The view out the airplane window
like a mirror of my mind
brownish grey
everywhere a diffuse heavy haze
smudged thick in patches
more stew than iced tea
And the ridges
snaked convolutions
snowtopped peaks
shine bright white,
valleys layered with old snow lying
like nicotine stained fingers
shriveled on the edges
We need a good long scrubbing
Followed by a thorough dowsing
An invigorating downpour of water
Rainforest fresh or
Newly released from glacial depths
A cleansing to wash away the
Accumulated ooze and grime . . .
To emerge clean, pure, renewed
Dare I say--reborn?
But the purest rainforest
fall and glacial melts are
tainted too
There will be no simplistic
one-time cleansing
no easy fix-it-all deluge
no purification by proxy . . .
The scrubbing will be long and hard
I look out the window as we slowly
descend
I wrote this poem at the end of the century. It came back to me today as I was thinking about my weekend in the deep woods, trouble at work, financial insecurity, and running behind on too many promised projects. I stood in the shower under a deluge of hot water and thought about how fiercely positive I was two weeks ago when I wrote my Cost of Living blog. I wanted to follow that blog up with tools of hope—and here I am, feeling brownish grey and shriveled on the edges. How can I preach hope when I feel so hopeless?
Perhaps I need to spend some time talking about hopelessness before I can get back to hope. After all, one of the problems with this society is our tendency to think that if we can just get to that one, magical spot, then everything will work out and we will live happily ever after; if we just get to a place of hope, it will stay bright and shiny in our hearts forevermore. The truth is that everything ebbs and flows, including hope. The trick is not to keep hope glowing non-stop—the trick is making it through the dark until the next tide comes in.
I was in the woods this weekend. Specifically I was in the Mendocino Woodlands State Park at a camp in the middle of 700 acres of redwoods, next to a thin rocky creek, at the bottom of a long, dusty mountain road (http://mendocinowoodlands.org/home.html). There have been Unitarian Universalists camp gatherings held there for at least 30 years. This was my first time and there are many stories I could share, but that is for another time. What I brought back with me that I want to share here is the dark depths of the forest. Even at high noon, the sun merely filtered faintly down to dimly light the soft needle paths, the floor of ferns and rocky outcroppings stretching steeply up on either side, hemming me in with rock and thick soil, and trees as tall as city buildings. The silence was profound and left my ears ringing with the void until they adjusted. Then I could hear…..something. The soft hum of life, barely on the edges of my awareness. I sat in a small patch of sunlight on a moss covered log and listened to the almost-silence, and let the forest seep into my soul.
We were surrounded by young redwoods—young, by redwood standards since the area had been clearcut in the 1930’s. The remains of ancient, old redwoods were everywhere—burned out trunks as large SUVs still standing as living reminders of some long ago fire. Redwoods can keep growing even when their cores get burned out. These stumps were not stumps because fire killed them—they were stumps because humans cut them down. Even so, some survived. Redwoods send out roots that grow up into new trees. The new trees are exactly the same as the old trees genetically, so you can say that these trees are thousands of years old, although only the youngest growths are still viable. There is a critical difference, however. The new trees are growing in a different environment, one that encourages fast growth. Because of this, the new redwoods are soft. Old redwoods can be almost as hard as steel—difficult to cut and very sturdy. While we still have redwood forests, we will never again see trees of steel. That environment is gone, forevermore.
We have done so much damage to this planet. We have lost so many species, polluted so much of our water and air, lost so many forests. And we have built such amazing things—telescopes that can see far out into space, spaceships that have shown us the moon, seacraft that have allowed us glimpses of the ocean depths. We have looked inside the human genome and found amazing complexity, and miraculous cures. The yin and the yang—creation and destruction. There must be balance. It is a rule of nature, a rule of physics, a truth that all religions have recognized even if they have not always practiced it.
This brings me back to my poem—to be clean again. Isn’t this what we all yearn for—a return to balance? Aren’t we all just exhausted by the constant, niggling fears? By the never-ending, low-level insecurity that runs through all of our lives? Don’t we all feel grungy and dusty from slogging through all of the day-to-day grime of life? Doesn’t a deluge of pure, clean water sound fantastic and refreshing? Oh, to be clean again!
And so I came home from the woods, filled up with their deep silence, and I realize how incredibly thirsty I am for change—and just how far away that change is. The reality is that change takes lots of hard work. Lasting change means doing lots of mundane, every day cleaning—rolling up our sleeves and scrubbing out those sinks, cleaning up the toilets, and washing down the walls. Change means that sometimes we will inherit difficult things to deal with: losing a job, going bankrupt, racking up medical debt, feeling overwhelmed, dropping into depression, losing faith. Sometimes hope is just too hard to reach for. Sometimes it is all we can do just to keep breathing. And that is OK. Sit with the deafening silence, sit still and breathe. Wait until our ears adjust and we can once again hear the faint flow of life that is busy living all around us.
