I believe our separation from nature is at the root of both the climate crisis and COVID19. As a reconnection ceremony over these months I signed up for a Nature Writing course sponsored by Emergence Magazine. At the end of our online writing session on April 19 we had 15 minutes to write a poem on the theme of Resting and Belonging. This is what came out:
Virus:
You will stop.
You WILL stop.
I. mean. STOP.
REALLY STOP.
Me:
OK… OhKAAY….. OhKAAAY……..(breath) Geesuz, OK! ……. (breath)….. (breath)..….ok.
Oh yikes, is this what you mean?
Oh goodness (breathing).
Dare I stop?
Dare I rest?
Dare I jettison a lifetime of not belonging,
Secure, justified and fortified in my outcast conviction?
Dare I stop figuring out how to be loved and included?
Dare I peel back my hardened shell and risk not belonging,
So that I may rest in a “keeping not my own”
(thankyou Wendell Berry)
And belong at long last to the community of all life.
OK.
Peri and I greet you in the midst of your own process of adaptation, letting go, and remembering. It is a privilege to connect to you, in the quiet. Herein is a prayer for your well-being, nestled in gratitude for this blessed Earth.
“There are no privileged locations. If you stay put, your place may become a holy center, not because it gives you special access to the divine, but because in your stillness you hear what might be heard anywhere. All there is to see can be seen from anywhere in the universe, if you know how to look; and the influence of the entire universe converges on every spot.”
— Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put: Making Home in a Restless World
Barbara and Peri