Environmental Spirituality – Page 2

Honeysuckle Jewels and Women with Wings by Sara Wright

Initially I wrote this article for publication at a plant site but was forcibly struck by the reality that what we are doing to plants is exactly the same thing we are doing to humans, women in particular. Separating, Othering, Judging, Dismissing, Eradicating. I could go on here. When you read this article about invasives think about how we are being treated as women. It alarms me that no matter I turn I see the same story played out with humans (women and children suffer most overall), trees, plants, and the animals we are so busy annihilating if not physically then in some other monstrous way. Fill in the blank with your own story. Then imagine yourself as a bird with wings who carries the seeds of new life into unexpected places.

When I first moved to this area many years ago, I used to spend most of the time in the forests that surrounded my house except in the spring. Then I walked along what used to be a country road to see the wild trilliums, arbutus, lady slippers, bunch berry, violets and columbine that peppered the road edges.

All the trees and flowers were so plentiful and so beautiful that it took me a few years to pay closer attention to the bushes like the various pussy willows and wild cherries, beaked hazelnut, witch hazel and hobblebush that I also came to love.

Summer Lessons, by Molly M. Remer

Let us be gentle with ourselves
as we cross the threshold
into summer,
as we both open our hearts to change
and open our hands to choice.
It is now that we both let things go
and celebrate what is flourishing,
what is thriving and growing
and calling us onward.
Let us be soft and supple,
luminous and languorous.
Let us practice the discipline of pleasure
and the liturgy of delight.
Let us protect wide margins for magic,
commit to our own life’s unfolding
and swim freely
in the current of the sacred
that is always available
to receive us
and welcome us home.

Today, I sit missing the orioles and thinking about cycles of change, how things grow and decline, and how we can choose to be present or not with what we see and feel. I tip my head back in the green filtered light of morning and discover berries beginning on the mulberry trees. The wild raspberries and blackberries too are tipped with small, firm caps of green. I am feeling the sort of overdue clarity that descends when I finally realize I can let something go, that not everything is mine to carry or mine to fix. I know that this clarity too will come and go, but for now, I welcome it, feeling the cool wind stirring my hair and brushing my shoulders as I enjoy the sunshine and the sound of hawks on the wing. There is a powerful hope in these blue sky days and for now, I bask in the sensation of both remembering and reclamation.

This year, as we tip into summer in the Northern hemisphere, the temperatures in my own Midwestern biome have been surprisingly cool, peaceful and rainy. In an era of climate change, this slow entry into the heat of the year has felt welcome and encouraging. Something that continues to inspire and teach me this year has been to start where my feet are, to return again and again to where I am on this earth and in my body. In a culture that encourages fragmentation and distraction, distance, discord, and dis-embodiment, this practice of return is an act of both rebellion and reclamation.

I have been writing for Feminism and Religion for 13 years. This year, sitting down to write and reflecting on the life lesson of starting where my feet are, I decided to go back through my past summer posts here to discover the other lessons I have learned from summers gone by. I chose thirteen lessons to share from past summer posts:

Deep Time and Dreaming by Sara Wright

I am standing on top of a mountain looking over a landscape of unspeakable wild natural beauty that stretches as far as I can see. This is the ‘long view’ the dream -maker tells me. The trees are stretching out their lush green needles to the sky as if in prayer, and they are whole. The forests, clear waters, the animals, birds, insects. All of Nature has been returned to a State of Grace.

An Old red skinned Indian Man appears. He is a Grandfather. He is on the mountain with me but also stands below (both and). He speaks to me.

“Sit, listen, this is the Song of Life”.

A finely crafted flowing red clay seat appears below (it flows like a wave) although it is situated a few inches above the earth. Almost hovering. I also see a drum made from deerskin and red clay sitting on the ground. There is a four directional equilateral black cross on the skin of the drum. The cross is thick and around the cross an intricate design is etched/inked into its skin also highlighted in black.

Return to Sender by Sara Wright

you whistled
my name
four notes
chilled
prickly skin
needling
truth
we are
forever
bound
you
bird
woman
owl
tree
wounding
wounding
wounding
we weep
grief
grief
grief
too deep
half a
million
dead
gunned down
by Explosive Will
I make
no apology
Return
atrocity
to those
whose
behaviors
will one
day
destroy
them
too.
What we do to nature we do to ourselves.

Context for Poem:

Yesterday I wrote an essay about the barred owl killings beginning with a personal story about my relationship with barred owls. I have known about this Federal Fish and Wildlife Organization’s proposal since 2023.

Women and Trees: Little Red Pine by Sara Wright

Women and trees belong together; our relationships with them stretches back to antiquity. They have been our protectors, guiding us through grief and difficult times. They offer us gifts of beauty, fruits, and nuts, are receivers of prayers, sometimes speaking through prophecy. Sometimes healing springs appear at their feet. And always they are wisdom keepers, these Trees of Life. It is not surprising that women’s ceremonies were and are often enacted in the forest under a canopy of trees.

