Dear Friends,
Hoping you have had a good week or at least one that you were able to manage without too much difficulty.
Last week our reflections focused on Autumn in a general way. The theme this week also has an autumnal feel to it but centres in on trees, and the falling of leaves. A couple of the extracts have a message about being able to leave the past behind & look towards the new growth in spring. ‘Conkers’ is quite violent – very different from the completion & bounty of last week.
Our blessing today is an Irish Blessing from Sacred Weave. We hope that those who have some Irish blood in their veins in particular will enjoy it.
With our love
Love Every Leaf
In times like these, our prayer may need to be expressive and embodied, visceral and vocal. How else can we pray with our immense anger and grief? How else can we pray about ecocide, about the death that humanity is unleashing upon Mother Earth and upon ourselves? How else can we break through our inertia and despair, so that we don’t shut down and go numb?
I’ve taken to praying outdoors. I go outside, feel the good earth beneath my feet and the wind on my face, and I sing to the trees—to oak and beech, hemlock and pines. Making up the words and music as I go along, I sing my grief to the trees that are going down, and my grief for so much more—for what we have lost and are losing, and for what we are likely to lose. I sing my outrage about these beautiful old trees being cut to the roots, their bodies chipped to bits and hauled away to sell. I sing my fury about the predicament we’re in as a species. I sing my protest of the political and corporate powers-that-be that drive forward relentlessly with business as usual, razing forests, drilling for more oil and fracked gas, digging for more coal, expanding pipeline construction, and opening up public lands and waters to endless exploitation, as if Earth were their private business and they were conducting a liquidation sale. I sing out my shame to the trees, my repentance and apology for the part I have played in Earth’s destruction and for the part my ancestors played when they stole land and chopped down the original forests of the Native peoples who lived here. I sing my praise for the beauty of trees and my resolve not to let a day go by that I don’t celebrate the precious living world of which we are so blessedly a part. I’m not finished until I sing my determination to renew action for trees and for all of God’s Creation. . . .
So our prayer may be noisy and expressive, or it may be very quiet. It may be the kind of prayer that depends on listening in stillness and silence with complete attention: listening to the crickets as they pulse at night, listening to the rain as it falls, listening to our breath as we breathe God in and breathe God out, listening to the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our heart. A discipline of contemplative prayer or meditation can set us free from the frantic churn of thoughts and feelings and enable our spirit to rest and roam in a vaster, wilder space.
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas
Letting Go
The birch leaves are falling, Lord,
Yellow diamonds on the green grass,
released in the autumn wind.
But I, Lord,
I still clutch tight the leaves of my old life,
useless, withered & dry.
Teach me to let go of the old –
old hurts and animosities, old troubles and grief.
Teach me to release them to the wind of your Spirit
to be whisked away,
that like the tree I may rest a while
at peace within,
then grow again in the spring.
Annie Heppenstall
Golden, crisp leaves falling softly from almost bare trees, lifting and falling in a hushed gentle breeze. Slowly dropping to the soft cushioned ground, whispering and rustling a soothing sound. Coppers, golds, and rusted tones, Mother Nature’s way of letting go. They fall and gather one by one, autumn is here, summer has gone. Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away; lengthen night and shorten day; every leaf speaks bliss to me fluttering from the autumn tree. Autumn leaves are falling down, whirling, twirling to the ground. Red and yellow, orange and brown, creating a beautiful carpet all around.
AUTHOR UNKNOWN.
Conkers
Ruth Burgess
You have always been good for me.
Yours is the brown mottled beauty
that has allowed me to say ‘Wow’ and thank you,
to know that the leaves will come tumbling
that the wind will buffet
that the winter is near.
Yours too the legitimate outlet for anger,
the aim & the balance,
the energy of the downward smash
the bruising of fingers
the destruction
the victory
the permission to be vicious
to let the autumn tiger loose
to let the anger go.
You speak autumn to me
sticks & leaves
and childhood energy,
and the ripeness that this season offers
again and again.