An Evolution of Spirit

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” ~ Nelson Mandela

I talk pretty on my blog about kindness and compassion. My words are honest and I work every day to live by them. But I wasn’t always this person. We are born with open hearts, and then the world happens and shapes us and we spend the rest of our lives fighting to get back to that original place of faith in humanity. Every year I get closer. But I like people to know how different I was, to understand how much I have changed. Because if they do not perceive my change, how can they believe themselves capable of the same transformation?

“Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

I used to be an anger ball. By that I mean I was very quick to anger. I was angry at the violence I had suffered. Angry at the people around me who found relief by taking out their pain and insecurity on others. I was angry at the hardness of a world I did not seem to belong in. I was no better. I curled in or lashed out, always one of two extremes, as a way of taking what I needed from the world to survive it.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t know there was another way. I was a heavenly body on the inside of the circuit, the sun that the solar system revolved around. I didn’t see that the world was smothering me because I put myself at the center of it. All I saw was that I was suffocating. And I couldn’t see a way out.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” ~Buddha

I was at a crossroads, my own personal Equinox. I was disconnected from myself, from the earth beneath me, from the sky above me. I could see the forest of trees but not the roots of them entwining and holding each other up. I didn’t know how to bend. I didn’t know how to flow. Everything was fire and lava. I wasn’t living in the world, I was burning my way through it.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

When we feel lonely we push out at the world, keeping it further at bay. I pushed everyone away before they could leave me, before they could hurt me. I thought pain was inevitable and that was the face I gave.

“Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” ~Mary Oliver

It wasn’t what I wanted. I was at a crossroads and I made a choice. I turned away from chaos and insanity, from trying to fit in and struggling to breathe. I let go of the anger that was eating me from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just released it in small breaths. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it up to the universe. I rediscovered faith and turned my attention to finding a path that felt firm beneath my feet. I took the time to get to know myself.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” ~Danielle LaPorte

I had defined myself for so long by what I didn’t like, what I didn’t want, and what I thought I was supposed to want, that I found I didn’t know what it was I did want. What did I like? Who was I? I first heard an answer in a ritual in the dark in the mountains. Deep in the core of you, what are you? I quieted my soul and listened, and the word that came from my mouth surprised me.

“Light,” I said, with tears in my throat. And later, the overwhelming answer I found was kindness, goodness, compassion, and joy. When I removed the protective layers from my heart, I discovered the brightness I had been searching for all along within me.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” ~Brené Brown

The world I live in is a better place for having me in it. I believe that. I feed it my hope and my optimism and my compassion. It does not mean I am perfect. It does not mean my heart is not weighed down by the violence and evil that men do. It does not mean that I do not cry in the quiet nights within the safety of my walls. But I cry because I am connected now. I feel part of the earth beneath me and the sky above me. I feel part of the roots connecting the trees beneath the surface.

“Softness is not weakness. It takes courage to stay delicate in a world this cruel.” ~Beau Taplin

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain S. Thomas

Do not be ashamed of the ways the world has tested you. Do not be ashamed of the times you have fallen, of the times you have failed to get it right. What matters is that you picked your head up. What matters is that you picked yourself up and you kept going, even though you did not have faith that what lay ahead was better. It is not our perfect moments that define who we are. It is the moments we are imperfect that shows the spirit that lies beneath the flesh and bone. It is how we carry ourselves through those moments that reveal the soul of us.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

We are meant to follow our own paths. It is never too late to change tracks and find your way back to you. Our original state is harmony and peace. The world is hard but there are others in it, lighting candles in their hearts against the dark, struggling to grow despite the resistance. Every action is a choice. When you stand at the crossroad, open yourself to compassion and hope. You just might be surprised where you find it.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli


[Originally posted September 24, 2014.]

Great-Grandma Hattie’s Diary

My dad has an old metal toolbox, inside which lies my great-grandpa Royal Levant Eaton’s wallet, a true leather billfold. Inside that wallet, I found a small scrap of paper folded up. It was a page from “Our America Engagement Calendar for 1956”. On the other side of it was a brief holiday journal written out in green ink by my great-grandma Hattie Eva Smith.

By the end of 1956, Hattie had been widowed for twenty-five years. My great-grandpa Roy was a prison guard. His son, my grandpa Mark, was sixteen years old was his father was injured during a prison riot and later died. Hattie was left with three children- Helen, Dorothy, and Mark- and had to get a job. She went to school for nursing.

