This is the fifteenth issue of my free newsletter. Your feedback is most welcome!
The earth exhales after a long rain: mist hangs heavy in the air in the April morning. There is a quietness and beauty this mist brings to my mind, slowing my activity. I’m still learning to have gratitude for all aspects of the hydrological cycle, including the steady rains which leave giant puddles and mud: mud to slip and slide on, mud crusting up my boots. Dampness creates rust on my file cabinet and seals all my envelopes shut.
Learning the watershed through many walks, my most recent acquaintance was “Buckeye Spring.” Here, two layers of rock drip with many fine trickles of cold, pure, delicious water. Just below it grows a stately old buckeye with a comfortable moss-covered base, perfect for leaning against. Her many children are all below her on the hillside, where her large, distinctive seeds have dropped. While listening to the sound of the dripping spring, I hear an occasional chime like tiny silver bells, and I smile, imagining it is the water sprites who might live here. What an easy place to experience gratitude for water! As we leave, we are careful to cover our footprints with fallen leaves. The creek monitoring group got out with kicknet, magnifiers, thermometer and pH strips last week and assessed the health of Rosy Branch and Taylor Creek. We found many mayfly and stonefly larvae, varieties of snails, and some critters we could not identify. Although the pH was a little acidic, we were cheered by the abundance of pollution-sensitive organisms.
Although we had one last surprising storm of heavy, wet snow, winter is mostly over. I'm glad, knowing the hardships of cooking in a cold dark trailer, slipping on icy steps, and shivering in the Council Hall when there is no dry wood for a fire, will soon be in the past. The house we live in will be finished before next winter; we'll have a floor, and a kitchen! At the end of February, I visited Berkeley to get my remaining belongings out of the friend's garage where it had been stored. There, days were warm and all the trees were blooming. Staying in a real house felt like the lap of luxury. But the traffic and busy streets were oppressive. Most of my friends now have cell phones; it amazed me to see how many people were talking on these devices while driving, riding buses, walking, and sitting in restaurants. Once again I experienced the familiar sense of disconnection: friends in so many different neighborhoods, having to travel to visit each. So this is city life! It felt good to return to the community and to the country.
When the sun shines, days can be hot, reaching nearly 80 degrees. Daffodils gladdened the first days of spring here, and violets are now offering their tiny grace along roadsides. The first dogwoods’ creamy blossoms are out, as well as cherry, redbud, plum, apple in shades of pink and white. There are even buds on the rhododendrons which grow all along the creek banks. Gardening is under way, with lettuces, kale, and arugula. Mixing aged horse manure with last year’s compost and a few scoops of beautiful humus from the forest gives a lovely crumbly black mixture for the garden beds.
At Earthaven, we celebrated the spring Equinox with “cascarones.” Blown-out eggs were distributed. Each person wrote her or his name on one, and it was sent around the circle so that everyone could write a word of appreciation or blessing and add a pinch of lavender flowers to it. A second egg was filled with lavender flowers by each person while holding intentions for the season. In pairs, we spoke of those intentions. Then we stepped outside and took turns smashing the intention-eggs onto each other’s heads, amid much giggling, leaving lavender flowers in everyone’s hair. With the Equinox, darkness and light are in perfect balance for a short time.
Yet despite all the beauty of spring, there is the somber awareness in everyone’s minds of the war and destruction taking place in Iraq. On the Sunday before war was declared, we took part in a beautiful candlelight vigil at a lake in Black Mountain. In complete silence, people walked with their candles, and suddenly the glowing lights made a complete circle around the lake. We stood in prayerful quiet for many minutes, sending our light to the world leaders. The day after war was declared, a rally in downtown Asheville was held; I was glad to see Buddhist monks there along with the usual collection of young counter-culture demonstrators.
Some Earthaven women made a "peace collage" with images of dawn breaking, a woman gardening, children of many races playing together, and a "peaceable kingdom": a prairie dog next to a buffalo, birds touching their beaks together, sheep resting in a pasture, an elderly couple laughing, a Native American woman gazing serenely, a snowy egret perfectly reflected in a pool, a Tibetan boy with hands in "namaste" position.
Last weekend, the “Code Pink for Peace” group created a presence in Asheville. This idea started with a group in Washington, D.C. last fall which has held a long-standing and spirited vigil in front of the White House. See www.codepink4peace.org. Pink represents women’s nurturing qualities, the pink of a baby’s cheeks, the color of compassion. We women wore our most outrageous pink outfits, along with black for mourning the victims of war; some of us had pink umbrellas bearing messages such as “Mom for Peace,” “Grandmother for Peace,” “Stop the killing,” and the like, as we strolled in pairs or threes through Asheville, handing out leaflets, receiving many sympathetic honks, smiles, and some curious stares. The best part, to me, was that our presence was so non-threatening that two men who were pro-war actually struck up conversations with me and my friend. This made me realize how important one-to-one talks are. Anti-war protesters can contribute to polarization if their attitude and slogans are angry and confrontational.
There is a strong tendency to fall into line behind the argument that “now that the war has begun we must support our troops” and not protest this unjust war for world domination. Keep protesting! Let us remember that this was an unprovoked war of aggression by our government. No weapons of mass destruction have been found; that was only a flimsy excuse. In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal rejected German arguments of the "necessity” for pre-emptive attacks against its neighbors. "To initiate a war of aggression,” said the tribunal's judgment, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Let us remember, as well, that the majority of the Iraqi dead are women and children. Far from being heroes who are liberating the Iraqi people from a ruthless leader, the U.S. was responsible for arming Saddam Hussein in the first place. There is increasing evidence that this is a war to gain control of Iraq’s oil reserves and to shore up the dollar in world markets.
Let’s keep talking to our neighbors, let’s keep resisting this unjust war, let’s keep praying for an awakening in the hearts of our leaders.
Here at Earthaven, we are steadily and slowly working to create an alternative to the oil-driven consumer society that threatens to devour the planet. If the sun doesn’t shine enough during the day on our photovoltaics to charge our batteries, we’ll light a candle instead of turning on a light at night. The batteries of the laptop I’m writing this on were charged from the electricity of our small hydro station. We’re contemplating the feasibility of creating a biogas digester to harvest methane from our largest composting toilet to run a stove, instead of propane. We’re looking at wood gasification to utilize the byproducts of the Forestry Co-op’s lumber operation.
Perhaps most important, this odd collection of visionaries and pragmatists are making decisions by consensus and learning to live with one another as a supportive community. In the city, when two people have a disagreement, they may simply distance from one another. That is not so easy in a small community; and our ideals call for working things out. Recently, I experienced the angst of feeling judged by another community member. We went through a mediation, and still did not feel quite finished. So, we are meeting every couple of weeks and now we are both communicating much more compassionately than before. The result is that I am communicating more mindfully with others as well. This gives me hope, for I believe that peace is all about healing our relationships. A Course in Miracles reminds us, "How beautiful are those whom you have forgiven. Nothing else on Earth is as lovely."
