WILL FUSION POWER BE OUR SAVIOR?

Oh, how we love our technology! I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with it, as it’s done so much good for the world and yet may be the end of us all. (It’s already been the end of quite a few of us when you think about weapons of war and toxins in our bodies.)

Nevertheless, we are all a-twitter this week, and rightfully so, over the amazing news about fusion power. The much-anticipated holy grail of scientific and energy geeks the world over, fusion ignition has finally been achieved. Scientists call this “proof of concept.” One might argue that spending untold billions just to conclude, “yeah, maybe this could happen,” is not the best use of money. I can’t begin to imagine how much progress we could have made had we used only an itty bit of that taxpayer money to improve already viable safe, clean energy sources like solar, wind, geothermal, or tidal. I mean, solar batteries, for heaven’s sake! We can do batteries.

Still, Lawrence Livermore Lab where this proof of concept took place is a nuclear weapons lab, and I highly doubt all this fusion money would have materialized if it weren’t for the “national security” element. (Read, “new & exciting ways to pulverize humans in other countries.”)

Oh my, but I see my cynicism is showing. Sorry – it’s part of my charm.

Fusion Seems Too Good To Be True!

I’ve been reading up on fusion power a bit, enough to learn that it’s not true that fusion doesn’t produce radioactive waste. And it is true that fusion still carries the risk of terrorists creating weapons-grade plutonium 239, and that there is a danger of highly radioactive tritium (which replaces hydrogen in water molecules) leaking into our groundwater. Oh, it’s also true that the molten lithium within the reactor could explode. You know how the nuclear industry always tells us that there’s no danger of fission nuclear plants exploding? Yeah, well, welcome to the new and improved reactor.

But I’m the first to admit I know next to nothing about fusion power. I have some expertise in energy from my educational background and my 27 years as an environmental policy analyst and lobbyist with Sierra Club. But mostly I’m just googling and using my brain.

My usual sources within the national environmental community have made no comment on this scientific breakthrough, which is highly irregular because they will put out a press release at the drop of a hat. My guess is they are still scrambling to figure out how this fits in to their energy campaigns and messaging, which is understandable but not OK. They’ve let the “Hooray, we are saved from climate change” message get way down the road in front of them.

I know enough to suspect that fusion is not the solution to our climate crisis. The warming and melting and flooding and droughting that’s already been set in motion is not going to wait the decades it would take to build even one fusion reactor. But it’s way more than timing.

A Kinder, Gentler Technology

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-technology — it will obviously play a large role in whatever efforts are made to confront the crisis. Technology caused the problem, and it must be part of the solution. I’m excited about the great potential of clean and safe energy production technologies, and also about energy conservation and efficiency technologies. Once these proven technologies free us from our fossil fuel addiction, then we can diddle around with weapons systems posing as environmental progress. Oh man, there’s my cynicism charm showing again.

It’s just that the more we as a country invest in outrageously expensive technologies that continue our reliance on centralized industrial plants connected to massive interlocking energy grids, the less we invest in the common sense, humane solution of smaller, localized energy sources that enhance our communities rather than threaten them.

My church recently converted eight acres of land to a community solar farm, designed to serve 350 families, one-third of them low-income homes at reduced cost. We didn’t like sacrificing our wildflower meadows and we had to move our beehives, but it is good to know we are part of a just and compassionate solution to humanity’s climate crisis.

CEDAR RIDGE COMMUNITY CHURCH, DOING ITS BIT TO PROTECT CREATION

Undeterred By Any Other Power On Earth

“We spend our lives, as nations and as individuals, waiting to be saved by the power of our own achievements or the power of destructive force. And yet, it is the clear, soft, consuming, overshadowing power of the {Higher Power} in us—the power of goodness that is undeterred by any other power on earth—that lies within our grasp, that can really turn all of life benevolent.”

Science and technology are great, but as long as their foundation is corporate profit and military power, I don’t see a real solution to the problem of the suicide machine we have created.

The crisis, I believe, is spiritual. It is a crisis of greed and selfishness, and the solution is compassion and kindness. I know, I’m probably being unAmerican. But I read the above quote from Joan Chittister this morning, and it got me thinking about this brouhaha over fusion. It seems to me a very costly step down the wrong road. But perhaps it’s necessary so that humanity will survive long enough to learn the compassion thing.

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A MODERATELY ATYPICAL SUMMER

Greetings Dear Readers! 

