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 Lachen oder Weinen?

Yet another November, this one like none. Harvesting my sparse pomegranates before last night’s rain, I am leaving two on the tree. This brings me comfort and delight. The taking and the leaving, both. Yesterday overnight, these two pomegranates split open, greeting me exuberantly on my morning round. Are they laughing or crying, lamenting or smiling? Hidden new moon energy infuses our shortened days. The gentle rain washes my garden clean, makes it bright, sparkling with promise – fragrances of deep hidden growth, of composting and restoring.


Soon we will face darkness and the poignant starkness of winter. Trees bare, energies pulled into the root system. All beings must store food, remember ancestors, be brave. Keep the heart warm. Renew the commitment to living with goodness, nourishment, sharing. Embracing our brothers and sisters who are suffering, listening to their plight. The squirrels are busier than ever, racing up and down the highways on the lichen and moss-covered oak branches, in great height, back and forth. Carrying acorns to be stashed away in all kinds of hiding places, for times of need. Back and forth. Squirrels memorize the many paths to their riches. It is a mast year, over abundance. In America, we have been brainwashed into constant external need, excess, and hence discontent – this leaves very little space for aliveness and real nourishment.


Do we remember the pathways to real riches, to what is important? Not just extraction. So much relentless distraction and indoctrination. Worldwide wars are intensifying, and witnessing the carnage hurts and injures even us bystanders. Endless consuming by rich nations like ours brings about suffering elsewhere. And, in times of uncertainty, we don’t do so well. We get paralyzed with fear, waste our energies with inappropriate over-drive, denial, avoidance, escapism, or frantic worry, despair. Daily, I take cues from my frugal and smart co-habitants in Karinaland. How will this winter play out? Lachen oder Weinen? The feeling that the world could break any second, literally, on many levels. Laughing or weeping? Definitely both. Beides. The unpredictable theater of the bigger-than-us forces ­– in nature and culture – is mindboggling, intimidating, scary, bizarre. How do we find balance, comfort, contentedness? Even if just briefly. Will we be brave, remember temperance, and our goodness?
 

Nature’s cycles are a good guide: time to grow, blossom, bear fruit. Time to rest, decay, wither, die, compost, rebirth, renew. With wild fires, hurricanes and flooding, as well as elections, chaos and political turmoil at our doorsteps, our nervous systems are overloaded, on alert. Exhaustion abounds. A strange mixture of indecency and extremes has settled in, is accelerating. For daily hope, I make time to listen to the voices of wisdom and beauty, search them out every day in poems, art and music. Find them in my garden as well. My “golden delicious” apples are falling. From the canopy I harvest the high hanging ones with my fruit picker. With gratitude I use both, bruised and pristine ones, for eating and cooking my improvised medicinal spiced compote. Meanwhile the chattering of busy squirrels, incessant dropping of acorns, loud, bold and precise, a harvest like none this year. With important intention for the future: abundance to make sure that live oak’s young seedlings have plenty of chances to survive and thrive. Mast years come in unpredictable cycles. Then this afternoon, suddenly the distinct screeching of circling hawks, they are back. “Uh-oh!” exclaim the squirrels, “never any guarantee…”  Crows and ravens squawk their warnings. Cosmic forces at play – how will it manifest in our human society?
 
What needs to be heard, known, learned, nurtured, healed?


More pomegranate stories and a bit of much needed tenderness:


Comments

  1. KenNovember 15, 2024 at 12:43 PM

    "We get paralyzed with fear, waste our energies with inappropriate over-drive, denial, avoidance, escapism, or frantic worry, despair." That's exactly how I've been reacting since the election! Not entirely - I also try to "make time to listen to the voices of wisdom and beauty, search them out every day in poems, art and music", to achieve as you say "daily hope" - but it's difficult for me to escape the despair/escapism cycle.

    I feel so grateful that I know you and am one of those "in the know" who benefit from reading this online journal, this work of artful prose and deep wisdom and insight and love of the world that you share with us. If you should ever choose to share it with a larger audience I think it would be hugely popular, very much appreciated.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alex KNovember 16, 2024 at 5:06 PM

    As of late due to increased feelings of fear and despair due to both personal health concerns and what is happening in our country and the world, I have found a growing urgency to pay attention to the larger forces in life both to calm myself and to allow the richness of life to nourish me. Your piece gives a living voice to the largeness of life. Much needed.

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