Inaction IN Action

Inaction in action.

I woke to these words clear as a bell this blog morning. Not hearing nor seeing them, they emerged from the inside out as I slowly opened myself to the day. I sensed them. The direction, focus, indeed the title for today’s Pivot felt as deep knowing that the three simple words were guidance for Friday’s May Day Strong events and how I will engage.

Questions emerged: Inaction in action. Who will you Be? Who will you stand with by your choices on Friday? And beyond?

I’m not surprised to awaken to Pivot guidance on Wednesday mornings. That’s how these weekly posts have emerged over the 659-week journey of The SuccessZone and its pivot to becoming The Pivot in 2020. From some mysterious ‘place’ both inside and beyond me. A place not a location. A place we are all a part of and rely upon, the Source of All Life. At the same time responding in some way to the world I’ve experienced.

But I digress, an easy tack to take when I experience resistance to something. Just turn the other way. A tack that may work for an instant or a bit beyond, but somehow whatever I resist finds me … usually at some inconvenient moment. This morning as I wonder why the resistance? I’m guided back to the questions: What is to be shared? How am I guided to engage on Friday?

I journeyed down a bit of a rabbit hole thinking that perhaps I need to share lots of information about May Day itself and plans for the day. But you who want that know just where to find what you need.

Thinking, that was the mistake. Just listen. Bring attention to the day. Everyone will make their choice.

What about mine? I feel guided to be in solidarity by engaging in NO commerce and turning away from my electronic connections with the world which in themselves are commercial operations. No Zoom. No social media or following the ‘news’. Disrupting my own patterns so I can listen to another voice. Mother Nature and Her wisdom. Returning in a sense to the pagan roots of May Day. Celebrating Spring’s fertility and the return of light on this day that is the midway point between the Equinox and Solstice.

And as I listen, I will honor those who courageously walk away from jobs, from schools, from the cultural pull to consume as well as those who organize, who march, who provide all manner of support in creating some disruption that will make a difference. I will honor those in Minnesota who inspired this day’s events with the Minnesota Day of Truth and Freedom on that cold day in January and in every city, town, and hamlet who join in their own special ways.

And I will honor those who work tirelessly day in and day out to bring our world to a more peaceful place. For indeed, with a loving heart and clear intention, everything we do is a part of co-creating just that. Even inaction is a choice to act.

An old snag along my path reminds me to not be ‘snagged’ by the culture …

A Simple Pivot this Earth Day

From Global Alliance for Rights of Nature Earth Day 2026

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition. Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN)

A simple pivot when you pick up the pen or your fingers touch the keyboard – from nature to Nature. Nature – a collection of living, breathing beings each and everyone more than deserving of our recognition. Not a collection of ‘its’ to be exploited. A whole that IS LIFE.

And it is time, this Earth Day, to remember and recognize just that. GARN’s post which greeted me this morning says it well:

This Earth day change how you write and you begin to change how you relate.

We always capitalize Nature. Why?

Long before modern law, many cultures understood the living world as a community of beings, not a collection of resources. Mountains had presence, rivers had voices, forests were relatives, and language reflected that relationship.

The industrial age broke that bond: Nature became lowercase, abstract, extractable, governable without consent.

Capitalizing Nature is a return, not backward, but deeper. It restores agency and aligns language with a growing legal reality where rivers, forests, and ecosystems are recognized as rights-bearing entities.

The United Nations now capitalizes Nature in official reports. The law is shifting because the story we tell is shifting, as words shape perception, perception shapes behavior, and behavior shapes the future.

We capitalize Nature because relationship begins with recognition.

This Earth Day, start there.

I made this pivot some years back when I first became aware of the Rights of Nature movement and this simple yet profound shift one can make. As I’ve hiked these sacred mountains and as I saunter in the Woods Out Back, more and more I sense the true nature of Nature and that we indeed all are One.  And when I forget, there is always some gentle reminder, like the mule deer that was resting under Grandmother Pinon on my morning walk a couple days back.

Honor the Earth and all Her Beings this day. Honor Nature and honor you as a part of all Life.

Resting Under the Grandmother Tree

Flowing With Life

Step Into the Steam that is Life!

