This week I encountered the phrase "collapse aware" for the first time. It feels a notch up (or down?) from "climate grief," with that word "collapse" -- it stopped me short at first, the stark calling out of what's happening around us. That's why essays like what you write on Wednesdays matter so much, the reminder to be present, to notice the small and miraculous, and name that too. Like, I just looked up columbine because I'd couldn't picture them, even though they're all over the Midwest! Now I'll look for them on my hikes. Thank you for that gift.
Beautiful. I needed this! Just this morning, my partner and I were walking past the flower garden outside the library, and a huge swallowtail butterfly stopped us in our tracks. We spent the rest of the walk talking about magic and mystery and sensing the divine....and refusing to partake of the collective trance that keeps us chasing productivity instead of wonder. Your post made me feel part of a community. Solidarity. THANK YOU (always).
Thank you, Anita, for sharing your swallowtail encounter--like a bit of magic in the air! Lovely. I hope you will take that wonder and pour it into your own writing. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Big love.
The forest speaking in tongues--I can hear that. Today is another hot and desperately dry one in western Colorado, in a year of heat and deepening drought. And yet, as you say, the community of the land continues to offer miracles: your columbines and baby squirrels, my Two-tailed Swallowtail butterflies and Lewis Woodpecker babies squeaking from the nest in the grandmother Fremont Cottonwood tree down the block. I am held by the land. I believe in the songs and smells, the lives and deaths and metamorphoses. The miracles of life just going about its business despite all. Thank you for the reminder to pay attention and let the land fill my grieving soul. Love to you!
Thank you, Susan, for the music of your voice. What else is there but love of land, of terraphilia, of these beauty we gather each day? I am sending a prayer for rain and a spell, for all of us. Let it be.
As someone who stayed up late last night reading Rough Beauty (and will again tonight), I'm a Karen Auvenin fan! The woman, the writer, the wonder-er. Thank you, Karen, for your deep noticing of this beautiful world we live in. All the more beautiful for your presence in it. Melissa's note about columbine, the small and miraculous, the gorgeous name, the ephemeral. Loving every moment, whether large or not so much.
Many thanks friend for coming along with me in my memoir. Every day, I ask myself what can I do and the answer always is: Gather Beauty. Sending big love to you, friend.
P.S.! So interested to see "I wonder as I wander" attributed to Sharon Olds. I know those words as part of a Christian hymn (sung around Christmastime). They are so lovely.
Thank you so much for this reminder than sangha gaia is always here for us. To show us that beauty is still here even in the suffering. As Terry Tempest Williams writes, "finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find." The first step is paying attention. Thank you, as always, Karen, for your posts that ground and bring light.
This week I encountered the phrase "collapse aware" for the first time. It feels a notch up (or down?) from "climate grief," with that word "collapse" -- it stopped me short at first, the stark calling out of what's happening around us. That's why essays like what you write on Wednesdays matter so much, the reminder to be present, to notice the small and miraculous, and name that too. Like, I just looked up columbine because I'd couldn't picture them, even though they're all over the Midwest! Now I'll look for them on my hikes. Thank you for that gift.
Melissa, I believe that the more-than-human world feels our appreciation, our noticing as reciprocity. This strengthens the web of the world.
Beautiful. I needed this! Just this morning, my partner and I were walking past the flower garden outside the library, and a huge swallowtail butterfly stopped us in our tracks. We spent the rest of the walk talking about magic and mystery and sensing the divine....and refusing to partake of the collective trance that keeps us chasing productivity instead of wonder. Your post made me feel part of a community. Solidarity. THANK YOU (always).
Thank you, Anita, for sharing your swallowtail encounter--like a bit of magic in the air! Lovely. I hope you will take that wonder and pour it into your own writing. Looking forward to seeing you soon. Big love.
The forest speaking in tongues--I can hear that. Today is another hot and desperately dry one in western Colorado, in a year of heat and deepening drought. And yet, as you say, the community of the land continues to offer miracles: your columbines and baby squirrels, my Two-tailed Swallowtail butterflies and Lewis Woodpecker babies squeaking from the nest in the grandmother Fremont Cottonwood tree down the block. I am held by the land. I believe in the songs and smells, the lives and deaths and metamorphoses. The miracles of life just going about its business despite all. Thank you for the reminder to pay attention and let the land fill my grieving soul. Love to you!
Thank you, Susan, for the music of your voice. What else is there but love of land, of terraphilia, of these beauty we gather each day? I am sending a prayer for rain and a spell, for all of us. Let it be.
As someone who stayed up late last night reading Rough Beauty (and will again tonight), I'm a Karen Auvenin fan! The woman, the writer, the wonder-er. Thank you, Karen, for your deep noticing of this beautiful world we live in. All the more beautiful for your presence in it. Melissa's note about columbine, the small and miraculous, the gorgeous name, the ephemeral. Loving every moment, whether large or not so much.
Many thanks friend for coming along with me in my memoir. Every day, I ask myself what can I do and the answer always is: Gather Beauty. Sending big love to you, friend.
xo — big love back, embrace it!
P.S.! So interested to see "I wonder as I wander" attributed to Sharon Olds. I know those words as part of a Christian hymn (sung around Christmastime). They are so lovely.
No doubt she cribbed it!
Wonder as Wander
Sharon Olds
1942 –
At dusk, on those evenings she does not go out,
my mother potters around her house.
Her daily helpers are gone, there is no one
there, no one to tell what to do,
she wanders, sometimes she talks to herself,
fondly scolding, sometimes she suddenly
throws out her arms and screams—high notes
lying here and there on the carpets
like bodies touched by a downed wire,
she journeys, she quests, she marco-polos through
the gilded gleamy loot-rooms, who is she.
I feel, now, that I do not know her,
and for all my staring, I have not seen her
—like the song she sang, when we were small,
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die,
for poor lonely people, like you, and like I
—on the slow evenings alone, when she delays
and delays her supper, walking the familiar
halls past the mirrors and night windows,
I wonder if my mother is tasting a life
beyond this life—not heaven, her late
beloved is absent, her father absent,
and her staff is absent, maybe this is earth
alone, as she had not experienced it,
as if she is one of the poor lonely people,
as if she is born to die. I hold fast
to the thought of her, wandering in her house,
a luna moth in a chambered cage.
Fifty years ago, I'd squat in her
garden, with her Red Queens, and try
to sense the flyways of the fairies as they kept
the pollen flowing on its local paths,
and our breaths on their course of puffs—they kept
our eyes wide with seeing what we
could see, and not seeing what we could not see
Yes! Thank you, Karen, for sharing the context. So gorgeous. And these are the words I remember from that hymn:
I wonder as I wander, out under the sky,
how Jesus, the Savior, was born for, to die
So easy to believe in mystery with words like those lasting all these years and showing up in the work of great poets.
Write on! Beauty is truly happening in our work.
Yes, in our work. For the beauty of your writing, Becca. Big love and thanks. Karen
Thank you so much for this reminder than sangha gaia is always here for us. To show us that beauty is still here even in the suffering. As Terry Tempest Williams writes, "finding beauty in a broken world is creating beauty in the world we find." The first step is paying attention. Thank you, as always, Karen, for your posts that ground and bring light.