Archived here are the blogs I write about inner life and outer life, inner nature and outer nature. Perhaps my writings on life, as I see it and experience it, may offer you some small insight or different perspective as you take your own journey.
With gratitude for all that life teaches me, I share my experiences.
The other day we watched a swallowtail butterfly alight on our small lilac bush, noting that, in spite of all the bad news lately, nature is back in full swing. But that doesn’t mean we are safe from harm. Life seems to be going on as usual and I’ve noted that people do not really get it that our world has changed since the nuclear disaster in Japan. But this is change that we can’t see, so there is little incentive to believe the truth of it. As a result of that-which-we-can’t-see, poisoned earth and food are not even an issue for most people. Little real change seems to be taking place as to how people eat and view food and this is worrisome.
What are we thinking? Why do we choose not to face the truth of our changed world? How do we protect ourselves from ingesting even more toxins than ever before? Even in local gardening, in growing our own foods, in picking from nature, the truth is that the soil is contaminated now with radiation.
In my opinion, this changed environment requires diligence and questioning on the part of the consumer. It requires that we take the initiative like never before to confront the hypocrisy of the media and the corporations, that we demand full exposure of the truth of reality, in straight spoken terms, so that everybody gets that we are in a crisis here, and, above all, that we push for the closure of nuclear power plants now in operation and stop all plans to open more. There is nothing safe about them.
I don’t think it’s too late for us, or the earth, but a lot of people may have to get sicker before the food and power industries begins to change, based on the consumer making demands based on reality, even the kind you can’t see.
The crows are trying to tell us something. This bird of omen, if you note, as we have, has been flying low lately. What does this mean? The crows are swooping down in front of us as we drive, walk, sit on our deck. They are trying to tell us something— perhaps to be careful, to be watchful. Are they swooping low to remind us of what came raining down upon us from the nuclear explosions in Japan? Are they trying to tell us that our world is changing more rapidly than we think? Are they warning of impending attacks? I don’t mean to alarm, but I really wonder what they are foreshadowing or implying in their erratic behavior? Normally birds of the sky and the tree tops, they are diligent at watching over the world from on high, but now, for some reason, they have left their sentinel posts and are flying at low levels and this is mighty curious.
I don’t take the unseen lightly. I know it is powerful energy, the unseen web of interconnected energy that is both healing and spiritually enlightening, but that is also where negative energy and the potential for destruction reside as well.
Be thoughtful, be careful. Detoxify, heal the self, treat the earth as you would treat your children, your loved ones and she will treat you well in return. Nuclear power, oil drilling, and natural gas fracking are not treating the earth well; they are harming it irreparably and our human population as well, more than we can see.
It is not that which we see that is important now, but that which we can’t see. Keep that in mind as you think about how you really want the world and yourself and your loved ones to look in a few years time.
Take a look at this article from The Center for Public Integrity: A More Likely Nuclear Nightmare that just got posted while I was writing this blog. It’s time to protest the absurdity ever more loudly.
Always hopeful and optimistic, yet alert like the crows,
Jan
I don’t mean to overwhelm with bad news, but I just can’t ignore what I come across. All of this so-called bad news is just pointing out, as I see it, both the manipulated world we live in—and have so readily accepted without question—and the desperate need for all of us not to fall back into it, and, likewise, to question everything. It is only through questioning reality that we can begin to question our own inner process as well, and make the journey to embracing and becoming part of a changing world in alignment with what is real.
With Mother’s Day coming up I’ve felt the need to expound on our real mother, Mother Earth. If we all give her just a little more attention we can help her stay healthy and truly alive. If we keep looking for the signs that show us the truth, we will not fall back into our old complacency that has gotten us into the trouble we are in now. If we all spread a little Mother Earth message every day, perhaps we can help change the world outside of us, while we still concentrate on changing our inner world.
I recently found this update on what really happened at Fukushima in Japan following the earthquake and tsunami, and why we must be vigilant and continually say no to the perpetuation of nuclear power.
I found this article about China producing fake organic certificates. I’m sure it’s just a small drop in the bucket of consumer fraud. Organics means money. So watch what you buy and consume. The best bet, shop local from people you know and trust, or better yet, grow your own. Even a few small window planters can yield a summer’s worth of meals. Plus, as mentioned in yesterday’s blog, look around your own backyard.
Spring is eagerly looked forward to in our house. The first signs of green growth, what some people would call weeds, herald platefuls of nutritious meals and the making of tinctures, infusions, and decoctions. At this time of year we are gathering those weeds, drying some for teas, cutting and infusing others to become medicinals for winter use, and cleaning and eating others fresh from the ground. Those weeds are full of energy, the first signs of offerings from Mother Earth after a long winter of making due with what we can find in the local markets. As the winter waned we watched the struggle, the earth awakening, the buds growing a little more each day, the need for sunlight and rain to aid in the natural unfolding of what has been lying dormant for so many months.
As a young teenager, I hiked along the Appalachian Trail that ran along the top of the mountain where I lived, a copy of Euell Gibbon’s Stalking the Wild Asparagus in my backpack, learning to identify plants and trees, digging for roots, picking leaves, and always on the lookout for that elusive wild asparagus. My daughter tells me that Stalking the Wild Asparagus has taken on a cult meaning now, within a new hippie culture; her friends posting that they are out ‘stalking the wild asparagus’ when walking the land or simply unavailable. I like that, the idea that a book written by a man who Johnny Carson regularly used as a brunt of jokes, but also respectfully invited to his show, The Tonight Show, is still important, still valued. I know that this modest man and his book are extremely valuable now as we face the call to change how we live upon this earth.
Yesterday, while driving and listening to the radio, I happened to hear part of an interview with Vandana Shiva on Alternative Radio, a woman from India, a nuclear physicist turned environmentalist. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide a link to that interview, called War on Earth, originally recorded on April 26, 2011, but I urge anyone who is interested in the environment and what is happening to our food supply to read her books, look for interviews, and pay attention to the truths she so eloquently speaks of. At the end of this blog I link to some You Tube video recording of interviews with her, for convenience, in an effort to aid in awareness of her lifelong calling to save what rightfully belongs to Mother Earth and to us as human beings living on this planet.
In the interview I listened to yesterday, she spoke of the differences between Eastern and indigenous knowledge of the earth as true Mother and the Western concept of earth only as nature, totally separate from man. No, she says, the earth is Mother; she gives us everything. In fact, we are the guests here, though we have lost this most vital and humble connection to our presence on this earth.
As visitors for only a brief period of time, are we not responsible for being better guests? Are we using the earth as a cheap hotel, leaving it in a shambles for someone else to clean up? Are we going to keep trashing, burning, drilling, cutting, tampering with, poisoning, and destroying what Mother Earth provides? Are we going to let a greedy few take away our health, our land, our most vital resources because we don’t have the energy or time to care?
A few weeks ago, someone turned to me in the aisle of the grocery store as they read the label on a can of tuna fish that stated it was sustainably caught and caring of the planet. This person looked me in the eye and said: “I don’t care about the planet, let the planet take care of itself.” When I heard this utterance I felt my face turn into a mask, my entire being becoming earthen and solid, as I felt the deep well of disrespect that I know is rampant in our country. To speak even the word ‘mother’ in the West, as Vandana Shiva mentioned in her radio interview, is often rebuked as silly, dismissed as naive, unimportant.
In truth, we are so distant from the true reality of ourselves as related to all things. We prefer to be superior, above and beyond nature. We are a culture resistant to breastfeeding, where a woman’s body is no longer sacred or respected; mother no longer held in the highest regard, as the giver of all life.
Vandana Shiva is part of a group of international environmentalist working toward earth change, part of the group that recently helped enact the law in Brazil calling for returning equal rights to Mother Earth. As she said: She is mother.
How can we not understand that? The indigenous cultures know this and they see what has happened to their mother and they want to stop it. Can we not also see this and embrace this cause? Can we not see that our very lives are at stake?
It takes more than an individual effort; it takes a global effort to enact this kind of change. But, in the meantime, we must still, each one of us, do our individual part. Today, I suggest that we each take a look at what Mother Earth offers us in our own environment so that we can truly begin to understand just what she provides us. I follow with a few examples from our own backyard.