In the journal bit she tucked away, it was Christmas time for her and it is Christmas time again. I corrected her major spelling and grammar errors, but otherwise, I’d like you to meet my great-grandma Hattie, in her own words. She mentions her daughter Helen, who shared an apartment with her. It’s worth noting that Helen was rescued by her brother and his brother-in-law from an extremely abusive relationship. 

December, Sunday 25: Snow all gone and it is Christmas day. Went to Mark’s for the day. Had a good time. Phil’s so cute (that’s my dad!). They sure had a nice Christmas, so glad. They deserve it. Robert and Laura were there for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Rauson [Ransom, Mark's boss] came in to call.

December, Monday 26: Dorothy came after us and we went down there and had a lovely time. Jack sure had a good time. I know I did. Helen did too and looked better in a short while after we got there.

December, Tuesday 27: Cold day. Helen went to library. Very quiet here. Looked over my xmas presents. Read. Took a nap. Washed a few clothes. They are like boards they froze so stiff. A bit tired today. So much excitement!

December, Wednesday 28: Lovely day. Dorothy came for a little while. Bertha wanted time to go to the movies. We went to Bob’s for evening and had a good time. They sure had a big Christmas. Wish I could do for mine

December, Thursday 29: Went to the movies to see Heidi also Vanishing American. Helen was mad when she found out Bertha paid for it. She wasn’t too nice about it but so it goes. She is so sore at life.

December, Friday 30: Cold. A snow squall this morning. My check came this morning. Will pay the rent 46.00 tonight. Church $10. Also $8 for Miss Schafer for underclothes; slips. Helen’s so depressed over (?)el(?)(?).

December, Saturday 31: This is the end of the year. Hope next year will not be so hard. Have done the best I could. What more can anyone do? Good bye, old year. We hope for better times.

            At this year comes to an end, I feel a kinship with this woman I have never met. After I read the small diary to my father, he talked fondly of her and described the layout of her small apartment to me. I live in my own fading apartment and have spent a year barely getting by, trying to focus on the joy that we are still getting by.

In difficult times, the love of the people in my life is my sunshine. I wonder if it was the same for Grandma Hattie. Because in that respect I am fully blessed. So I’ll borrow her words, her silent prayer, as I greet 2015. This prayer is for me, for my family, and for the world around me.

“Good bye, old year. We hope for better times.”

An Evolution of Spirit

“I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.” ~ Nelson Mandela

I talk pretty on my blog about kindness and compassion. My words are honest and I work every day to live by them. But I wasn’t always this person. We are born with open hearts, and then the world happens and shapes us and we spend the rest of our lives fighting to get back to that original place of faith in humanity. Every year I get closer. But I like people to know how different I was, to understand how much I have changed. Because if they do not perceive my change, how can they believe themselves capable of the same transformation?

“Loving ourselves through the process of owning our story is the bravest thing we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

I used to be an anger ball. By that I mean I was very quick to anger. I was angry at the violence I had suffered. Angry at the people around me who found relief by taking out their pain and insecurity on others. I was angry at the hardness of a world I did not seem to belong in. I was no better. I curled in or lashed out, always one of two extremes, as a way of taking what I needed from the world to survive it.

“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” ~Mark Twain

I didn’t know there was another way. I was a heavenly body on the inside of the circuit, the sun that the solar system revolved around. I didn’t see that the world was smothering me because I put myself at the center of it. All I saw was that I was suffocating. And I couldn’t see a way out.

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” ~Buddha

I was at a crossroads, my own personal Equinox. I was disconnected from myself, from the earth beneath me, from the sky above me. I could see the forest of trees but not the roots of them entwining and holding each other up. I didn’t know how to bend. I didn’t know how to flow. Everything was fire and lava. I wasn’t living in the world, I was burning my way through it.

“If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

When we feel lonely we push out at the world, keeping it further at bay. I pushed everyone away before they could leave me, before they could hurt me. I thought pain was inevitable and that was the face I gave the world.

“Listen—are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?” ~Mary Oliver

It wasn’t what I wanted. I was at a crossroads and I made a choice. I turned away from chaos and insanity, from trying to fit in and struggling to breathe. I let go of the anger that was eating me from the inside out. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I just released it in small breaths. I didn’t know what to do with it, so I gave it up to the universe. I rediscovered faith and turned my attention to finding a path that felt firm beneath my feet. I took the time to get to know myself.

