A green chaplain to trees
nurtures Her root systems
and dancing
prancing branches
Preaching
reaching deeply
into shared 0-soul trunks,
circling spinal enthusiastic core
Breathing
circulating annual rings
of growing communion
Potential win/win performance
musing resonance
amusing musical engagement,
brilliant resilience.
Students enjoy a question
often wisely asked
especially of teachers
parents
and preachers
who seem not too often recall
curious younger learners,
deep listeners
If I must choose
which to trust,
your words without compliant
healthy resilient action,
OR your less mindful actions
not supported by your invocations
for divinely healing reactions,
Like telling your kids not to smoke
in-between stinky toxic puffs,
Which will have primary influence,
and which a wider and less deep
secondary smoke screen
of ambivalence
where we had hoped for integrity?
I question how to safely and astutely trust
a source of incompatible verbose
and poignant inaudible messages
brought by legs with feet,
arms with hands,
minds with hearts,
rooted nutritional systems
with sensory complex faces.
What primal communications
are most likely
to miss communion’s full
of grace potential?
Our more obvious EarthTribal point,
we deeply trust only Earth’s naturally
spirited resources,
healing advocates,
ecological green nurturing leaders,
indigenous species of integrity
Like trees
bushes
plants,
blessing soil
water
breezes in integral, sacred forests,
beautiful and true
trusted green
breeze in
and not relentlessly blue
breath out
Where healthy deeds
and safely consilient
brilliant
refulgent
resilient communications
are integral,
confluent,
in sync with humane
and divine local
through global
green EarthWealth care
For upright inaudible meaning
with downleft poetic purpose.
Long before sun light
was born from starkness
Long before Earth’s dawn
broiled unsteady hot star fire
Long before She filled
Her scarlet mind
with Yang’s high hills
time was this love
This ancient life
is reborn.
Long before our trees
greenly filled
Mother’s forests
Long before a wind
unsailed to sing
Earth’s wholesome songs
Long before She filled
Her turqjuoise mind
across Her seas,
time rewinds love
This ancient life
health born.
Long before Earth’s great chain
of being
forged ecocidal
egosystems
Long before a voice
could speak
divine creation
Long before She filled
Her bleeding heart
to grow a child
there is Earth’s love
This ancient life
wealth torn.
Long before a Truth
of love’s life
could be broken
Long before our wounds
were nailed upon a Mother Tree
Long before She laid Her body down
under His light
time spins this love
This ancient life
still born.
Wakeful each night
Greeting Earth’s dawning
Stubborn as trees
rebirthing burned
wounded hills
As we fill our healing minds
to hold Earth’s timeless time
This ancient love
Her aching life
flows stumbling on.
Note: This is a theological/ecological reflection on the lyrics to “This Ancient Love” words and music by Carolyn McDade, Copyright by Surtsey Publishing/ 1996, by Carolyn McDade. These are the word choices I hear when speaking and singing Carolyn McDade’s beautiful composition. Not experienced, meant, intended as an improvement, update, or correction, but as a Both/And communion of sad sacred gratitude, in preparation for Earth Day, 2022.
Where do bully pulpits go
when the only audience
right or left
is silence?
How would a narcotic Bully speak
after wonder and awed silence
return to anxious quiet
within a healing ecological culture
of intentional BadNews shunning?
How could these heated wounds
of belated excommunication
lead to hibernating repentance?
For win/lose
rightwing autocratic
unhealthy
much too liberally kleptocratic,
competitive anti-social capital
uncooperative over-infestment
How could this late
so great
made in USA
healthy
deep listening
multicultural global society
hear such wounded repentance?
Without recognizing our own
stone throwing sins of punishing
addictions to revenge,
anger about unhealthy win/lose divesting
of multicultured EarthBeauty and HeavenCooperativity,
fear of those not yet known,
hate for those not yet cherished,
greed to live largest,
longest and best,
To be granted monotheistic
last minute mercy
from torment for publicly pardoning
Patriarchy’s own capital-investment errors
without admitting more than slim possibility
of personally culpable,
and alarmingly illegal,
not to mention immoral
corporate error
For too hopefully entertaining
magical eternal rebirth
against liberty for Other’s personal changes,
yet for making your own
ego-identified death
unimpeachably great again.
How might a wealthy polycultured ecosystem
restore win/win justice
for a repentant win/lose
nationalistically empowered Bully?