There is an effortlessness to the movement of Duck as you watch them glide downstream. Just as Duck enjoys the current that guides them, you too are asked to stop paddling ineffectually upstream against the flow of life. Elder Duck in The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook by Asha Frost

Just before entering a conversation several days back, I drew a card from the Animal Oracle deck. Elder Duck invited me to ‘follow the flow’ into that conversation which unfolded as quite magical. And in the days since, I’ve felt Duck’s presence as I’ve made choices walking through each day.

Such was the case yesterday, Pivot Wednesday, when what I thought and ‘planned’ to be a fairly short meeting extended several hours. While I could have chosen to wrap the meeting before business was complete and schedule completion at another time, I felt Elder Duck’s guidance to ‘follow the flow’ and honor whatever time was needed to complete the business. Somewhere beyond my rational, thinking mind I sensed ‘This is the time. Move with the energy. The Pivot will flow in its time.’

And on this ‘day after’ I find myself in a flow that invites me to share Elder Duck’s wisdom without my typical musing as I integrate a deeper sense of both yesterday’s meeting and my choice to allow it to unfold rather than stepping in to control.  Elder Duck speaks:

Invoke my medicine when it is taking an overwhelming amount of energy to move in a certain direction. Yes, there are times in life when we need to dig deep and push through, but this is not one of them. Roadblocks and hurdles, like boulders or dams across the river, are powerful signs at this time. My medicine reminds you to stop trying to jump over them or run through them. With my help, you can choose to glide around them or take a new stream entirely. Follow the flow, for the water knows exactly what it’s doing. Elder Duck in The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook by Asha Frost

This may not be your ‘medicine’ at this moment in time, but I invite you to take a brief pause. To breathe. To be present to the moment. And to inquire ‘am I in the flow that Life wishes to carry me?’ Carry this question with you into tomorrow’s potent New Moon inviting us to step into the flow of co-creating the world our hearts desire.

The Ziggurat on a Colorado Blue Sky Day

(Re)Turning to What Is Essential

Full Moon Morning

Our lives are a small stitch sewn on a vast circle of mystery. While we are forever mounting a campaign to order, know, grasp, and control, we are constantly reminded that with all our cunning, we still don’t know a hoot, really, about life. … But until we look inside our looking, until we become fully present to what it means to be a human being, we will stray from that which is essential. Richard Strozzi Heckler (Holding the Center: Sanctuary in a Time of Confusion)

 I pulled this 1997 gem off the shelf last week in the midst of clearing out ‘stuff’, step one in transforming what has been my office into a playful, creative studio space. An inside place where I can be fully present to and express those parts of me mostly ignored (I was ignorant to their being a part of my Being!) in the days – no decades – of doing career, family, etc. You know, the things our culture tells us bring success, happiness, and supposedly all the things we want. A place to be curious just as I am when I saunter in the woods out back. Ah, but I digress…

If you’ve been with me on these weekly musings for a while, you’ve read about my explorations and practices of ‘presence’ for some time and that the Venerable Monks’ Walk for Peace from my hometown, Fort Worth, Texas to Washington D.C. inspired me to be more fully present to my breath. Each breath. Not an easy practice in our world, so let’s pause and breathe together for a moment. … Ah… What if we did that more often?

I’ve experienced the days since last week’s musing as tumultuous (to say the least) both within and daring to look out and step into the world. I’ve needed to return to awareness of my breath more often than I’ve actually done as I’ve explored deep, unfamiliar inner terrain for the sake of clearing out old gunk of the unconscious, creating space within as I’m doing in the physical space where I dwell. And I’ve needed it as I bear witness to our world and human fragility.

Thumbing through Strozzi Heckler’s musings, I was curious to discover what I’d highlighted almost 30 years ago when I first encountered his work. Two words: Presence and Practice! A full circle moment and a sense, confirmation perhaps, that I’m returning to what is essential.  Hopefully, in this chapter of my life, with a deeper commitment to discovering and living in alignment with the very essence of Life itself. Here are a couple of those highlights:

Presence is being present – a state impregnated with an open-ended curiosity, relaxation, and power that comes from seamlessly knitting together one’s mind, body, and spirit. … it is only through practice that this unification can occur. ‘If you want to tame something,’ the fox advises the Little Prince, ‘sit with it every day at the same time.’ A practice is not so much about achieving a goal, avoiding something, improving yourself, or making your wishes come true, as about creating a positive environment, internally and externally, for the awakening process to take hold.