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” ~Danielle LaPorte

I had defined myself for so long by what I didn’t like, what I didn’t want, and what I thought I was supposed to want, that I found I didn’t know what it was I did want. What did I like? Who was I? I first heard an answer in a ritual in the dark in the mountains. Deep in the core of you, what are you? I quieted my soul and listened, and the word that came from my mouth surprised me.

“Light,” I said, with tears in my throat. And later, the overwhelming answer I found was kindness, goodness, compassion, and joy. When I removed the protective layers from my heart, I discovered the brightness I had been searching for all along within me.

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.” ~Brené Brown

The world I live in is a better place for having me in it. I feed it my hope and my optimism and my compassion. It does not mean I am perfect. It does not mean my heart is not weighed down by the violence and evil that men do. It does not mean that I do not cry in the quiet nights within the safety of my walls. But I cry because I am connected now. I do feel the part of the earth beneath me and the sky above me. I feel part of the roots connecting the trees beneath the surface.

“Softness is not weakness. It takes courage to stay delicate in a world this cruel.” ~Beau Taplin

“Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place.” ~Iain S. Thomas

Do not be ashamed of the ways the world has tested you. Do not be ashamed of the times you have fallen, of the times you have failed to get it right the first time. What matters is that you picked your head up. What matters is that you picked yourself up and you kept going, even though you did not have faith that what lay ahead was better. It is not our perfect moments that define who we are. It is the moments we are imperfect that shows the spirit that lies beneath the flesh and bone. It is how we carry ourselves through those moments that reveal the soul of us.

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~Buddha

We are meant to follow our own paths. It is never too late to change tracks and find your way back to you. Our original state is harmony and peace. The world is hard but there are others in it, lighting candles in their hearts against the dark, struggling to grow despite the resistance. Every action is a choice. When you stand at the crossroad, open yourself to compassion and hope. You just might be surprised where you find it.

“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn’t understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.” ~Cynthia Occelli

Spring Equinox Cleaning

Equinox is upon us, the mid-point between the longest night of the year and the longest day. We already feel the effects of the lengthening days and we bask in the warmth we finally feel from the light. We’re itching to throw the doors and windows open and air out our living spaces, to shake out the cobwebs and clear out dust.

In our lives we are constantly shedding skins and starting over. Shedding skins and reinventing ourselves. Shedding skins and letting go of what is no longer needed. Every year, at spring equinox, I tackle a room or two of my house, going through my possessions and furnishings, culling out what has gone unused or forgotten. It invariably also becomes a spring cleaning of my emotional house, as I evaluate my attachments to the items I consider letting go of. This year it was my office, my nest. Included in that room was the dreaded storage closet of doom, filled with boxes that haven’t seen the light of day in over a decade.

I re-organized. I put hands on everything. I stopped to read through old letters and cards from specific places of my life revived memories I had previously left to whisper and rest. I am at a crossroad, roughly halfway through the years I expect to live. Sorting through that closet, my life unfolded behind me, mementos of everywhere I have been and everyone I have loved.

I smiled joyfully through most of it, as the memories rippled through me. What a treasure it was to remember, in my body, the friendship and love of such innocent times. It helped buoy the box of painful things that had been tucked away. But those memories didn’t sting so badly this time. Even that box held lessons for wiser eyes, ways to not repeat those mistakes. I read and I culled, and as I culled, I re-organized.

I found the hole the mice were using to get in and sealed it. I found the alien spider’s secret corner of egg sacks. I found a box of crafts and stories I thought had been lost. And I found the last card my Grandpa gave me before he died. Which made me pause again.

He’ll be gone 10 years this Monday and I find it hard to believe so much of my life has been lived without him, when he is such a firm part of my identity as a grown-up. I still have so much more life left to come. I will never stop missing him. I am aware that part of my flurry of cleaning each spring is related to the uselessness I feel in the things I have no control over, like when someone I love dies. Cleaning- the wiping, the scrubbing, the scraping- delivers instant gratification. And it gets things done.