Across the meadow this morning, beyond the orange day lilies, red bee balm, and purple phlox, I can see two deer and a family of wild turkeys. All is quiet, except for the neighbor’s confused rooster who crows enthusiastically and incessantly, no matter the time. And thanks to my totally awesome new app “Merlin,” I can also identify the conversation of a red-eyed vireo, a tufted titmouse, and a pileated woodpecker.

I’ve just arrived back at my sweet little house in New Hampshire after a wild & crazy June and July, full of people and travel and what felt like great adventures — though pre-pandemic they wouldn’t have been out of the ordinary. 

I’ve been to North Carolina twice, to the Outer Banks and to my beloved Wild Goose Festival near Winston-Salem. I’ve seen nearly every member of my family, including my sister whom I hadn’t seen in ten years and a cousin I hadn’t seen in even longer. I explored dinosaurs, evolution, mass extinction, and climate science at the Smithsonian Museum with my oldest friend, and served two days of jury duty with some men I do not want for new friends.

Smithsonian Wanderings

ANSWERED PRAYERS

Like many of us, I’ve been left drained and deadened by the pandemic. For several years, I’ve felt stuck, flat-lined, uninspired to do anything, let alone help save our democracy or our planet. 

But finally, God has answered my desperate plea for renewed passion and a new vision of what I am meant to be doing in these precarious times. I’m not yet ready to write about it, but I hope to share in the months to come. There are ducks to line up and God’s timing always has its way, but the Wild Goose Festival provided new connections, creative energy, and much-needed hope. I am spirit-charged and ready to go! 

All Are Welcome!

Goose Gals!

Another answered prayer took the form of a phone call from my dermatologist announcing a “moderately atypical” mole that is not dangerous. Phew! Last year, her phone call announced “squamous cell cancer” which was not nearly so welcome. Not only did she send me off to New Hampshire worry-free, she gifted me with a new favorite phrase to describe myself and my life: moderately atypical. It fits. 

On My Atypical Way Again

Day before yesterday, I stood on the shoulder of I-90 in Massachusetts staring at my flat tire as tractor trailers plummeted down a steep hill towards me and a gritty wind whipped my face. Forty minutes later, my rescuers had dragged a spare tire from the hatch, mounted it, and then stayed to repack my belongings. The state trooper held two boxes of houseplants, a cheerful white orchid blossom bobbing about her face. The bemused and be-greased truck driver cradled a crumpled plastic four-pack of wilting parsley and decrepit thyme. When my backseat garden had been safely tucked in, the trooper got in her car and set the lights flashing.

“Moderately atypical,” I said to my cat Alice as I buckled up, eased into traffic, and headed north.

Just One of My Moderately Atypical Neighbors

Stubborn Hope in the New Year

So many social media posts this week sound like gasps or relief: Finally, it’s over! We made it! A fresh start! 

I don’t know what planet they are living on, but I don’t see much changing for a time. 2021 felt like a continuation of the dreaded 2020, except that it started off with an insurrection at the Capitol and the loss of one of my dearest friends to COVID. 

It’s hard to hope in the midst of the latest COVID surge and against a backdrop of historic floods and droughts and wildfires. Any yet. And yet. Here it is New Year’s Eve, a time of looking forward with hope to what a new year might bring. My pastor recently said that hope takes courage and determination, and it seems that has never been more true. 

We must be stubbornly hopeful. What miracles might we hope for? 

“Keep a fire for the human race
Let your prayers go drifting into space
You never know what will be coming down”
Jackson Browne

Pandemic Lessons

First of all — leaving aside the maniacs celebrating at Times Square tonight — most of us have been gradually learning to let go of bright & shiny distractions, extravaganzas, and expectations that we will be endlessly entertained by . . . something, anything. Spiritual sages throughout history have taught that “letting go” and “surrendering” are essential to spiritual growth. COVID has provided a master class in surrender.

We are learning to truly appreciate and sometimes cherish simple time with our families and close friends, those we lost to COVID and those still with us. We have rediscovered taking walks instead of “going for coffee,” making meals together instead of going to restaurants, reading books instead of going to concerts or movies or — well, anywhere. 

I confess I have felt resentful about those brief periods between COVID variants when we cautiously began to gather, to hug, to dine out. It felt like 2021 dangled hope before us and then snatched it away. But remembering those fleeting moments and the deep relief of getting vaccinated, I see that my thirsty soul was filled with a good dose of hope in 2021. I sat at a few dining tables with close friends, I ate food made by hands other than my own, I sang around fire pits, I went to crafts fairs and even made a few new friends. All of these are reminders that life will return to some form of normal. There is hope.

