“There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long.” — Mary Oliver
There is a marsh by my house, and it is covered in cattails. I have noticed that the cattails — all of them, together — move. It’s slow, but they’re moving. And I guess I didn’t realize that they’re not rooted into the ground. Which, duh, it’s a marsh.
I mentioned this recently in the book group I’m in for “Braiding Sweetgrass,” and someone said, “I think they are rooted to each other.”
— This is the best visual I could find, from Hiker’s Notebook
I love being alone. On my own.
Often in grief, and at all times for Enneagram Fours (at least in my experience), there is a sense of safety in pulling ourselves out of the crowd. Standing on the sidelines. Being bound to people stinks sometimes. People can hurt us.
I often make myself an outsider so that no one else can, and then feel victimized anyway. I assume that people won’t understand me or my grief. The truth is, often they don’t! But the lesson I’m learning is I need to be in community anyway.
Because we are (unfortunate as it may feel at times) as connected as the cattails floating in the marsh.
We, as people, easily forget what we are made of, what we are connected to, where we have come from. We look for all the ways that we are different rather than the ways we are eternally bound to one another and to our origins, magic woven through our very being. Seaweed can remind us of these timeless networks of life.
— A card I keep pulling from the Dirt Gems oracle deck
Recently, my pastor talked about harboring each other: Harbor as a verb. I was reminded of another part of “Braiding Sweetgrass” where the author says of her indigenous language, “A bay is a noun only if the water is dead.”
A harbor is defined as “a place on the coast where vessels may find shelter, especially one protected from rough waters by piers, jetties, and other artificial structures.”
I thought immediately about sailing and how a harbor isn’t just a place of protection. It’s a gathering place. A place to come back to. A starting point and a point to return after our journey. Where we come together.
See you next week, cattails <3