The pups have grown and now have begun to hunt.  Last winter was exceptional for voles—they are constantly underfoot these days—so, I’m good with having a few more vole hunters around the farm.  At least for the moment

We have neighbors who would disagree.  Some disagree because they are of the opinion there shouldn’t be any coyotes near the farm—mine or theirs.  While coyotes might remove voles at the moment, sooner or later they are going to begin harvesting livestock.  They have a point.

After all, there are other neighbors who depend on chickens, for instance, to provide their family with eggs—a good source of low-cost quality protein.  For them, the chicken itself, is only eaten when they get old and quit laying.  Killing a layer would be an indulgence.  To risk having a coyote around who could eat a quality Sunday dinner is simply foolish.

Which leads to questions: Should I not be accountable to my neighbor if the pups, one day, begin eating their’ chickens?  At that time, do I not have a responsibility to kill the very pups I allowed to become adult predators?  Can there ever be balance or harmony between the wild and the domestic?  Is it okay for domestic animals to die so the wild animals can live?  Is it right to take food from the mouths of others just because I have a vole problem?  (And little want to kill a coyote pup.)  Just who has a right to live?

Moreso, when is it right to take a life?  Should the female coyote be taken before she whelps?  Should the pups be killed before they become adults?  Should they live until they begin to kill the neighbor’s chickens.  Is there a hierarchy of life between wild and domestic—voles are okay to be eaten but not chickens?  Are we responsible for the wellbeing of our neighbor?

Then again, who is my neighbor?  So far, I’ve only thought about this in terms of humanity.  Yet, is not the coyote a neighbor?  And what about the quail, the rabbit, the vole, and the pheasant?  If they are neighbors, then what do I do about my other predatory neighbors who are nesting on the farm: the hawk? the owl?  And if I were to question them, shouldn’t I be questioning my own predatory existence?

Each foot fall creates a vibrancy, held by air, that becomes language between walker and ground.  Measured in rhythm, footfalls experience the vegetation and animals of place.  Shifting gravel gives way to dust and the smell of land whispers of life once known.  As if we have something do with dirt.  Walking is the intimacy of thought in space between foot and ground.  A beckoning of relationship and a binding of place.

Being bound to place is an intimate relationship with the ancient.  Both a knowing of what is old and wonder in what is becoming.  Walking landscape allows for a patience of awareness that allows memory to deepen and broaden.  Giving way to wakefulness of life in the moment between foot and dirt.

Walking landscape is the learning of remembering.  Moving us toward an awareness of commonality—our ordinariness of dirt and place and body.  To walk, is to step into the normality of ancient existence, beginning knowledge, and the imaginative what is yet to become. 

Yet the trees have good leaves.  Strong leaves carrying a good edge.  Deep in their particular green—somewhere between the sour cherry and the plum—they speak well of their ancestors.  Fall ancestorial leaves who gave all of themselves—their nutrients, their chlorophyll—back to the tree before sealing their stems off from the tree, turning yellow and dropping to the ground.  Today, we enjoy the wholeness of their existence: bright and beautiful.

Morning coolness still lingers well in these days who are beginning to warm.  Warm who reminds us that apricot tree leaves will hold shade well, who in turn, will hold us well this summer.  Life given and life returned speak to tomorrow’s summer moments of life and wonder.

When I choose to experience people like grass my relationships become closer and easier.  I’ve a friend I not often call.  They are very personable and likeable when we hang out together in person.  They shoot-the-bull easily, are engaged, have a true sense of who they are, and a genuine interest what is going on in my life.  Yet, when I call them on the phone there is no patience, they are quick and to the point.  “How is life?” is answered quickly with, “Fine.” quickly followed with a pressing, “What’s up?!”  They get right-to-business.  Their ease with relationship and questioning and wonder is lost over the phone.

The “What’s up” is disorienting to me because I’m expecting their unique insight and laughter.  This lack of phone relationship bothered me, until, I began thinking of them as a grass relative.  I don’t expect fescue to be anything other than fescue.  And when I hear “What’s up” I recognize this is another way of being grass.  They may blow in the wind a little differently than me, but then, that is what you get, naturally, from wheatgrass.

In trying moments with friends or acquittances I have found I am healthier—which in-turn, I think they too are healthier for they need not dwell with whatever I might project—when I quietly say to myself, “oh, yes, she is bunchgrass” or “he is wildrye.”  Perhaps it is simple and trite, but I find knowing my people through grass lenses helps me accept creation as created and experience the natural as intended.

We could certainly talk about Christian structure and the Council of Nicaea using the vernal equinox to set Easter day or Pope Gregory, in 601CE, using 46 days to fix Ash Wednesday.  However, while setting Easter on the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring equinox serves Church structure, there is a hint of the indigenous.  Strain Christianity through a fine sieve and the mystical of indigeneity is revealed.  Grind the Lenten season down like acorns, leach it with a little water, and the indigenous surfaces.

I like this rhythm, “The spirit sent Jesus into (είς) the wilderness and Jesus was in (έυ) in the wilderness forty days.”  The rhythm of words into (είς) and in (έυ) allow us to learn Jesus did not wander the wilderness but became wilderness.  Wilderness’ simplicity is as a space where the unknown becomes known.  As we live our unknown, our fear subsides, our interior awakens, and we begin to recognize wilderness’ commonality from within.  The mundane of the first Sunday after the first full moon of the Spring equinox is the awe of the season.  For it is in this moment of 40 wilderness days that grace allows our insight to deepen and our attention to have clarity.  It all begins with Ash Wednesday.

