Lines of Green (VOL. 4, NO. 7)

Here are a few things I’m sharing this month:

1. Question I’m living with:

• “What’s the line between the blame that stops you from action and the acknowledgement that catapults you to do the right thing? You’ve got to practice that. You’ve got to practice that one every day.” – Colette Pichon Battle (ht On Being)

2. Quote I’m considering:

• “A leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars” – Walt Whitman (ht Marginalia)

3. Poem I’m pondering:

“Hope” by Victoria Stafford (ht Parker Palmer)

Our mission is to plant ourselves at the gates of Hope—
Not the prudent gates of Optimism,
Which are somewhat narrower.
Not the stalwart, boring gates of Common Sense;
Nor the strident gates of Self-Righteousness,
Which creak on shrill and angry hinges
Nor the cheerful, flimsy garden gate of
“Everything is gonna’ be all right.”
But a different, sometimes lonely place,
The place of truth-telling,
About your own soul first of all and its condition.
The place of resistance and defiance,
The piece of ground from which you see the world
Both as it is and as it could be
As it will be;
The place from which you glimpse not only struggle,
But the joy of the struggle.
And we stand there, all of us, beckoning and calling,
Telling people what we are seeing
Asking people what they see.

4. Something inspiring:

• Listen to one of the largest life forms on the planet – Pando an Aspen tree (one Aspen tree with many trunks) that spans 80 football fields in Fishlake National Forest in Utah.

5. The blog’s still on hold as I finish writing my Rewild School book. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter titled “Step 9: Liminality”:

“Liminality is the edge of the wilderness, where the curbs and guardrails of civilization brush up against ungovernable nature. The guardrails are rusted. Vines climb their vertical posts. Gravel lies in the leaf litter and bifurcating cracks in the asphalt are bursting with dandelions and silver maple seedlings.

The wilderness calls us to enter, seek who we were born to be and take up the chase.

However, like fox and coyote who furtively roam the remaining lines of green in our neighborhoods, towns and cities, like rabbit and chipmunk who sprint in between disconnected patches of forest, like thrasher and wren who cry out harshly from untamed monocultural hedgerows, who we were born to be scurries like lightning in and out of our peripheral vision.”

Thanks so much. And, have a great day! – shawn