CHAPLAINCY
Acknowledging these creatures as brothers and sisters…all beings of birth and death….all beings of earth and dust of stars…and all earth bodies drumming out their song…listening to this one supernova life-flash here on earth…heartbeat of the insects…heartbeat of the birds…heartbeat of the fish…heartbeat of the bears…heartbeat of the deer…heartbeat of the mountains…heartbeat of the trees…heartbeat of the stones rolled in the oceans deep…
Earth Meditation, Katy Dion
Earth Meditation, Katy Dion
Charlie Turner
Jan Rudestam
Charlie Turner
Belonging in an Orange Grove
When I strip away my skin and reveal my fur
I will know then how to love you properly.
How to howl at the moon and be only the howl
how to sing with the cicadas and waggle dance with the bees
and we will run together and know each other as the seedling knows the soil where it germinates.
Crouched on my belly I watch you and wait
for your oblivious movement to scare a jackrabbit toward my pounce.
Cicadas sate my hunger when I fail to catch the rabbit
and wiggling bee butts keep me laughing and prancing even as I long for honey.
Rich dark leaves respire oxygen which transports the sound waves of my laugh
and the zzhazz-ing mumble of the beehive invades my nap on sunny afternoons.
Along the evenly planted rows, black plastic tubes provide water to each tree
I bite holes into them when it’s too dry and I thirst for surely the oranges and I can share this water.
In soft soil where the bulldozer removed a dead tree last fall, I dig my den
and on the first sunny day in March four big-eared puppies
emerge to stumble their clumsy play in the secret clearing near the beehive.
Summer comes and puppy bellies grow round alongside a hundred thousand oranges.
Is it the multinational corporation that owns this orchard?
Or the man raising his family in the crumbling dwelling nearby
taking care that his child isn’t harmed by bee stings or coyote bites?
I know nothing of packing houses and shipping containers
and something of dogs and keeping secrets, but eventually the sunny clearing receives a visit.
Poison is the result of discovery and our bodies slowly decompose in my carefully constructed den.
Shortening days and ripening oranges will soon begin their journey around the world.
There is a surprising beauty among glossy oval citrus leaves and ochre branches swinging with ripe orange fruit. As I walk their quiet rows under the Hunter’s Moon,
weeping at the remains of the cracked and broken hive where once I used to laugh
and visiting the clearing resonant with echoes of humming bees, joyful howling and the yips of tumbling puppies
I feel my body expand to saturate this place completely as it intertwines moment to moment with everything here, each leaf, each orange.
When I strip away my skin and reveal my fur
I will know then how to love you properly
and we will breathe together and know each other as the seedling knows the soil where it germinates.
Sarah Mussulman
When I strip away my skin and reveal my fur
I will know then how to love you properly.
How to howl at the moon and be only the howl
how to sing with the cicadas and waggle dance with the bees
and we will run together and know each other as the seedling knows the soil where it germinates.
Crouched on my belly I watch you and wait
for your oblivious movement to scare a jackrabbit toward my pounce.
Cicadas sate my hunger when I fail to catch the rabbit
and wiggling bee butts keep me laughing and prancing even as I long for honey.
Rich dark leaves respire oxygen which transports the sound waves of my laugh
and the zzhazz-ing mumble of the beehive invades my nap on sunny afternoons.
Along the evenly planted rows, black plastic tubes provide water to each tree
I bite holes into them when it’s too dry and I thirst for surely the oranges and I can share this water.
In soft soil where the bulldozer removed a dead tree last fall, I dig my den
and on the first sunny day in March four big-eared puppies
emerge to stumble their clumsy play in the secret clearing near the beehive.
Summer comes and puppy bellies grow round alongside a hundred thousand oranges.
Is it the multinational corporation that owns this orchard?
Or the man raising his family in the crumbling dwelling nearby
taking care that his child isn’t harmed by bee stings or coyote bites?
I know nothing of packing houses and shipping containers
and something of dogs and keeping secrets, but eventually the sunny clearing receives a visit.
Poison is the result of discovery and our bodies slowly decompose in my carefully constructed den.
Shortening days and ripening oranges will soon begin their journey around the world.
There is a surprising beauty among glossy oval citrus leaves and ochre branches swinging with ripe orange fruit. As I walk their quiet rows under the Hunter’s Moon,
weeping at the remains of the cracked and broken hive where once I used to laugh
and visiting the clearing resonant with echoes of humming bees, joyful howling and the yips of tumbling puppies
I feel my body expand to saturate this place completely as it intertwines moment to moment with everything here, each leaf, each orange.
When I strip away my skin and reveal my fur
I will know then how to love you properly
and we will breathe together and know each other as the seedling knows the soil where it germinates.
Sarah Mussulman
Jan Rudestam
Holly Thomas
Anne Schmitt
Kerstin Goldsmith
Kerstin Goldsmith
Kerstin Goldsmith
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Mirror of the Mind
Once upon a day, Once up on a tall hill I climbed. At the top stood two pillars of stone, dome-shaped. They framed a view to the North and appeared immovable - with weight and with height and with a sense of dominance and dominion over all they surveyed. Circling them by foot the illusion evaporated and the spell broke as doors appeared in each of them, one facing West toward the Ocean and the setting sun, the other facing East toward the Forest and the sunrise. Inside each dome was a small hand-carved wooden bench facing a companion of itself - here was a reverent hollow for two. Sitting inside, looking upward and outward, I saw that stone was not at all. Rather, wire mesh covered in small shards of coloured glass forming solar systems and galaxies swirling together into apparent solidity through which, actually, light streamed and shone. Sitting inside, looking upward and outward the sheer weightlessness of the domed structures made me smile. Returning to the spot from which I had first perceived the pillars my mind played , back and forth, with their two realities - One solid, stone, domineering, and unyielding, One penetrable, hollow, playful, and bendable. In them, I saw through to A mirror of the mind: stubborn and impenetrable pliable and light and filled with illusion and delusion. Each morning, I climb another tall hill while sitting on the cushion and choose the domes, or the pillars, through which to frame my view of the world for that one moment, for that one day. Reflections from Camp DoubleBear September 3-7, 2019 Kerstin Goldsmith |
Marilyn Vogel
Charlie Turner