 Oh, how different life might have unfolded if I’d really heard and heeded this wisdom then! But I hold no regrets, trusting that my journey has unfolded just as it has been meant to unfold, including the oopsies, U-turns, delays, losses, gains, changes made, and those avoided.

 Yes, we live in a time that is beyond confusion, even beyond chaos. Rampant hypocrisy. Mis and disinformation. Threats. Heart wrenching violence and abuse. Faith rupturing corruption. The need to reckon with our past. And so much more. That we must navigate these is clear. But navigating in and through does not mean submission to.

 Presence and practice offer us clear paths. We ‘look inside our looking’ to explore the essence of human Beingness. In practicing presence, we open to possibilities offered by returning to discover what is essential – the essence of Life itself. This opens us into co-creating, with others and with Life, a more coherent world for our children, grandchildren, and generations beyond.

Snow on the Peaks Sunset

Synchronicity, Listening, and Speaking Up

Elder Blue Jay Speaks

The path of truth invites you to root fully in your integrity. It’s not always the easiest or most comfortable choice…Elder Blue Jay (The Animal Elders Oracle Guidebook)

I’ve experienced seemingly random threads on this topic of truth - of listening deeply and speaking up - on my personal path recently. And I’ve observed the same out there in the world – uncomfortable truths being revealed, reckoning with our silence, both past and present, discerning human generated truth amidst the FUAI (Flood of Unidentified Artificial Intelligence).

Until this morning, the treads out there and my own exploration of speaking up seemed separate. But, in two back-to-back events, the randomness evaporated and the threads began to weave into a tapestry of deep listening and authentic voice. I felt the simultaneous guidance to speak up and to listen more deeply and with greater discernment. Not new. Deepened and widened.

Robert Hamburger’s Substack post The Hollowing of Human Speech: We’re Starting to Sound Less Like Ourselves reminded me of a post a few weeks back citing that “Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development recently analyzed hundreds of thousands of video transcriptions and found something unsettling: humans are unconsciously absorbing AI linguistic patterns into their own everyday speech, completely independent of whether they personally use AI to write.” The ‘YIKES!’ of that planted a seed that seemed to sprout and connect with reflections on deep listening, the quest for truth, and speaking up.

Then as I began to turn my attention to writing today’s post, I consulted The Elder Animals Oracle, asking the heartfelt question ‘What wants to be shared today?’ The message wasn’t loud, but it was clear: Speak Up! Not just about speaking up, but about how we listen, how we discern, and the blind spots we may have in seeking convenience and ease; about whatever your heart wants to share, in both close relationships and in interacting in the world.

Elder Blue Jay’s message landed in me as an answer to a question I’ve been sitting with trusting that clarity would come. It did! And the elder’s message put icing on the cake of confirmation about something I’d spoken up about recently, albeit a bit reluctantly. The cake? In response to speaking up, I was invited to say more which led to a rich, relational conversation and opened into seeds of a wider, generative exploration of possibilities.

Just what I long for and intend to create as I put a wrap on my 76th trip around our star and step into my 77th round.

I thanked the elder, remembering that Blue Jay was one of the first birds I identified as a child. While Blue Jay does not reside here in the woods, I’m in close relationship with its kin who do, both Pinon and Stellar’s Jays. They speak up. Loud and clear! Thank you wise, winged beings!

As I look back, the dots of other events and encounters connect in interesting patterns not as random, separate events. Rather in the noise of our world, I was presented with threads beneath the noise of mainstream. Curiosities and concerns were being offered clues, signs along the way about using my voice more clearly and intentionally and about the voices in the world and the growing challenge to discern who and what is human created content versus AI feel good puff or fear mongering stories meant to generate confusion, fear, and uncertainty.

We are reckoning with much from our past and in our present, including the cost of our silence when we witness misdeeds and withhold our voice. After listening deeply into a panel discussion beginning to reckon with just that and reading Hamburger’s post, I’m beholding an inquiry about what is slipping away in the noise of manufactured words as well as in withholding our voices. Are we willing to lay our humanity on the altar of convenience? Of ease? It occurs to me as I write that approach hasn’t worked out so well for us in terms of our health as we consume quantities of fast, convenient food. But that’s a story (or a rant!) for another day.

We are grappling and reckoning with much individually and collectively as the volume of disclosure rises and blatant hypocrisy inches toward becoming the norm.

