Making accommodations with the world as it is

 With the on-again, off-again, on-again pattern of the past few days, it's not clear, technically speaking, if it's snowing again or still. Another week or so of this and we'll qualify as a training camp for expeditions to the planet Hoth.

Some folks love Winter. We're not among them. It's tolerable, most of the time. It even sometimes has its moments of beauty and joy. But a lot of it is aggravating for adults who don't have children handy to demonstrate the fun of sledding and snowball fights and snow forts etc. What happens to some of us as we put on the years and responsibilities? Later today and/or tomorrow I'll go and pick up two separate CSA boxes of vegetables. One I know will be sitting at its pick-up location by 5 pm today. The other was supposed to be delivered to our pick-up location by "noonish" today, but we still haven't received confirmation it's there.

may the benign spirits of the season be with you
(carving handiwork of the Better Half)

Photo by J. Harrington

We'll make the best of an uncertain situation and wish heartily that we could learn to do so without getting as irritated as we do. Learning to function well in a world that needs to be envisioned as much more organic and living than mechanical and dead runs contrary to what we've been taught most of our lives. It's an adjustment we think we'd like to make. In fact, when we were college age we hung around with some folks of the hippie persuasion who seemed to naturally act and feel in ways we had to work hard to approach. Maybe it's similar to the ways some are hunter-gatherers and others are farmers. It takes most kinds to make the world work as well as it can. Those who insist everything has to be their way and that they're always entitled to the biggest slice of cake don't fit our collection of "most kinds." We still haven't figured out where and how they fit, or even if they do.

One of the organizations we follow, the Center for Humans and Nature, who recently published one of our poems, has a new statement on "Our Commitment to Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion." It's the kind of thing we are often a little too busy to read carefully but are happy to see it exists. Maybe, as we wait for the snow to melt and Samhain and then Thanksgiving to arrive, it's a good time to read that Commitment carefully and see what we think and if it might work for us. If we remember correctly, about a month after Thanksgiving there's a holiday that has to do with love and redemption and kindness and giving. How different can those be from justice, equity, diversity and inclusion. Who knows, after reading the Commitment, we may even learn to enjoy eating veggies.

Justice

By Rudyard Kipling

October, 1918

Across a world where all men grieve 

   And grieving strive the more, 

The great days range like tides and leave 

    Our dead on every shore. 

Heavy the load we undergo, 

    And our own hands prepare, 

If we have parley with the foe, 

    The load our sons must bear. 

Before we loose the word 

    That bids new worlds to birth, 

Needs must we loosen first the sword 

    Of Justice upon earth; 

Or else all else is vain 

    Since life on earth began, 

And the spent world sinks back again 

    Hopeless of God and Man. 

A People and their King 

    Through ancient sin grown strong, 

Because they feared no reckoning 

    Would set no bound to wrong; 

But now their hour is past,

    And we who bore it find 

Evil Incarnate held at last 

    To answer to mankind. 

For agony and spoil 

    Of nations beat to dust, 

For poisoned air and tortured soil 

    And cold, commanded lust, 

And every secret woe 

    The shuddering waters saw— 

Willed and fulfilled by high and low— 

    Let them relearn the Law: 

That when the dooms are read, 

    Not high nor low shall say:— 

"My haughty or my humble head 

    Has saved me in this day." 

That, till the end of time, 

    Their remnant shall recall 

Their fathers' old, confederate crime 

    Availed them not at all:

That neither schools nor priests, 

    Nor Kings may build again 

A people with the heart of beasts 

    Made wise concerning men. 

Whereby our dead shall sleep 

    In honour, unbetrayed, 

And we in faith and honour keep 

    That peace for which they paid.

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