A bag mixed with gratitude

In my younger days, a mixed bag might have meant returning from an afternoon’s hunt with a rabbit, a squirrel or two, and maybe a grouse or a woodcock. These days it’s more likely to refer to counting my/our blessings as well as those things that aren’t going the way we think they should, such as November 5’s outcome.

One of my favorite local writers has an interesting piece that’s worth the time to read and then to think about this Thanksgiving week and for the rest of the season (no, not autumn, the “holiday season”). Speaking strictly for myself, I have a tendency to take the good stuff for granted, as my due, and complain about both the other, and about wanting more and/or better. At least these days I’m more aware of such tendencies and am working toward reducing my malcontentedness. Here’s a link to Heidi Barr’s perspective on Gratitude practice.

Gratitude is also a theme in a book I’ve been reading for the past week or so. Robin Wall Kimmerer’s THE SERVICEBERRY Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. An abbreviated version of the book can be found here in Emergence magazine.

As you no doubt already know, November is Native American Heritage Month and November 29 this year is Native American Heritage Day. Some argue that honoring Native Americans on the day after Thanksgiving is disrespectful or, at best, in poor taste. My preferred perspective on the subject is well covered by a Native American poet and former Poet Laureate of the United States, Joy Harjo. Please pay particular attention to the second line.

This Morning I Pray for My Enemies

Joy Harjo
1951 – 

And whom do I call my enemy?
An enemy must be worthy of engagement.
I turn in the direction of the sun and keep walking.
It’s the heart that asks the question, not my furious mind.
The heart is the smaller cousin of the sun.
It sees and knows everything.
It hears the gnashing even as it hears the blessing.
The door to the mind should only open from the heart.
An enemy who gets in, risks the danger of becoming a friend.

November may finally arrive

Our high temperature today was in the low 50s. That’s what’s forecast for tomorrow and Tuesday, then November actually arrives. Normal highs are about ten degrees less than today’s. Starting Wednesday, we’re looking at more seasonable temperatures, or less. It’s not just the precipitation that’s getting volatile.

Most of the leaves are down. Some of the yard is cleaned up. Today was the last day of firearms deer season in our neck of the woods. Last night after dark I was walking the dogs and we were almost run over by three whitetail does who ran out of our field entrance one at a time. The first two sailed over the split rail fence across the road. The third acted like she’d never seen a fence before until she looked at this one for a minute or so and then jumped over. My old lab took it all in stride. The beagle didn’t notice the first two deer but finally got a glimpse of the third one and responded with a “What was that?" spinning in circles. The three may, or may not, be the same three in the picture.

three whitetail does in field behind our house

Photo by J. Harrington

We recently stopped by one of our favorite, local, independent bookstores, which is conveniently located two doors down from one of the food coops of which we’re members. At the bookstore I picked up a replacement copy of Kent Nerburn’s wonderful Neither Wolf nor Dog. We gave away the first version we had and I wanted to reread it so now we have the 25th anniversary edition. If I had remembered we outplaced our copy, I would have bought a replacement when we went to hear Nerburn speak some weeks ago at an art gallery in Sandstone.

Tuesday I’m hoping to head for Birchbark Books to pick up a preordered copy of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry. I expect to find it verrryy interesting, as Arte Johnson used to say, to read about abundance and reciprocity weeks before a second Trump administration begins. I have major doubts that will do much to enhance abundance for ordinary folks and would truly like to see it experience reciprocity by having others treat it as it treats everyone else.

Next week we celebrate Thanksgiving on Thursday, the 28th, and Native American Heritage Day on Friday the 29th. I hope we all will have something for which we want to give thanks and also will want to do something to honor the heritage to which we owe so much.

History

Linda Hogan

This is the word that is always bleeding.
You didn't think this
until your country changes and when it thunders
you search your own body
for a missing hand or leg.
In one country, there are no bodies shown,
lies are told
and they keep hidden the weeping children on dusty streets.

But I do remember once
a woman and a child in beautiful blue clothing
walking over a dune, spreading a green cloth,
drinking nectar with mint and laughing
beneath a sky of clouds from the river
near the true garden of Eden.
Now another country is breaking
this holy vessel
where stone has old stories
and the fire creates clarity in the eyes of a child
who will turn it to hate one day.

We are so used to it now,
this country where we do not love enough,
that country where they do not love enough,
and that.

We do not need a god by any name
nor do we need to fall to our knees or cover ourselves,
enter a church or a river,
only do we need to remember what we do
to one another, it is so fierce
what any of our fathers may do to a child
what any of our brothers or sisters do to nonbelievers,
how we try to discover who is guilty
by becoming guilty,
because history has continued
to open the veins of the world
more and more
always in its search
for something gold.

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