"No"ing Everything

     My seven-year-old son recently told me that when I say "maybe", it means no.  He also said that when adults say "no" right away, they aren't listening, that it would be better to say "yes" and something good might happen.  This calls for some creative thinking.    

     In worship with Friends the other day, a person stood and shared ministry regarding the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe.  She was, in essence, saying “yes” to bringing a refugee family to the United States to be sponsored by our meeting.  And I heard yes! in my heart.  The answer came immediately.  Yes. Bring a family here and it would be a very good deed.  I was soon swallowed up by no and what about the others, and do they even want us?  These thoughts against yes weighed heavily.  Then, in silence, the yes came back and I said yes and then yes and then yes to the entire cascade of questions that followed.  What follows a yes?  …Ten more open doors. 

Give Me The Love You Are Hiding And I Will Keep It Burning Forever
by Glee 2015 

     I wonder if non-violence is about saying “yes” and then walking through the multitude of open doors that follow.  Many openings come from allowing my practical self to quiet, my protection to loosen, and my self-interest to become interest in others, saying to myself, “I will not be exhausted. I will be re-energized by the love I feel when I give my approval to a good and useful thing”. 

     If saying yes to something helpful feels like it takes energy, consider all the things we say yes to daily that are hurtful.  How about buying gasoline when we know about climate change or leaving the hose to run in the gutter during a drought, running inside to get the phone.   Let’s call these hurtful things, or “no’s”.  When we walk by a homeless child without looking, or pieces of trash on your street, saying nothing about impending war, not speaking out against police officers abusing people of color, thinking “at least it’s not me or someone I love”.  For me, it’s all around, the no’s are constantly present.  They are part of our system.  There are so many, they make up a mountain of no’s.  It takes energy to know they are wrong and feel helpless to stop them.  And it takes even more energy to push against these no’s, even when stopping them would alleviate the pain in my heart. So, I am walking through my days seeing the presence of the no’s and saying "yes" by not stopping them. Through my actions, I am saying yes to the no.  

     Imagine if you were to say. “Yes” to things you encounter that are good and helpful to humanity, the Earth, or to yourself.  Saying “yes” to the yes’s.  Yes, to opening a door for someone or yes, to a petition to put in a new bikeway, despite complicated and imperfect details.  What about saying yes to help a homeless person get some new shoes or a cell phone.  What about saying yes when your child or grandchild goes to pick up a piece of trash?  Instead of saying, “No! That’s dirty.  Put it down!” you say “Oh, what a good idea.  Let’s get a bag and pick up some trash. Then we can wash our hands.”  Then maybe say yes to riding the bus to work, yes to a friend who is writing a book about racism in schools, yes to forgiving your relatives for ignoring your needs. 

When I think about all of these yes's I get exhausted.  I have to pick and choose the yes's because I usually have to do something, organize things, give money, or show up for a meeting.  Blah!  I'm tired!  Then I realize all I have to do is say yes in my head and in my reactions.  Saying no to these solutions is usually a response to the energy it takes to change habits.  I do not like to change my habits! 

     I wonder if energy will follow when I say yes, especially when someone else is doing it all and what they need is approval and for me to talk about their idea.  Saying yes to a proposition to stop all cash flowing from the government into our defense budget and putting the money into education, disarmament, and sustainable energy?  There is one just like this called Proposition One.  You could support it.  It would take some energy.  But, imagine the energy you put into walking by the hurtful and negative things every day.  What if we all put our energy into one of these yes’s every day?  I've tried it for a couple of months and it feels really good.  It's a relief.  I have made a lot of connections, and I feel relieved of the nagging feeling that I am part of the problem.  

     How do I get past the feeling that I will use up all of my energy on useless projects? I focus on the basic goodness of all things, meaning the stuff I need will come to me when I need it if I create a system of giving and gratitude around me.  

     There are a few things I have come to know by sitting in silence. I experienced these openings because other faithful Friends came to be silent together.  One of these is a vision of wholeness that has unfolded slowly over a period of years.  In fleeting moments, I see it all at once and try to savor it like a childhood memory.  That vision has found only a few words to describe itself, one group of words being Open To Love, and the other The Healing Salve Is To Disarm Oneself.  These are poor descriptions in short phrases, but really I see it in a larger, more systemic vision, like a picture of a working organism of people where people and environment are One, growing to become one another, a transformation of selves into selves until all of the lines of separation are blurred. 