I closed that closet door, covered in grime and feeling elated. It wasn’t just spring cleaning and de-cluttering. It was time travelling. I walked through who I was and the choices I have made, making more decisions about what to hold onto and what to let go of. I shed skins, old versions of me that no longer apply.

I learned more about the person I am now. I learned that I can’t regret the path I took to get here, because I like who I am. I like where I am. It’s another Equinox cleaning come and gone. I’m standing at the crossroads, looking back over my shoulder, while prepping what is needed for the next move forward, weighing the roads ahead of me. Wondering what awaits in the next turning of the year.

Thinking and Buying Local for the Holidays

In a holiday that has become largely commercial, we should all endeavor to support our own communities and artisans by buying local, especially at this time of year. How does this topic apply to Ancestor Work? It’s simple. We are the catalyst for the change we wish to see in the world. We make choices every day that shape the world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren, for our nieces and nephews. And that includes everything our dollars support. Every single dollar bill. Every cent.

Where do you spend your money? Independently owned businesses or chain corporations? Where do you shop? Where do you eat? If you spend your money on chain stores and franchises, do you know where *they* spend their money? What political causes do they fund? What humanitarian causes do they give money to? For all you know, you are spending all of your money in a store that funds everything you despise and disagree with.

When you buy food and gifts from local stores and artisans, you feed your hard-earned money into your own economy. Which is good for where you live, as it keeps that money circulating locally. It also keeps the carbon footprint of your dollar down with little to no expense for shipping and packaging. Peeling back another layer into this mindfulness, where do the products you buy come from? Why send money to China when there are artisans and craftsmen in your own city who need your support?

I know, I know. But this is *exactly* what I wanted. Sometimes, it shouldn’t be about getting exactly what you want or need. Sometimes, compromising on your vision due to money or geographic constraint is the lesson. And it’s usually where you start to work outside of the box and the magic happens. Anyone can buy a gift off a list or registry. But who else is going to get them that custom mug made just for them? Or that glass wind chime custom colored to match their house? The hand-forged kitchen knife with a handle made of wood from their favorite tree?

Do you want a mug poured in a mold that looks just like every other mug in the box? Or do you want a mug hand-thrown and glazed, with all of the artist’s energy and concentration poured into its creation? Which of the two do you think will feel better in your hands? In the hands of your loved ones?

Supporting artisans over corporate stores is first and foremost of importance to me. If you’re buying on-line, look into sites like the Etsy shops, where craftspeople sell their own items. I am blessed to have good friends who are jewelers, potters, bladesmiths, metalsmiths, candle makers, herbalists, visual artists, carpenters, seamstresses, poets, etc. I love giving them business and I love sending them business because I know where that money goes; it pays their rents and mortgages. It pays their utilities. It buys them more supplies to create more wonderful items. It means they can also have a good holiday with their spouses and children.

Being able to do that and/or buy items locally is of secondary importance to me. If I can’t find an artisan who can make the gift I need, I at least try to buy that gift from a smaller independently-owned store versus a chain. Take a drive around the yellow pages and see what little stores are tucked away in your community that you haven’t visited yet. Check them out and see what treasures they have to offer. If I have to buy from a chain store, I buy it from the one whose beliefs are most in accord with mine, based on what they do with their own money. We vote with every dollar we spend. I believe that.

This year, instead of trying to find gifts to appease people, buy them a unique item no one else would or could have (if you are capable of it, craft one for them). Find them that treasure that makes you think of them, so that they’ll see your heart in the gift of it. And if you are a potter, a toymaker, a dressmaker, a knitter, a felter, a jeweler, a carpenter, a bladesmith, a writer, a visual artist, a glassblower, a baker, etc… thank you for taking a risk. Thank you for sharing your gifts and your energy. Thank you for brightening my world.

Carry In, Carry Out

Earth Day is coming up this weekend, but for me, Earth Day is every day. You can’t see the pattern of revolving humanity and still be selfish about taking what you want for yourself from the earth. There are so many other people and animals to consider, as well as all the species of plants. It would be wonderful if we lived in a culture that was not human-centric, for the world we live on isn’t.

