Backstory: A poetess, Mimi Allin, posted this question on Facebook (a question which, I think, all creative people face):
,
As a people-pleaser
who never wanted to
hurt anyone,
it stuns
and pains
and saddens me
to know how badly
I’ve injured
and pained
and scared
those I cared about
the most.
A giant Christmas
globe, hung from tree branches, lays
above cotton fog.
My daughter ripped me/
about my land’s micro-trash./
Now, pockets are filled.
Backstory: A few years ago, my daughter came to live at our house in NW Georgia. Our objective at Spirit Tree FarmsSpirit Tree Farms is to create a place of peace and healing, where folks can come and connect with Nature, tap into their God-inspired creativity, #FindNatureJoy.
One day, as she and I were walking in the woods and fields, she turned to me and basically called me out, saying something like: “This place is not what you’re trying to have it be. It’s not peaceful. There’s no Zen here.” Taken by surprise, I asked her, honestly, what she meant. She pointed around and said (I’m paraphrasing) :”You come out here and leave plastic bottles and pieces of paper and shreds of plastic bags. You say you’ll clean them up later, but you don’t. You’re trying to partner with the Earth, and have Earth and this land be a healing place, but there’s micro-garbage everywhere. It doesn’t work!”
I looked around and saw that she was right. Ribbons of torn plastic, busted milk jugs once used for watering native plants but now falling apart and useless, plastic bottle caps, pieces of paper, all were interwoven with the very plants, trees, grasses, and wildflowers we were trying to grow! I was not being authentic at all!
Since then, because of her ripping on me, I’ve been much more aware of micro-trash on our land and elsewhere. Does it still exist? Sure! It’s micro-trash, and despite my Boy Scout, nature observation and trash-pick-up training, I do miss things. (And having the neighbor’s dogs and local racoons and birds get into bags and boxes and shread and spread things doesn’t help!) But it’s a lot better than it was.
I used to come back from my nature observation and grounding walks in the woods and fields with bags of micro-trash. Now, it’s rare if I fill up my pockets with litter.
I hope my daughter is proud of my efforts. I’m certainly grateful for her example and chastisement! In fact, I sent her a text with this haiku, then said:
I’m always thankful every time I pick up a piece of micro-trash in my yard, for your chastisement and vital lesson. Thank you.
A grateful Dad
After all, if we expect Mother Earth to heal us, we have to be partners with her, and help heal her. And we can all, always, do better.
“There is no Christmas in Bethlehem this year.
The tours and pilgrimages have all been cancelled. The streets are bare, the shops empty.The Palestinian residents are in mourning. Celebrations have been replaced with a somber peace vigil and prayer service to mourn for the tens of thousands of people—mostly Gazans, mostly women and children—lost in the Israeli-Hamas conflict.The traditional nativity scene at the Evangelical Lutheran church depicts baby Jesus on a pile of rubble, rather than resting in a manger. Instead of gifts, the wise men carry burial shrouds.Ask anyone in Bethlehem this year what their Christmas wish is, the answer will be the same: they pray for peace.Whether Christian, Jewish, Muslim, a follower of some other tradition (or no religion at all), may we join their prayers.May we affirm together that we are all worthy of dignity and love…That divinity makes it way to earth, hidden in human form…That the Kingdom of God yearns to flourish within each of us…And that the best gift we can ask for is the gift of peace for all.May we practice peace within ourselves…Within our families and communities…
And pray that, one day, we will beat swords into plowshares.”
I must be always/
positive, and give peace on/
earth, good will to all.
— The backstory for this poem was my take on Longfellow’s poem “I heard the Bells”, and also a haiku inspired by a prose piece Kate Phillips wrote. You can read it here.
