Even though it is winter, even though January has a rep for being bleak and stark in Chicago, there’s still beauty to be experienced. Go out and grab you some organic PEACE!

I wrote this Sunday morning at Thatcher. Communing in nature has become one of my spiritual practices :

Koan #7

Frozen River

Silence in the glen
Winter stillness
The rare peep of an unseen bird
Clumps of snow drip
from bare gray branches,
soft thuds onto the ground.
Blue glitter,
a million prisms of light
bless the banks, decay of logs
the ground sculpted into rounds and slopes
by hours of wind and river tongue lashings.
The DesPlaines has frozen —
Time in hibernation,
Spring arrested and Summer’s bubbly frolic
soothed into a cold lullaby
beneath blankets of fleecy white powder.
Delicious hush, how healing you are!

I want to show my son
the land the way it really is,
naked beauty, precious pale sunlight,
the deep sacred silences
no hand-made temple or church can surpass —
this is the open sky, the vault of heaven
the original cathedral.
Too many cars drive past,
one every minute,
speeding to brunches or Sunday services,
rushing on the frozen crunch of road.
But I don’t mind —
more silence for me,
unashamed of my greed,
drinking beauty like a dying woman
as the feathered tips of treetops
brush the morning chill.

Koan # 8

Hint of egret wingspan flapping
behind the tangled jumble
of gray winter branches.

Koan #9

Rush

I hate the rush of days,
man-made hours,
boxes I am trapped inside.
I push against the walls
only to break through
to another box.
Schedules, deadlines,
start times, end times,
school bells, radio alarms,
buzzers, timers, beepers,
cell phones, online bids —
Enough!

Where is the deep time?
The sun moving westward in the sky?
Shadows of trees growing longer?
The moment suspended,
like a dust mote hanging in sunlight,
the slow growing of grass seedlings?
The halted flow of river
beneath the ice?

Where is the joy
of climbing snow heaps
falling, rolling, tumbling
until the laughter and ice streak
your face and there is nothing left
but the pleasure of returning
inside to a hot mug of cocoa
and damp socks drying on the radiator?

I rail against the boxes
we have made
and claw the pages of every schedule
and run, a free woman, to the frozen Palos hills
where time is kept in drips and ice crystals
forming in the winter sun.

– M.G.B.

Just over the border of Indiana, a toe into Michigan is the town of Michiana where oak trees dot the rolling hills, Lake Michigan laps at the cool shoreline, and a deep and peaceful silence hems-in the town. Chicago peeks, like silhouetted upright legos, over the horizon…so distant I couldn’t hear the familiar rattle of the El, the sirens hard at work, the disappointed sobs of our beloved city’s denizens over the loss of the Olympic bid, or the complaints about how hot (or cold or hot or cold) the weather is.

No. Last weekend was our annual time for girlfriends, a time when we gather at our friend Joy de Vivre’s house. A time for talking, and bonding and laughing, yes. And also a time for rejuvenating our spirits amidst the trees, sitting on the beach as ladybugs used us as warming stations, gulping down the pure silences like we’re dying of thirst.

It’s good to see the stars at night.

It’s good to taste how clean the air can be…and to feel the eyes of a hawk upon me.

It’s good to unplug (even though I love to tweet and Fb and work on my laptop and Skype and all the technological wizardry that comes with this age).

It’s good to just be.

Thanks to Joy…to Lucky the Ladybug Magnet…and to Cool Blue.

~ MGB

Read my latest feature article, “Promise on the Prairie”, at Sierra Magazine online. I cover Chicago Boys and Girls Club teens from La Villita (South Lawndale) and a prairie restoration workday they did in 18F degree weather — that’s right, below freezing. Who says there’s no action in the prairie in wintertime? Enjoy!

-MGB

It is the long season of ripening. Time to harvest solitude in the bare branches of the trees. Sing wind! The squirrels are plump, making slow scrambles up the maple trees. I walked with my new friend, B., this morning through our town. We spoke of technology and nature while our dogs sniffed poetry in the dry grasses. Yesterday, driving my mom to Midway airport, I saw a hawk catching a thermal over the industrial vastland where people eke out a living. It hung in the air, wings spread wide, spiraled, spiraled, beyond the DesPlaines, searching. Three warm days and my body was tricked into longing for summer again. But winter is on the cusp. The bare branches bear witness.

Look out your window. Better yet, GO OUTSIDE. Unplug. Live a little. Above all…Love.