When we hear those old words saying, you are dust, and to dust you shall return, the wildness of indigeneity awakens within.  There is grace in becoming landscape and remembering; we are ancient dust; we are the dirt of our birthplace; our communal people are of that same ground; plants and animals rose from dirt alongside us; the voice of our ancient people finds us upon wind’s wild breath.

This Wednesday begins an indigenous season of remembrance and connectedness.  Gather with your people and begin a season of close attention, amble into (είς) your natural landscape, practice the virtue of attentional listening, and open your interior to unexpected growth.  There in (έυ) the wildness of your place you will find an ancient welcome.

Dia de Reyas is tomorrow.   Before long, we’ll head over to the local panadería to pick up the Rosca de Reyas we’ve ordered.  For days they’ve been preparing Three Kings Bread for the community and today the panadería will be busy, festive, and full of life.  I enjoy Dia de Reyas nearly as much as the mass of Christ for many reasons; most of all though, the people of many cultures come to celebrate as one community.  Additionally, the day reminds us that the mass, the celebration of Christ, the mystery of creation does not end on the twelfth day of Christmas.  Rather, the celebration continues into ordinary time with the daily epiphany of creational life.

The pan/bread of the Kings Ring or crown that holds a hidden baby figurine within symbolizes the fullness of our creation.  Wheat, water, salt, flour, yeast, (decorative candied fruits), and the Christ figurine become one and singular within breaded Rosca de Reyas.  Epiphany begins in the ordinary days when the entwined siblingship of tree and flour and Christ allows the mundane to become eternal. 

Standing again she walked a few feet, looked to her rump, circled, then folded her legs and laid down, again. Clouds watched as the amnionic sac remained protruded.  She leaned and two hooves became visible, within the sac.  Quiet settled, the landscape watched, and the calf’s muzzle appeared as she lifted her head.  She’s done this before.  A resting moment, a foreleg stretch and the calf’s head appear, within the sac.  Creation silences.  She rests.  An Exhale and shoulders clear the vulva.  Breathing in, the calf is birthed.

The amnionic sac remains intact and the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  The birth is “veiled” for the calf remains inside the sac.  Sunlight lends awe as the calf moves in a space of glistening amnionic fluid.  Separate but wombed, the mother and calf remain one.  Individuals but singular.  Interior place becomes exterior yet new life calf remains internal.  An eye opens, first sunlight of birth, the calf stretches, and the amnionic sac ruptures.

Though water ponds around mother and child, the gushing amnionic fluid disappears into the ground. Hungry for home, you can feel fluid slipping through dirt.  Following roots stretching into the ground, the fluid finds root hairs.  Recognizing kin, the hairs absorb the fluid and the birth process begins, again.  

Sun glints off the sac now matted to calf and giddiness fills the air.  A crow caws and I settle upon vertigo haunches.  Interstellar spirit is not of flesh nor matter but is the boundarylessness tangling of calf, grass, water, root, soil, light, sky, and mamma where the singular becomes communal.  The old people’s adage of us being “known before the womb” becomes obvious as the life of what was and will become exists in the now of creations amnion.  Silence holds space as animate earth watches mamma’s first licking of her calf; stimulated the ancestors are rebirthed as the calf takes her first un-wombed breath.  Mama moos a newborn coo.

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The mass of Christ is a moment of mystical introspection. To contemplate the transcendent is to live into a day of unveiling existence’s mystery.  Symbolically and otherwise, the unknown of becoming begins as creations amnion is unveiled.  There is richness in a day when we allow ourselves to remember we are creational siblings who exist in an everlasting birth of renewal and restoration.  Our existence within the mundane and ordinary is of awe because the everyday is transcendent.

Our ancestorial stories are stories of common creational intermingling.  Whether we are people of Skywoman, Buddha, Muhammad, Spider Woman, Nüwa or Christ; the singular answer is we are not alone.  We are creative life who has siblingship with the natural and amnionic landscape.

Regardless of our human beginnings, may we recognize the unveiling of creations amnion in our life.  Know we are forever wombed, forever living, forever sibling.  And recognize the blessing that within the morrow of our bones exists the exquisite sacrament of a newborn calf.

The spirituality of the natural Christ is known in place.  All that we are aware of that is ancient and everlasting is the Christ who existed in Bethlehem and the Jordan long before human birth.  The wilderness of John and the landscape of a Bethlehem journey speaks to the unincorporated everydayness of Christ.  Nothing special here, a river, a donkey, a dirt road, a breeze, shrubs, and people—yet it all is singularly exceptional.

To look around our place and see the Christ of grass, the bare tree Christ, the Christ of fallen leaf, the rabbit Christ, the Christ of ridge, the quail Christ,  the Christ of water, the hitchhiker-farmworker-mother-houseless-child Christ is to know we are uniquely and wonderfully of our place.  To learn and then to know our everydayness—our ordinariness—is the beginning of knowing our intimacy with the Christ of creation’s landscape.  And therein lies harmony.