In February last year, ( 2023 ) I unwittingly began a series called Becoming Whole that carried me for most of the year. I haven’t posted often since 2024 began and I want to renew my commitment to sharing.

I am inspired by Earth Sunday, which I helped to plan for my Episcopalian community. Our rector asked four of us to share a 2 minute story from our hearts to illustrate a quote by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Kimmerer’s quote is one many of you may already know.She talks about choosing joy over despair because the earth, though wounded, offers her joy again and again and she wants to give back for that blessing. Because our ceremony began with all that we modern, westernized, capitalistically driven humans have forgotten about our relationship to earth, I liked the idea of focusing on what we can now begin to re-member. Thus the title for this new series: Re-membering Who We Are.

The poem included here tracks the two minute prose story I told at church that day in response to how does Earth offer me joy and how do I return it.

Early last October
grey raw morning
I gather with other volunteers
at the organic vineyard nearby
to do a job called Leaf Pulling.

During most of their growing season,
grape vines need all their leaves
to shade them from searing summer sun
but about a month before harvest
the grape clusters yearn for sunlight
to plump, to sweeten, to thrive

I’m kneeling
the grape clusters grow low on the vine
Concentrating
watching the conversation of my hands with the leaves
some reluctant to part company with their vine
noticing heat on head and shoulders
the sun has burst through
I look up

A grape cluster
which I’ve just freed from its shady confinement
is glowing as if lit from within
Every nuance of color illuminated precisely
nearly transparent to yellow to yellow-green
with a rosy pink blush on the tops of a few

I gasp in response to such unexpected radiant beauty
face smiles tears glisten body melts
Joy, bliss, wonder
All those words ring true
but the full truth doesn’t resonate
in that moment,
nor in the intervening months.

It’s only in the retelling right now
that I am swept with the greater significance:
My giving of time and energy
and
receiving radiant delight
are
seamless, inextricable, reciprocal, relational
awe-full…
I experienced communion.