Eco-feminism – Feminism and Religion

The Turning of the Wheel by Sara Wright

Today Grace enters. The air is clear, the window open. One hummingbird hovers at my window. Every twig is covered with lush green leaves and every time I gaze into the green, I feel that gratitude pulsing through me – the wonder of being alive. A brilliant green frog inhabits my toad pond. Last night a Datura blossom literally opened before my eyes etched with pale lavender – a moonflower of exquisite fragrance and beauty. If anything, I appreciate these moon blossoms more than I did in the desert.

My bee garden is humming, saturated with crimson, deep orange, yellow, pink, a cacophony of color and sound. I say sound because I also imagine that I can hear the flowers singing their song of abundance, gratitude, and praise to all there is…

The first lemon lily pods are ripening, green apples bend the trees low, grapevines are heavy with new fruit, and columbine spikes are bursting with seed that I scatter between the cracks of stones. Diminutive pale pink poppies keep popping out of a tangle of ajuga runners and fledglings hug the cabin. The forest birds have quieted. Some will soon be migrating but stillness blotted out the forest trills when the deadly smoke first filtered in. Little gold birds flit back and forth, sunbursts singing up the dawn. The Mourning Dove waits for me at twilight…

Falling into Spring by Sara Wright

The glorious
white stars
waited in vain
for rain
for miner
sweat
mason
or bumblebee
to feast
on pollen
sacred to All
after three days
petals
drooped
golden
eyes shut
pearled
almonds
fell
one by one
next year’s
compost
soaked in
unshed
tears.
Perhaps
Bee Goddess
has a plan
Changing Woman
transforms
Sky Woman
holds the
seeds …
clasping
bloodroot
spears
and
buds
wrapped in
gray shawls
she may
yet
choose
to
intervene.

NPR meets My Telepathic Bird Lily b, part 2 by Sara Wright

Part 1 was posted last week. You can read it here.

About ten years ago I began to keep a (public) though never advertised blog to help me keep track of my life. Because I am so severely directionally dyslexic this blog helped me to organize my material. Drafts of published and unpublished papers, poetry, opinions, changing seasons, virtually anything that I was experiencing and writing about ended up on that blog. Without conscious awareness/intention I began to include the more esoteric aspects of my experiences, and this is how stories of Lily b, lizards, various extraordinary encounters with birds, bears etc. ended up on this online journal sort of by ‘accident’. I didn’t even realize what was happening. I wasn’t talking about these experiences, but I was starting to write about them publicly, not just privately. People read what I wrote, I realized vaguely. Frankly this didn’t matter much because that wasn’t why I kept an online journal. Its primary purpose was twofold. It helped me organize my writings but more importantly it distanced me from particulars so that patterns emerged. Enter NPR. Anna had apparently been reading my blog for a couple of years and asked me if I would do an interview on Lily b my telepathic bird. I was astonished, but agreed, although with some trepidation because I had so rarely discussed this subject. The old fear of crazy surfaced.

Poems for Season by Sara Wright

In late November I first snowshoed our woodland trails to include the little balsam that I lit to honor all evergreens throughout the winter months. Every day when my little dog and I circled the tree I told her I loved her and called her ‘Lightbringer’. This daily encounter never lost its magic. The Goddess Lived during the darkest winter nights!!

The rest speak to the subtle changes that occurred from late winter into spring. My writing naturally follows both seasonal and intraseasonal shifts that might not be noticed unless a person is paying close attention.

(1) Lightbringer

Will she still
be there
shining
after the storm?
Moon Bear
is on the rise.
I peer through
white flakes
at dawn
light
pierces
her powdery
fringed shawl
Love lights
the darkest
Night.

Steadfast Balsam
cloaked or not
Ever-green,
Tree of Life.
Heartlines flow
crystalline
waters
pour down
deep sleep
oh,
Daughter
of the Night
Daughter of
The Light,
Light -Bringer
Life -Bringer
The Miracle
Is that
You Live.

Coming Round and Round by Sara Wright

the circle
repeats
tightens
with age
crushing
an
aging heart
I cannot
breathe
through
these lifetimes
of
loss
instead
I relive
old
pain
4AM
lasts
an eternity
each mourning

Poems by Annelinde Metzner

For five days this March, I gifted myself with a stay at the Meher Baba Center in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I often plan short getaways to help me find my center and decompress from everyday life. The contrast between “worlds” is very great when you’re staying in a pristine nature preserve with the overwhelming commercialism of Myrtle Beach right outside the gates. I knew that this retreat was helping me to deal with a similar conflict I felt in my body, from the pain and stress of living in this moment in time. Poems flowed easily, and I’m grateful for that.

