Sustenance

You know how when you begin to look for something you begin to see it everywhere? Right now for me the world is full of messages about choosing joy in the face of despair, thank goodness. The latest ones came in a recent Reading Circle. We began Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants in February. These passages are from last week's reading of "The Sacred and the Superfund". This was a hard chapter for me, an exploration of the desecration of Syracuse, New York's Onondaga Lake, sacred to the people of the Onondaga Nation. It is now one of the most polluted lakes in the nation, holding beds of industrial waste 60 feet deep. Author Robin Wall Kimmerer is from the Syracuse area – and so am I. When I was a child in the 70s (above), it was said that the lake wasn't chemically considered water. We didn't talk about how it got that way. Hearing Robin's complicated care for this place helped me to ache for and love it anew.

The gifts of Braiding Sweetgrass are many. One is Robin's willingness as an Indigenous woman to consider whether a nation of settlers and immigrants can become indigenous, to truly make home, and that would look like. I find this thrilling and humbling. Another gift is her hope, based in a fundamental trust of land and life. I wouldn't say she is hopeful, but she does hold hope, and shows paths of possibility. These passages made me shiver, so I bring them to you, as Robin has taught me, making the gift more valuable by giving it onward.

Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world is holding us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.

Restoration is powerful antidote to despair. Restoration offers concrete means by which humans can once again enter into positive, creative relationship with the more-than-human world, meeting responsibilities that are simultaneously material and spiritual.

Braiding Sweetgrass is a series of essays; they weave a story, yet each can stand alone. Ah, perhaps they are interdependent, like us! If you want to drop into the Reading Circle to share in our final sessions, it would be a joy to see you there. They will be July 30 ("Collateral Damage" and "Shkitagen: People of the Seventh Fire") and August 13 ("Defeating Windigo" and "Epilogue: Returning the Gift"). Sitting and reading aloud to one another is such a treasure; I always come away lighter than I arrived. We meet here on Zoom. Thanks to the many people who have joined the reading along the way, from teens to elders. Sharing this with you has been a golden thread in my year.

Schedule Note
Ongoing weekly events are cancelled July 13-23: No Reading Circle, Tuesday morning Meditation Gathering, or Soft Animal yoga session. Probably no newsletter next week. Scheduled events for Lovingkindness: Support for Heartfelt Living & Change will continue.

Resources for Sustenance

Generosity
One of the things that I find inspiring about difficult situations is how we respond to them with generosity. Yes, we respond with fear-based negativity, but there are plenty of people willing to tell you that. I want to tell you that there are people who run toward fire, determined to help. Mr./Fred Rodgers famously said, "Look for the helpers" – or really, his mama did, and he said so again. The more we see people taking action, the more we are likely to realize we can take action, and to want to take action. I love this story about the living seed bank at Camino Verde, Peru; it has to be a living bank because many rainforest seeds cannot be dried. The whole project is a lovely thing, but the final line of the story, oh, this is one to live by: “We want to make sure our learnings don’t just remain with us.”

Action
Vote Forward's Big Send aims to get hand written letters to 10 million people before the 2024 election. Their research shows the efficacy of these efforts in increasing voter turnout, and what we need for the survival of our struggling democracy is voter turnout! I've signed up to write some and I hope you'll join me. If you'd like to connect for support in this, I'd be delighted to hear from you!

Nourishing Resilience
The gut is a powerhouse of neurotransmitters, producing “about 90 percent of serotonin and 50 percent of dopamine" . As we explore the gut-brain axis in science, we are finding that the microbiome of the gut plays a vital role in mental wellbeing, including our resilience under stress. If that leads you to think you should pop some probiotic pills, do consider reading the link above, in which the scientists doing this work emphasize that fermented foods and vegetables are a surer route than pills. They are also more delicious! And happily, with the popularity of fermented foods like kimchi, sauerkraut, kombucha, yogurt, kefir, and others, they are widely accessible, too. I've made every item on that list, and they are simple, far less expensive, rewarding, and again: delicious!

Cultures for Health's website presents on the surface as a store, but is also an incredible library containing troves of free articles about all sorts of fermentation. I've purchased their yogurt starter and kombucha SCOBY and found them of high quality. I got my start in fermenting with Sandor Ellix Katz' classic book Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods 20 years ago. (Link is to the 2nd edition which I assume has improvements, though I haven't purchased it yet; still using my battered copy of the original.) His friendly, curious, casual, affirming approach revolutionized my approach to making food. If you love the 'Gram, Cultured Guru is food microbiologist Kaitlynn Fenley.

It's Hip to Be Sober
Sari Botton's Oldster Magazine does a collaboration with The Small Bow recovery newsletter called "Ask A Sober Oldster". I enjoyed this "highlight reel" of quotes from the first year of this series; perhaps you will as well. For full clarity: I am not sober; I do enjoy thinking carefully about my relationships with all the things that affect my consciousness, and I'm thrilled to see the cultural wave of excitement around sobriety which has followed the pandemic surge in alcohol consumption.

Politically Engaged Poetry
Copper Canyon Press, founded in 1972, is a widely-loved, independent, non-profit small press who publishes only poetry. I didn't realize until I moved to the forest near Port Townsend that they are based here; what a joy! They support a truly diverse range of poets, and I was excited to discover that they have curated a selection of "Politically Engaged Poetry", which they describe as "a selection of poetry that speaks of and to some of our most fundamental civic concerns." I see June Jordan, Pablo Neruda, and Mahmoud Darwish alongside many names new to me. Perhaps there is fuel for your heart here, too.

Your One Wild and Precious Life
It doesn't feel right to mention poetry without sharing a poem, so here's the poem I've been sharing in the spaces I hold most lately. It ends with Mary Oliver's most famous couplet, but I find the path there glorious and ache that is often overlooked in the dazzle of that ending.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver