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What's included in today's Digestation:
Describing how I have been leaning on memoirs by women in STEM fields as reminders of taking a long perspective from nature for handling what's happening in our world. Also, reminders of practical ways to shore ourselves up for the long haul.
The Long Haul
At the end of every gathering of the weekly community singing group (the one I mentioned in my last digestation), the song leader asks us a question that we then ask each other. A while ago, the question was this: “What are you doing to keep going, to thrive over the long haul?”
People grouped into small circles of 2-4 and began to share. After I said goodbye to a friendI joined a group that had already been going. I hadn’t heard what anyone else had said yet, but it was my turn. I said:
“When Trump first won, I got the sense right away that I needed to look at geological time. See how short our lives are in perspective to rocks, I guess.” I’ve said something like this many times over the last few months. “I read books and am trying to spend more time in/on the earth, and trying my best to remember epochs and eras from geology.”
I didn’t say this to that group, but in specific, I read Turning to Stone: Discovering the Subtle Wisdom of Rocks by Marcia Bjornerud, then Life on Other Planets: A Memoir of Finding My Place in the Universe by Aomawa Shields. There’s been a trend of science-blended STEM women memoirs, and I’ve been taking the opportunity for a familiar genre mixed with less familiar hard sciences to better digest them, know them through heart and not just mind.
“Talk about long haul,” I quipped and we all laughed. Then I said, “Wow. I hadn’t actually thought of it that way. Yes. I am fueling up for the future long haul via the past long haul of earth’s perspective!” And we all nodded.
It turns out Turning to Stone is by a professor at Lawrence University, which is in Appleton Wi, where I grew up. She describes the stone I knew, and still know today, in a beautiful mix of personal memoir and passionate conservation alongside real, deep, understandable knowledge (though I still struggle to handle epochs in my mind!)
For a month or so, I was waking an hour earlier than usual. Normally if I wake that early, I would go pee, then go back to bed. Instead, I was hopping up, eager to get out and weed before the sun overtook our gardens.
One morning I said to Dylan, “I’ve become my mother! Excited to wake up and weed before it’s hot.” I laughed and Dylan wasn’t sure of my tone. Often, though not always, in the past, when I have said I am becoming my mother, it’s meant in a pejorative or worried way; she died young and my adolescence and her perimenopause overlapped in a tragic way for our relationship. Dylan came gently from behind, slipped their arms under my arms, and said near my ear, “It’s a trait you share with your mother, not you becoming her.”
“It’s okay but thank you.” I replied, “I don’t mind becoming like her in this way.” It's taken almost three decades, a long time, to digest the grief and rage over my mother's life and death to be able to take pride in where we overlap.
One thing I haven’t taken enough advantage of living on the North side (which is far less densely populated than where we previously lived) is the night sky. In the first year, I was strangely shy to walk in our neighborhood at night, even though it’s perfectly safe (at least for me as a white woman). But one night, long after the sun went down, when I stepped out unusually late to make my offering to protectors, I looked up and saw the stars. There’s so much less light pollution up here, and the galaxy poured out in front of me.
I met Aomawa Shields a few years ago at a retreat with Natalie Goldberg, She was in the finishing stages of her book, Life On Other Planets. Like with epochs, I don’t think I’ll ever really be able to comprehend light years, but the combination of Shields’ experiences being a rare black woman in STEM, and her uncanny ability to render the stars accessible is inspiring and helpful.
May you have enough (even if not a lot) space and time in or with nature in whatever form that takes - even if it is inside, because of heat or smoke, with plants or fish or cats. May your senses let all the lessons and love the natural world has to offer sink in deeply. And may your studies, should you choose to do them, enrich rather than become an intellectual obstacle to, your connection to the natural world.
Also, here are some practical, earthy suggestions, in addition to study and self-care. As we continue to endure overt fascism in the US, and it’s impacts far beyond this country, please join already-existing, led by those concerned, groups fighting for the most vulnerable among us. For instance, join queer-led groups to protect trans kids and their families, immigrant-led groups to protect those vulnerable to deportation. If you need to increase your capacity for handling the intensity, Resmaa Menakem offers many practical practices and powerful views around race and healing in his community Black Octopus, and Leesa Renee Hall offers gentle inward exploration via Inner Field Trip (where I am also a facilitator). And remember – “We don’t need another hero” as Lama Rod likes to quote Tina Turner; show up together, and plan to work for freedom for the long haul.
Also, as always, I send you love and a deep wish for the liberation of all beings.
Love,
Miriam
Where else to find me online?
My Mighty Network, the best spot to follow me, interact with my community and me (including a spot to discuss these digests!)
Goodreads – I post about every book I read (more than I mention here) with reviews and ratings
Instagram – Mostly politics in the stories and Miksang Photography in the posts
Facebook – Political and personal posts and images
Karuna Training YouTube channel – find video recordings of offerings I’ve made
Karuna Training blog - for articles related to those offerings
Insight Timer - I have a couple of recordings up now and more coming soon
My previous blogs:
Insidespace, my personal and teaching blog of seventeen years, last post last year.
memoirmind, a blog I kept for five years about reading and writing memoir and the intersection of Buddhist teachings - last post was five years ago.
Other places you can read me:
Two books on Miksang Contemplative Photography with John McQuade:
Heart of Photography
Looking and Seeing
Essays published:
Illusion of Control via Tendon Magazine
Speaking Grief via Isele Magazine
Interviews with me:
From 2019 on Contemplative Writing, by Dale Kushner
Articles by me:
On Dance and the Ground of Being (about Ellen Moore) in 2015
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