InPeace, Nikki
like a mirror of my mind
brownish grey
everywhere a diffuse heavy haze
smudged thick in patches
more stew than iced tea
And the ridges
snaked convolutions
snowtopped peaks
shine bright white,
valleys layered with old snow lying
like nicotine stained fingers
shriveled on the edges
We need a good long scrubbing
Followed by a thorough dowsing
An invigorating downpour of water
Rainforest fresh or
Newly released from glacial depths
A cleansing to wash away the
Accumulated ooze and grime . . .
To emerge clean, pure, renewed
Dare I say--reborn?
But the purest rainforest
fall and glacial melts are
tainted too
There will be no simplistic
one-time cleansing
no easy fix-it-all deluge
no purification by proxy . . .
The scrubbing will be long and hard
I look out the window as we slowly
descend
I wrote this poem at the end of the century. It came back to me today as I was thinking about my weekend in the deep woods, trouble at work, financial insecurity, and running behind on too many promised projects. I stood in the shower under a deluge of hot water and thought about how fiercely positive I was two weeks ago when I wrote my Cost of Living blog. I wanted to follow that blog up with tools of hope—and here I am, feeling brownish grey and shriveled on the edges. How can I preach hope when I feel so hopeless?
Perhaps I need to spend some time talking about hopelessness before I can get back to hope. After all, one of the problems with this society is our tendency to think that if we can just get to that one, magical spot, then everything will work out and we will live happily ever after; if we just get to a place of hope, it will stay bright and shiny in our hearts forevermore. The truth is that everything ebbs and flows, including hope. The trick is not to keep hope glowing non-stop—the trick is making it through the dark until the next tide comes in.
I was in the woods this weekend. Specifically I was in the Mendocino Woodlands State Park at a camp in the middle of 700 acres of redwoods, next to a thin rocky creek, at the bottom of a long, dusty mountain road (http://mendocinowoodlands.org/home.html). There have been Unitarian Universalists camp gatherings held there for at least 30 years. This was my first time and there are many stories I could share, but that is for another time. What I brought back with me that I want to share here is the dark depths of the forest. Even at high noon, the sun merely filtered faintly down to dimly light the soft needle paths, the floor of ferns and rocky outcroppings stretching steeply up on either side, hemming me in with rock and thick soil, and trees as tall as city buildings. The silence was profound and left my ears ringing with the void until they adjusted. Then I could hear…..something. The soft hum of life, barely on the edges of my awareness. I sat in a small patch of sunlight on a moss covered log and listened to the almost-silence, and let the forest seep into my soul.
We were surrounded by young redwoods—young, by redwood standards since the area had been clearcut in the 1930’s. The remains of ancient, old redwoods were everywhere—burned out trunks as large SUVs still standing as living reminders of some long ago fire. Redwoods can keep growing even when their cores get burned out. These stumps were not stumps because fire killed them—they were stumps because humans cut them down. Even so, some survived. Redwoods send out roots that grow up into new trees. The new trees are exactly the same as the old trees genetically, so you can say that these trees are thousands of years old, although only the youngest growths are still viable. There is a critical difference, however. The new trees are growing in a different environment, one that encourages fast growth. Because of this, the new redwoods are soft. Old redwoods can be almost as hard as steel—difficult to cut and very sturdy. While we still have redwood forests, we will never again see trees of steel. That environment is gone, forevermore.
We have done so much damage to this planet. We have lost so many species, polluted so much of our water and air, lost so many forests. And we have built such amazing things—telescopes that can see far out into space, spaceships that have shown us the moon, seacraft that have allowed us glimpses of the ocean depths. We have looked inside the human genome and found amazing complexity, and miraculous cures. The yin and the yang—creation and destruction. There must be balance. It is a rule of nature, a rule of physics, a truth that all religions have recognized even if they have not always practiced it.
This brings me back to my poem—to be clean again. Isn’t this what we all yearn for—a return to balance? Aren’t we all just exhausted by the constant, niggling fears? By the never-ending, low-level insecurity that runs through all of our lives? Don’t we all feel grungy and dusty from slogging through all of the day-to-day grime of life? Doesn’t a deluge of pure, clean water sound fantastic and refreshing? Oh, to be clean again!
And so I came home from the woods, filled up with their deep silence, and I realize how incredibly thirsty I am for change—and just how far away that change is. The reality is that change takes lots of hard work. Lasting change means doing lots of mundane, every day cleaning—rolling up our sleeves and scrubbing out those sinks, cleaning up the toilets, and washing down the walls. Change means that sometimes we will inherit difficult things to deal with: losing a job, going bankrupt, racking up medical debt, feeling overwhelmed, dropping into depression, losing faith. Sometimes hope is just too hard to reach for. Sometimes it is all we can do just to keep breathing. And that is OK. Sit with the deafening silence, sit still and breathe. Wait until our ears adjust and we can once again hear the faint flow of life that is busy living all around us.
InPeace, Nikki
