Reflection (and Poem): the Power of Connection

“What we all long for is relationship with other beings; it’s the only thing that cures this massive alienation. Lying on your back in the woods, see how the trees lift themselves in a circle. Reach out and extend your circle. Community, the geography of Somewhere, is the We that balances the Me. Women know this, in the compass of our bones.”

—Oak Chezar (We’Moon, 2020)

I have been thinking a LOT this year about the thinning threads of friendship/relationship that I feel and see around me. I think many of us feel frayed and worn and I would encourage each one of us to continue to tend to our threads. Don’t give up. Lie on your back in the woods and see the circle. Reach out to others and make a circle. Allow yourself to see and feel and receive. Here we are, together.

I dreamed of monarch butterflies
dancing over the road
and tiny acorns in a pile.
I woke to a message:
We all need time to kneel on the ground,
to place our hands flat on the earth,
to make friends with what we see,
to remember that we belong here together.
I find myself worrying
about community and connection,
the thinning threads of friendship
and relationship
and what it takes to rebuild the fibers,
to hold on to the threads.
Sometimes we find we have intentionally
let them go.
We have given too much,
been fuel for others dreams,
have been left parched and wondering
after having emptied our own tank
into keeping things going
that could fade away.
The thinning may be unintentional,
an artifact of being small and human
and pulled in many directions
by many demands
as well as by dreams and wishes
and inspired plans.
Sometimes we find we’ve stepped back
too far out of the necessary network
of tending and befriending
and giving and receiving
that keeps the world turning
and love alive
and connection as a truth
and not just a nice idea.
We need to remember
that it is in the grit and blood of living
that we find the magic
of wholeness and humanness
and wholehearted living,
that we need to extend our hands
past quirks and differences
and calendars that fail to match
to hold on anyway,
that we need to attend
to our place in the web
and to the threads of those beside us
and around us.
We are all in this together.
Remember how it feels.

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