I experience that when I pause to breathe, become fully present, listen beyond and beneath the noise to my heart the synchronicity of experiences is revealed along with a way forward: what step to take and what is mine to speak in the next moment.

What seemingly separate threads in your world may be synchronicities awaiting discovery to guide you in your listening and your speaking up?

Presence to What?

Morning Musing Under the Mother Tree

All grace arises out of presence. Tara Brach

Today is about slowing your roll and taking in the big picture of what is being required of you, both in your personal life and in how you are relating to the outside world and all its calamity. Dr. Michael Lennox (Daily Astro Alert: March 25, 2026)

All grace arises out of presence. In a world where we need so much more grace, I’ve been observing and reflecting on presence. Observing my own presence and lack thereof. Observing how I experience both the presence and lack thereof in relating with others.

Observing the inner peace of full presence I experience when I set aside scattered thoughts and I’m present to the one thing always with me, breath, and to whatever needs attention in that moment. Experiencing the internal war when scattered thoughts take over, seemingly able to resist being guided back to simply attending to breath. I’m reminded of something I wrote decades ago: Scattered thoughts like a herd stampeding go nowhere, fast.

Experiencing the joyful resonance of being fully present with others who are likewise fully present to whatever we are engaged in, along with the disconcerting, disappointing dissonance when I experience that I or the other isn’t fully present.

As I read Dr. Mike’s message about slowing your roll, I felt a resonance in me to step back and look at the bigger picture of presence for the sake of calling forth the co-creation of a world aligned with Life.

I think of The Agreement Beneath All Names with its gentle calling to remember

The ground beneath all nations is the same breathing body.

The sky above all prayers does not choose sides.

Then, as we remember, The Agreement’s invitation to

… choose again — each morning, each meeting, each moment of heat—

to respond instead of react,

to include instead of conquer,

to listen long enough for the deeper truth to surface.

And I wonder: How do I more fully bring my presence to this call for grace within and without? What are the deeper truths that want to surface? What is possible for our world and our future, if we cooperate and co-create from them? What conversations and invitations am I being asked to engage?

I wonder too as the old power-over, patriarchal systems crumble (explode, dissolve, and fade away) what habits of those systems might we need to lay to rest with them? Might it be useful to pivot from setting goals and rigorously following plans to listening and reimagining what is Life-aligned and allowing ourselves to be guided to that unfoldment? Are efficiency, productivity, and speed habits of these old systems that we need to release to create space for allowing emergence? Is multi-tasking one of many subtle patriarchal tools/habits that separate us from one another and from full presence? What is the sun setting on?

Let’s muse, breathe, and co-create together with Mother Earth and All Life! 

What shall we lay to rest at sunset in the days ahead?

Sacred Emergence: New Moon, New You, Spring

Emergent Iris

I’m present to a wide pallet this day, a desire to weave them all into The Pivot yet each warranting its own time. Many threads, one weave. A pattern that remains a bit blurred. The thread of the sacred in each points to making and taking time for ritual – long or short, alone or in community – to presence the time and what is emerging.

Spring is a time of major exposure, when everything that’s been tucked away suddenly finds the surface … Jacqueline Suskin, A Year In Practice

Ah how I’m experiencing that! Outside and in! Walking out the door to see the fresh green shoots of iris peeking out of their underworld. Sitting quietly with memories and ancestral queries rising in me.

Coming to the end of a winter in which the weather has been more spring-like than the snowy, cold that I so love, temperatures are rising to summer levels. Perhaps it’s no surprise that weather is reflecting a world heating up with ever more conflict and discord leaving suffering in its wake as it marches on. All Life suffers as dissonance and disharmony abound.

As I reluctantly bid adieu to the winter that never quite was, I feel into this time, this week of a powerful New Moon (today! 18 March at 7:23pm here in the mountains) and of the Equinox (Spring here in the north) a day of balance of daylight and the darkness of night. I sense that, if we so choose, we can embrace this time as sacred, inviting the sacredness to support us to pivot beyond the aberrations of separation, to harmonize whatever dissonance we experience within so that we can sprout the newness of harmony and light into the world.

Looking both within and out to the world as my phone dings with the 13th text of someone wanting attention that, in this moment, I don’t have for what’s concerning them, I’m present to how deeply and widely we humans need this. To balance, if only for a moment, the light and dark in us. To turn, as spring heralds, to light and BE that light in the world. To rest in Nature’s harmonious arms. And, despite the world’s demand that we hurry, to not rush the process. The light returns slowly – in us where we have held darkness and on the planet.

