Just a few words

Just a few words
Repeat themselves
Over and over again
That’s language
To be shared
Reflect reality
Ideally or else
Submerge illusion
Which way to go
It is your choice
Not taken lightly
But given sound
Touch the heart
And free soul
As war rages
People suffer
Apparently unjust
To come together
Sooner or later
Or part for good
Any way that is
What’s happening
Over and over again
Repeating itself
Just a few words
Of love will help
As actions resolve
Right and wrong
What is that it is.

“Nature’s echo in blue calm” — where a contrast meets

Trust and the honorable harvest

Trust is a delicate matter. It takes forever to build up. But it can vanish in one instant. One lie or what’s seen as absolute negative can destroy what took years, decades, even centuries to build up. Trust! Once blemished or broken, it’s very hard to build up again and may at best remain shaky for a long time. That’s where most part ways. But how about remaining together? That’s love!

“If I don’t pick rocks and pull weeds, I’m not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these things with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants’ responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate.”

“The guidelines for the Honorable Harvest are not written down, or even consistently spoken of as a whole — they are reinforced in small acts of daily life. But if you were to list them, they might look something like this:

Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.

The rules of the Honorable Harvest are based on accountability to both the physical and the metaphysical worlds. The taking of another life to support your own is far more significant when you recognize the beings who are harvested as persons, nonhuman persons vested with awareness, intelligence, spirit — and who have families waiting for them at home. Killing a who demands something different than killing an it. When you regard those nonhuman persons as kinfolk, another set of harvesting regulations extends…” — the Honorable Harvest.

— Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, pp. 126-127 and 183

An honorable swan beyond words