Now engaged in cooperative social capital reinvestment
in ecological climates of healthiest wealth,
Now co-investing in silently listening
to all sacred voices
and win-inside/win-outdoor ecological
healthy democratic choices
While bowing to sacred hope
of faith-rooted wealthy Trees,
absorbing Earth’s nutritional co-relationships
Breathing out compassionate green communications
between heavenly light
and winds
and fire,
and Earth’s deep and wide
cooperative powers
and warm wet waters
of ecofeminist systemic wombs,
Seeds of therapeutic
wisely silent
compassion composting EarthJustice
As anciently witnessed by light
worshiping Trees
silently and shyly,
humbly and gratefully
absorbing social capital
through subterranean
healthy root systems,
And never unwisdom
of listening to uncaring win/lose ambivalence,
wrong v right branched dominant,
co-arising anxious Bully Pulpits.
I awake again with this left-brain thought
that an economic conservative
about balancing his ever expanding budget
looks at my mountainside forest of firs
as a green commodity
for potential exploitation.
Yet when this same conservative
resides in this same fir forest,
now threatened by a large lumbering corporation,
he sees these same trees,
like himself,
as prey
in a win/lose zero-sum value-retention game.
Then I have this right brain passion
that an ego/eco-logically harmonic nondualist,
all about right responsible relationships,
feels and acts with compassion toward these same trees
in this cooperative win/win forest
internally governed by WiseElder firs, regenerative,
from whom we learn
to nutritionally
resiliently,
naturally,
spiritually climax
and recommence together, after loss,
in secular/sacred solidarity
of co-passioning seeds
structured to anticipate four-seasoned wealth givers
and receivers
of Earth’s forested pro-active health care,
robustly optimizing self/other value maintenance.
These reviewed landscapes are not mutually exclusive.
Yet only the last is cooperatively left and right
nondualistically inclusive,
like ethical truth with aesthetic beauty,
compassion spiritually foresting natural integrity.
Perhaps we all secretly long
to be embedded in perpetual spring time.
My most entertaining pre-pubescent memories
of spring’s most sacred times,
when occasionally left
to my own leisurely adventurous pursuits
outside for further natural/spiritual embedded nest
Include a warm and sunny afternoon
unfolding on Saturday’s mid-western stage,
going to a pond
waiting on the edge of wild
lying on my belly
with my nose nearly touching
Her still surface waters
watching spiders
walk over Her
polliwog organic submarines
waving
going somewhere fins
propelling, with me,
into our Saturday afternoon
nutritional adventures
embedded in feeding FlowSource
well-being entertainments.
Another spring Saturday,
perhaps closer to full pubescent
FlowSource entertaining feelings,
I ran far back into the RoundField
where I knew a solitary MotherTree,
like me,
busy getting dressed up
in Her fulling spring leaves
while I unbusily removed all my clothes
and climbed Her
full body hugging Her trunk,
embracing and thanking each sturdy
warm-used limb
all my forceful way to Her most sacred top
To look and feel together
across this green alfalfa field
with all surrounding trees
a deeply fertile ocean forest
green-radiant slumbering mysteriously back at us,
this happy solitary FlowSource
MotherTree and ResourceMe
unseen WinWin feeling together triumphantly
becoming Be
Indigenously embedding entertainments,
Memories much richer and deeper and older
yet naked and wider and younger
than anything I ever heard or saw mid-winter
coming from inside black and white TV.
Said the last wrinkled brown leaf,
falling toward late dark ecstatic ground
crumbling into wet somber grass,
to the twig
belatedly letting go,
What does eternal healthy life feel like?
But, remembered romance,
enchantment,
resilient nurturing radiance
before and after
twig’s silently reassuring
timeless non-reply.
I wonder if THC
and our Holy Cooperative Spirit
could be cousins
like Grandmother Moon
and Grandmother Tree.
Why do you want to wonder
about something as curious as that,
dear?
Oh, I don’t recall, really.
It just came up in conversation a few minutes ago.
Honey,
your breakfast is still a figment of your hopeful imagination,
so who on Earth were you conversing with a few minutes ago?
I was in the backyard
talking with the trees,
and the extended family question just came up.
Honey,
when you take your morning meds,
and then go out to your sit spot
and talk to the trees…
Yes?
Would you do me a favor?
What’s that?
Would you listen more,
and invoke curses against climate hate-mongerers
and malingerers
less?
You scare our more pedestrian neighbors.
But I was listening.
The trees were talking
in their windbown surfing voices
of autumn colored breeze
swaying like Green Fairy SkyWoman
Blessing each falling leaf
spinning tales
revolving moral compasses
drifting from win to lose
coming to rest where they first gave birth,
Blessed by Grandmother Moon’s ultra-violet rhythms
lights
and dual dark dilemmas,
mystery,
everyday awe
expecting sacred wonder.
Oh, well then,
I was wondering why you were so quiet out there…
So, what’s your plan for today?
