Reflections

Originally published in USA Today April 9, 2022

Think about how our conversations across political, racial and other divides would be transformed if they were grounded in love.

Odds are you agree that our country’s deep divides are bad for our democracy and that we need to learn how to bridge them. Poll after poll confirms this is how most Americans feel.

Recently we met with Senior Program Officer Sharif Azami to talk about his work leading the Fetzer Institute’s democracy initiative, about its progress over the past five years and the fruit it is beginning to bear.

In the northern hemisphere it is the autumnal equinox, a perfect time to share a reflection on the season by Parker Palmer. In 1995 Parker wrote a welcome for the Fetzer Institute's newly built retreat center, Seasons, which included his musings on each of the four seasons. Here we excerpt his reflection on autumn in the Upper Midwest where he lives and where the Fetzer Institute is located.

Last night we bade an unexpected farewell to Minna, the gentle pony who shared the barn and paddock near Tree of Life with Puck, the goat. 

After working at a local YMCA camp as a trail pony, she spent her retirement years at GilChrist, greeting guests and graciously accepting treats offered over the fence. Her sweet presence dwelled on the grounds and overlooked the labyrinth as guests walked their prayers. She will be deeply missed by our staff who cared for her, by guests who savored the creaturely interaction, and surely by Puck, who pestered her amiably and tirelessly.

I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being created.

The world is already split open, and it is in our destiny to heal it, each in our own way, each in our own time, with the gifts that are ours. —Terry Tempest Williams in When Women Were Birds

Dear friends of GilChrist,

My grandmother cried when I told her that I was going to be a political organizer. I remember her smile, the one I counted on for affirmation and love in a world that often felt challenging, quickly disappear. I couldn’t imagine what I had said wrong; I was doing the very thing I thought she wanted me to do: transform the world.

We are on the move, even when we are sitting perfectly still.

Lit up by the moon, it looked celestial; seemed some plumed and glittering god uprising from the sea.

The 51st chapter of Herman Melville’s classic Moby Dick is called “Spirit Spout.”

“Spirit Spout,” the chapter, describes a series of dark nights at sea where several members of the crew of a whaling ship see a burst birthed from the still waters, which they believe to be the spout of the whale they are pursuing: