Last week’s post concluded with this blessing:
May we experience the joy of solidarity:
grieve together,
celebrate birth together,
honor our seasons,
both personal and planetary,
together,
laugh with love’s demands,
together,
and
root our trusting souls in humble ground,
together.
Today, I ask,
what does it mean to come together?
When I see a forest in my mind’s eye, I see a vast diversity
of trees, dependent on the bio-region. Here in the Pacific Northwest I witness
cedar and hemlock, fir and willow, cottonwood and big-leaf maple,
sometimes spruce.
Back East where I grew up, it was another kind of maple,
tulip, oak, elm, before disease hit, hemlock and sometimes spruce.
In Montana, where I lived for thirty years, it was pine, before disease hit, tamarack,
hemlock, fir, cedar, aspen and alder, and sometimes spruce.
Diversity, diversity, diversity.
Think of a backyard garden,
My folks grew roses – each one a different color, with a different scent,
a different growing habit. Every petal slightly different from all the others.
Heralding Spring with a riot of color, form, and pattern:
lily of the valley, daffodils, tulips of all shades and shapes, peonies, forsythia.
Remember your dog?
Short legs or long, smooth tail or fluffy, stand-up perky ears or droopy silken ones.
No judgment but delight, Yeah, this is my pooch, Heinz 57 varieties.
What about wolves, coyotes and foxes?
Each one a unique voice,
a different color and pattern of fur, a different way of responding to life,
a different role to play with their kin.
Every galaxy a trillion stars in different stages of evolution,
every planet in a billion galaxies,
each different in form, size, and composition…

Would it not be boring if there were only one kind of anything?
Why do we NOT protect the natural diversity on which we depend?
War is a major contributor to climate disruption.
Corporate greed is a major contributor
to destroying Earth’s diversity,
despite its necessity for LIFE.
Awe strikes me every time I “take in”
the sacredness of so much uniqueness
all around me.
I bow to Creator’s creation.
Why do we NOT honor human diversity?
Why do we NOT come together?
Imagine the symphony we humans will sing when we DO!