In Praise of The Sky

Journal Notes Series

Photo by Omar Ramadan on Unsplash

Friends,

It’s March. We’ve made it, the month of Spring. These days I practice the dance of zooming in and out, that’s the best way I can describe it.

I zoom into my everyday life, into the realities of an America that feels like its crumbling, and then I zoom back out to all of history, existence, time and space, whatever that is, and ask big questions of what my gifts and purposes are here.

It’s both a feeling of being totally grounded and totally groundless, and somehow, that’s comforting, or, if not comforting, at least remind me that I am human and this is the dance that being human requires of me sometimes.

The words I share with you today are from a journal I kept in 2016/2017, these words from autumn of 2016, as Trump was becoming president for the first time, as Standing Rock was happening. It was a huge time of transformation for me, and I felt it in my writing.

Here are the words I wrote. I hope they bring you comfort and care, and push you into deeper compassion, that they help you with the dancing and zooming in and out around you.

Photo by Dewang Gupta on Unsplash

The Sun-bathed, moon-gleamed sky has seen the history of everything.

She watches wars—men and women against men and women, the oppressed against the oppressor, the broken against those who break them.

She has watched babies being born, all creatures come to their end at one time or another.

She births herself, rain and cloud and thunder, to remind us that she is still a willing and active force to be reckoned with.

But still, she sees.

She sees children bombed in their schools, protestors fighting to keep her water clean.

She sees miracles happen and the worst disasters unfold in real time.