Category Archives: Awake to Each Other

Stirrings of Life

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Deep snow in and on a ranch house with dark grey cedar shingles and white shutters. In front of the house are yew bushes, and in the snow are several tracks crisscrossing the yard. A sign that says Wildlife Sanctuary.

Today is Imbolc, the cross-quarter day in the cycle of the year between winter solstice and spring equinox. It celebrates the new stirrings of life under the cold of snow. When I took a walk this morning, I saw the well-traveled paths of deer in our back and front yards, and decided to follow the road where I could see them also in other yards. So my walk took a different direction, and I noticed that most of the deer paths led to yew bushes, in our yard and in other yards. Winter food. I am happy that our little sign marking us as a Wildlife Habitat is still true in winter. I notice they also visit the bird feeder, and drink from the water we leave out there in a heated bird bath.

This winter has been more like old winters with lots of snow, and temperatures below freezing for days on end. For some reason, the deep snow comforts me in the face of another kind of ICE, the cruel and relentless attacks on immigrant neighbors, especially in Minnesota, but then for the last couple weeks intensifying here in Maine as well. Just a mile from our house, an 18 year old boy was taken, Jean-Pierre Obiang, a student at the University of Southern Maine. I am one of those radicals that believe borders are not the way, but even so, most of the people ICE has detained, including Jean-Pierre, are fully documented and following the legal process for being in the United States.

Like so many others, I have been devastated by the murders of legal observers Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis and the lesser known murder of Keith Porter, Jr. in Los Angeles. But I have also been inspired and heartened by the up-swelling of community resistance and mutual aid that have filled the streets of Minneapolis and spread across the country. I have been inspired by my clergy colleagues here in Maine who have stood out in the cold to protect immigrant workers on their way in and out of their jobs. I follow along on social media, and try to spread the word.

And today, in another stirring of new life, came the news that five-year old Liam and his father Adrian were brought back safe to Minnesota by Congressman Joaquin Castro. They should never have been taken, and Liam’s face, in his little blue bunny hat, as ICE was trying to use him as bait to capture other members of his family, was seared into my heart. I prayed every day for them to come home from where they were held in Texas, and now I am so grateful that they are home. But how long will it be before all the children, and all the families, and all the people are set free? May the stirring of Imbolc light the fires of resistance and interconnection for all of us.

No Kings

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Three inflatable frog people standing in front of a building at an anti-ICE demonstration in Portland, OR. Text: Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

In the midst of cruelty and oppression, where does hope emerge? For me, it was seeing the protesters in Portland, Oregon dress in inflatable frog costumes, exposing the lie that Portland was a war zone, or that protesters were violent. In the face of armed and masked ICE agents, people responded with this creative and playful spontaneity. First there was one frog, and then it expanded to many frogs, and other silly costumed beings. Then someone else remembered this quote from Exodus about the plague of frogs. Perfect.

October 18th is NO KINGS day, and thousands of peaceful protests are planned for across the country. I can’t go out to one, but I can voice my support here. Support for democracy, support for the beautiful diversity that can make our communities full and alive, support for immigrants, support for trans siblings, and all queer people, support for disabled people and black people and indigenous people, Asian and Latino/a/x people. We need to keep expressing our vision of a multi-cultural country bound together by equality, justice, and full participation.

May the frogs multiply and spread the good word. Keep hope alive!

Green frog sitting in pond water, nearby there is a bee on a rock, and black tadpoles swimming around, and maple seeds floating.
Three frogs sitting on slate rocks
three more frogs on rocks and in water

September Musings

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Four huge turkeys in the shade of some green grass, behind leaves of zucchini in the front corner of the photo

The summer garden had some successes and some fails. And it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. This turkey family visited the yard many days, and walked through the garden beds in the back. They mostly left the veggies alone, except they liked to eat the tops off the bean plants. We still got a few beans even so. And they left alone the zucchinis, which did well, the cucumbers which did fair, and the broccoli, also fair. We appreciated their visits–we want to support wildlife after all.

However, we tried to lessen our support for the chipmunks and squirrels that became such little rogues. Despite netting over the blueberries, once they figured out they could squeeze holes into it, they got the rest of the blueberries, though we did get a bunch before that. I am happy to say that the baffle on the bird feeder totally worked. They never got up to the feeder after the baffle was installed. So I am hoping that without all that extra food to stash, the population won’t explode like it did this year. The long game. And the birds keep coming back to the feeder.

In the front yard, we never had monarchs lay eggs on our milkweed plants, despite their visit. Maybe next year? The netting on our kale and carrot bed was a great success. It protected the kale from cabbage moths, and no one tried to get into it. We have a ton of kale harvested and still to harvest.

Rectangle garden bed filled with green kale of two kinds, covered over with a translucent net on white metal supports.