Possible Miracles

Maybe we will all be so sick of Zoom that we’ll reduce our screen time and enjoy time with actual human beings! Maybe the new habits of walking and gardening and chatting with neighbors will take hold and we’ll become healthier people, more in touch with our bodies, with our communities, and with the earth. Yes, there is hope. 

There is hope that the climate disruption we witness every day now, either personally or in the news, will be enough to overcome the evil greed that keeps our nation from acting in its own interest. 

I have hopes that the committee investigating the January 6 insurrection will hold public hearings to expose the involvement of past and present elected officials in the effort to overthrow our democracy. There is hope that someone will be held accountable.

There is hope, too, that the GOP overreach in various states to keep lower income communities and people of color from voting will be so egregious that a voting rights bill will actually become law. Perhaps our republic will survive when we are all equally able to cast our votes. Perhaps then there will be the will in Congress to reform the police and judicial systems. Maybe even protect our schoolchildren from the NRA! 

“Nothing is impossible with God,” says the Bible. And I believe that. I do. I just forget sometimes.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

My Own Personal Miracles

I long ago gave up New Year’s “resolutions” or “goals,” but I do have three “intentions” for the year 2022. The fact that they closely resemble my 2021 intentions does not bother me; I have learned to give myself a whole lot of grace. I am framing each of my intentions with hope:

• I will declutter my home with the intention of entertaining loved ones in the future. I haven’t opened my door to friends since grief overtook me and entropy overtook my abode eight years ago. Clearing and cleaning my space will fill my head with hopeful visions of post-pandemic life. I may be stuck alone here right now, but it’s not forever. 

• I intend to write hope into the world. This intention will keep me on the lookout for hope, so that my blog brings light into dark times. Please hold me to that, dear Readers, if I get too cynical or sarcastic. I also intend to finish the first draft of my memoir. It’s a hard process, reading old journals and remembering past angst & pain, but I nurture the hope that if I stay connected to my God, She will reveal hidden value, meaning, and connections in my life story. 

• My last intention is most important. The lynchpin of my courage, determination, and hope is my relationship with the Divine. So my intention is to go deeper with God, to open my heart to hope and to miracles. I think I’ve become self-absorbed and stuck in my head during COVID. I’ve limited myself and God, forgetting that “nothing is impossible with God.” It’s time to reconnect with my source.

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Her, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Romans 15:13

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Book Review: On the Brink of Everything, by Parker Palmer

There’s a lot to love in this little book. Parker Palmer is one of my favorite spiritual authors, and I’ve been fortunate to see him speak a few times. His humility and wisdom are so refreshing and needed these days, and as he ages, his readers just get more of both. This book speaks to my time of life and the subtitle says it all: grace, gravity, and getting old.

Parker says we need to reframe aging as “a passage of discovery and engagement, not decline and inaction.” Then he goes on to tell us what that looks like for him through essays, poems, and stories, plus a good sprinkling of quotes from other wise people. Lots of Thomas Merton. This is a relaxed and friendly read, and his take on spirituality is the same: “an endless effort to penetrate illusion and touch reality.”

No matter your age or spiritual background (or lack thereof), this book could do you good — especially if you have an activist’s heart.

• 

*** Let me apologize for WordPress. Apparently the powers that be decided to completely change the way this site works, and I can’t figure it out, nor have I the inclination to at present. Figures that the only technology I had even a tenuous grip on is now no more. It really was the only user-friendly blog platform I’d found, and now — not so much. So I am unable to categorize or label my blogs, but I’m sending this out anyway. ***

A Mystical Take on Masks, Racism, & the 4th of July

As always, I have arrived at my family home in New Hampshire happily laden with books and full of dreams of writing. I intend to post here on Writing with Spirit more often, I’m working on a draft of my memoir, and I’ll begin a month-long online writing class next week. You will likely hear about some or all of these pursuits. Meanwhile, I have finished my first book of the trip, Richard Rohr’s “What The Mystics Know: Seven Pathways to Your Deeper Self.” I thought I’d share a short review because it’s rare that a “spiritual” book so completely jives with what we call “reality.”

And what a reality! As if things weren’t surreal enough lately, the President just celebrated Independence Day with a speech attacking what polls show is a majority of Americans who support the removal of confederate statues from places of honor. He aggressively stoked fear and hatred and division. But all this is nothing new. As he tries to distract us from the deadly pandemic that worsens daily, there will no doubt be more race-baiting and ugliness emanating from the White House.