Unity  2015 by Glee 

     The vision is like many microcosms described as a large interwoven scene comparable to an M.C. Escher drawing where one perspective becomes the other while one’s eyes and mind are led on a spiral journey but in this case, a journey of compassion.  Simple and yet complex, this vision of a gentle but powerful system is easier seen in the mind by relaxing the eyes, mind and heart until the small and the large are seen as one, letting dichotomy fade away.  It is like an ecstatic moment in nature expressing patterns within patterns of randomly purposeful beauty. 

     I have seen this way of thinking played out in non-competitive games, those used in the Alternatives To Violence Program, a way of playing games that has it’s roots in many cultures but came to western culture in the 1970’s.  Capture the Flag might be familiar. 

One I really like is called Wizards, Dwarves, and Giants.  A group of people are split into two equal teams and asked to choose a base far from that of the other team.  Exactly half way between the two, a meeting place is established.  At the meeting place, each team brings a character imbued with its perspective power.  Giants win over dwarves, wizards win over giants, Dwarves win over wizards.  Each team has a secret meeting at base, where they choose who they are going to be that time.  When ready, teams walk to the meeting place, form a line facing the other team, standing quietly, out of character.  At a signal from an outside facilitator, each team expresses their character.  Those who are over-powered, can be chased by the winning team and tagged, causing them to go to the opposing team.   The teams gather again at base and it goes on and on.  As the teams mix together, one team might get larger, the other smaller, a strategy might emerge, but what profound thing happens is that the members come to know being on both sides without animosity.  The goal at the end is for both teams to become one, for each member to know both sides and all powers.  The powers and characters each have a useful quality.  The end result is a feeling of mutual winning.  They are not meant to decimate the opposing team.

     When we see humans woven into one another as we are woven into the whole of our living ecological systems, the medium we are made of becomes the message we express.  In this case, the medium of minerals, air, water, sunshine, moonlight, and more, is a part of our being.  As we observe water flowing, plants growing, planets moving, we understand how we are to behave.  We express ourselves the way we do because of what we are.  When the vision is one of a system moving smoothly, there are constant returns and endless expenditure, one part is happy to be giving, as it is receiving in full and in many miniscule and infinite directions from all systems within a system in expansion and compression, breathing the universe.  Another reason to let go of defense and ownership.  

     One analogy of unity came by way of a vision of one who sees from the perspective of the baby in a womb soon to be born and at the same time the mother waiting to meet them and yet knowing this is a soul she has met many times before.  Once this feeling of connection of infinity is realized, there is love, fear, and expectancy all present at once in a moment so fleeting there is no time to grab the phone, a camera, a pencil, or a word to describe it.  We can sense unity when we are in this kind of fleeting moment.  We are here now in this place.  Once this unity is known, we are informed by this truth.  It is now a part of our senses, like hearing, tasting, or feeling. 

     When I see us interwoven, the system flowing, I see a vision of the softest and weakest power that cannot be overcome by any amount of defense.  Indeed building up protection, holding back water, and pushing back at the gates of time appears to be stopping the flow of this beautiful system.  I listen for this truth in the quietest places, when the doors are open, the path is clear, the arms are wide, the dams are let loose, the tears fall shamelessly in joy and sadness, the muscles lay softy after stretching and hard work, the breath of her mountains and trees are the air in our lungs.  This is the kind of power that comes from being Open To Love.

     I feel so euphoric in this vision, I ask, “Where is violence in this system? For there is always violence.”  When you ask for food, you are fed.  When you ask for water, you are quenched.  When you are tired you rest.  When you are curious, you seek.  When you are rested, you run, dance, laugh, lift, build, push, lead, and follow at the intersection of all of existence.  Love, that feeling of connection beyond explanation but expressed a thousand and a thousand more ways, comes slowly, without warning, and stays as long as we can be with it, for god is overwhelming, but unforgettable.  In every action, every movement, each breath and effort to connect, we are here with this love.  It cannot leave.  We are never separate but for our armor, our borders, and our defense, which is exhausting.  We cannot help but remember the pain, violence, and suffering.  When we stop the divine flow of opposites from moving into one another, the energy cannot be replenished and the next place in our system cannot receive, and the next and the next and the next, and on and on endlessly we are being affected by this stuck place.  Whether fear, exhaustion, or injury, we must leap from fear to love, leaping with arms wide, eyes open, muscles relaxed, compassionate, forgiven, released, and in love to the other side only to realize the separation, the chasm was never there. 

