Emma’s Revolution came to New Orleans and offered a workshop focused on singing and songwriting for social justice last weekend. I am still reeling a bit from process. Yesterday I caught myself humming a song and wondered “whose song am I singing?” With a flash of wonder, I realized that it was mine.

It wasn’t until that moment that I realized how shut up/shut down the songs within me have been.

We are endlessly adaptable, us human beings. We can adapt to racism, to endless war, to drone strikes and wire taps, to fracking and mountain top mining…We can adapt to deformed seafood and boil water alerts, to a school to prison pipeline and senior citizens choosing between heat or healthcare.

“That’s just the way it is,” we say. We forget that we have the power to resist. We forget that there are unsung songs within us. We forget that adaptability is essential for survival, but there’s more to life than surviving.

We must refuse to adapt to that which dehumanizes us, destroys our habitats and our hearts. We who would be whole and holy – who would thrive together as beloved community – must remember the songs within us. Remember the songs within us and sing them out loud together.

“Remote” is different now. I spent the weekend driving from Washington D.C. to Blacksburg, Virginia, and back, with my family and a friend in the car. There were lots of beautiful trees, long stretches of uninterrupted, leaf-lined highway, and countless cows who appeared to be contentedly munching on hillsides of grass. At some point, we got into a discussion about what it means to live in “a remote area,” these days – what does that even mean, anymore? In these days of many modes of travel, of online chat groups and videoconferencing, what (and who) is actually remote?

Simultaneously, as we drove to-and-from Blacksburg, the ramifications of a massive typhoon that pummeled the Philippines on Friday evening began to be discerned. There are 98 million people who live on the 7,107 islands that make up the Philippines, and this was apparently the strongest, largest typhoon ever to make landfall in recorded human history. There is so much that we don’t yet know about the devastation that has occurred there, because communications are down throughout the country. I find myself stunned at the disaster and also angry about the lack of organized preparation that people in this regularly storm-struck area have had to live with. Please take the time to read the powerful statement by Philippines Lead Negotiator to the United Nations, Yeb Sano.

My family, friend and I were in Blacksburg to attend the installation service of a colleague and friend who has moved to Virginia from California to begin her ministry there. It was a beautiful service in an impressive, lovely facility, hosted by many, many kind and welcoming, friendly people. There were over 30 pies for the reception, spread out on a long table. One family that I talked with explained to me when I asked if they were from Blacksburg that “no one [they know] is from Blacksburg.” Another family I talked with shared that they thought 65-80% of the people in that congregation are associated either with Virginia Tech University right nearby or one of the other colleges in the surrounding region. People have sought out and found this place, and this community. They are connected. Our friend in the car observed that “though it felt like a long way to get there, and a long way to get back, while we were there it felt like we were right in the center of things.” While we were there, Blacksburg Virginia didn’t feel remote at all.

I try to imagine, even for a few moments, what it would be like to be in the Philippines today, to be struggling to find food for myself and my family if we had managed to survive the typhoon. The Philippines is the 7th most populated country in Asia. Every year, the people there are hit by storms. The government continues to struggle with corruption and the misuse of public funds. Consider some of the provocative questions posed by this article.

I remember a time when I was in a cabin in the woods in eastern Washington state, with no phone or internet access, and no one that I knew nearby. I had had a fight with my girlfriend at the time, and she had left with the car for the day. Physically, I was in a Swiss chalet-style lodge, in a beautiful place, by myself for a stretch of day — it still sounds to me like it should have been idyllic. Emotionally and psychologically however, I was stuck in an incredibly awful place, spiraling into depression, suicidal thoughts, anxiety, and fear. I look back on that day often, as a foundational experience in my understanding of what “remote” can actually look like. Years later, I am still processing the understanding that our physical surroundings are only a part of where we actually are, what we are actually experiencing.

There are so many other factors that make up what our experience of life actually looks like: First and foremost, are our basic human needs being met? And then: what is our community rubric like? What is our socio-economic structure and support system like? What is the quality of our neighborhood’s social culture, safety, “neighborhood watch”-type systems – how much do neighbors look out for each other? What has been invested in the maintenance of the homes (can they withstand major storms)? Did we choose to be in that place – do we have a sense of choice about it? Do we have a say in how our community is managed? Do we have the resources to tap into support networks that expand far beyond our geographic locale? And on and on and on. I would enjoy hearing your questions about what factors in to what we experience as “remote.” My sense is that it has changed very much in recent decades, but that our descriptions of what is “a remote area” and who is “remote” have yet to catch up.

by Pablo Neruda

(translation by David Breeden)

Now, let’s all count to twelve,
then keep still.

For once on this earth,
let’s speak in no language.
For once let’s stop
and not move our arms so much.

That would be a fragrant moment,
without hurry,
without movement;
we would all be together
in an instantaneous . . . disquiet.

The fisherman in the cold sea
would not hurt the whales,
and the worker in the salt
would look at his broken hands.

Those who prepare garish wars–
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors–
would don clean clothes
and walk around
with their brothers
in the shadows

doing nothing.

Don’t confuse what I want
with true inaction:
life is only what you do–

I don’t want anything to do
with death.