I thought I might plant more trees.
Want some company?
If we both listen more,
and ask impatient questions less.
Planting already faithful saplings
or merely hopeful seeds
of co-relationship?
Depends on how long we care to be remembered
for our civil kindness,
green cooperative intent,
revolutionary winning trees and winning people values
norms
voices natural and spiritual
bilaterally spinning democratic energy,
healthy merits and unhealthy demerits,
regenerative plantings more than degenerate uprootings,
climate health supplanting wealth of disease,
unease,
dissonant disassociating trees.
Dearest,
I’m having trouble following some of your connections.
Do you think that’s the THC
or Holy Cooperative Spirit whispering?
Yes, love.
My most troubling client
told me he died last night.
While this did not appear to be his somber case,
nor, sadly,
did my home office silently resound
like this was his actual historical peace,
I did conjure up sufficient energy
to ask why he thought so
or felt so
or hoped so
or feared so
and probably all of the above.
Why not invite
this spectral tsunami
overshadowing life’s reverberating days
and nightmare nights?
I have no prior experience,
no words
for comparison or explanation,
he replied,
I realize I am not naturally dead
but feel spiritually disassociated,
withdrawn diverse inside
And not entirely out enough
as if
in my nocturnal half-life
I wandered lost last night
and failed to fully reassemble.
So this feels like spiritual and unnatural failure?
Failed to fully return
to business as daytime usual,
to orthodox reasonable integrity,
to all insanity of inhumane nature
out of interdependent touch
with outdoor Earth kin,
nature-spirit Elders,
ancient ring-wrinkling trees
witnessing history
already before Nina
Pinta
and Santa Maria,
cut and bound European cousins
arrived on Eastern Atlas shores…
You talk a lot
for one so dead.
Is there a difference
between Eastern Atlas space
and Eastern U.S. Atlantic bounded place?
Maybe this is a failure,
pacific weakness;
certainly a loss.
Each natural species opportunistically suspects
yet cannot risk imagining
what spiritual difference could remain
within what is left of natural Us.
Perhaps we feel drained
strained
de-brained
maimed
blamed
shamed
reamed by Herculean angst,
absence of health developed spiritual curiosity
and courage…
to pull all my self chosen gods and improper goddesses
together again
each morning resurfacing
into yet another cooperatively longing day.
Perhaps.
Although gods and goddesses do not sound sufficiently accurate,
nor historically courageous
resurfacing this discontinuity
before and after my regathering alarm,
bugled and bungled into each foggy day…
I feel, still, my sacred loss of outside presence.
To die our sacred disempowering death
To competing devilish inside challenges,
To belong cooperative EarthGarden awakened
gripped by supreme ego lost
shadow of light’s Source,
outdoor business time’s nature/spirit boundary
threshold of ZeroSum heart
playing organic EarthGame’s finest
green commons Paradise–
outdoor courageous success
behind indoor curious failure
to awaken quite wrongly dead again.
Natural secularizing life,
falling and failing through bilateral integrity
as Earth allied
All over again
this personal
and contractual
and constitutional well-born morning,
not quite competitively reassembled.
What remains
paid less to keep consuming
but more properly reimbursed to keep bothering to breathe
bad inside air.
As they say,
Shop till dead Time drops
dispersed
depersonalized
dissonant
desacramented
autonomous ego
ReAcclimating toward more cooperative eco-resilient
interdependent integrity…
As he continued disassembling
Ancient branched witnesses turned to enter deeper rooted notes,
Our most troubling spiritual student
dismissed us from domestic servitude
as s/he died last night
As if one human had exclusive rights
of nutrition empowering sovereignty.
We winked back
and said ThankYou
And don’t let that over-lumbered door
slap you down
on our way outside and in,
more competitively cooperating again.
The United Nation of Trees
held their annual Falling Leaves Conference.
I was invited as a silent witness
and a loudly investigating reporter,
recorder of curious water-bearing and leaking history.
Our sacred water is now bought and sold
in mostly plastic bottles
manufactured by oil-fueled degenerators.
Our roots are robbed
of shrinking water tables,
underground rivers plundered and fracked
in vain genocide
against future EarthLife.
Our fading and shriveling leaves,
severed trunks,
raped forests,
cannot keep up with clean-air projections
for future EarthTribe health care.
Therefore,
Be it resolved
This United Integrity of Trees
shed our last leaves
to heal our soul,
longing for future healthy soil regenerations.
And so it was,
this united ballad of Trees
hosted our final Falling Leaves Conference
for a thirsty while,
hoping future AnthroSapiens
might learn to hear
this deadly fallen silence.
gdill52 