Turn Your Heart To The Point Of Oneness
by Glee 2013

     I have been reading about the solution to a world wide fresh water crisis, particularly around the work of Maude Barlow and the notion of water becoming a common, un-owned resource, establishing bodies of water like the great lakes region, a commons.  The English used to and still have areas that are considered the commons, a good example being shared grass areas where sheep, goats, and cows are put out to pasture.  A community must share this resource, and guard its productivity into the future.  Whether the seventh generation is considered, I am not certain.  A commons from the perspective of indigenous peoples regarding the small amount of lands still in their care, might be considered commons, but in a much larger and longer reaching way.  It’s not the giving of a shared space to the common use of people, feeding into the individual use of the land/business they own separately, with borders and separations.  Yes, territory, and survival are part of this and cause violence, but use of the resources is not a commodity that can be used up, it is there for all beings, all of life.  It is never parceled up.  It is part of us and we are part of it.  I am making an attempt to describe this, and it might be a bit romanticized, but this point might just be the point of Mr. Lietaer.  He refers to societies inspired by the Great Mother, that these societies are ones of sharing and openness, not scarcity and fear.  That it has a lot to do with small local economies showing us how knowing, encouraging, and sharing, giving of our gifts creates a strong, equal economy. This is saying yes to another way of using water.  It requires letting go of ownership and saying yes to letting it belong to a living system, having faith that it will return to us when we need it.  

     Here's a brain twister... I have seen whole organizations, classrooms, and faith groups change when the answer to most every yes is a yes, and to every no is a no.  If the yes is, at heart a yes, it firstly does no harm.  It may not solve all of the problems we are facing, or even perfectly resolve a conflict.  The yes may not stop Climate Change or the violence that comes from it, but the yes energy will be cared for until another yes comes along.  As leaders, saying yes can build capacity and keep the flow of healing energy moving.  One example is a gathering to figure out a problem, where ideas in the form of a brainstorm are recorded.  All ideas are acceptable, clarified, and recorded until all ideas are expressed.  This is a yes system.  A no system is one with fits and starts using shame and aggression to get to the answer that is acceptable only to the already existing system that is perhaps causing the stuck feeling to begin with.  So, openness to all possibilities is a yes, and it creates the energy to move a system into a place of shared vision.  Many of us know that a shared vision is a supported vision, an equitable vision, and it may even create further possibilities beyond the solution that comes out of a yes session of brainstorming. 

     Here is an example of how seeing a yes was hard for me.  

     My Quaker meeting accidentally found themselves on a list of organizations supporting The Charter For Compassion.  This is a charter asking that all faith traditions return to a place of compassion as a basic principle and that this principle also be at the heart of our beloved communities.  A beautiful idea based in exhaustive research of the basis of all religions done by Karen Armstrong.  Our organization is a non-violent, peace society, based in the notion that there is the light of God in every person.  We might even see ourselves as one of the experts on faith and peace activism.   Reading the words of the charter proved challenging for our community and even for me.  The concept of promoting a principle of compassion without first instilling a sense of human experience around it seemed inherently flawed.  I could not put my energy into something that seemed too good to be true.  I even sited the evidence that any utopian vision is one of inherent violence to those who do not readily comply. I was scared that I would put my hope into something and that it would either not work or that someone would go around killing groups of people who refused to act compassionately.  Wow!  I don’t even know how my mind went there.  It just goes to show how fear can bring on a no when a yes comes along.  I went home and looked at Karen Armstrong’s new book, Fields of Blood: Blood and the History of Violence ,  and realized she had provided the research needed to show the world that saying yes to compassion doesn’t lead to more blood. She writes in the introduction, Obviously the two world wars were not fought on account of religion.  When they discuss the reason people go to war, military historians acknowledge that many interrelated social, material, and ideological factors are involved, one of the chief being competition for scarce resources. 

Still Life With A Blood Donor
by Glee 2012

     So, here I was, faced with my own disregard of a yes.  A profound and beautiful answer to a history of violence so long I couldn’t fathom an end to it in my children’s lifetimes.  Yet there it was being honored by The Pope, The Dalai Lama, and many others.  Our no hasn’t stopped the flow of an open and healing system, but it blocked the forward energy of a group of folks who believe in compassion so strongly, they would say no to it.  I wanted to go back in time and say, “Yes! This one is easy, Yes! Yes! Yes!  Never mind that the words are not perfect or that the plan isn’t in place.  This is one of those fabulous ideas that must move forward.”  What a relief it would be to add my faith community to that list.  Relief is what we call goods and services given to a group of people in dire need of basic supplies. 

