A Poem For These Times

It has been a long and strange week in the continued wake of Hurricane Helene. The new moon was this past Wednesday and it felt like a very ripe time for shifting the energy of shock and pain toward healing. Perhaps we can imagine an evolution of sorts in this time of dire needs and opportunities for repair (of infrastructure, buildings, and relationships).

Thank you for all those who reached out to me from my newsletter last week. I was very touched by your care and generosity. I finally got to speak to my father on the phone on Thursday evening and it was so amazing to hear his voice!

David and his friend Bryan have been in Yancey County, NC since Tuesday serving on medical and rescue teams. They are doing incredible and exhausting work in service of saving lives and reuniting families. 

If everything goes as planned, I will be with my family when this newsletter arrives in your inbox. I will not have cell service or any connectivity, but I will be connected again to my people and the land that is my home, both forever changed by a powerful storm. Oh the grief... Oh the gratitude...

When I feel like I don't have my own words for expression, I often turn to poetry. I recently read this poem and it resonated deeply with me in relation to these times. 

The Never-ending Ending of Things by Jeannette Encinias 

No one is coming to rescue you.
No one is coming to make
the sea of your life
any less rough.

All storms and beauty and miles of water undone.

It is this way for each of us.
We all get swept away
tossed around
face in the sand
gasping for air.

Alive, almost gone, alive, alive, alive.

And then we see that breath
is a luxury of lungs
promised to no one.
And in that knowledge
we begin to float.
Turn our tender and once fearful face
to the sun.

Appreciate everyone.

I once harbored an anger.
It flowered so deeply inside of me
that you could see it growing wild
across my eyes.

Then the water came
to show me how I could not garden
this pain.
How nothing would ever grow.
So I headed to the ocean
and left it
in the bend of a wave.

We are here for such a brief time
and in the midst of it all
some days there is a surrendering.
A trust.

Bones of the body
finally relaxing into
the never-ending

ending of things.

Let's continue to hold each other close. May we have patience with what is unfolding and focus on what good may emerge now. Life is precious.

May you be safe, may you be well, may you be at peace.

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