The robins never came back to their nest on our back porch after the babies had been attacked. Still so sad about that. We’ve had some lovely visits with human friends out by the pond. The pond water level went down with the drought, but this weekend’s rain helped, especially after adding water from the newly filled rain barrels. Still a few frogs, though I am not sure about the tadpoles. They hide under the lily pads, and it’s a lucky day to see them.

And… and… and… Gaza is still being attacked night and day, and starved by blockades. International resistance is growing but too slowly for the people killed each day. I keep bearing witness, and praying. It’s the same with the rising fascism of our country, and the attacks on immigrants both documented and undocumented, and citizens who are brown or black or speak Spanish. The only thing that gives me hope are the multiple levels of resistance from huge demonstrations to lawsuits to governors who slap back. Here we do the best we can to get by, day by day, accepting our situation as elders and those who are chronically ill. In the face of so much cruelty and hate, we add our little love to the mix, hoping to be part of the larger Love which is our only real hope.

Feeding Each Other

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female hummingbird flying near red feeder

This summer, we’ve been blessed to feed hummingbirds in our yard, both through flowers like bee balm, and also through our little red hummingbird feeder that we fill with a sugar solution. Earth creatures feed each other. Everyone needs to eat. This happens through the incredible natural chain of life, some animals eating plants, other animals eating animals. But the deepest natural order is that all animals must eat. The interconnected circle of life. We participate in this circle, by what we eat, and by how we feed others.

Perhaps this is why forced starvation is such a horrific crime. To cut off a people from food is a crime against humanity, and also a crime against the natural order of life. I have been daily bearing witness to the forced starvation of people in Gaza by the Israeli government. There is food aid literally waiting at the border being denied entry. My heart is breaking every day. As the starvation goes on, it becomes impossible for people to heal from the damage it does to their bodies, even if they survive. Every day more people are dying and more people are reaching a point of no return. One action that is being organized is to pressure mainstream media to cover the fact that Israel is starving Gazans, which should be headline news everywhere in the world. You can find a template to flood media inboxes at https://writersagainstthewarongaza.com/action.

I also want to bear witness to the starvation happening in Sudan. I am not seeing so much about it in the news. When the current regime in Washington closed the doors on USAID, the situation there became dire. According to an article today in Closer to the Edge:

“The U.S. was once Sudan’s largest humanitarian donor. USAID funded almost half the international aid reaching the country. Then, with the flick of a legislative pen and the grinning cruelty of budget hawks who will never see a famine up close, that support was ripped away. Community kitchens—lifelines for displaced families—shut down. Nutrition programs vanished… The numbers are so obscene they should scream off the page: 25 million people acutely food insecure, over 770,000 children under five on track to suffer severe acute malnutrition this year, and nearly 100,000 cholera cases since last summer. ” 

We are all connected. I am remembering that the very first moral imperative according to the parables of Jesus, was simply this: “I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink.”

Living lying down

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mussed up light blue sheet with two cat paws peeking out, black and white fur

I’ve been trying to figure out what it all means. I mean my life these days. What does it mean to be ill, to be mostly fatigued, to be compelled to rest most of the hours of my days? I wasn’t sure what photo could go with this question, and then I happened to see this photo of Billie from five years ago, her body hidden under a sheet on the bed, just her little paws sticking out. Somehow that fits. These days I am mostly hidden, lying down somewhere, sometimes under a sheet, and just a tiny part of me emerging into the world now and then.

I used to admire the elders who were out on the picket lines into their eighties and nineties. It makes me sad, but I don’t think that can be me. I still care about the things I used to care about. I hunger for justice, for human rights, for kindness, for peace. I still rage against cruelty, oppression, violence, and genocide. I scroll on Facebook and try to bear witness to all that is happening out there. I share posts that document the atrocities, in the hope that bearing witness is better than silence. I share posts that document the resistance, in order to foster hope in the face of so much despair. But is that diminished activism what my life now is meant to be about? Is it what it means?

Spoon theory is a method of managing energy for many people with disabilities and/or chronic illness–if we only have so many spoonfuls of energy, we have to ration our activities to match the spoons we have. Lately I am always running out of spoons before I can finish the tasks of daily living. I am lucky if I can keep up with the dishes in the kitchen sink, keep up with cleaning out the litter box for the cats, keep up with watering the vegetables I was so bold to plant. Are these tasks of daily living what my life means now? Do I need to cultivate that Zen approach to being fully present in each moment, however mundane?

Meanwhile, I spend many hours lying on the couch watching tv shows on Roku. Sometimes I have to manage my energy for that too. I can’t handle too much drama. British mysteries are about right, especially if I have seen them before and they are well done. Nature shows are usually okay, unless there is too much about how we are destroying it. Sometimes I nap during the shows. Lately, I’ve been watching “Would I lie to you?” on Britbox for laughs. It all feels rather pathetic actually, but this is the unvarnished truth.

