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It's been too long since my last post, but I thought I'd start the year off by quoting one of my favorite poems, "For Instance" by Denise Levertov. Somehow, she was able to capture what is, for me, the essence of our relationship with Creation.

"For Instance"

Often, it's nowhere special: maybe

a train rattling not fast or slow

from Melbourne to Sydney, and the light's fading,

we've passed that wide river remembered

from a tale about boyhood and fatal love, written

in vodka prose, clear and burning--

the light's fading and then

beside the tracks this particular

straggle of eucalyptus, an inconsequential

bit of a wood, a coppice, looks your way,

not at you, through you, through the train,

over it--gazes with branches and rags of bark

to something beyond your passing. It's not,

this shred of seeing, more beautiful

than a million others, less so than many;

you have no past here, no memories,

and you'll never set foot among these shadowy

tentative presences. Perhaps when you've left this continent

you'll never return; but it stays with you:

years later, whenever

its blurry image flicks on in your head,

it wrenches from you the old cry:

O Earth, belovéd Earth!

--like many another faint

constellation of landscape does, or fragment

of lichened stone, or some old shed

where you took refuge once from pelting rain

in Essex, leaning on wheel or shafts

of a dusty cart, and came out when you heard

a thrush return to song, though the rain

was not quite over; and, as you thought there'd be,

there was, in the dark quarter where frowning clouds

were still clustered, a hesitant trace

of rainbow; and across from that the expected

gleam of East Anglian afternoon light, and leaves

dripping and shining. Puddles, and the roadside weeds

washed of their dust. Earth,

that inward cry again--

Erde, du liebe ...

If, just once, every person could have an experience such as Ms. Levertov describes, I think we'd be moved to treat Mother Earth with tenderness and care, with the same lovingkindness that we'd enjoy receiving from the universe.

As we embark on a year of new beginnings and new opportunities, I pray that we can open our hearts to the beauty of our fragile planet, and that we will be moved to nurse our Mother back to health.