Summer Solstice Moon
Been trying to figure out what I’ve stood for and stand for. This is different than what I believe in since beliefs and actions don’t always match up, but actions remain after all thinking is done.
One thing I’ve stood for, or rather sat for, is learning. Ever since I started school and learned to read, I’ve been on one long ride, most of it in the presence of words. There is admit, something profligate, unguided, voracious about my desire to learn. It has taken me down unexpected roads, but then it would not be learning if it didn’t, would it?
Early on I took the idea that we are responsible for our own education, not the teachers or the schools or the curriculum. We had to decide how to focus, how to integrate and eventually how to guide our own learning. It was clear to me from around the fifth grade or so that schooling was temporary, while learning was lifetime.
Another thing I’ve stood for is justice. Injustice rankles me, gets under my skin, especially if people aren’t doing anything about it. Or, if people feel life is set up to give them a raw deal. Again, from very early I opposed things done for the sake of tradition, because somebody said we had to do it that way, because somebody said there was nothing else to do about it.
This pushed me into politics since power and its wielding often determines how just a given circumstance is or can be made: class president, university senate, student rights, anti-war politics, civil rights, feminism, neighborhood based economic development, a jobs response to unemployment, a bank for the poorest of the poor, Sierra Club legislative politics. We can’t do it is not a phrase that makes any sense to me. Never will.
Art. Painting, sculpture, prints and drawing, literature, poetry, theater, dance, classical music, jazz, blues. Not sure you can I stood for it, but I can’t get enough of it. It’s always at my side, on my wall, in my head, pushing out the boundaries of my heart.
Family. Even though the path has been dotted with failure and often laden with pain family continues to be a lodestar in my life. Never more so than now.
The Ways of Mother Earth. This was slow coming on, but it has occupied more and more of my time and thinking as we pushed into perennials, then vegetables, finally fruit. And explored various methods for caring for the plants. And the bees, of course.
Dogs. They are in my life and have been and will be.
Creativity. I believe in it. I do it. I work to support others in it.
Travel. Being the stranger in a strange land. Seeing how others solve the puzzles of human life. How they build and love and cook and sell and live.
So, let’s see. I stand for learning, justice, art, creativity, family, the ways of Mother Earth, dogs and travel. These are the primary things, that I can think of now, that have occupied my time and energy. And I’m ok with them.