I don’t have the answers to my questions. I don’t know what it all means. But I feel like I have to wrestle with this reality I am living in, wrestle with the meaning, because that is also still who I am, a wrestler-with-meaning. I can look out on the world, but I must also look into this intimate space under the covers. I believe that each human being has inherent dignity, each life has ultimate value. I believe that we are all connected. So how do I find the ultimate value in this life of mine, right now, not based on what I have done or who I have been, but right now. Still able to write sometimes, but about to lie down for the rest of the day.

A Little Gift

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I don’t have a new photo to share, but this afternoon, I saw a young robin pecking the ground in the orchard. It had the slightly mottled chest coloring of a juvenile. It didn’t stay long, it quickly flew away, but it brought me a moment of hope. I can’t prove it, but I think it might be the young robin that I tried to help last week. That’s why I am resharing the last photo of that fierce baby, taken on June 21st. I feel that witnessing its presence in the garden is a gift.

Today has been a day that needed a little sign from heaven, a little miracle. The Senate passed by a tie-breaker vote its version of the big horrible bill that will kill so many people who lose healthcare, if it is now passed by the House. I don’t want to say anymore about that right now, but every call, every email, every public witness is like a prayer for hope, for goodness, against cruelty and greed. We are facing so much destruction and pain. But I feel the presence of Spirit with all of us who do whatever we can for our common good, for our intertwined life here on this planet.

Kindness or cruelty?

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White woman on left of phot with tan baseball cap and rust shirt, just visible at hands, holding a phone facing pebbled shoreline with horseshoe crabs in the water mating, and huge boulders on the other side.

The other day, Margy and I went to Maquoit Bay to see horseshoe crabs that had come to shore to mate. Margy especially loves horseshoe crabs and has learned a great deal about them. It was shortly after high tide, and we noticed that a few of the crabs had wandered behind and between big boulders placed on the site, in a way that they were trapped. (Much worse than what can be seen in the photo above.) As the tide continued to go out, it was likely that they would be stuck high and dry. So we very carefully lifted them out by the sides of their shells, (never lift them by their spikey tails!) and placed them in the water where they were free to move where they wanted.

To us, it felt like a simple act of kindness for a fellow creature on this planet. We see someone in a vulnerable position, and do our best to be a helper.

I have been astonished and horrified by the cruelty I’ve witnessed (as reported via social media) of people in positions of power in our government. Separating families as they come out from immigration courts. Detaining a young child with leukemia. Sending migrants to horrible prisons in countries to which they have no connection. Terrorizing people as they garden, or shop, or go to work, while wearing masks and refusing identification. Detaining a pregnant woman and offering no medical care. Such is the state of DHS and ICE activity in our country. Cruelty seems to be the point.

I am thinking also of the people in Gaza, who are still being starved and bombed, and shot by IDF soldiers even as they line up to try to get food. Some soldiers even admitted that they were ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid. I feel so helpless to stop the harm, to stop the genocide.

It seems there is no end to cruelty. It has been troubling me greatly. And I wonder why? Why be as cruel as a human can be to fellow human beings? Don’t all religious and ethical traditions lift up our common human bonds and encourage us to love our neighbor, and love the stranger in our midst? What does it do to the human beings behind the masks or the guns to act with violence and cruelty every day?

Are the people in charge in our country trying to instigate retaliatory violence to justify further oppression? Is it some oligarchic strategy of conquest? Is it a way to convince themselves that some human beings are not really human beings? Are they truly this cruel and this evil? And then, how can they convince ordinary people to follow along? Ordinary people who might value kindness over cruelty.

All I can do is to keep speaking out about it, to share the daily reports of the people who have been detained or killed, to see their names, to weep. I recently decided to do one more thing, to purchase a keffiyeh from Palestine. This traditional scarf was worn as a headdress or face covering, and in recent years has come to symbolize the Palestinian yearning for freedom. For those of us who are not Palestinian, it symbolizes solidarity. For me, I am moved by the fact that it was made by Palestinians in the West Bank, touched by their hands, their hopes. And now it is touched by my hands, my hopes for them. I feel that spiritual and physical connection. I wear it for the children being starved in Gaza, for the families being bombed in their tents or apartments. I wear it for all the helpers who do whatever they can to help, in the midst of so much cruelty. I wear it as a symbol of connection between human beings,

Myke, a white woman with reddish gray hair, wearing a black and white Palestinian keffiyeh wrapped over her shoulders.

On June 14, Margy and I couldn’t go to one of the thousands of No Kings rallies to protest the usurping of power that this regime is attempting. (This is life with chronic illness…) So we decided to sit in our own driveway with a sign, and bear witness in our neighborhood. During that hour and a half, we had about 20 positive responses from people driving by or walking by. A few people looked away but no one was angry or negative. Because we were out there, we also learned that a few neighbors had gone downtown to the rally as well. This photo was taken by Margy… it is her empty chair on the right. So we were two of the millions who protested that day!

