Withdraw

The redbuds are getting ready to burst into bloom.

…Withdrawing. If you do this, a lot of people will call you a ‘defeatist’ or a ‘doomer’, or claim you are ‘burned out’. They will tell you that you have an obligation to work for climate justice or world peace or the end of bad things everywhere, and that ‘fighting’ is always better than ‘quitting’. Ignore them, and take part in a very ancient practical and spiritual tradition: withdrawing from the fray. Withdraw not with cynicism, but with a questing mind. Withdraw so that you can allow yourself to sit back quietly and feel – intuit – work out what is right for you, and what nature might need from you. Withdraw because refusing to help the machine advance – refusing to tighten the ratchet further – is a deeply moral position. Withdraw because action is not always more effective than inaction. Withdraw to examine your worldview: the cosmology, the paradigm, the assumptions, the direction of travel. All real change starts with withdrawal.

~ Paul Kingsnorth, Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist and Other Essays

Forsythia on a rainy morning.

Emergence Magazine has been running some essays and podcasts, with plans for more, to address the current times.  This morning I read Finnegas by Paul Kingsnorth.  I highly recommend it.  Wise words and storytelling.  After reading the essay, I went searching for some quotes from Kingsnorth to start my post and found the one you might have just read (I know some folks skip the quotes if they are more than a line or two).  Now that we are in a kind of forced withdrawal, it might be a good time to do some of that going within and figuring out what is right for us.

I’m going to keep this short.  I don’t want to take up too much of your time every day.  Just letting you know I’m still here, and passing on the good stuff when I find it.  Speaking of which, here are a two other offerings that have hit my inbox lately:

• Creating an at-home retreat (Tara Brach — with a lot of suggestions and links)
• Free 10-day meditation series (davidji)

I will be using Ms. Brach’s retreat information as a resource for my upcoming 40-day challenge.  I will be starting tomorrow.  Arlingwoman is joining me.  If anyone else would like to jump in with us, feel free to do so at any time.  There are no shoulds, have-tos, or rules.  You do what you need to do, what is good for you, and what will help you as we continue on this strange new journey.  I have an idea of what that looks like for me, but will be playing around with it for the first week to ten days, with a willingness and openness to change what needs to be changed whenever it needs to be changed.  Resilience and adaptability seem to be the keywords for now.

One of the first blooms on the azalea.

Thank you for stopping by.  Sunset might be quite interesting this evening now that the rain and clouds are beginning to clear out.  I’ll meet you at the Point where we can safely maintain some distance between us while still sharing the view.  Sunset is scheduled for 7:16 PM.  It’s a little chillier than yesterday’s record breaking high of 85°F.  You’ll need a nice warm jack, perhaps a hat and gloves, and boots/wellies are highly recommended since we had quite a bit of rain.

Be good, be kind, be love, be safe, and be well.  ♥♥♥

The maples are flowering.

A few of the 10,000 reasons to be happy:  1,276)  Morning walks in the rain with M.  1,277)  More connecting with neighbors as we waved and said hello.  1,278)  Flowering maples and oaks.  1,279)  Blueberry pancakes with maple syrup for breakfast.  We have a sugar shortage here at the ranch.  We failed to stock up on Easter candy (or any junk food, for that matter!  What were we thinking??!).  The canister in which we store sugar is nearly empty.  The maple syrup on my pancakes this morning nearly made me swoon.  All that lovely sweetness on the tongue was amazing.  1,280)  Finding lost things.

Blue glow.