Every morning I go outside, step into my little backyard, get down on my hands and knees and kiss Mother Earth. I push my forehead into her body, I smell her green, soil sweetness, I thank her for loving me and tell her how much I love her. These past few weeks I find myself taking more moments throughout the day to sit with her. Earlier this week the little purple crocuses bloomed, just a few inches tall, opening their petals each day and closing them each night. A few days ago, I noticed the smallest of moths hunkered down on a cushion on my front porch. He or she was there for days, barely moving, gently tucked into a fold in the fabric. I stared at that little fuzzy moth’s face and found my hope again. Today the moth is gone, and the lilac buds are getting fat on their branches. People are hanging hearts in their windows, tons and tons of little hearts. I have always loved little things, teeny-tiny trinkets and such. I’m finding and feeling hope in the little things, which I think, might really be the biggest of things. The gentle, small shifts, opening and emerging from within. Spring is here, She is moving in and through All. Millions of tiny, sacred acts.
Heavy
by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had His hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel
(brave even among lions),
“It is not the weight you carry
but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled—
roses in the wind,
The sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?
From my heart to yours,
—Emelia Sautter, Ecospirituality coordinator