i want to speak beauty into the world.

a very small gesture of gratitude
for the amount of beauty that the world speaks into me.

the lodgepole pine surround my home
and everyday teach me something new

they remind what it means to be rooted and flexible
what it means to stand tall and vulnerable
while forever providing nourishment for the whole forest.

the lodgepole pine stand
covered in a surprising September snow
knocked by wind
and surrounded by the buzz of human progress.

it seems to me that this is hope…
hope as an experience that lives in the tension.

hope is…
nothing more than the persistence of a force of the Earth
cycling through life and death
as it intimately encounters
an opposing force
that threatens its existence.

the lodgepole continue to grow
and provide
and receive
and return
as they are to do.

they stand
in the of service to life

because that is what they are:
expressions of life…

i don’t know how to be much clearer
and there is no energy i can add
to make this teaching of the lodgepole anymore beautiful.

so i offer out
the beauty that they teach me to see.

and it’s simple.

they live
and then they become something else
and the cycle repeats.

as the span of that life cycle made more life.

perhaps hope is not an idea or a belief,
for it seems to be a habit

folks like me,
humans,
see, we’re also… life..

though we get sucked into “not life” but the idea of life.

the world of ideas,
is an energy so strong
it creates the tension where hope awakens.

but when hope itself becomes an idea
it gets dislodged from that force of the Earth.

tangled in thoughts,
it turns into a prayer for outcome,
a hope for specifics,
parameters,
for a type of life.

but to do as the lodgepole.

to continue to be in the service of all life
is inherently the experience and act of
hope.

it is what you do when you rise from
and root into
and learn from
and engage with
the living world.

Listen,
for the whole will instruct the role of the part
on how to be in the service of life.

How is not a decision
it is who you are.

Put yourself in allegiance with,
make yourself an accomplice to,
the trees
that have so much to teach
in a single morning
something about the cycle of life is revealed.

how can i be of service to that?
how do I do as the lodgepole pine
in my human form
with fleshy, trapped beliefs
and stories on repeat
that force me to go days
without touching the earth.

============
in this moment i beg her pardon for that reality
for the absence of my contact the absence of my embrace

it seems that
in this body
i am holding onto all affection.
locking it tight in my pelvis.
that part of me is locked in hiding,
yet i see her

thank you for allowing me to learn this
i will touch you everyday.
==========

speak beauty into the world
as the world speaks beauty into you.

marvel,

not at what we have done
but that which,
simply by being human,
we are a part of.

the great and profound project
of life as Earth.