Love Note: Internal Earthiness

Hello Dear First Unitarians!

We had quite a celebration of Bill Latta’s birthday yesterday, with a zoom call and a socially distanced but warmly received celebration at Treyton Oak Towers, where a photo album from the congregation and other gifts were given to Bill.  I hope that you had a chance to see the segments of the Governor’s and Mayor’s briefings in which Bill was recognized as having his century mark Earth Day birthday.

To close out our Earth Day reflections, I share with you a poem written by Neil Douglas-Klotz.   I am drawn to this poem because he invites us to internalize earth-centeredness by animating the earth within us and feeling its Wisdom.

These days of pandemic lockdown have had a simplifying effect on many facets of our lives (despite how comfortable we may or may not be with this).  The author encourages us to step into simplicity and consider the nature of our true needs.  We are fortunate to have abundant opportunity to delve into such considerations these days.

As these days of isolation continue to pass, my sincere hope is that each of us, in our own way, can be fed with the spiritual bread that this period of slow down offers, and reap the insights that follow.

Sending warmth and love on this cloudy spring day,
Lori

The Blessings of Earthiness: The Next Step

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight:
subsistence for the call of
growing life.Give us the food we need to grow
through each new day,
through each illumination of life’s needs.Let the measure of our need be earthiness:
give all things simple, verdant,
passionate.Produce in us, for us, the possible:
each only-human step toward home
lit up.

Help us fulfill what lies within
the circle of our lives: each day we ask
no more, no less.

Animate the earth within us: we then
feel the Wisdom underneath
supporting all.

Generate through us the bread of life:
we hold only what is asked to feed
the next mouth.

Grant what we need each day in bread and insight.

~ Neil Douglas-Klotz ~.