Chuck and I have been resurrecting our acre of land over the past several years. Once highly landscaped, it fell into disrepair and by the time we purchased it most of the gardens were overgrown, hiding the ornamental trees and bushes; the rock walls covered in poison ivy, sumac sprouting up everywhere. When we lost our tall pines in the tornado that came through last fall, we at first bemoaned the loss of those majestic trees, home to many birds, that had shaded us in the summer and protected us in the winter. Now however, we have embraced what nature did, for we have sunlight and the ability to grow food that we didn’t have before. As we have cleared and cleaned our property we have discovered its hidden offerings as well. As we walk the land, we find that we could actually survive off it, food aplenty, medicinals and healing opportunities abounding.
Crab apple and magnolia trees, though often thought of as only ornamental, offer many healing properties. Their blossoms, leaves, and barks hold many properties that have been used by indigenous and Chinese herbalists for centuries, some of them making their way into products we find on the market today. If you chew the bark of the magnolia you may recognize that it tastes like something familiar, used in many dental products, because it is good for the gums and teeth. The pesky sumac, the kind with red berries, not the poisonous kind with white berries, is actually full of healing properties as well, as is the rapidly growing catalpa with its large leaves and long pods, the seeds especially medicinal.
Dandelions, the leaves, roots, and blossoms are full of vitamins, minerals, and healing properties as well. Plantain, the lowliest of wild plants probably—everyone has this in their yard or can easily find it alongside the road—is amazing in the healing of cuts and stopping the flow of blood. We use it often; chewing the leaves and laying the pulp over a cut to stop the bleeding and knit the skin back together faster than anything I have ever seen. In telling his story Black Elk, the holy man of the Oglala Sioux, refers to being healed in this way after having been in battle, his guts hanging out and the shaman having him chew the leaves of this lowly plant and it knitting him back together so that in a matter of days he was back on the battlefield.
Last night, Chuck and I had a meal of tender dandelion greens sauteed with shitake mushrooms and garlic in olive oil, a little lemon juice sprinkled over it, salt and pepper. We also sauteed, in butter, tiny buds of dandelion flowers. Tasting like tiny asparagus they are the little green nuggets at the center of the plant before the stems grow. We sprinkled our plates with a few edible purple violet flowers. In picking the greens before the flowers grow the characteristic bitterness is avoided; after that soaking them in salted water removes this taste if it is unpleasant.
We make salads or sautes of chickweed, garlic mustard, plantain, prickly lettuce, wild onion or ramps, and clover, all found in our backyard. We make dandelion brandy from the flowers of this so-called pesky weed; its properties cleanse the liver; its roots a tonic for many ills of the digestive system. We make tinctures of chickweed, good for the skin; lemon balm, good for the nerves, heart, and brain; burdock for innumerable reasons.
Get a good book, research ancient folk remedies on the Internet, learn to identify what Mother offers in your own backyard, neighborhood or park. Everyone, no matter where we live, can have access to what the earth offers if interested. She is right below our feet, we don’t have to go far to find something to sustain and heal us. She does indeed offer us everything we need.
Here are a few quotes to ponder from Hexagram #48: Well, taken from The Living I Ching by Deng Ming-Dao.
“The muddy well does not feed. No birds come to an ancient well.”
“Well: draw from it, and you draw from the source. No matter how advanced a civilization becomes, its foundations depend on nature. A source of water cannot be replaced.”
“On a practical level, we must maintain our supply of water and food. On a spiritual level, our understanding deepens the more we dwell on the sources of our existence.”
Water from the Earth
“The water comes to us freely from the earth, deposited by the last winter’s rains…This free use of a well is a metaphor for how we should conduct our lives. If we are careful and healthy in our conduct, we will be replenished each day. Accordingly, we must give all that we can today, knowing that tomorrow will bring new support. Those who are narrow and selfish with their energies grow smaller, not greater. Give everything that you can. Do not hold back: unless water is drawn from a well, new water cannot flow in.”
“Water from the earth is wonderfully pure, refreshing, and invigorating. Our scientists can find little different about this water in their laboratories, but those who drink from the wellsprings know better. Expensive bottled water and manufactured beverages cannot help us in the way a well can. Eschew the artificial. Go to the source.”
