Tag Archives: Diversity

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

Garden Blue

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My favorite color in the garden is this blue/purple of the Siberian iris. They’ve multiplied in the roadside garden bed, and blossomed all along the way. And now they are gone. So we had maybe a week to enjoy their beauty. I feel the time rushing by with all these spring and early summer flowers. Nothing goes on and on. With photos we try to capture the moment and make it last a little longer, but nothing really lasts in that way. If we don’t pay attention to the moment, we miss it.

It is easy for me to get caught up in what needs to be done, the projects, the planting and watering, the weeding, the holistic sprays for the orchard. But probably what is most important is to walk around the yard noticing the flowers and plants and critters, noticing the birds and frogs and tadpoles. When we came to this yard, our hope was to nurture our relationship with the land, with all of the wisdom it had to teach us, with all of the tending that it asked of us. It was the tangible finding our way home that my spirit was hungry for.

We’ve been tending this particular small place for about nine years, and we feel such a bond with it. In these times of wars and rumors of wars, walking through the yard restores my soul. What must it be like to live for generations in a place? I can only begin to imagine. One of the crimes of the destruction of Gaza, along with the horrific killing of human beings, is the destruction of the land, the olive trees, the plants, the gardens. All those homes. It makes me weep.

I walk around the garden in the mornings, and I pray. I give thanks for another day of living. Not just my life, but the life all around me, of which I am a part. I am happy to see that the spiderwort plants are blooming, another in that shade of blue/purple. This seems to be the very favorite flower of the bees, and it lasts for a long time, with multiple little buds on each stalk, taking their turn to shine. It is the very diversity and multiplicity of the plants that bring abundance to life in the garden.