On winter’s margin, see the small birds now

With half-forged memories come flocking home

To gardens famous for their charity.

The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins

Hang at the entrance to the silent wood.

With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs;

By time snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing

Like children for their sire to walk abroad.

But what I love, is the gray stubborn hawk

Who floats alone beyond the frozen vines;

And what I dream of are the patient deer

Who stand on legs like reeds and drink the wind;-

They are what saves the world; who choose to grow

Thin to a starting point beyond this squalor.

~Mary Oliver

we are called to be other than what we are comfortable with sometimes…..what does that look like?

inquiry for today~  consider this moment in time…..this day of long-held memories…..this time and place with your own deep ancestral care…..

how did it really happen?

For millions of Americans, this is a time of doubt, despair, and the pain of loss.

I have no “remedy” for this widespread suffering—and if I said I did, you’d know you were hearing from yet another con man.

But this much I know to be true: doubt is the other side of faith, despair is the other side of hope, and the pain of loss is the other side of love.

We can hasten that day by joining in the never-ending struggle for love, truth, and justice in whatever ways we’re able.

As Wendell Berry has reminded us, big problems never have one big “fix.” They yield only to a million-million human scale answers to the question, “Under these circumstances, what’s the right thing to do?”

~Parker J. Palmer