To See the World in a Grain of Sand...

So writes William Blake in his poem, Auguries of Innocence. The first stanza reads:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

I have been thinking about the world often lately. (By lately, I mean the last thirty years.) Those who know me, know that I love to garden. From the ordering of seeds, starting of seedlings and preparing the soil, to the planting, weeding and harvesting, I enjoy it all. When I was most recently out in my garden, I thought about my view of the world. Quite often it is up close and personal. I relish being able to analyze the conditions in my small plot of the earth. Some plants need more water, others more compost or some need pests removed. There is beauty in these small things. Currently, my daughter is have an amazing vacation in Greece, Egypt, and the United Arab

Emirates. She is seeing the world with a much broader view than I am. I am vicariously enjoying her experiences and her photos have been nothing short of amazing! My son usually sees the world from his computer as he uses that for his work and his entertainment. Both of my children help to broaden my views with the way they see, and interact with, the world.

Practicing earthing or purposeful walking, I have become more self-aware of my place on the planet. There have been three places where I have really felt connected or hyperaware of where I was on earth. One was at my parents's earth sheltered home. This location has spiritual meaning for me for a variety of reasons. It was here that I lived, post-college, in my own attempt at a Walden experience. I only lived there in spartan conditions for six weeks but it was here that I decided I wanted to teach. I was married here, in a chapel built by my father, with minimal help from us. We've had 20+ annual picnics here and it is the home to the ashes of some of our relatives and pets. Standing in the woods, hours before dawn, I feel alive watching the animals and birds greet the new day. Listening to my father play Phantom of the Opera on the pipe organ during a thunderstorm is a memory that grounds me. When our daughter studied in France for her junior year of college we had a chance to visit her there. One of the things we did was attend an all night costume party at the Palace of Versailles. The experience was amazing, despite it not being my cup of tea. We rented period costumes from a shop in Paris, rode the train to Versailles and then were part of a very colorful, bright, crowded party with very loud, upbeat techno type music. I spent much of my time in the wee hours of the morning, sitting and walking outside in the gardens of the palace. Looking up at the sky, seeing the stars, I could really feel my sense of place; I thought of all of the famous people who walked these same grounds.

As I have written about before, I also feel very connected to the earth at Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. Standing outside after dark on a summer night, one cannot quite tell where the fireflies stop and the stars begin. The howling coyotes off in the distance helps to create a primal feeling. Walking slowly in the village before dawn, smelling the smells and listening to the day begin, gives me a sense of place on the planet. At my summer writing retreat in July, I set a goal to write at least one blog with more of an edge to it, a chance to shed my midwest niceness and risk alienating some people. So here goes:

As I biked around town last week, there were a few places where I could smell the chemicals that people sprayed on their lawns. At one point, I biked past a truck with a long hose and on the end of it was a guy spraying who knows what on the grass. He had on boots but no mask. I wonder if he had been told that these chemicals are safe and not to worry; I wonder if he researched what they are or what harm they cause. Just last week, a jury awarded $289 million to a school groundskeeper for the cancer he developed from using Round-up, the darling product of the evil company, Monsanto. We, as a society need to stop using these chemicals! They are bad for the environment, they are bad for life. If you rationalize that it is okay, you just use a little bit, you are part of the problem. People want a lush, green lawn and they spend much time and effort to achieve that, often to the detriment of the planet and themselves. I also biked past a woman, sitting on her lawn, pulling weeds by hand. I wanted to stop and give her a hug but I suspected that would have been a bit intimidating, for both of us.

Step foot in my yard and you will see that I prefer function over aesthetics. I leave the dandelions, clover, and creeping charley for the bees. The milkweed are for the monarchs and the thistle for the finches. In the back part of our yard, the oregano has spread, yielding a yard that smells like an Italian restaurant. By mainstream society's standards, my yard is a mess. The sweet peas have taken over and random flowers, many of them weeds, have sprung up all over the place. I prefer to think of it as a healthy ecosystem. While biking in Madison this past summer I saw this sign:

"If not this, then what?" This was posted along a bike path and a long-standing, well-maintained community garden. If we don't do this, take care of the earth, turn green space into productive, cared for soil, then what are we doing? If we don't take steps to reduce our carbon footprint, then what are we doing? Destroying the planet for future generations? Or at the rate of the planetary destruction, for our own selves? Please don't think that your little bit of poison is trivial. It is not. We each need to be better stewards of our home. In the remainder of his poem, Blake writes of paradoxes that exist. After reading it, I felt a greater sense that we are all connected and the earth itself is at the root of this connectedness. Those companies who feel justified in taking resources in destructive scale and those who are destroying their little corner of the planet, doom us to a bitter end. The way I see it, we need to live more responsibly. If not this, then what?

I plan to reflect on the changes that I can and need to make in my own life. I ask you, gentle reader, to do the same.

Roundup photo source: http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/evidence-linking-monsanto-roundup-cancer/