Orange Fireworks

But back to the book:

I liked this little book. If you’ve read much Richard Rohr, you will find it familiar, with good reason: it’s a book of excerpts from his other writings. I could quibble with the structure of “Mystics;” the “seven pathways” seem forced and kind of random. This is probably because the editor who came up with the idea died part way through the writing, so I think the big picture may have been lost. But since the readings are in small bites, and the book doesn’t pretend to be a straight narrative, the structure isn’t too distracting, and there are plenty of wonderful Rohr nuggets throughout. This makes a fine daily reader for meditation and journaling, and I think I’ll be using it for years to come.

If you haven’t read Rohr, I recommend “Everything Belongs,” my favorite. But “Mystics” is a decent summary of his beliefs about spiritual growth and enlightenment, including growing out of our egoic self-preoccupations and into more compassionate non-dualistic thinking, less “othering” and judging.

It’s unusual for a “mystical” book to track so directly with the day’s headlines, but it’s impossible not to think about my fellow Americans refusing to wear masks because it “infringes on their freedom” when doing so would literally save the lives of others — talk about sick egos! Or about millions of white people yammering about their their precious “heritage” of slave-holding while demonizing black people being murdered in our streets and jails by law enforcement officials. Some seem more concerned about statues made of stone than their fellow citizens made of flesh and blood. Wrong color flesh, it seems.

Also timely, the last section of Father Rohr’s book centers on transforming others and society, and is hopeful but realistic. He recognizes that in North America, “our economy, our self-image, our very psyche have lived in a triumphalist and paranoid stance for so long that it will be hard to change to a positive and creative mode . . . a new way of living based on faith instead of fear, peacemaking instead of moneymaking, community instead of competition.”

May it be so!

 

Finding the Divine in Nature

“Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal,” writes theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

Perfectly said.

In less mystical language, the Message translation of the Christian Bible says, “The basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of {Her} divine being.” Romans 1:20

Ancient mystics have always felt that silence is God’s first language, which may be true, but nature is certainly a very close second. Together, they are the gateway to the Divine.

Assisi Pathway

God has always spoken to me through the natural world. I wasn’t brought up in a religious home — my sanctuaries were the woods and meadows of New Hampshire and a muddy little spot on the edge of a silty pond in southern Florida. Turtles, grasshoppers, and garter snakes served as my preachers, “intimations of the divine,” in Rabbi Heschel’s words.

Preach it, sister!

I know that many people experience a “higher power” most strongly in nature. Of course, not everyone will choose an environmental profession as I did in response to nature’s divine communication. But if you spend quiet time in a natural setting and “take a long and thoughtful look,” you cannot help feeling a sense of connection, belonging, oneness . . . awe. There are no words to capture this connection, hence silence.

Tomorrow is World Day of Prayer for Creation, which was started in 1989 by the Eastern Orthodox Church and is now celebrated worldwide by people of all faiths. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a “praying person,” why not get outside, preferably alone, and say something like, “Hello?” 

Or consider the words of 12th-century German philosopher mystic Meister Eckhart as you look up at the sky: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” 

Amen.

In Search of Silence

Noise. Clutter. Complexity. Distractions. These are the norm for many of us in the western world. Since the U.S. election of 2016, the mad pace and chaos seems to have gone over the top. It’s as if the whole nation has taken on the chaotic ADD characteristics of a president who bellows contradicting policy statements every few hours and whose twitter-whims regularly destabilize our government, our economy, and the world.

We barely have time to mourn the latest school shooting before another Cabinet member is threatened or fired by the president. And it’s all blared 24/7 by bloviating newscasters with dueling “facts” and “alternative facts.”

That’s not what this post is about, though. This is about silence. And our crying need for it.

Yesterday I took a “day away” at Dayspring Silent Retreat Center in Maryland. Twenty of us began the day sitting by a crackling fire in the rustic lodge, gazing out a picture window at the surrounding wintery woods. We shared what we hoped to “let go of” for the day, it being Lent and a time of releasing the things that weigh us down or distract us from living better lives.

I had brought with me a bunch of church work, all of which I looked forward to doing: notes to help me design a Good Friday service, an outline for a Lenten “challenge group” I’ve been leading on Simplifying Life, and a draft plan for refurbishing the prayer walk on our church property. This is the kind of thing I love doing, but I often have trouble finding the time to focus.