     I am left with the question of brining a Syrian refugee family to America to be cared for by our community.  Spirit answered yes to that right away! Come to find out, much of the unrest in Syria is caused by a scarcity of fresh water.  What is alleviating the situation is compassion and opening of borders.  How many yes doors need to open to end a civil war and rebuild a country?  How many yes doors have to open in American politics to bring refugees to rest here in the U.S.? 

Learn More:  Charter For Compassion 

                        Alternatives To Violence Project

                        Maude Barlow: Blue Future 

Being Together

I first published this post to encourage others to learn more about David Korten and his vision of a new society beyond Climate Change.  As an after thought, I listed all of these other interesting folks who are saying the same thing.

The basic message I hear is that we all need to know more about one another's needs, talents, and interests, so we can begin working together again.  If we don't have fossil fuel and other ways of living far beyond our bioregions, we will have to rely on one another for sustenance.

We will have to learn to use our hands to make things machines and poor people make for us in far off lands.  We will have to grow our food, share it, and learn to preserve it.  We will have to learn to entertain one another with stories, music, and laughter when our gigantic TV's start to fizzle and we don't have the resources to fix them or buy a new one.  We'll have to learn about plants and plant medicine to cure one another.

If it gets hotter or dryer, we will need to understand how to direct water back into the ground or how to make cisterns to collect it.  There will be a lot of emotions around saying goodbye to our lifestyle.  We might feel sorrow for the way we have used things up, and dirtied the beauty around us.  So, to build strength and support, we will want to form deep and well connected communities that span out into numerous other circles of people and other living things.  Someday, we will recall living as caged birds, not knowing how to sing or fly.

• The International Council of 13 Indigenous Grandmothers: The medicine the world needs is to focus on reconnecting with all our relations and relationships to one another:  They are awakening people to the urgent need for change if we are to survive on this planet. But they are not using fear as a weapon. They are offering us hope. What many people see as a threat, they see as an opportunity. (For The Next Seven Generations-the movie) 

• Donna Maxey of Portland Race Talks:  How many of you know all of your neighbors three houses up, down and across the street?  I mean knowing them by their first name and having been in their house.  

• David Holmgren: Permaculture Principles:  Sustainable systems are about relationships 

• Watch a Youtube Video of David Korten, the co-creator of Yes! Magazine and author of several books.  His most recent being Empire To Earth Community. 

• Eco Faith Recovery, Portland, Oregon:  Reconciling a right relationship with all of creation 

• The Turning Point, by Fritjof Capra:  The new paradigm may be called a holistic world view, seeing the world as an integrated whole rather than a dissociated collection of parts. It may also be called an ecological view, if the term "ecological" is used in a much broader and deeper sense than usual. Deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena and the fact that, as individuals and societies we are all embedded in (and ultimately dependent on) the cyclical process of nature. Fritjof Capra, Gunter A. Pauli (1995) Steering business toward sustainability. p. 3 cited in: Elmer Kennedy-Andrews (2008) Writing Home. p. 13.

• Gaia Theory: James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis:  There is one Earth organism co-evolving 
• The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil 

Clean And Pure

The Rebirth of Venus  by Kneil Melicano

Bathroom Sink in Phoenix, Arizona 

Most bottled water is secured or purchased from a source, city water supply, or a spring and filtered of all that is not two hydrogen atoms attached to an oxygen atom.  At this point, it is pure, free of minerals, bacteria, flavor, and healing properties.  Basically, this water's connection to it's place on Earth is removed.

Minerals are added back into the water to make it taste the way we think it ought to taste, sweeter? cooler? .(..stronger? thinner? taller? cleaner? quieter?)  Then it is put into a plastic bottle. covered with more plastic, labeling it pure, dated and sourced for our convenience.  Then it is marketed to the public.  We buy it, drink it, and discard the marketing.  In truth, we have had a drink of water and paid for the marketing, processing, transportation, chemicals, legal process of procuring the water, upkeep of vehicles and equipment, worker in the bottling plant, the creation of plastic from fossil fuels, getting the fossil fuels from the ground, processing the fossil fuels into compounds used for plastic, the natural gas and coal to power the plant that bottles the water, the glue, the paper to wrap on the bottle, the design of the bottle and the marketing of the shape of the bottle best suited to our taste, and often for the refrigeration of the water and the management of the dispensing machine.  Now, that's expensive!

Going to the store to buy bottled water is getting more complicated, there is water from NewZealand, California, Arkansas, Fiji, Hawaii, Iceland, Ashland, Oregon.  And the water is now guaranteed to be naturally alkaline, since folks realized water has properties in it other than just pure water.  Since fresh drinking water is becoming scarce, the value of it is going up, (according to the market).  All water is different, because it lives in and on Earth, our bodies, and in our very unique bioregions.  When these unique qualities are remembered, I wonder if we will become connoisseurs of each special source. Like drinking fine wines, they will carry ancient stories of place.

This is the beautiful part of the story.  The ancient story of water is that it is believed to carry special healing powers when one drinks it from a specific spring at its source.  Lithia Springs, in Ashland, Oregon is one example, one of millions.  Many of these healing springs are also sacred, which in turn became waters named after Catholic Saints.  Going to the land where the water springs forth is no longer a special journey.  The journey is the one we take to the grocery store, the quickie mart, or the vending machine. Perhaps some day these hermetically sealed waters will be a collector's item, like fine wine.  When all the water in springs and clean water sources are sucked out of the Earth and rivers, piped, purified, bottled, trucked, and stored for those who can afford it, water will truly be a commodity.

What has changed is that these waters are being displaced.  Over time, the joy of drinking a special kind of water has become a very damaging form of consumption.  How?

Waters are displaced because they go through our sewer system (from our bodies), usually in large urban areas and don't make it back into the septic system, aquifer, or water bioregion they came from.  The water isn't waiting in a reservoir for us to turn on the faucet, it is being taken out of a system far away all day every day and put into bottles and trucks and taken to where the people are waiting to buy it when ever we get thirsty.  It's sitting in storage at big warehouses, on trucks, and in grocery stores.  When we need water, it is there for us.  Meanwhile, fresh drinking water supplies in towns and cities all over the world are being over pumped, over used, and over priced due to scarcity and private ownership.  Perhaps when the market changes, the price of warehoused bottled water will change.  When availability changes, the price will change.  Considering that we all need water every day and knowing there are extremely impoverished people in our country, this is a growing emergency.  If public drinking water supplies are not protected and shared, the only clean drinking water could be what is in the bottles.  Should impoverished people have to wait for the wealthy to give them water or should we all have access to clean drinking water, no matter what?

"The environmental impact of the country’s obsession with bottled water has been staggering. Each day an estimated 60 million plastic water bottles are thrown away. Most are not recycled. The Pacific Institute has estimated 20 million barrels of oil are used each year to make the plastic for water bottles." -Amy Goodman, Democracy Now 

Let's get straight to the point here.  

Please drink water from our water systems.  Vote for laws that discourage profiteering from our water.  Look for ways to declare our water sources a community commons.  

Bottles for recycling, Portland, OR. by Glee 2015

When I hear declarations like this, I find a million reasons NOT to change.  Consider this...The fabricated fear of drinking city water, or getting bacteria from a drinking fountain is a first world problem.  There are plenty of places in the world where drinking the water can mean guinea worm disease, cholera, or dysentery.  Not so much in US cities.

Drink from the tap, bring a cup, find a drinking fountain.  Not for yourself, but for everyone, for your world family.  Keep water in its region, and help keep that water a part of the place where you live by buying foods grown and processed locally.  When we buy fruits, vegetables, drinks, juices, grains, products, we buy the clean water that was used to produce and process them.

What can you do now? You can get to know your neighbors.  Your neighbors likely live in the same watershed, over the same aquifers, and hopefully share the same water utility. Have a watershed party in you neighborhood.  Drink some water together. When we know our neighbors, we realize we are all in this together.

Learn and do:  Create A Rain Garden
                        Maude Barlow at World Social Forum
                        Know Your Watershed
                        Friendly Water For The World 

Arundhati Roy

"Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. 

On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."

-Arundhati Roy

Birds of a Feather: Forming The Beloved Community  by Glee 2013

What is a beloved community?  

