Love will win

The Arctic is burning. We are frying our beautiful planet. Corporate greed + ineffectual leadership = suffering and destruction. We live in dark times, transitional times, but I have hope that love and connection will win.

Reiki class

Today was Reiki class all day. I got to spend the day with some beautiful souls. We spent the whole morning at the pond because it was such a glorious day. Sunny, breezy, lovely. When we did attunements pond-side, the turtles and frogs came to say hello.

It got hotter in the afternoon and we went inside for a potluck and discussions of history, reputable resources, and fun with group Reiki and hospital beds.

2019

2019 is testing democracy, climate change is more intense, and there is much hate and fear. These are dark times. I try to stay in the light and I have hope for our future. Be Reiki ~

Reiki class

My Reiki class at the university starts next week. The students read current research, learn the principles and basic hand positions, and we do service learning at an oncology infusion center. We do attunements beside a pond, with turtles, frogs, water lilies, and singing birds.

FOLLOW, by Roland Flint

I spent the 4th of July with my cousin Pam and her daughter Amelia on an island in Maine. We honored her dad, his poem, and lobster-catchers of Cliff Island.

FOLLOW

by Roland Flint

Now here is this man mending his nets
after a long day, his fingers
nicked, here and there, by ropes and hooks,
pain like tomorrow in the small of his back,
his feet blue with his name, stinking of baits,
his mind on a pint and supper — nothing else —
a man who describes the settled shape
of his life every time his hands
make and snug a perfect knot.

I want to understand, if only for the story,
how a man like this,
a man like my father in harvest,
like Bunk MacVane in the stench of lobstering,
or a teamster, a steelworker,
how an ordinary working stiff,
even a high tempered one,
could just be called away.

It’s only in one account
he first brings in a netful —
in all the others, he just calls,
they return the look or stare and then
they “straightaway” leave their nets to follow.
That’s all there is. You have to figure
what was in that call, that look.

(And I wouldn’t try it on a tired working man
unless I was God’s son —
he’d kick your ass right off the pier.)

If they had been vagrants,
poets or minstrels, I’d understand that,
men who would follow a different dog.
But how does a man whose movement,
day after day after day,
absolutely trusts the shape it fills
put everything down and walk away?

I’d pass up all the fancy stunting
with Lazarus and the lepers
to see that one.