I was picking trash up along the street this week when a neighbor down the way asked me what I was doing. “Picking up cigarette butts,” I said. He was flabbergasted that I was picking up trash in someone else’s yard. I shrugged and told him that technically, my yard wasn’t my yard because I was a renter. Again he seemed surprised at the care we take with the property- we’re the only house that gardens in the summer on our street. What he seemed most surprised by was that I took care of something I didn’t own. His idea of property and possession saddened me. If everyone on my street cared, the curb wouldn’t look like a garbage dump. I believe that the care, or lack of care, we provide ourselves, and our homes, reflects the emotional state we exist in.

I pick up trash when I see it because the earth is not a garbage can, a point to which our landfills would beg to differ. I also do it because I honestly and sincerely care. Non-organic trash chokes the earth. How can living things grow and breathe under layers of plastic bags and concrete? If we want to live in a cleaner world, we have to be willing to clean it. I want to live in a cleaner and kinder world.

I didn’t always feel this way. I was a smoker in college, another young kid who thought it was cool to finish off a cigarette break by flicking my butt into the grass. My friend Jurgen called to me one day and asked me to bring him my cigarette butt. He showed me how to field-strip the extra tobacco and put the filter back in my cigarette box, because the tobacco and paper would decay, but the filter wouldn’t. I had never thought about that before. It’s what he had been taught to do with them in the military. He never chastised me for littering, or tried to make me feel guilty. He just showed me a conscientious way to walk on the earth and I took that lesson and awareness to heart.

In Binghamton, there are six wooden carousels that were built by George F. Johnson, a wealthy businessman and philanthropist. He built these carousels in local parks. As a child, he was very poor, and could never afford to ride the carousel. It was a magic he was denied that he carried into his adulthood. He wanted every child, who wanted to, to be able to ride a carousel so he stated that the price for a ride was a piece of litter from the park, forever, as a way of helping to keep them clean and green. How wonderful is that?

My local community has a basic rule we enforce for ourselves when in nature, because we feel that those of us who are alive to walk it are stewards of the land. The rule is simple: Garbage In, Garbage Out. Everything we bring with us, we take home with us, including dishes, glow sticks, disposable food tins, candy wrappers, empty bottles, etc. I’ve branched that out to a larger concept of carry in, carry out. Whatever I take with me, wherever I go, I am aware of it, and I make sure it all returns home with me, because at home I know everything that can be recycled will be.

What you discover are things you might not have been aware of, like just how many plastic-bottled beverages you go through, or how much waste goes into individually packaging a lot of the food we eat. It helped me make better choices in purchasing products, and over the years my garbage production has decreased. This year for Earth Day, make it Earth Week. Carry a bag around with you and put everything (except actual food) that you would throw in the trash bin in the bag. Do this for a week, and see the actual trail of trash you are leaving on the planet.

Remember that the earth is our mother, our father. It is the planet that gave us life and on which we are still dependent. Find ways of walking softly across her features, and see where you can trim your needs and comforts, sacrificing a little of our modern world to preserve the larger one. Remember that we are children of the earth, not its masters. Put your hands in the earth, play with some worms, plant some seeds, make friends with a tree spirit, and soak up the sun.

My Grackle Friends

photo shared by Factumquintus

Five years ago, a group of birds woke me on an early spring morning, their piercing croak filling the space outside my bedroom window. I had never seen them at our feeder before, the brown-black birds with iridescent green and purple heads. They were substantially bigger than the house sparrows and cardinals we were used to feeding and they did not seem to be able to manage the cedar feeder without almost knocking it over. They were so flashy in the sunlight that I later had to look them up on the Cornell bird identification website. They were my first grackles.

Of the nine grackles that frequented our yard, only one figured the bird feeder out. He was a little larger than the other ones and he found a way to hook one foot on the side of the feeder and a second foot just underneath it. He bent his body slightly sideways to balance his weight, with his tail wrapped around the side corner. From there, he would use his beak to scrap the seed off the side, down onto the ground for his friends, feeding below.

I watched them every morning when they rolled through for breakfast. I would sit quietly and after a while, they didn’t even startle when I slid the window curtain to the side. My friend, the grackle acrobat, slowly learned some more skills with balancing on the feeder. When he spied me through the window, he would run through all of his tricks and land on the clothesline, staring at me. After a while, he even started calling to me in the morning from the feeder if it was empty, which was one thing the other grackles picked up. Still, above the din, I was able to discern his fuller rusty hinge croak from the others.