In The Shade Of a Tree: A True Story

August 1, 2015

By Glee

Tree showing its roots in Ashland, Oregon   by Glee

 One hot day in August, a friend had dropped some old toys off on our front porch for the kids.  After discovering the boxes, my kids had turned the Jungle into "Endangered Species Political Coup", leaving the muscle bound, equipment heavy action figures trapped in their own cages.  The wild animals had taken the plastic Land Cruiser and all the tiny plastic film equipment to the back yard.  There, they filmed their communal creativity in celebration of the action figures' release.  The story on the front of the box turned out to be tragically wrong. 

My littlest had grown tired of his older sibling’s intense "activism".  He had abandoned the tiny crew and their puppet master in favor of solitary play in the front yard.  The front door was gaping wide in welcome to the warm breeze of a summer afternoon. 

I had found a lull in the day, when endings had come together and beginnings had yet to start.  I didn’t know who I had been before I gave myself to motherhood.  I was left wondering, "Where was the ache for independence I knew before children?"  I picked up one thing and put it in its place, and another, and put it where it belonged.  It was fruitless. 

I rounded the corner from the kitchen as my youngest walked through the door with purpose.  He prepared his statement with careful gestures, tilted head, and sincere brown eyes.  “There’s a lady sitting out front asking for a glass of water.”  I mixed my concern together with certainty and calm, saying, “Oh, well, I’ll take care of it.”  I took a couple of steps through the front door and onto the porch to see an elderly woman sitting on a flat rock in the shade of our maple tree.  She’d been expecting me, and looked up. There were two big bags of cans lumped on the sidewalk next to her feet. 

I knew this woman.  I didn’t bother to take another step and said, “Oh. I’ll get it.” 

I passed easily through the open door and into the kitchen.  I saw a big plastic cup in my hand, and then in hers.  These are the cups we use when we are worried about our good glasses breaking.   I saw an honor and love for her change the plastic into a big glass cup filled to the rim with cool water.  As I looked down, my hands had already filled the glass.  It was a glass of water I would want for myself if I were very thirsty. 

I walked with ease, saying aloud to myself, “Did I need this lesson today?”  I was secretly relieved to have something to do.  The weight of the glass felt good, like a precious gift of every day value. 

I stood and talked to Sing about her life, how she’s from Fiji that she got here and worked, then retired, and now gets social security, barely enough. 

“But I don’t steal, you see?  I ask.”   She said as she drank the water.  We spent some time talking as she rested in the shade, commenting here and there about how she was tired and hot and it is a good place to sit. 

Pears my neighbor shares from her tree.  by Glee

We talked about men, how her long-time boyfriend had become enamored with a Chinese woman, who was taking away all of his attention.  She was frustrated and angry. 

She suddenly remembered why she’d been there in the first place, and quietly informed me that my neighbor’s husband must drink a lot, 'cause she puts out so many beer cans to recycle every week.  She comes by to get the cans, but doesn’t always get the timing right.  The cans weren’t out, yet. 

I took a moment to cover my sadness for my neighbor, a woman who lives alone and smells of alcohol in the afternoons, how she’s the best neighbor I’ve ever had. 

I became curious about a brown grocery bag of fresh picked greens at her side.  Following my eyes, she said, “You know these?  You cook them it hot oil.”  She gestured to show the motion used to cook them.  I felt my conscience well up and I checked my boundaries.  “I don’t know this woman”, I thought to myself.  “I can only offer her what I think I can spare.  then We could be friends.  She could live in my house.  We could learn from one another.  She could be a nice grandmother to my kids.”  Familiar with these thoughts, I chase them away and quickly tell her, “You can have some figs when they ripen again.” 

“I don’t like that kind, you know,” said Sing, grimacing.   

Softened stones, Rock Beach, Oregon Coast  by Glee

I said, ”Oh, you like greens, roots, squash.” 

“Yes.  Yes. That’s good for me”, she nodded.

I got up to get her some beets from our garden, big green leaves attached by deep burgundy stems.  She was surprised we had veggies growing in the front yard. We talked about how people cook them. She thanked me, passed back the empty glass, and we said good-bye.  She was still sitting at the sidewalk when I walked into the house. 

I carried Sing with me in my mind.  I never knew the rocks below were good for sitting on.  The deep shade had grown over the years and the rocks had softened.  I recall thinking, “She didn’t want the sweet figs.  I guess I planted those for me.”

Learn more:  Is water a fundamental human right?  
                     The Gift Economy