June Nights Await

shreds of
wing light, tattered
soulscape, lit upon by
grace-little moth splayed out in joy-
my heart

Eye of the Beholder

"I want to work a lot of places when I grow up!"

"Like where, Lily?" I inquired of my almost six year old niece.

"The dump, an ice cream parlour-- I want to be a singer, an artist, a dancer, a hair dresser!" she excitedly and assuredly proclaimed.

The dump ? you might wonder to yourself as you read the otherwise typical list of a very girly little girl. 

The conversation occurred as we were walking up my little neighborhood side road to my house in the early am of a day off from kindergarten. Soon into our walk she spotted several small liquor bottles which someone had recently tossed. She said they were cute and I could tell that she wanted to stop and pick them up but foolishly thought I should make the conversation a teachable moment. 

"Wow, Lily" I exclaimed pointing to the ditch." Look at all the other garbage people have thrown away"--a Tim Horton's paper coffee cup and waste plastic lid, a potato chip bag--"Maybe people should really try hard not to buy things that they just use and then throw away! " I said as I tried to restrain her from picking up the dirty, drippy debris.

She stood there grasping my hand, itching to dive into the ditch, her little eyes bulging with the artistic possibility which lay before her.

"You know, nothing is garbage to me." she had said several weeks earlier to her cousins, my three children, who were visiting with her and her younger sister at my parent's house.  

In her sweet innocence, the world of waste is filled with artistic potential.  "Beautiful junk" was what my oldest daughter's kindergarten called it. And I can understand the delight--being allowed free range over transforming the refuse which no one else wants into the invention of your choosing. Isn't that at the heart of every artists dream of transformation? But I figured at this age her parents might appreciate clean and dry junk rather than what was in front of us.

Walking on I was flooded with more thoughts. The social activist/ environmentalist inside me got to thinking of the thousands upon thousands of homeless children living in dumps and slums; children whose very survival depends upon the refuse of the world. The possibility they struggle for is life itself. 

I also thought of what our little Island might look like in the not so distant future should we all continue to mindlessly consume plastics the way we currently do. Even so-called recyclables are a burden to Earth. It was not a very pretty picture which came to mind.

Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh writes:
"Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us--in the world and in nature--and in us--in our bodies and in our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace we will be healed and transformed."

What might the future world look like if we could mindfully and imaginatively transform how we engage with the here and now?

The gift of each new moment offers us the potential to make such transformation a reality. 

In peace,

Jill

                                                                                                                                    

Please consider commenting on the PEI Climate Change Adaptation

Also for your consideration: the role of and need for a child advocate on PEI

A beautiful junk example which would be worthy of modeling:

Materials Exchange Center for Community Arts

Happy Earth Day 2017

Earth Day 2017 and so many wonderful things going on to help us reawaken our connection to the sacredness of the living Earth.

An afternoon in the relative quiet of our little south facing front garden provided all the inspiration and sense of connectedness I needed to sustain me for Earth Day this year.

My three children, two delightful teens and one sweet preteen, my dear two and a half year old nephew and I all passed a wonderful afternoon digging about clearing out remnants of last year's garden and planning for this year's expansion. So many little discoveries awaited our curious, sometimes patient, unearthing.

Eight honey bees busily pollinating the early spring bulb bluebells--which we almost didn't plant last November. A large box of mixed bulbs, a late but most welcome gift, and the bluebells themselves an afterthought in the garden really, but so very welcome to the busy bees this day.

And a nest of three slumbering queen Bumblebees coiled in little earthly beds beneath a sandstone foundation stone lining the side of our driveway.

Many, many earthworms of assorted sizes and one very large dew worm.

A white cabbage butterfly fluttered by and a Tree Swallow swooped deep swells of sky high above the trees behind our house.

An Osprey called out its high pitched ode to spring returning to its nearby nest platform after feeding in the pond down the road.

A powerful Raven made the parents of an incessantly chirping baby crow in our neighbor's evergreen windbreak pretty nervous for a short time. Then it was off like the clouds and they all settled down for a while.

"It's a pretty hard day for digging outdoors today" was my little nephew's take on the afternoon. He dug in our little bed for a solid hour and a half, with a pleasant seriousness only his father could better, studied the honeybees, ran and played catch with his cousins, tree climbed, swung in the hammock, yelped out for all to "Come see this one guys" when in his very earnest digging he dug up a plump dew worm which was 9.5 inches long. We had the tape measure outside because we were planning our garden redo. We are expanding our little front edibles garden because our gardening efforts of the past five or six years have proven so delicious and bountiful that we are undertaking the joyful planting of even more good things to eat at the request of our two very interested, oldest kids.

