Essays, Poems, Ceremony
After decades of teaching young children, several years ago I found myself with free time. I was inclined to gather a few friends here in my forest home; together we would explore the world of Sacred Ecology. I had been waiting years for this moment, and yet a quiet voice said “No. No human people yet. You must begin at the beginning. Go into the woods and encounter the beings who live there, your more-than-human neighbors. Go into their world; introduce yourself. They are far more aware of you than you imagine. They have been calling you.”
I was taken aback, yet the words of Joy Harjo, America’s Poet Laureate, echoed inside: “Remember the plants, trees, animal life who all have their families, their histories too. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems."
I hope you visit Wild Graces often, to listen to a poem or contemplate the questions raised in an essay. My wish is that these poems and songs to the wild may enter you as a drink of fresh water, move through your liquid body, clear your mind, awaken your heart, seep into your dreams. In this way may you discover the place your next footstep falls and thereby help to shape the living future.
You can visit our Books page, and keep your own copy of A Litany of Wild Graces: Mediations on Sacred Ecology beside your bed.
“The tangible world itself is an iridescent sphere turning silently among the stars, a round mystery whose life is utterly eternal relative to ours, from out of whose vastness our momentary lives are born, and into whose vastness our lives recede, like waves on the surface of the sea. An eternity we thought was elsewhere now calls out to us from every cleft in every stone, from every cloud and clump of dirt. To listen is to be turned inside out, discovering to our astonishment that the wholeness and holiness, the secret and sacred One we’ve been dreaming our way toward has been holding us all along, enfolding us in … unfathomable wholeness and complexity.”
If you appreciate these videos and blogs, if you feel inspired by them, please follow this link https://merwinconservancy.org/donate/ and make a donation ~ or a number of donations ~ to The Merwin Conservancy. It is a small and thriving arts and ecology organization on the island of Maui which conserves the home, garden and palm forest that Pulitzer prize winning poet W.S. Merwin planted and tended. It warms me to know that my work, through your donation, helps support this illuminating initiative!
A Litany of Wild Graces Videos
Take a moment, here in the season of dreaming, to hear animal voices spoken through dream images.