Emergence magazine recently posed three questions that I want to share because I think they might help raise awareness for women who love trees and the relatively small minority of other people who are attempting to deal with what is happening to the rest of nature during this political crisis and time of earth destruction.

Some folks who are not Indigenous still love and care for the land as a beloved friend, relative and teacher and it is to these people, both women and men, that I offer up these questions because I think they may help to keep us grounded in a painful but potentially creative way. Queries like these attach us to a larger long-term perspective that allows for a ‘both and’ approach to the future. The last question invites the reader to take personal action. Feeling that reciprocal connection between an individual and some aspect of the land s/he is attached to is a key that opens a door to deeper engagement with the rest of nature.

From the Archives: Winter Solstice: Celebration of the Powers of Fire by Sara Wright

This was originally posted on Dec. 12, 2023

I have a problem with the belief that Winter Solstice is primarily about celebrating ‘the coming of the light.’ This one – sided thinking negates the cross-cultural reality that this is a festival during which candles are lit to light up the night and roaring fires blaze inside and out bringing warmth to all. Winter Solstice is above all else a Festival of Fire.

Fire is an ambiguous element (as all the elements are) carrying both a positive and negative charge. On one level fire brings warmth and light on cold winter nights. On the other hand, fire also incinerates, destroying everything it touches. Approaching a Festival that celebrates the Element of Fire should be done with consciousness and caution.

The Wave: Poems from Hurricane Helene by Annelinde Metzner

For 37 years, I have resided with awe and delight in the Appalachian Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. With gratitude for the palpable strength and ageless beauty of the great mountains down to the tiniest ephemeral flowers, I have poured out poetry and music in honor of Her and my life here. In one day (or three, including the days of rain leading up,) Her pristine beauty and the homes and lives of thousands were destroyed by the violent winds and rain of Hurricane Helene. I was dropped into a deep well of grief, which I still experience to this day. But something very ancient, basic and fundamental pushed me to write poems, astounded as I was by the events and human interactions around me. I hope these poems give you some sense of the experience.

Hydrangea Lessons, by Molly Remer

How to create a ritual:
Look at the sky.
Touch your skin.
Breathe deep in your belly.
Feel your heart beat.
Stand on the earth.
Let life carry you.

September 2024:

It is now that slender bush clover makes flower crowns along the roadside and coreopsis lifts its yellow faces to the sky. There is change in the air, whispering on cooling winds and shrieking by above the field on the feathers of broad-winged hawks. The last cicadas continue to drone and the apples hang rosy on the trees. The deck bears a sprinkling of yellow walnut leaves, and I picked up a brown and green patterned oak leaf to press into the pages of my prayers. It is now that I pause to steep, to listen to myself before pressing onward into the final part of the year. There is both an invitation and a summons here, to evaluate and renew, to consider the pace of life and whether to ease off or push onward. It is now that I remember that restoration is the antidote to depletion and I gather myself up, tenderly calling the fragments home, recollecting myself and taking time to look at where I am and what I have and what I’ve chosen. There are crows calling at the end of the driveway. I keep my eyes open for any passing monarchs. There is a slight hint of spiced pumpkin on the wind. The Virginia creeper has darkened to rusty red.

MOTHER OAK by Dale Allen

We sat on the in the leaves, my daughter and I, in the warm autumn sun under the Great Mother Oak. Here and there fallen leaves danced lightly in the breeze. It felt good to be directly connected to the ground, bent knees and bare feet on the land. We leaned back and looked up at the tree in all her glory. She was still filled with yellow green leaves… her canopy so high that from up there, she can “see” the other neighborhood trees with many years like she has.

She has been here in this place since the end of the 1700s or the beginning of the 1800s. She was here with the first European settlers of this place. Her mother had been here before that, with the last generations of the people who were of this land for 15,000 years or more: the Paugussett People. We could feel this history. We could feel the tree’s mother. And then, from beneath the ground where their energy remains steady, we heard the voice of the Paugussett. They thanked us for acknowledging their presence. They said that they can feel our profound love for this place where we live, here in Black Rock, Connecticut… our love for the trees, the leaves, the flowers, the osprey, the red tail hawks, the fox, the squirrels, the rabbits, the insects, the shore, the waters of coastal Connecticut (Long Island Sound), the shells, the sand, the sparkles, the historical homes, the families, the new babies. We love this land. We love our home. And the Paugussett saw this love. The Mother Oak saw this love.

A Leaf Peeper’s Reflection by Sara Wright

Twice a year, once in May for a few days and during the first week of October I can’t leave home because I’ll miss the next moment of spring flowering or scarlet flames.

Last week I was captivated by how the golden morning light affects each deciduous leaf. For about five days I ran inside and out all morning to feast upon the astonishing leaf color changes as the sun rose higher. ‘Fire on the Mountain’, crimson, gold, seductive sultry salmon brilliance. In and out for hours. I drove my dogs crazy. Noting the bees on the blushing hydrangea, glad for dragonflies cruising around the house. Greeting little green frog framed against his log. Breathing in the Light. Infused by all too brief moments of swamp maple’s fierce fiery splendor.