Yet when it came my turn to say what I intended to let go of, I said the words, “church work.” I had not intended to say those words, but there you have it. We’ve been talking in our Simplicity class about letting go of the good for the better, and I guess God was showing me how to do that.

Pilgrimage

Our group spent the next four hours in silence.

I usually read and write a lot at these quiet days. But I didn’t even want the noise of words. Too many words!! Words — especially words that try to capture the spiritual nature — can be counterproductive. If there’s a little glowing ember of insight or wisdom in my mind or heart and I immediately try to capture it, analyze it, and control it, I have lost the ember. It has become about me and my words.

Instead of “wording” and adding to the noise in the world, I sat by the fire for a twenty-minute Centering Prayer session. Then I read a psalm and sat for another twenty-minute session. I enjoy meditating in community, half-hearing the soft sounds of someone making tea in the kitchen, the rustle of pages turning, deep sighs.

Later I went for a long walk. Walking in the winter woods and fields always reminds me of the journey we are all on, the seasons, the dark times, the pilgrimage in search of peace. “To be silent keeps us pilgrims,” as the early Christian desert hermits said.

I walked the labyrinth and noticed that it’s getting easier for me to connect with the feminine God. I’m not as easily distracted by the HE of my spiritual tradition. That was making me increasingly angry, but I’m learning to let that go as a human construct and enter the mother’s heart of God without fighting to get there.

“… how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing,” said Jesus.

Peace & Quiet

After a silent drive home from my retreat, I stopped in to visit my neighbors. I was immediately blasted with the noise of the world: the Secretary of State has been fired! Another top White House aide has been escorted out of the building by security! I checked the news on my phone: The Pennsylvania race! The school gun-control walkout! House GOP concludes no collusion!

I am so glad to have been reminded that my attendance at this noisy circus is not required. I can check in, add words if they are helpful, march when it is necessary, grieve as Jesus did when he wept over Jerusalem: “Would that you had known on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes.”

Yet I can also return to an inner silence, “a peace that passes understanding,” and rest in knowing that God is love and love wins. It may not happen on my timeline, and it may be “hidden from my eyes,” but love always wins in its quiet way.

Reflections

♦ ♦ ♦

Today’s word prompt: Noise

Coming to Terms with the Hate

The pickup tailgates me for a minute, then swerves into the left lane and pulls alongside my car. A big hairy arm emerges, fat middle finger extended like a pale sausage. I am not alarmed, not even surprised. In the time of trump, anything can and does happen.

It’s hard to know which bumper sticker set him off. Beauty will save the world? Love the Creator, care for creation? God is not a Republican? Most likely, Obama 2012. That black man has more dignity and grace in his pinky finger than both of those white guys in the pickup put together. They know this and they hate it. So much resentment and hatred.

Am I making assumptions about the guy with the fat middle finger and his buddy? Stereotyping? You bet.

Abuse as Patriotism

Online I’ve been called a witch, a moron, a fat hag, and of course a snowflake. The latter is my favorite “insult,” a very common one on Twitter, meaning weak and prone to melting into tears. Personally, I love being likened to a sparkling crystal that dances and plays in the air before settling in place among other snowflakes which, in community and over time, can shut down a city and stop the federal government in its tracks.

My least favorite insult is “f%$king libtard,” not because it hurts my feelings, but because it flaunts “political incorrectness” by playing off a long-abandoned, derogatory term for people with mental impairments. The guy with the sausage finger and his ilk are egged on by their favorite president, who said:

“I think the big problem this country has is being politically correct. I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t, frankly, have time for total political correctness. And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either.”

So although I’ve been driving around w/ liberal bumper stickers on my car for decades and haven’t experienced anything like this before, I’m not surprised at the random rage. Things are different now. President Tweet has purposefully brought out the very worst in this country. I don’t have to tell you that.

I’ve got a list of books and articles theorizing about who these trump people are, and why they seem incapable of recognizing how sick he is or how he is manipulating them. It’s textbook demagoguery. But I don’t need to read about it, I know in my gut what’s going on.

Spiritual Sickness

It seems clear to me that America is suffering from a deep spiritual sickness. When you live in a society that worships ego and competition and glorifies wealth, weaponry, and war, you’re bound to run into serious problems eventually. Especially when so many “religious” people buy into this lust for power and wealth. I know one Christian guy who says that while we should have compassion, we have to be pragmatic about it. Where in the Bible did Jesus say that?? I don’t even want to hear his views on North Korea. Bombs away, no doubt.