Life is strange and wonderful. I thought of many things during our happy little afternoon outdoors together. The circle of life was not far from my mind as I played with my little nephew in the soil and thought of my dear sister, his mom, who is 31 weeks pregnant with her second child and eagerly awaiting meeting their new little person.

I thought too of my ninety year old grand aunt whose end of life party we attended last Saturday and who passed away yesterday afternoon amid the tearful farewells of her loving family. She will be buried in the graveyard down the road from my house, and hers, early next week. She comprised an interesting combination of spunk, generosity and warm graciousness. 

Life is precious -- all so precious and all so deserving of our mindful and loving attention.

This dear Earth can hold us in a myriad of ways, us the myriad of creatures that we are. But, and this is a big But, we must take better care of this tiny, sacred orb. The lives of so many utterly depend on our realization that the Earth is not here for our taking but for the caring and sharing of many creatures for years to come.

Special thank you to all my dear outdoor companions today--for helping me remember to keep close to the Earth, and to my son for so willingly teaching us all about the wonders and ways of the creatures we saw today. It never fails that when I take time to pay quiet attention to the living world, I am duly rewarded.

Happy Earth Day 2017
In Gratitude,
Jill MacCormack

Living, Loving Universe

Extend
your gentle ways
to all creatures, beings
so that goodness, kindness blooms with
each breath.

Jill MacCormack

Late winter is a wonderful time to consider the ways in which life wants to engage with us. We are emerging from the cocoon of snowdrifts and darkness with the sun's strengthening and lengthening daylight hours. What better time to re-consider the re-awakening world as one that is alive with potential to nurture and heal us of our sense of separation? What if we took some time to ponder the following excerpt and consider the sacredness of the natural world and the wonder of being an integral part of the living universe?

"At the cutting edge of contemporary science a remarkable insight is surfacing: the universe, with all things in it, is a quasi-living, coherent whole. All things in it are connected...A cosmos that is connected, coherent, and whole recalls an ancient notion that was present in the tradition of every civilization: it is an enchanted cosmos... We are part of each other and of nature...We are a conscious part of the world, a being through which the cosmos comes to know itself."

Ervin Laszlo 

Too oft we forget how deeply it all is connected. When we do remember, we can once again care for each other and for the well being of this achingly beautiful, altogether mesmerizing world.

In peace,
Jill MacCormack

Sarah and Sebastian Storm Day

Sarah and Sebastian are best friends. They've known each other almost their whole entire lives. They live in the countryside on a little Island in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. They love their little Island and they are curious explorers of the world around them. Won't you come join them?

Sarah awoke early to the deep sighing of the wind.

She popped up and looked out her window which was covered in lacy ice ferns left by the deep cold night. The snow was swirling in frosty dips like a square dancer stepping high then bowing low in one after another do si do.

Just then Sarah's mother opened her bedroom door.

"No school today Sarah. Go back to sleep." her mother smiled. "Your father will be home today but I have to go to work. See you at suppertime!

Sarah pulled the thick layers of warm quilts up to her chin. I wonder if Sebastian will be dropped off today, Sarah thought to herself.

Sebastian's mom and dad both worked in the city like Sarah's mother and on day's off school Sarah's father kept care of Sebastian.

 

Sarah drifted off to dreamland and awoke for the second time that morning to the sound of her best friend's voice.

"Come on Sarah! Get up! Are you gonna sleep all day?" 

Sebastian laughed at Sarah with her great pile of sleepy red hair in a tangle around her face.

"I already had breakfast and I want to go outside with you." her friend said.

Soon Sarah was getting on her snow suit to head out with her friend into the snow. The evergreen hedgerow that bordered the property was a favourite place of Sebastian and Sarah's on blustery mornings in wintertime. They crawled in under the thick canopy of snow laden branches and lay back in the cold quiet of the hollow beneath the trees. 

Craggy bits of a gray green lichen called Old Man's Beard hung in shaggy tufts on some of the bare branches. Sarah grabbed a lichen covered twig off the snow beside her. She held it up to her face and Sebastian laughed at her. 

"You look like an old man" he said to her.

 Sarah giggled and handed it to her pal. 

"You try it Shun."

 He held it up and it tickled his chin. 

"These trees are getting old like great- grandpa. Dad told me this stuff only grows on very old trees."

Shun tossed the stick aside and looked out at the stormy day.

