"a fractured and tender world"

There's no way, since they aren't wearing obvious identifiers, to be sure the egrets we saw today are the same ones seen a week or so ago, but today we did get some pictures and confirmed that the birds are, indeed, great egrets, based on size, wing span, and yellow bills.

egret in flight

Photo by J. Harrington

About the time we were taking egret portraits, the Daughter Person [DP] was sending an email with a link to an online recording of a conversation between Krista Tippet and Naomi Shihab Nye: Your Life is a Poem. It's part of a larger effort Ms. Tippet is undertaking, the Civil Conversations Project, which:

"... seeks to renew common life in a fractured and tender world. We are a conversation-based, virtues-based resource towards hospitable, trustworthy relationship with and across difference. We honor the power of asking better questions, model reframed approaches to entrenched debates, and insist that the ruptures above the radar do not tell the whole story of our time...." 

three egrets, Sunrise River pools

Photo by J. Harrington

As we explored the conversations available (note that there are transcripts as well as audio versions), we came across one with Layli Long Soldier — The Freedom of Real Apologies. It contained information we think we should have known, but hadn't, until today, that "the U.S. government offered an official apology to Native peoples in 2009. But it was done so quietly, with no ceremony, that it was practically a secret." If this summary is accurate, we still need to do better, but, as Lao Tzu would have us know, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." More civil conversations are, no doubt, in order.

Although we have, for some time, known about Krista Tippet's On Being interviews, we've neglected exploratory excursions until today. We owe the DP a huge "thanks" for the nudge. Although Naomi Shihab Nye is among my favorite poets, and I look forward to reading her conversation, I'm absolutely delighted belatedly to have learned that the United States government is beginning to acknowledge our debt to those peoples indigenous to the lands that became the U.S. and further, that it "commends and honors Native Peoples for the thousands of years that they have stewarded and protected this land." We believe our collective future will be best served if all of us become more dedicated to stewarding and protecting this land. There are no jobs on a dead planet.

This has been a day full of serendipitous surprises full of good tidings and karma. We hope the rest of our today,and all of yours, goes as well.

Big Bend National Park Says No to All Walls

Naomi Shihab Nye, 1952

Big Bend has been here, been here. Shouldn’t it have a say?
Call the mountains a wall if you must, (the river has never been a wall),
leavened air soaking equally into all, could this be the home
we ache for? Silent light bathing cliff faces, dunes altering
in darkness, stones speaking low to one another, border secrets,
notes so rooted you may never be lonely the same ways again.
Big bend in thinking—why did you dream you needed so much?
Water, one small pack. Once I lay on my back on a concrete table
the whole day and read a book. A whole book, and it was long.
The day I continue to feast on.
Stones sifting a gospel of patience and dust,
no one exalted beyond a perfect parched cliff,
no one waiting for anything you do or don’t do.
Santa Elena, South Rim, once a woman knew what everything here
was named for, Hallie Stillwell brimming with stories,
her hat still snaps in the wind. You will not find
a prime minister in Big Bend, a president, or even a candidate,
beyond the lion, the javelina, the eagle lighting on its nest.

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Please be kind to each other while you can.