When they moved on in the summertime, I was sad to see them go, but grateful for the time I was able to spend with them. The next spring, they returned, my friend front and center, and I was overjoyed. We picked up where we had left off and shared our morning times together. Two years ago, when the grackles returned, my friend was no longer among them. Even though none of the others could manage the feeder, they kept returning, and I spread seed out on the ground to encourage them.

A week and a half ago, I knew spring was finally here when I woke to a sharp grackle cry outside. It is a small group this year, but strong. There is one among them who figured out the feeder first, a smaller female. I found her hunched over the landing strip of the feeder, tucking her tail underneath it for counterbalance, skipping seed down onto the ground for her grateful friends. She unabashedly jumped up onto the clothesline and looked through the window at me.

Over the days, others have mastered the feeder, each in their own way. There is a large pair of males who discovered that if they each land on a side of the feeder at the same time they can keep it from swinging wildly beneath them. I don’t claim to know anything about bird genetic memory, but even still, I allow myself some musings. I know that in the wild, grackles can live eight to twelve years. Maybe there will come a spring that they don’t return. And maybe the grackles will keep coming long after the ones who came with my old friend are dead. Maybe they’ll keep coming long after we move away from where we live now. Maybe the fact that our lives intersected at all have linked our journeys somehow.

I wonder if the young grackles in the group knew my old friend, or if he passed before they were born. I wonder if they remember, and if they do, if they remember him. And then I realized that it doesn’t matter whether or not they do, because I do. These grackles are here and I remember the first grackle that brought them here and found them food. These grackles are living their lives in the moment, eating sitting and throwing up leaves in the dirt. I am bearing witness to the larger journey of their small group. Their lives come and go and I remain.

It is like that with our world, we come and go and the trees in their lengthened years bear witness to our passing. Watching the grackles outside my window, I am reminded that the whole pattern I am watching unfold is what my ancestor work is about. I hold my hand to a thread of ancestral energy that is the pattern of birth, life, and death we humans keep marching through. I hold my hand to that thread, keeping it present and connected to the action of living my life now. That energy is there for all of us to connect into, waiting just on the other side of the curtain, hiding beneath the rusty creak-song of an early spring grackle.

Our Living Ancestor, the Earth

We live in a world we want to believe will never fall. We want to imagine that our society will grow and rise in prosperity and technology like every good science-fiction novel or film would have us see in our future. At best, we see a future like Gene Roddenberry created in his Star Trek universe, where no one wants for any of the basic needs. That is a beautiful world he created. Unfortunately, I see it more like E.M. Forster wrote in his 1909 short story, “The Machine Stops,” where everyone is living underground in automated bunkers, reliant upon their technology for everything, and the chaos that ensues when it dies. Just imagine what would happen if every internet browser crashed for one hour- chaos! We hide the true intention of these cautionary tales behind the moniker of science fiction. We live in a world we want to believe will never fall, but our own history tells us a different story.

Our planet’s surface is littered with the ruins of civilizations, big and small, that rose and fell into legend through acts of nature, lack of resources, and warfare; civilizations like the Sumerians, Minoans, Ancient Egyptians, Mayans, Phoenicians, Babylonians, Toltecs, Aztecs, Mauryans, Incans, and the Rapanui. Could any of them have foreseen their own eventual demise? I wonder this as prices for natural resources skyrocket and scientists stop debating the reality of global warming and start talking about the eventual end of the Midwest Aquifer. I’m not trying to be a downer but I try to look at the world with my eyes open. As we spill out into the future, it’s important that we remember the ones who will come after us. We have to be aware that we are not more important or entitled to life than any other man, than any other animal. We all share this world together. As a species with higher brain function, we cannot afford to be selfish creatures.

Western Civilization once referred to the African peoples living in tribal villages as savages and primitives, thinking of them as little more than animals, judging them on the way they lived. After all, who would choose to live that simply if they could evolve and become more civilized? It’s what those who traveled to the New World thought of the Native peoples. Except when I think of how long any of those indigenous populations existed in their way, on their lands, adapting their lives to the available resources and living gently, it gives me pause. My own city is littered with empty and decaying industrial buildings, giant monstrosities paved over the earth, over sacred land, for all that is green and brown and wild is sacred to me. There are days when I desperately despise concrete more than I am grateful for the ease of travel because of it.