"If I was a rabbit this is where I would live in the wintertime." Sebastian said to Sarah as he shook an evergreen branch and powdery snow fell on his face. He rubbed his mitten on his cheek and brushed the snow away.

"Oh Shun" Sarah said. "You mean Hare, not Rabbit. Remember what we learned at school last winter. Rabbit's are at the pet store but Snowshoe Hare's live in the wild here. We saw their tracks last year in the field out back."

Shun remembered the little tracks which looked a bit like miniature snowshoes but smiling at his friend said he would always call them rabbits because he liked the word rabbit better. 

Sarah crawled out of their secret hideaway. The cold wind brushed against her face. Shun crawled out behind her. 

“I’m freezing.” Sarah said. "Let's get some hot cocoa. We can come back out later on." 

The two friends went inside to the warmth of Sarah’s house. They drank hot cocoa and played puzzles and painted pictures. Sebastian said one of his pictures was of a white rabbit hopping in deep snow in a blizzard. Sarah laughed at him because the page he held up was blank. Sarah loved how her best friend could always make her giggle.

Prince Edward Island is home to many species of Lichens; Old Man's Beard is just one of them.

To learn more about Old Man's Beard visit: https://flandrumhill.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/lost-beards-of-the-forest/ 

Snowshoe Hare tracks are some of the animal tracks you see in the winter woods and fields of PEI. To learn more about Animal tracks of PEI visit: http://www.cwf-fcf.org/assets/pdf/en/trackingwinter-72.pdf

"Go Into the Forest--all Those Trees are Holding Hands" Chief Charles Labrador--Beauty Whisperers

"...only when knowledge is conditioned by respect can it be truly shared” (in Mi’kmaq: “Ta’n tujiw kjijitaqn tela’tasik kepne’ktn ketloqo kisiktpi’tasitew”) (Mi’kmawey 1997).

 www.integrativescience.ca

When I am in the woods I know I am in my true home. I know it by my breathing, by the feeling in my bones and by the quickening of my pulse as I lay my hand on the rough and weather beaten bark of a silent, old friend. In the forest I forget myself and become one with the beauty which surrounds me.I linger by the moss that watches o'er the base of old stumps. I cannot help but reach out to touch the lichens whose wisdom traverses the ages. And I always pause by the noble fungi whose quiet ways uphold so much. When I myself am quiet, these old friends speak to me as they did during the great many hours we spent together when I was a child.  It is in honour of those moments that I must speak:

As a civilization we have lost the art of quiet appreciative listening-- our modes of operation endanger rendering us as nothing more than automatons of consumption. And beauty—that sweet whisper of the soul— there is a war being raged upon her very being. In her defense let us become beauty whisperers. With heart focused attentiveness and a willingness to step beyond our own limited  and confining sense of self we can be the change we seek in this world.

Through the act of helping the next generation become reacquainted with their own curiosity and the wonders of the natural world we might help them see past the mindless consumption of digital technologies so they can once again hear the songs of their own wild and beautiful spirits echoed in the world around them.

Another starting point lies in the revival of a language of the land. First Nation peoples had so many wonderful words to describe weather and landscape. The Celtic peoples and many others did as well. People intimately knew a small area and cared for it with loving attention. They knew not to pollute the life systems upon which all life depends.

“Go into the forest, you see the birch, maple, pine. Look underground and all those trees are holding hands. We as people have to do the same.”

Mi’kmaw Spiritual Leader, Healer, and Chief Charles Labrador of Acadia First Nation, Nova Scotia.

http://www.integrativescience.ca/Principles/TreesHoldingHands/ 

Restructuring our lives so that we can playfully re-integrate with each other—with peoples of all ages and abilities, with nature, with art and music- is another wonderful place to begin. Reducing attitudes of competition and increasing a sense of caring, collaboration and community mindedness are joy filled, life enhancing choices towards positive change.

Imagine doing as First Nations peoples have done and take the long view towards the impact of planned actions on the well being of future generations. How might this action I am about to take affect the land, air and water of those living in seven generations from now? How will it affect the well being of all creatures in this present moment? How will it support my own re-acquaintance with beauty, love and joy and the wildness of my own heart?

Beauty--it is all around you--You only need listen and it will speak to your heart.Take a chance and reach out your very human hand to those near you--it is a beautifully vulnerable and courageous act of LOVE. In doing so you might just see that beneath the surface of our lives we, like the trees, are all holding hands in a myriad of ways we can scarcely begin to fathom.

In beauty,

Jill

Image: Macphail Woods courtesy of Lucas MacCormack