KINSHIP

Jane Goodall's passing has me pondering our kinship with the other beings living on Mother Earth with us -  remembering that we are only one part of the natural world along with all the others - humans, birds, sea life, animals. And the ecosystem containing so much interconnected life apparent in the plant world - trees, fungi, plants small and large. There are small universes carrying on their lives all around us.

Stop and gaze at a spider web, the spider waiting patiently for a fly to land. A nurse log with so many diverse life forms growing on it it takes your breath away.

I have been reading The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl, who has the gift of seeing and appreciating the small beauties around her. Nature is everywhere, trying to survive, waiting for us to really see what surrounds us. For one year, each week she wrote of that week's observations in her back yard wildlife garden.

Renkl writes, "Stop and think for a time about kinship. Think for a long time about kinship. The world lies before you, a lavish garden. However hobbled by waste, however fouled by graft and tainted by deception, it will always take your breath away."

She writes about the current state of the world, the climate crisis and politics, then says, "Immersing myself in the natural world...is the way I cope with whatever I think I cannot bear. I'm not trying to hide from the truth but to balance it, to remind myself that there are other truths too. I need to remember that the earth, fragile as she is, remains heartbreakingly beautiful."

Needless to say, her message resonates with me. It is in nature where I, too, find solace and peace - and a respite from the noisy and disheartening world of politics.

A world of wonder is all around, whether we live in a city or village, in a house with a yard, or an apartment with a balcony full of potted blooms. Watch for other beings, for they are everywhere. The political world may be noisy and cruel, but the natural world surrounds us with beauty, every day, reminding us that we live among billions of other lives, of every kind, each one wanting to survive, just as we do.

In my small potted garden out front, there are four flowers, two yellow, two orange, which draw up their suddenly spikey petals in late afternoon when they are shaded and feel chilly. When the mid-morning sun hits them, they unfold into lush, round blooms and look like completely different flowers. A small miracle, every day.

Our topic is kinship with the world and all its beings - just one, among all the other beings. You might take a walk and see what you can find that's struggling to survive in our noisy midst. Brief moments of awareness and delight. 

Pick whatever your eyes land on and tell us about it. What makes you catch your breath today? Small universes, or large. A world of kin.

WHEN I AM AMONG THE TREES
by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”    

            ***

TODAY, ANOTHER UNIVERSE
by Jane Hirshfield

The arborist has determined:
senescence      beetles      canker
quickened by drought
                           but in any case
not prunable   not treatable   not to be propped.

And so.

The branch from which the sharp-shinned hawks and their mate-cries.
The trunk where the ant.
The red squirrels’ eighty-foot playground.
The bark   cambium   pine-sap   cluster of needles.
The Japanese patterns      the ink-net.
The dapple on certain fish.

Today, for some, a universe will vanish.
First noisily,
then just another silence.

The silence of after, once the theater has emptied.
Of bewilderment after the glacier,
the species, the star.

Something else, in the scale of quickening things,
will replace it,
this hole of light in the light, the puzzled birds swerving around it.

             ***                       

JASMINE
by Jane Hirshfield

“Almost the twenty-first century” —
how quickly the thought will grow dated,
even quaint.

Our hopes, our future,
will pass like the hopes and futures of others.

And all our anxieties and terrors,
nights of sleeplessness,
griefs,
will appear then as they truly are —

Stumbling, delirious bees in the tea scent of jasmine.

            ***