Big cardboard sign saying "no Kings" held by Myke, seated, wearing keffiyeh, resting on second chair.

I hope that if I keep speaking up, it will inspire others to speak up as well. I think of the Ella Baker quote in the song by Sweet Honey in the Rock: “I want to be one in the number as we stand against tyranny.” Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our kindness. Never let their cruelty cause us to lose our sense of human connection.

Families

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robin feeding 3 babies in nest, whose beaks are pointing up
Parent feeding the babies on May 18

The robins raise their young so quickly, just a few weeks and they are already fledging from the nest. But they treasure their little family, and take utmost care to give the babies everything they need. We feel privileged to watch from our windows. So I will take my theme from this little family, to speak about the human rights of families.

In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 16 says:

(1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality, or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.

(2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.

(3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

Now, in these few sentences, we can also see the foundations of the right to marriage for same-sex couples and transgender persons, because this article affirms “free and full consent”–that we choose our intended spouses, rather than being assigned a spouse by parents or society. At the time it was written in 1948, sexual orientation wasn’t fully understood or protected. But I was happy to be a part of the changes made in the last decades that extended this right to all couples.

And today, I am especially thinking about Mahmoud Khalil, being held in ICE detention in Louisiana, since March 8th. A legal green-card resident of New York, he was detained for previously speaking up about the human rights of people in Gaza. He was not permitted to be with his wife for the birth of their child, and today immigration officials have denied a request for him to hold his newborn son during a visit from his wife. This cruelty robs him and his baby of a bonding that is so humanly necessary. He should be free, and able to go home to his family.

I’ll close with a few photos from the baby robins.

2 newly hatched robins and one blue egg with crack in it.
Newly hatched robins on May 7th
Three robins peeking out of nest today.
Parent encouraging one baby robin, the last fledgling.
Parent encouraging the last fledgling.

Even the Humblest of Beings

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trout lilies in old leaves, with mottled green leaves, and yellow and brown blooms

The trout lilies bloomed last week before several days of rain. This photo was from May 5th. Today the blooms are already fading or gone. The trout lilies live near a path by the Capisic Brook that I visit most mornings, though I don’t always make it as far as that path. I was glad to walk a little further to see these lovely small beauties.

I want to continue to post from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I started a couple weeks ago. It is such a good reminder that every person, no matter how humble, or seemingly insignificant, is worthy of dignity. (In this quote of the declaration from 1948, for simplicity, I am using the original language, in which the pronouns he/his/him were understood to refer to all people).

Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home, or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Article 13: (1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. (2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

Article 14: (1) Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. (2) This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from nonpolitical crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.

Article 15: (1) Everyone has the right to a nationality. (2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.

Can you read them again? So important in the light of what is happening to migrants today in our country. Everyone has the right to seek asylum. Every one has the right to a country, or to leave a country. Everyone has the right of return. And yet so many are denied that right. We have to keep speaking up for what we know is right, even if our societies have never fully lived up to these values.

Where is Mosab Abu Toha?

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Mosab Abu Toha
Photo By Ishmaeldaro – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=155046681

Update: It turned out to be Facebook that suspended his account for a few days. In other news, Mosab Abu Toha just won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary, for a series of essays in the New Yorker. Original post follows:

Mosab Abu Toha is a Palestinian poet and writer living in the United States with his wife and three children. I have been following him on Facebook because every day he posts so eloquently about what is happening in Gaza, he shares the details of people killed and the horrors of the genocide there. Today, I discovered that his Facebook page did not exist any more, and all the posts I had shared before had that little FB memo: “This content isn’t available right now.” The latest such post was April 27th.

I can’t help but wonder and fear what has happened. Has he been Facebook banned? Has he gone into hiding? Has he been arrested? He was so bold about speaking up for his people and appealing to the larger world to stop the genocide. This post from me is a prayer for his safety, and a prayer for all that he was trying to accomplish.

I have been posting articles from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today I will highlight Article 19: “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

I want to close with a poem by Mosab Abu Toha published a year ago in AGNI journal. Abu Toha has two books of poetry available: Things You May Find Hidden In My Ear: Poems from Gaza (2022 City Lights Publishers) and Forest of Noise (2024 Knopf).

This Is Me!

A city whose streets escaped it,
a house without windows,
a rain with no clouds,
a swimmer in the desert,
a shirt with ripped-off buttons,
a book with loose pages,
a lightless moon and colorless grass,
a toothless smile and suffocated laugh,
a dark painting on black canvas.
I’m a table with no legs,
a noisy restaurant with no guests.
I write with a pen that has no ink.
I write my name in the air
and shout it, but no voice comes out.
I look around and see many things,
but I see no one.