod, rattlesnake master, big bluestem, thatchgrass (pictured below) and more, each go from spring to summer to fall to winter in widely distinct hues and textures and shapes and curves, smells and even sounds. It is a glorious affirmation; an exhortation to luxuriate in my body as I autumn.

As I take in the variance in plants-even among the same species-I am astonished by my lack of judgement. In nature, it is effortless to observe distinctions and to witness "aging" without critique, without comparison or disparaging one for not having the characteristics of another or for looking old. Therein lies an invitation: to notice the granular outside the prairie, in myself, in others, with the same reverence.

What is even more exultant about watching plant elders dance in autumn is knowing it is seed season. In a culture that invisibilizes the elderly, particularly women, there is something deeply restorative and grounding in knowing plants drop their seeds in autumn. Since seeds are the literal blueprint on how to weather the weather, they are wisdom hard won by thriving season after season. Am I not the same? Full of seeds, full of wisdom, from the seasons I have weathered? For my own continued flourishing, I must loosen my seeds to the wind. I have to value my own hard won wisdom and grow from it. Further, I carry seeds vital to the ecosystems, the communities, I belong. After all, in the autumn of our lives, we are meant to share what we've learned. And in sharing our seeds, we provide for the flourishing of each other.