For a time, after the shock and surprise of all the hate wore off and I realized it was here to stay — being stoked daily by abusive, threatening tweets from the President of the United States — I was just sad. Deeply sad.

Now, even the sadness is beginning to wear off. I wouldn’t say I have accepted this as “the new norm” —we must never, ever accept this behavior or view it as anything but the pathological brokenness that it is. But I’m learning to live with the hatred without letting it consume me.

Survival

I pray that our country’s institutions and the world can withstand what looks more and more like an actual take-over of our democracy by an authoritarian demagogue. I will march, write, call, organize, and raise holy hell. But I am also choosing to go on with my life, enjoying my garden, looking for the good in people, and reading and writing healing words.

So some big hairy white guy gave me the finger. That’s his problem; it doesn’t need to affect me. Easy for me to say, white snowflake that I am. I hate to think what might have happened had there been more melanin in my skin or had I been wearing a burka.

Praying.

Further Heresy: Sage & Crystals

I’ve been burning a sage stick lately. I just wanted to get that out there and let the “Happy Housewife” Christian lady know. After all, confession is good for the soul.

I purchased the sage stick at a rock and mineral swap in a tiny town in New Hampshire, where I also bought a lovely piece of quartz with opalescent slivers inside it. Yes, quartz is a crystal, which some Christians believe is just about as heretical as a sage stick.

They think that crystals are “new age,” or “false idols” or “occult.” Never mind that Saint Theresa of Avila’s beloved sixteenth-century spiritual classic “Interior Castle” is based on the contemplation of a crystal:

“I thought of the soul as resembling a castle, formed of a single diamond or a very transparent crystal, and containing many rooms, just as in heaven there are many mansions . . . there are many rooms in this castle, of which some are above, some below, others at the side; in the centre, in the very midst of them all, is the principal chamber in which God and the soul hold their most secret intercourse.”

Contemplating nature is a time-honored way to reflect upon and connect with the holy. Jesus was forever talking about sparrows and types of soil and grains of wheat. He found lessons about God in everything around him. I feel closer to God in nature than anywhere else, so it stands to reason that I would want to use natural elements in my prayer time.

I light my sage stick and walk around my house, asking God to fill my home with Her spirit of peace and love and joy. I ask that She fill every space with the fragrance of Christ. (I don’t do this if my cat is downstairs, because it gives her a violent sneezing fit.)

I don’t believe crystals and sage sticks are magical or contain or control spirits; I think they are relaxing and beautiful. God made the rocks and the plants, and She gave us an appreciation for rich aromas and beautiful objects. We are intimately and organically connected to the plants and to the elements, and that’s why they help us embody our spirituality and connect with the Creator.

Here’s another confession: I am still a tad annoyed at the internet assaults launched by the Happy-Housewife Christian lady. So although she has already condemned me to hell for loving gay people, I am hoping to further annoy her with my hippy prayer practices. So there.

At least I am not cozying up to power and engaging in idol worship of a political leader like some other pastor-types.

Sacred Soil

I’m doing laundry, watching the last of the silty North Carolina river soil circle the drain and disappear. I’m always low when I first return from my annual pilgrimage to the Wild Goose Festival on the banks of the French Broad river. After spending four days with two-thousand-plus “spiritual misfits” immersed in spirit, justice, music and art, it’s hard to return to the “real” world.

My friends and I have been on sacred ground, sacred meaning “holy” or “set apart for or by God.” We set ourselves apart from our busy calendars and to-do lists and the traffic and the email and even wi-fi (!!!), and we dug our roots deep into the soil of truth and love and living spirit.

Standing on sacred ground at the Wild Goose Festival

Soil is what feeds us and nourishes us. It’s what we are made of. As the Bible says, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Down by the river, we remember. We remember our true selves. We remember that we are connected to every other wounded soul on the planet – past, present, and future. And we remember that we have responsibilities to all those other souls.

We are each called to heal and to become our best, healthiest selves, now more than ever. Our very planet depends on it. 

What soil will we choose for nourishment?

We can sink our roots into the polluted soil of judgement and contempt and divisiveness, or we can choose the sacred soil of love and openness and peacemaking.

For a few precious days, my thirsty roots penetrated deep into the sacred soil by the rushing river. It will take some time to see what grows. I have pages and pages of notes, and my head is full of rainbow flags and sung psalms and the smell of campfires. I’m not quite ready to write about it. If you are curious or impatient, you can use the search function on this blog to find my posts from past festivals while you breathlessly await my 2017 Goose musings.