Retreat in Myrtle Beach

A preserve of five hundred acres,
here on the South Carolina coast,
where fresh-water lagoons teem with waterbirds
just across the forested dunes from the breaking ocean waves.
Turtles sun in the grass,
deer leap and raise generations.
A preserve! and out beyond the gates,
over the protecting wall,
is Myrtle Beach, another type of Mecca.
Come out the gate, and it’s “Hooters!”
then, “Tsunami Beach Souvenir Shop!” (everything on sale!)
then, “Maui Beach Miniature Golf,” with an exploding volcano!
and of course, “the MAGA Megastore,”
who’ll sell you anything you could want or need.
This morning I awoke in my sweet-smelling cabin,
little propane heater in the old fireplace
keeping me warm.
And here is the teaching:
Plant your feet on the Earth.
Love this greenness, these creatures,
love Yourself,
because the entire off-kilter, out-of-balance,
koyaanisqatsi (*) world out there
is depending on You: feet planted,
head in the stars.

Born Again by Sara Wright

“Let me sing to you about how people turn into other things.” (Ovid)

Years ago I placed my brother’s ashes in a shallow depression that I had dug near a granite fern and moss covered boulder. The brook flowed just a few feet away and at the last minute I scattered a few filaments over the shallow waters, returning them to the sea. A week later I planted a hazel nut tree nearby. A fossilized spiral ammonite marks my brother’s grave.

Thanks to the underground highway created out of millions of tree/plant roots, the extensive net of fungal hyphae and this communal system’s miraculous ability to exchange nutrients/minerals/sugar, my brother lives on as part of this forest…The gracefully spreading hazel and all the other trees (spruce, maple, balsam, hemlock, ash) that are scattered around this hallowed woodland grove have been nourished by the bones of one I loved.

Yet only recently have I been possessed by revelation.

White Pine Wonder by Sara Wright

Yesterday was mild (mid 40’s in January) so Coalie and I went to our favorite forest to walk. The roads were icy, but the seeps were brimming and ringed with footprints. Over one of my favorites (because declining wood frogs still lay eggs there in the spring), an elderberry bush arced over rippling water like some sort of plant protectoress.

Seeps fascinate me because they defy freezing weather bubbling up through deep in the earth. Water seeps in the forest are small wetland areas where groundwater naturally emerges at the surface, often at the bases of slopes. They create moist spots with lush plants in season (like elderberries) and serve as important habitats for wildlife by providing clean water sources all year-round. They form from underground layers of rock that force water to flow horizontally until it surfaces. Seeps care for their animal and bird neighbors by providing clear waters at any time of year. There were so many fox and partridge tracks leading to and from these pools that I was surprised we didn’t startle one of the latter. (At home I have a pair that are feasting on the last of the crabapple berries). A couple of chickadees were chirping from nearby maples probably annoyed because we were taking our time. Coalie was nosing every blade of grass in the area.

Autumn Light by Sara Wright

Where are they?

September’s light
illuminates one butterfly
in flight
Bittersweet losses
cast slanted shadows
pierce cool nights

morning mist
lifts as
light streams
through translucent
leaves

one acorn falls…

autumn’s breath
a gift of
primal scent

My Grandmother’s Pearls are Green by Sara Wright

“That move into mystery
is not an abandonment of
perception
into a cloud of unknowing.
It’s a move
into a different form
of knowing.”

Robert Macfarlane

I stepped outside when the sun was just rising over the horizon and low enough in the sky to create a play of shadow and light. This is my favorite time of the day to witness the astonishing beauty of the earth that is spreading her shimmering cloak around my feet… ‘oh, my grandmother’s hair, the words rose unbidden’. Chartreuse, plum, wine, lime, gold leaf and emerald canopies stretched across the brook blurring the leaves between birch, ash, beech and maples. The silvery water glistened, and I imagined myself flowing around those serpentine moss-covered banks listening to an ancient song that has been sung by water for more than 4 billion years. How I wish I understood what ‘ki’ was saying but I am no longer able to discern the language.