If we can’t be unanimous
as we move our lives so much,
maybe do nothing for once,

so that maybe a great silence could
interrupt this sadness–
this never ever understanding each other,
and threatening each other with death–

maybe then the earth
can teach us

now
when everything seems dead,

then
everything was seen as alive.

I’m counting to twelve,
and you, become
silent!

I’m leaving now.

The echinacea, once vibrant pink, is now black.

A friend told me that the word for aster in Hungarian means, literally, end of summer.

This time of year, as we approach Halloween, The Day of the Dead, and All Saints’ Day, I am often thinking of death. Granted, I am always a little bit morbid—my astrologer sister would say it’s because I’m a Scorpio. (I regret that I was too old to go Goth in my teen years, because I suspect I might have enjoyed that.) But right now, death is often lurking just under my mind’s surface.

My garden is one of the sources of my thoughts, and it is a place where there is plenty of room for such thoughts. This lovely, non-judgmental community of green friends, lets me think about whatever I fancy. And the garden is full of death. Every day I am pulling up or lopping off plants that have given their all—the perennials having given it for this year and likely to return, the annuals having lived their whole life in this one year. Farewell, I say to the enormous squash plant, as I pull it up and hold it by its roots. Farewell, I remember when you were just a seed!

The longer I garden, the more comfort I take in the ritual of going through the entire life cycle each year. I adore picking out seeds in the fall to plant in the spring. My grow light table in the basement has gotten bigger and bigger because having those tiny green babies means so much in March and early April, when the winter here in Minnesota has just gotten so long that I may go berserk if some tiny waft of a spring breeze doesn’t blow through, some tiny green weed doesn’t poke up under the snow. Tucking those seedlings into the May earth has all of the drama of sending my kid off to kindergarten, tucking tiny invisible notes into their invisible lunch boxes as I plant them. And then cheering for them in summer’s fullness as they grow up and begin to live out their life’s purpose—as zinnias’ shiny red petals glow in the sunlight, as basil or cilantro graces my table. And then, Minnesota fall means that all growing, all producing of food or flower, will cease for another long winter.

The more years I participate in this cycle, the more I love the dramatic resurrection stories so many of my plants tell me. Some are, simply, perennials, and I know as I cut them to the ground that they’ll bounce back in the spring, shiny green and new again. Others are busy throwing their seeds around the yard, winking at me and saying I’ll be impressed by their progeny. Other annuals are simply done, with no tales of regret to whisper in my ear as I say good-bye to them. All are amazing role models in giving it all away, in surrender, in generosity.

Some people believe that we’re perennials, that after our deaths, our souls reside eternally in one place or another. Some say we’ll be back, though perhaps in a different form. Whatever is and will be, I live my life as if I’m an annual—acting as if, if some part of me is to survive, it will be in the growth of the seeds I have sown in my lifetime.

With the help of wind, and birds, the exact location of the seeds which grow is unpredictable. Similarly, I don’t know which of the seeds I’ve sown will continue to bear their own seeds and keep growing after I’m gone. Given what I’ve seen in my life so far, my only prediction is that what of me keeps growing after I’m dead will be nothing I would ever predict.

My own mother, dead eleven years, increasingly comes back in memories that make me giggle. She wasn’t excessively funny when she was alive, but the memories of her humor are the ones that keep whispering in my ear now. Silly things she said forty years ago at dinner make me laugh out loud. This time of year she has more to say, I notice, as do other beloved ghosts. The pagans say that this is the time of year when the veil is thinnest between life and death, and in the garden, I feel that thinning all around me.

I don’t believe in a heaven in the sky, where St. Peter welcomes some and turns others away. But this time of year, in my garden, as the crows shout, squirrels scurry around, and geese fly over and honk their farewells, in the sweet grief of letting go and saying goodbye, I touch a tiny bit of heaven on earth.

Beloveds, I believe that we are all in this together – and together, we can shift a culture that is dehumanizing us all –

• A culture that prioritizes paper with imaginary value over oxygen, clean water, livable communities,
• A culture that tells some of us we are better than others, tells some of us we are inferior,
• A dominant culture that sacrifices the many for the few and lays the blame for the destruction squarely upon those who are being destroyed…
• A dominant culture that resists even being named, but which much be named to be changed…

Singer activist Ani DiFranco sang in 1995 (Not a Pretty Girl)

I am not an angry girl
but it seems like I’ve got everyone fooled
every time I say something they find hard to hear
they chalk it up to my anger
and never to their own fear

Sometimes I am an angry white woman. And sometimes, I am afraid. I am angry that children are not eating this week because human beings elected to govern the resources of this nation have decided that ideology is more important than people. I am afraid of how much harm is being done, how many lives without safety nets are crashing to the ground even as I write these words today.

And always, always, I am grateful to be a part of a faith on fire – on fire for love, mercy, and justice, a faith that walks the talk, not perfectly, but with a broken open heart of commitment. A faith that says it is okay to be angry and afraid and keep going, keep going… beloveds, let us turn toward each other in this vulnerable moment in our nation’s history.

Let us change the story together.