How long did the Native people of America live softly upon the earth? And how quickly did colonists ravage it of resources? According to their own Edward Winslow, it only took one year for them to make a visible and landscape altering change. And my ancestors were among that group, and more among the ones to come soon after. We came here, from an industrious world, with industry in mind, not simple living.

Philosopher and writer Derrick Jensen lives on Tolowa land, a Native people who originated in what we know as northwestern California and southern Oregon. He says that before conquest, they lived there for 12,500 years, without materially damaging the land. He argues, for sustainability sake, that while they were able to take trees from the rainforest for their homes during the course of that time without damaging the environment, that is no reason to believe that any forest can survive industrial forestry, because that becomes, by its nature, deforestation. What damage have we already wrought seeking resources for profit rather than need? Jensen talks about the Summitville Mine in Colorado, two square miles of toxic land in the mountains, in his article “What We Leave Behind” written with Aric McBay in 2009. He says “the total value of gold and silver taken from this mine is less than half of what the cleanup has cost so far.”

That has to mean something now. Our resources are finite. They will have an end and we know that. We have to know that. Taking resources from elsewhere isn’t the answer. We are not schoolyard children. Just because someone else has something we want doesn’t mean we can take it. Jensen says, “Any solution that springs from the (most often entirely unconscious) belief that the culture is more important than the world (or that the culture is real and the real world exists only as a backdrop and a source of raw materials) will not solve the problem.” Living more simply and walking softly is the answer, but it’s not enough if just a few of us do it. As a culture, we have to move away from industry. Can we, or is it already too late? I mean, we can do it. But will we?

And still, we do what we can to live more simply, because it’s something we can and should learn to do. Years ago, we turned to seriously look at the waste our house was producing. We switched from putting out one large garbage bag a week, to one smaller bag every two to three weeks. It makes us feel better, but it’s still not enough. That my family is living simpler is not enough. It helps us maintain our empathy for all living beings but having empathy for dying breeds, starving and enslaved people, and toxic landscapes will not make a global difference. I can no longer fool myself that it’s enough that I feel for the world. We need to stop industrial progression that surpasses our ability to dispose of the waste it produces.

When I think about industry, I think about the landfills, and about how much our country manufactures that we hope people will buy. We make products that are not meant to last for more than a few years, specifically because it is more cost effective to make a cheaper product in a country with less stringent labor laws and environmental laws, all in the hopes that we will feel the need to buy another product when it must be replaced. Or that we will buy a better one. How can we be so selfish? How can we, as consumers, allow industry to decide how we should live and what we should buy, what we should want to buy?

My resolution for this new year is to look more deeply at our waste culture. How can we recycle more than we have without needing to create more industrial waste in order to do so? How can we step away from our dependency on plastic everything? Every time we travel on the road and I see plastic bags stuck up in the winter trees, I say that if I could have one wish, it would be that every piece of plastic stuck and tangled in nature would, poof, become grass seed. That every bottle cap and soda can ring snagged in the mouth or belly of a turtle or bird would, poof, disappear, so that no more animals die from our careless lack of disposal of our waste.

How can we move away from a disposable Dollar Store culture and salvage this world for our children and their descendants? I do not have children, but I consider all of yours my responsibility. I am not more important than any of them. My immediate gratifications and comforts are not more important than their future. This society of make more, buy more, spend more, is not a cooperative one, it’s a competitive one.

I think about our ancestors, and how they had hope for progress and growth and were unaware of the potential dangers that would appear down the line. In a world as vast as the new world they could not envision a depletion of its resources, but they were wrong. I want to leave a better world for those still to come. I don’t have any answers, but for this new year, I am choosing to see the world with my eyes wide open, with my heart wide open. I would rather know the truth rather than be sheltered from it.

The earth is not a backdrop we live upon, it is the life source we were birthed from. It is our first great ancestor, and it is still alive beneath us. We have the chance every day, with every breath, with every action, with every dollar, to show our gratitude for the life and sustenance it gives us. We have a living opportunity to honor it. Derrick Jensen asks his reader, when we talk about living in the real world, what do we mean? “...are you talking about wage slave capitalism, or are you talking about a living breathing world of trees and rivers and lakes and deserts and forests and mountains and seas?”

To end, I offer you a moment of inspiration to brighten this week's theme, because there is always hope. Click on the link and the watch the video listed on the page, a gift for you, of people making the most beautiful music out of garbage- enjoy!