The Wisdom to Survive

A Vision

If we will have the wisdom to survive,

to stand like slow-growing trees on a ruined place,
Renewing it, enriching it,
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or heaven.

Then a long time after we are dead
the lives our lives prepare will live here,
Their houses strongly placed upon the valley sides,
Fields and gardens rich in the windows.
The river will run clear,
as we will never know it,
And over it, birdsong like a canopy.

On the levels of the hills will be green meadows,
Stock bells in noon shade.
On the steeps where greed and ignorance cut down the old forest,
An old forest will stand,
Its rich leaf-fall drifting on its roots.
The veins of forgotten springs will have opened.

Families will be singing in the fields.
In their voices they will hear a music risen out of the ground.
They will take nothing from the ground they will not return,
whatever the grief at parting.
Memory, native to this valley,
will spread over it like a grove,
and memory will grow into legend,
legend into song, song into sacrament.

The abundance of this place,
the songs of its people and its birds,
will be health and wisdom and indwelling light.
This is no paradise or dream.
Its hardship is its possibility.


--Wendell Berry

Begin It Now

Until one is committed there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back,

always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation.

There is one elementary truth,

the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans;

That the moment one definitely commits oneself,

then providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would never have otherwise occurred.

A whole stream of events issue from the decision,

raising one’s favor, all manner of unforeseen incidents, and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.

Whatever you do, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

Begin it now.


--Goethe
(or not)

to your imagination

Wild Geese


You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscape,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.


--Mary Oliver

Let Go of the Shore and Gather Yourselves

To my fellow swimmers:


There is a river now flowing very fast.

It is so great and swift

And there are those who will be afraid.

They will try to hold on to the shore.

They will feel that they are being torn apart

and will suffer greatly.

Know that the river has its destination.

The elders say we must let go of the shore.

Push off into the middle of the river.

Keep our eyes open and our heads above water.

And I say,

See who is in there with you and celebrate!

At this time in history we are to take nothing personally.

Least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do,

Our spiritual growth and journey comes to a halt.

The time of the lone wolf is over.

Gather yourselves!

Banish the word “struggle” from your attitude and vocabulary.

All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner

And in celebration.

We are the ones we have been waiting for.


--The Hopi Elders

Are My Hands Clean?

In honor of St. Brigid's day, something a little different:



Are My Hands Clean?
Lyrics and music by Bernice Johnson Reagon, 1985
Performed by Sweet Honey in the Rock
Live at Carnegie Hall (You can hear a clip here.)


I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world
35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America
In the cotton fields of El Salvador
In a province soaked in blood,
Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun
Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill
A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal
Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time
In South Carolina
At the Burlington mills
Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of
the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of
Dupont

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela
Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day
Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world,
Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago
Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas
To the factories of Dupont
On the way to the Burlington mills
In South Carolina
To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador

In South Carolina
Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton
into miles of fabric for Sears
Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea
Headed for Haiti this time—
May she be one day soon free—
Far from the Port-au-Prince palace
Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications
For three dollars a day

My sisters make my blouse

It leaves the third world for the last time
Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me
This third world sister
And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse
On sale for 20% discount

Are my hands clean?