Monthly Archives: September 2015
Weekly Photo Challenge: Change is Constant
“What does change look like to you?” It is the reality of life’s dynamic dance.
It is the touchstone of humility that reminds us that “perception is deception”.
It is the freedom to choose, to grow, to adapt.
It’s a challenge to strive in the Present…
…and to be at peace with the Present at the same time.
Change is the constant posture of the cosmos. It is grace in motion.
Weekly Photo Challenge: On or Off the Grid?
To grid or not to grid? That is the question. Grids are man-made structures, frameworks onto which we hang our systems – and sometimes hang ourselves, I think. They are made of straight lines and intersections, rigid and often unforgiving. They can be useful…or they can take over and dominate our landscape, our thinking, our creativity. A wise person knows when to go “off grid”. Where are you today – on or off the grid?
Farming a Dancing Landscape
Some Thoughts on Poverty – Spiritual Lessons from Nature Series
This article appears in this month’s issue of The BeZine. To read the entire issue, click HERE.
Raising a child is not rocket science. It is more complex than that. Rocket science is merely complicated. What’s the difference? The Latin root for complicated means “folded,” like pleats. There are hidden surfaces, but you can unfold them and draw an iron straight across it. Rocket science requires a long series of problems to solve, but with enough time and effort, you can get through them all and even repeat the entire process with very similar and predictable results. (Any one with more than one kid knows this is not the case in parenting!) In the same way, you can determine which peak is the tallest one in the Appalachian Mountains. You probably can’t guess correctly just by looking out over the landscape from a single overview, but get enough people with GPS tools to climb the hundreds of peaks on the horizon and take measurements, and eventually, you can figure out which one is the tallest. Complicated, but do-able.
Complex is a whole different story. The root of that word means “inter-woven,” like a spider’s web, where each fine thread is connected to another. And they’re all sticky except for the ones the spider uses to climb directly over to her stuck prey. But can you tell which is which? Can you tell that the one you just stepped into is sending a ripple right over to where the spider is sitting? She now knows exactly where you’re stuck, but she doesn’t know that you harbor a parasite that will kill her and make its way to yet another host when yonder sparrow snaps up her dead carcass. That’s complex.
Raising a child is complex. Trying to tell which peak in the Appalachian range is the tallest is complex, too, if the landscape is dancing: changing in an unpredictable pattern , moving to the rhythm of an imperceptible music. Which peak is tallest now? And NOW? And why are we even trying to find the answer to that question while watching this mysterious dance?
Poverty is complex. It is not something that is solved by simply devoting more time and effort to the problem. If it were, we would not be looking at thousands of years of history on the subject. We give in to the temptation to simplify poverty into a matter of dollars over time, reducing it to something measurable, predictable, and controlled, a mere graphic—the poverty line. But poverty is an inter-woven network of relationships and concepts—self worth, social justice, resources and their extraction, economic policies and global politics. It is as complex as our planet’s environment.
So how do you engage with a complex issue like poverty?
Aldo Leopold arrived at a Land Ethic after years of developing and recording a relationship to a particular place in Wisconsin. In the book A Sand County Almanac, he writes: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Making personal decisions about right and wrong based on your relationship to the community is the responsibility of every individual. Applying that ethic rigorously and non-dogmatically is the work of love. How do you love your neighbor? How do you preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community on this planet of inestimable and finite resources? How do you alleviate the suffering caused by poverty? These are complex questions.
“We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve, but to strive.” —Aldo Leopold
Maybe a more accessible question is this: How shall we strive to end poverty? To that question, I can imagine simple answers. Start early in your learning. Teach children about sharing and portion, not dogmatically, but in relationship. Strive toward understanding basic needs and toward a sense of what is enough. Build trust and hope and compassion. Be flexible, changing with the land and its resources. Be present with the multiple factors involved; do not look away, diminish or dismiss what is real. Be authentic and honest and diligent, and finally, believe that even on a dancing landscape, food is growing underfoot.
© 2015, essay and photographs, Priscilla Galasso, All rights reserved
Weekly Photo Challenge: Monochromatic
This is a fun challenge! I had thought at first that “monochrome” in photography meant black and white. It’s good to be aware of opportunities to be blue on sky or golden on yellow. (I feel blue on grey skies often, myself.)
Monochromatic
“Blue ‘Shroom…
… I saw you standing alooooone…”
I saw lots of fun fungi on my wet walk through the pines along the Oconomowoc River on the Ice Age Trail today, but this was the funkiest! I’ve never seen a blue mushroom before, have you?
“Lactarius indigo, commonly known as the indigo milk cap, the indigo (or blue) lactarius, or the blue milk mushroom, is a species of agaric fungus in the family Russulaceae. A widely distributed species, it grows naturally in eastern North America, East Asia, and Central America; it has also been reported in southern France. L. indigo grows on the ground in both deciduous and coniferous forests, where it forms mycorrhizal associations with a broad range of trees. The fruit body color ranges from dark blue in fresh specimens to pale blue-gray in older ones. The milk, or latex, that oozes when the mushroom tissue is cut or broken — a feature common to all members of the Lactarius genus — is also indigo blue, but slowly turns green upon exposure to air. The cap has a diameter of 5 to 15 cm (2 to 6 in), and the stem is 2 to 8 cm (0.8 to 3 in) tall and 1 to 2.5 cm (0.4 to 1.0 in) thick. It is an edible mushroom, and is sold in rural markets in China, Guatemala, and Mexico.” — Wikipedia
Photo Connection of a Lifetime: Swallow a Camera
I’ve gone much deeper into photography today than I ever wanted to. Today, I swallowed a camera. No joke. I am undergoing what is known as “capsule endoscopy”; in other words, I ate the Pill Cam. The thing was flashing when I put it into my mouth. It’s about the size of the tip section on my little finger, beginning at the last knuckle. Bigger than any vitamin I’d ever seen, but not by too much. Presumably, it is flashing away as it winds its way down through my small intestines, recording images of a tunnel that wasn’t reachable using the upper GI scope or the colonoscopy that I had done in June. These images are being picked up by a bundle of wires strapped onto my navel and recorded in a little metal box that I’m wearing slung around my shoulder.
I suppose what I’m trying to achieve with this exercise is to find out more about my body. I am seeking understanding about systems that are intimately interconnected – my digestive system and my circulatory system – specifically, why a routine CBC indicated anemia while I have no symptoms. These connections also effect my sense of self and how I connect with the wider world in larger systems like health care and the environment.
I have to admit that I am not very comfortable with this technological connection. I much prefer something more organic.
scillagrace 
