9 JAN 2023 Full MOON ZOOM – was a deep connecting experience.
Emergent Themes: Death & Health. Probiotics & Poetry.
One womans’ husband died recently, and she shared a poem she wrote about that. Ah. Other deep things, too.
One person recovering from a car accident. A possibly near-death experience, and tending of ones’self. A meaningful trip to India.
And those things balanced also with the joy of connecting to Life, probiotics, Mycroryzal fungi, the chickens, experiencing Winter!
Participants: Jo, Peggy, Barbara, Sarah, Jack, Richard R. E. Deanne, Bonnie, Selena, Robin.
Below are some of the words shared between us we folks from upstate New York, Vermont, Michigan, Ohio.
| Person | What’s alive in you? | What’s inspiring you? |
| Jubilant Jo | 13” snow just before Christmas. A very heavy wet snow with cold nights. Snow became ice. Careful treads over the crunchy top. Just going to the mailbox and the well. Potential to fall was too high. Just a few patches of snow left. Very hard on my covered barn roof. 18’ tall T that bounces the inside of the fabric. 2 tons of snow can come off at one time! Can travel 10-12’ from the barn at avalanche speeds. Today, I’m finally caught up on my laundry. Hand-operated washing machine that can hold just one double sheet. With weather like this, it will take some time to dry. Go down and coordinate and supervise down at the local park. Frustrating time doing the drain project around Unity Hall. Dug around the exterior of the building and installed drain pipes. My job will be to do the landscape restoration. Rather than top soil, the town brought “ditch dirt”, which we sifted painstakingly, but it was taken by the construction crew as fill. Chickens are doing well. Two eggs! One XS, one XL! Every day is Easter, go out and look for eggs. Shopping bag full of paperback novels. I read while I eat, and I time for a chapter to start just as I finish the bowl, so I can read a bit more. | Vast forests, a little bit more like the land I grew up in. Houses are scattered and small. The road was the only sign of civilization. Up and through the Adirondacks around Lake George. Very expensive places up there too. The farthest I’ve been from home since the pandemic. |
| Peggy | A demanding cat in the background. He’s cute, I can’t resist him. I’ve been spending time with people I have n’t seen in a while. Solstice gathering with a few friends. Pine halo craft project. Saturday, my son and I went out to see family. I’m one of the oldest cousins. Two left of the six or seven. She saw me one time: we had a little dog around Christmas time. Joey the dog was threatened by a neighbor’s German Shepherd. I was out there with a tree stump fending off a shepherd the same size of me. Great stories and memories that we had to share. Every Sunday we went to my grandma and grandpas. We had a lot of time together growing up. Northville which is now yuppy but back then farms down the roads. Today I get to be with all of you. Life is really pretty darn good. I’m a big reader too, Jo. There is so much good out there. I feel really engaged. From the global to the mycorrhizal. | Hagitude by Sharon Blackie
Old women ought to consider the strong, fearless, adventurous woman that is the hag. She remembers much and puts it together well. |
| Barbara | Adjusting to living alone after husband died in September. Paying a lot attention to ridding myself of extraneous things. Gifting things that I can’t use or don’t need. Writing poetry about our relationship and our past. Processing 40 years of marriage. Finding my way into my present. Poetry is a catalyst for coming to terms with all that I’m dealing with. Psychologically and materially busy. More involved in my church. People there I have known for decades are stepping up to be supportive. The Artist’s Way years ago with a friend: writing classic sonnets. In the last 3 months, I have written six sonnets, and they’re all about Bob, me, and our relationship. It’s been very cleansing. I’m not trying to shake it off, I‘m just trying to be there. “As long as you’re conscious of connection, you have a connection” ~ Deanne. | |
| Sarah | Otto Jennings and the surveys around Lake Erie. Many of those things preserved there were actually planted by him. There is so much botany that only exists because of political compromise. Peggy Suz is looking fabulous for 79! Celebrating because last February I had a horrible accident, and I was dragged by a car. I had my last physical therapy treatment. I’m happy, even with my big bouncy ball and weights. It’s a wonderful gift, we walk a little bit now. I’m 80 by the way! It’s really good to be, to own myself because I didn’t really own this left part of my body, it was an errant child. It’s really good, people! I’m still stuck in the city, and I’m still fixing house. Because a person who would come and down that would charge at least $800. Something’s really irking me. I’m a biologist. One thing that I’ve always been interested, is that which is native. I live now in the city where everybody has alien plants. Rebellion planted street trees. Supposedly, because we handed it over to the city, they were meant to plant native trees, but instead they planted Japanese cranberry. We work so hard to sensitize people to their surroundings. And then we get the lesson through, but it doesn’t all get through. Pennsylvania is planting milkweed along the highway, but they should be planting asters and grasses, etc. | |
| Bonnie | Happy new year! Looking forward to another go around the sun. I don’t have anything pressing. I nearly forgot you! A minute elapsed into an hour. It seems like I often come back with the same thing. Interfacing with my friend in Guatemala. Shifting the project: people had asked for some rice and beans. Enriching crops for nourishing the soil and the people. | |
