September 7th this year is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. September is also the beginning of our academic year and the time after our summer break which feels like a new start for many of us. Life does not go on the same, there are always surprises and new beginnings, some more welcome than others.

It is easy to bemoan the things we are aware of that damage people and planet, but change comes by believing in the future and letting go of the past. Things can seem beyond our control, but holding hope and vision for new ways of co-operation, respect and wisdom helps to bring in the new.

I love this Rosh Hashanah blessing, usually given with a piece of apple dipped in honey. I send it to you, and to our planet:

May the Lord renew for you a year that is good and sweet.
(Use whatever term you are comfortable with)

Sitting

I am sitting on the sand,
I am sitting on my planet.

I am rooted in this time,
I am present in this place.

This is my arena for life,
I leave footprints on its face.

‘As you walk upon the sacred earth, treat each step as a prayer.’ Black Elk. We walk the earth with dead feet, not connecting to the wonder beneath us. What difference might it make to the earth, and to us, if we walked with living feet? Walking consciously is good, having bare feet even better, and dancing better still. Walk your appreciation and your connection into the planet. Dance your song of love and feel the joy.

Walking

Walking
is my meditation
today,
putting one foot
in front of the other,
heel to toes,
rhythmic,
connecting with the earth
then letting go,
moving my body
and my awareness
through space,
connecting with this place
then letting go.

Our sweet dog Lizzie died this week. Death of pets affects us very deeply for they are all unique and much loved. Even non-mammals have different characters and can establish a relationship with us. Sometimes we see pets and farm animals as separate from the big canvas of nature; we have removed them from the wild and could think that it is our taming and our interaction that leads to these relationships. But let us look at it the other way round. Our relationship with pets shows us that we can respect and relate to other aspects of nature. All of nature is a network of ecosystems, and in an ecosystem all the diverse elements interrelate and affect each other. We too are part of nature. Let us use that knowledge to ensure that our relationships and interaction with our planet are positive elements in our ecosystem.

Summer

I can immerse myself in the bowl of summer, feel its edges around me and sink down, down into its unfettered abandon. The sun is loose and free, it soaks through the air, through the ground, through my skin like caramel. The clouds are friends scattering the sky with white or bringing the rain we need to maintain the green and to open up the earth. The days stretch into the night like a house with extra rooms added each summer, rooms to fill with all we want to do in the light and with all the occupations of nature.

Nature fills summer like an Indian wedding, everyone here, everything so full of colour and life. Flowers follow the sun, bees and seeds follow the flowers, and birds follow the seeds. There is so much, a plenitude, so many insects, so many grasses, so many plants with their own colour and form. So many trees sculpting the shapes around us for light and birds to fly through, filling the earth at their feet and the sky at their head, sounding the wind for us when it blows.

We are part of nature and fill each summer with our open bodies. We cannot escape it, cannot avoid responding to its light, its heat, its pollen. We are changed by it, we are part of the great cycle that spirals through the seasons, carrying us all in its loops. This year I am going to live in it fully, greet it each morning and enjoy its embrace. My mind likes hurrying away to the future and holding the summer in my plans, holding its transience and so anticipating its demise. This year I’m not holding the summer, the summer is holding me. I am grounded in the grass, I am blooming like the hawkbit in my lawn with bright heads of yellow florets and fluffy heads of waiting seeds. I am not yesterday or tomorrow, I am here and now, I am turning with the sun, I am happy.

Do you like grass? I love it. I love the green carpet in my garden that is soft on my feet and eye. There are approximately 11,400 species of grass which include wheat, barley, oats, rice, maize, sorghum and millet so grass provides nearly half of all human food and even more when you consider it as the food of the meat that we eat. Grass covers a quarter of the land surface. And it traps carbon dioxide, stabilises the soil preventing erosion, improves the soil keeping it cooler and moister, it helps clean the air and reduces noise pollution.

Lawns were only owned by the rich initially, using grazing sheep on the rolling pastures of Capability Brown, and highly paid sidesmen to scythe them short near the house. Lawn mowers were invented by the Victorians opening the way for any of us to have a lawn in our modest gardens. Yet we have not lost the image of the perfect lawn being a work of art with no weeds, no moss and no untidy edges. We sculpt nature by eliminating most of its natural components so that it looks nice, whereas not applying poisons, letting it grow longer and including the wild flowers that blow in is so much better for our environment.

Let us work with nature, with our lawns, and with our wild flowers aka weeds. And let us hold in our prayers and hopes the deliberations of the G7 summit meeting in Cornwall this week, from 11-13th June, as they are looking at how to build a greener future for our planet. Here is what they are doing:

The G7 Leaders’ Summit in 2021 is presided over by the UK and aims to unite leading democracies to help the world build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic and create a greener, more prosperous future. The UK Presidency of the G7 aims to build back better from the COVID-19 pandemic by:

• leading the global recovery from the coronavirus while strengthening resilience against future pandemics;
• promoting future prosperity by championing free and fair trade;
• tackling climate change and preserving the planet’s biodiversity; and
• championing global shared values.

Lawns

I don’t envy
lawns with stripes.

I like mine full
of flowers,
growing up again
each time I mow.

The buttercup and hawkbit
are tall and yellow,
the daisies short and white,
and hidden in the grass
are self-heal, clover
and the cushioning of moss.

My lawn isn’t just grass
it is ecosystem,
it is community.

Our ancestors’ lives were entwined with the land and its seasons. For this they needed an accurate knowledge of the sun and moon, the timing of the solstices, equinoxes, cross-quarter days, full moons, new moons and eclipses. And their stone monuments were precisely aligned to give this. The annual position of the sun is regular and easy to align with. But the moon’s arc around the earth varies from month to month. (That is why we get supermoons that look bigger than usual when the moon is nearer the earth, such as our next full moon on May 26th.) The arc is slightly tilted and so the moon varies in position over a period of 18.6 years. It also has a slight wobble with a cycle of 173.3 days or half an eclipse year. Amazingly many of the stone monuments in Britain were built to calculate these such as the Aubrey holes at Stonehenge which mark the cycle of the arc. Knowledge of the moon’s wobble, known and measured by the Neolithic people in Britain, was then lost until observed in the 16th century. The moon measurements obtained were engraved on markers of stone, bone or antler from 30,000 years ago and possibly as long ago as 300,000 years.

Living in tune with the moon, sun and seasons meant that our ancestors saw their own lives, and time, as cyclical whereas we tend to view them as linear. This has lead to us expecting and wanting a steady progression of growth, and viewing anything that deviates from this negatively. We struggle with what we might call dark times whereas the dark, the time of the moon, was recognised as a generative time of insight, healing and transformation that was particularly important. We do not view aging well but for our ancestors the older generation were the wise elders. This is particularly apparent with women after their childbearing years who were called crones. The word derives from the word for crown and she was the wisdom keeper and healer, guiding others through hardships and transitions. Now crone means an ugly, withered old woman. And we see death as an enemy to be fought rather than something to be honoured as part of the natural cycle of life.

Much of the harm we have done to nature has been because we have not understood or respected its cycles. This is the time for us to find wisdom in the old ways and learn to honour the cycles of the earth for their sake and for our own.

There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3.1-8