I invite you to join me in making and taking time during Friday’s Equinox to tap into harmony. Within and without. It’s out there, just as it lives within, if you truly seek it! Honor the light and the dark as you pivot to the light.

And today I invite you to tap into the newness of the moon.

The radical breakdown in our institutional consciousness continues, but in this very special New Moon, we set intentions from what is essentially a new alignment of our four-body system of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Dr. Michael Lennox, Daily Astro Alert March 18,2026

Every New Moon offers up an opportunity to set intentions and to begin again. Today’s New Moon is especially potent. For whether or not we are conscious of it, we are changed from who we were as we walked through the final months of 2025 and into this new calendar year. So today is a beautiful day to be curious about how you’ve changed and to set intentions of how you want to walk through the coming months of this chaotic time.

Will you put your attention solely on the chaos and breakdown and allow yourself to spiral into the morass of worry, fear, or anger that snares you into ineffective action or no action at all? Or will you look for those places where your light can brightly shine with grace and ease?

I invite you to join me in pivoting more fully toward the light and discovering your unique light that the world is calling for in this chaotic, yet rich with opportunity, sacred time.

Look Up, Look Down, With Eyes to See, Love is All Around!

Love Thy Neighbor and Love Thy Nature

Deer Feeding on Pine Needles and Branches from the Mitigation

… much as Martin Luther King did when he declared, "all life is inter-related. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny," and King was right that it's all life, not just human life. Maybe in this day and age, love thy neighbor should also be love thy nature. After all we are all neighbors to nature; we live in a grand neighborhood called the biosphere, the realm of life on earth, and we depend on it. We are it and it is us, from our gut biome to what we eat, drink, and breathe. Love in this case should manifest as active care. Rebecca Solnit

This Tuesday before blog day, I’ve found myself moving very differently in my world today – more slowly and deliberately. Present to each step. Following a flow of guidance rather than my plan for the day. It started early waking from a disjointed dream and hearing a clear message to write The Pivot today.

As I moved slowly through the morning, attending to self-care, watching deer feeding on pine needles from the mitigation, checking in on planetary aspects and earthly events, I sense something shifting deep in me and in how we collectively are understanding and navigating the chaos of our world. I sense love is being called forth in new ways, just as I witnessed it while reading a political essay by American writer and activist, Rebecca Solnit.

The essay, Visions of Life / Agents of Death: On Love Thy Neighbor and Love Thy Nature, is stirring in me not as new perspective to consider, but rather as a clear articulation of how the worldview of separation is currently playing out on the world stage and, simultaneously, right here at home, wherever ‘home’ happens to be for you.

As Solnit shares, the separation worldview is not the only play being written and acted on stages around the globe. In contrast to the separation story, those who hold the worldview that we are all connected AND we are connected to Nature are rising in communities around the world with expanding casts of characters engaged in co-creating a new world grounded in our interconnectedness to one another and to All Life. The worldview that we are not separate but are part of a web of Life that knows not borders, boundaries, and other props of the separation worldview even as they work within and across those demarcations.

None of us are mere observers of these divergent views. Consciously or not, we are actors on the stage contributing to one worldview or the other with every choice we make. Our opportunity in this time is first to understand these divergent world views and how they are unfolding and to be aware of how our choices support one view or the other. And then, from this understanding to choose our parts wisely with clarity and intention. I think Visions of Life / Agents of Death: On Love Thy Neighbor and Love Thy Nature can help us to do just that. So, I invite (no I encourage!) you to make yourself a cup of tea and sit with Solnit for a bit.

A New Friend in The Woods Out Back

In Silence and Stillness

Mitigation Teamwork

Let the one who carries fire sit beside the one who carries water. The Agreement Beneath All Names

As the cacophony of noise and accompanying horrors being perpetrated on Life grows louder and more horrific, I find myself in deep need to be silent, still. Body and soul need quiet and to be quiet. They call for the stillness of deep rest. To listen. Not to the world, but to Life. All Life.

Mind’s pesky thoughts pop in, questioning if quiet and stillness are aligned with these intense times. Perhaps in the so-called rational world we call ‘reality’, this is no time for stillness. For many it’s a time to add to the noise, turn up the volume so you’ll be heard. It’s a time many are called to action, to protest, to caring for one another.

And rightfully so. We each need to listen to and respond to our unique call in this moment.

My soul hears a different call. And as if to be sure that I hear and heed the soul’s call, body chimes in offering up a scratchy throat, minor arm injury, and a dearth of physical energy. “That should keep you quiet and still,” body seems to say.

Silence and stillness aren’t easy. Yet, as I listen, I sense that I’m harmonizing with all the Beings here in the woods in the wake of last week’s mitigation. The work itself flowed easily, with the trees and other Beings who dwell and visit here cooperating with we humans as we communicated and worked closely together. It was as if the tree Beings understood the need and opened to the transformational sacrifice.

And now we are called to recover. To move beyond the shock and jarring of change and into harmony with the present. The trees with new roles as firewood and mulch, not shade. For all, being more visible as old visual barriers are removed.

So this day, as I settle back into the quiet stillness of place, I leave you with a bit more from The Agreement Beneath All Names to reflect upon and, perhaps as I have, to incorporate into your daily practices of contributing to a peaceful world.

The sky above all prayers does not choose sides.

So we choose again—

each morning, each meeting, each moment of heat—

to respond instead of react,

to include instead of conquer,

to listen long enough for the deeper truth to surface. from The Agreement Beneath All Names

Honoring the Sacrifice and Gratitude for the Tree

Death and Rebirth in this Transformative Time

Farewell to an old friend …

Parting is such sweet sorrow … Juliet in William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet

In Hinduism, Shiva is a deity who represents transformation. Through destruction and restoration, Shiva reminds us that endings are beginnings, and that our world is constantly undergoing a cycle of birth, death and rebirth. Karen Salmansohn

The Pivot invites me to pivot numerous times this morning before the heart speaks clearly to guide the direction and focus of today’s Pivot ink. That direction isn’t what came when the pen first met paper early with my restless heart stirring in the wake of courageous voices and their stories speaking last evening at the ‘People’s State of the Union’ on the National Mall. Real people, having found their voices, courageous, some trembling, all enduring the cold night share their experience and show us what resistance looks like. An alternative to the story being told in the Capitol building at the same time.

And The Pivot wasn’t to be about my presence to how the world ‘out there’ is reflecting the inner turmoil many, I supposed most, of us are experiencing in this intense, transformative time where we are witness to the death of systems, beliefs, ways once held dear at the same time new ones, ones that honor Life, are rising. We are gifted with abundant opportunities to look within to examine, to choose to let go of all that no longer serves Life. At least that’s how I’m experiencing and observing this time.

Each of these is a topic worthy of attention and exploration as I engage in my own inner queries and musing. What the heck is this time about for me? For our world? For Life? For the cosmos? Musings for another day.

Yet as I sat quietly then moved about the house, apparently not quite ready to hear my heart’s call, the guidance became crystal clear: Letting go! Saying ‘good bye’ to two large tree beings and many large branches in other trees that need to be removed for fire safety. Being grateful for their service, their beauty, and honoring them for enduring the mitigation process – that of facing death to help protect this home and then, to be reborn, transformed into a new purpose – providing warmth for the home in winters to come.

These trees seem a powerful metaphor for this transformative time we are in, both individually and collectively. And for that awareness, I am ever grateful.

When I made the decision to mitigate a few weeks back, I talked with each tree, apologizing, expressing my gratitude, and asking for their understanding and cooperation. I honored each with a small stone and talked with the tree elders in the woods out back as well as the mountain to ask for their guidance, understanding, and support.

I revisit posts from earlier mitigation on the land in 2014 and 2020 to recall my thoughts at that time. I notice a cycle in the mitigation – six years between each. I’m reminded as I read the old posts how my relationship with the tree beings and all Life in these woods and beyond has deepened in the 12 years that I’ve been blessed to occupy and steward this place.

Now, as mitigation day comes closer, I begin to say my last farewells and consider what gifts to offer each for their sacrifice. Wondering ‘what is proper?’ and ‘what is enough?’, I ask for guidance, trusting that the perfect guidance will come, while knowing that the depth of my intentions and care will compensate for any oversight and trusting that divine perfection will prevail. I’m reminded that endings are beginnings, and that our world is constantly undergoing a cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

What if, I wonder, I/we could trust this transformative time with its cycles of death and rebirth with the same knowing and trust?        

Caring for the lichen and other Life that lives on the trees.