| Selena | I attend a dealing with diabetes group every Monday night. We were talking tonight about microbiome. I was telling the group that probiotics are really good. The people in the group seemed to disagree. What is alive in me is my probiotics. I think probiotics are very important. “It doesn’t do anything for them because it doesn’t make them feel any different.” They don’t make you feel different, but you know it’s helping you. The class ended, and I went right into this. My microbiome is smiling. | |
| RE
|
Really enjoying the work of Brian Thomas Swimm. Just released the book named Cosmogenesis: An Unveiling of the Expanding Universe with a nice purple color. A storytelling of a new story. I would leave it at that. If you do nothing else, check out their website storyoftheuniverse.org. Different components of the human presence of the planet: a positive view. If you want a boost and an expansion of boundaries, these items should be of keen interest. Dealing with my father’s estate. Tonight was a good night because we were able to drive and deliver my father’s Mercedes Benz without incident. Big joy! Only two more things of his to sell compared to hundreds. | Immense and intense creativity of the earth’s community. It gives hope. It’s very inspirational to experience increasing levels of that in every aspect of day to day life. Wow! You never need to be bored. Everyone is an opportunity to share with each other. Don’t miss the opportunities. |
| Robin | I just came from a support group also. I have something on my mind that I’m also working on. It’s related to having a family member with mental health problems. Very helpful and very therapeutic. My daughter isn’t in the program any more, but they asked me to stay in the program now for the past two years. Once a month. I took a trip to India in November to meet the new form of my spiritual teachings. They come from many mouths and many forms. Back in 1978, when I lived in Ann Arbor, a teacher came through our city. My husband and I both went to see him (I was in my late 20s). I saw something there that I had never seen in anyone before. I saw an aura. I only saw an aura for the first time around this man. He didn’t speak a word of English. The people around him did. I came into some teachings there just before we had planned to go to India. Strong teachings India. The form has changed from him to her with the death of her father. The mother became ____ after him. 3rd marriage. Lost her parents and her husband. I went to India in her new form. She was a baby in her father’s arms when I first met her. I feel very close to the teachings and to the lineage. I had to go to India to ensure that this new form that the teachings are in are still resonating truth. We all have doubts. I was actually one of very few non-Indians at this big event. It’s a very Indian crowd there at that time. Babaji’s teachings are so amazing. Everyone can touch everyone else’s feet with connection to God. Instead of hierarchy within life and within the family, everyone can touch everyone’s feet. All different castes sit together. Men sit on one side and women on the other, but it’s not required to be that way, just traditional. Dowry-less marriages. Marriage is just a simple vow, not a financial affair. Very inspiring group, lived in India for 4 years. How the teachings were being lived there. Teachings are true for me in my life. Yes, I have a connection to her. I’m excited because I think she will visit and meet people for all her life. Hearing people and sharing her teachings. | There are many alive today, RE, that don’t see what you see. We just came out of a shmita year. Let the land be fallow and forgive all debts. A sabbath year for the land. Personal debts to each other, that sort of thing. This is they ar that follows that year. It started at rashashana time in the fall. The year following the shmita year, is the time for people to come back together. Hachel, every 7th year, the year after the shmita year: people reach out and inspire each other. Be glad and be grateful! The shmita is like the sabbath day. This year, we can feel it coming out of COVID too. There’s always fresh inspiration from the Torah, looking back, and from each other. |
| Deanne | Winternship that started to roll on Thursday when people arrived. Friday we prepped for the weekend workshop. Saturday /Sunday we had a mud-plastering workshop. It worked out really well. I’m just in a whole different space here with four people living with me. Some of you met them at the beginning. It’s a privilege and a joy to have this quality of time together. Time out of time. Share our thinking, develop our thinking and our skills. Just five days in and just the beginning. Today was “a day off”. I don’t think I’ve slept that long in my lifetime, it feels like. Cleaning the house, getting things ready. Communicating. All the details that happen before they come. So many pieces to it. It feels that there are no other things happening in the world. It’s a pretty immersive experience. Within the workshop, it felt like I was in a flow. 2-days of workshops. Personal, food: it all goes well. Grateful for that. | Menopausal Years, The Wise Woman Way by Susan S. Weed |
| Jack | I’m inspired by Barbaras poetry, and I am wanting to process things in my life, and wanting to do more of my own poetry. I am seeing an opportunity for growth to come up to the french teaching standard. I will be studying with a friend in French. There is a flow with my new roommate! I had a weird moment last week that had me questioning my MORTALITY. A migraine with light flashes. That has me reconsidering self care, and modeling that for my students. Homeostasis. Rekindling my probiotic generation. I’m going to start making home-made yogurt. And I have the book of Herbal Beer! | Autumn leaf in verdant glee
knows soon it fall so gracefully! It’s still so fresh it could be vernal, it need not question life incarnal. The sugar flows in dactyl veins: It has the hots for whom it’s sweet. When gravity is not a pain, dear levity is its feat. A remnant of poetry squirreled away on my computer. Continue it and spread it. |
Leave a Reply