Today I’m ill, low chills and tired. And its one of those days when things are breaking down and work is hard to get done. No printer toner, computer glitches galore, and my own low biorhythms. A great sense of resistance has seemed to thwart my plans for the day to be productive. Sometimes, when I’m being thwarted, I explore if maybe I’m meant to  wander in a different direction. So, I find myself time traveling, wondering about those early women in the Philippines before it was ever called the Philippines, home of my ancestors…

Back in the day, and by this I mean of course my obsession with the sixteenth century, there were Filipinas who were found resting on the limbs of trees, on thick branches of the balete trees. These trees were massive, roots stuck in the ground at estuaries, where the salt sea meets freshwater and boughs stretched forward in complicated intertwinings as the tree reached for sunlight. These women were found overcome by visions. They were in the process of being called to serve as healers of their communities; they had undergone trials in the spirit world and, if they survived, they had the ability to go back and forth between the mundane world and the realms beyond to guide their people. In various Philippine dialects, these women were called babaylanes, bailanes. But my favorite term for them is Visayan: Daitan, the Befriended Ones.

If you, like me, were raised in a largely Judeo-Christian environment, you might find indigenous spirituality shocking at first. So we’ll have to peel back the layers of time, take off the Western lenses through which we see things, and try and uncover, accept an older kind of spirituality. Two things amaze me about my ancestors’ indigenous Philippine religions back in the day: * The leaders were women. * And living nature figured prominently in their rituals and ceremonies.

Certain trees were revered as dwellings of gods. You did not simply chop a tree down and sell it for lumber. There were forest spirits from whom they asked permission and gave offerings, special times of harvest and rest. Nature provided herbs for healing. The balete trees which cradled the priestesses were part of their rite of passage in becoming healers and, from the time they were found having visions in their boughs, the daitan had a special relationship with their particular tree (but they did not “own” the tree as property).

Recently, in my small corner of Chicagoland, I’ve noticed that congregations have been finding ways to incorporate nature into their prayer life. One Jewish synagogue holds seasonal prayers in the prairies. There are Buddhist mindful meditation walks. Some Christian-based churches do forest and river clean-ups taking up stewardship of the Earth as another way to practice their faith. Certain relatives of my own generation, who are jaded by their experiences within organized religion, talk to me about their awe of Nature (with a capital N), of being swept up by its tides and swells or amazed at the beautiful mechanics and physics and improbability of life on this planet. Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Green Party, my friends of all political persuasions seem to really find something in nature to connect with.

And so, today, in my thwarted state, I’m wondering about the connection between nature and spirituality. When the forests and the rivers are thought to be the home of the gods and goddesses, why would we mistreat such sacred places? If the trees and animals are part of the same Cosmos, if we manifest the same mysticism as other sentient Beings, then it is a joy and delight to take care of them.

We people, we two-legged seem to have a really hard time finding common-ground. And yet perhaps the ancient Filipina babaylanes knew the answers all along — our common-ground is literal. It is the Earth.

It’s after Labor Day and it really feels like the end of summer here in Chicago — without it ever having felt like a real Chicago summer at all. Here’s what I mean: When I moved here from the Bay Area over ten years ago, it was August. The days were cook-an-egg-on-the-pavement hot, steaming, sticky and, to a newcomer, uncomfortable. It was like living inside hell’s oven and unrelenting. We were told that’s what summer is like here. But living inside of a Chicago summer is also about getting used to the sweat, the languor, the piercing buzz of the cicadas who announce Yes, the long days are finally here. Grab you some Sunshine!

Summer in Chicago is also a jazz riff, a pulse of throbbing beats, bodies crushed out onto the street block parties, in festivals, at parks, chowing down on smokey barbecue (or veggie skewers), hitting the Lake, scouting the dunes and just getting out there into thronging life. ‘Cause winter’s brutal. And when the Sun comes to stay, you party.

But this summer’s been markedly different. Cool. And I don’t mean in a hip lounge, sipping-absinthe-at-the-Violet-Hour kind of way. I mean cool. Cold. Chilly. The kind of chilly that’s like San Francisco in the summer. As in,”The coldest winter is a summer I spent in San Francisco.” (<– This, btw, was not said by Mark Twain.) It’s been cool enough that neighbors and friends and all sorts of folks in my community have asked off and on all summer, “Is it global warming?” Except, of course, that sounds lame, right? We don’t have a good catch-all for what’s happening because all these changes in weather patterns will be different in different parts of the world – cold in some, hot in others, drying, melting, rising…CHANGING. We’re a planet in transition, grappling for how to talk about it. The beautiful jazz rhythm of our Chicago summer is losing its beat. (Can the plants keep up? And the animals that depend on them? And we, the two-legged in our four-wheel-drives?)

Okay, not to be a summer bummer or anything. But you gotta wonder right? We Chicagaoans (and, yes, I’ve lived here long enough to count myself among the locals) love to talk about our weather. We practically own weather — the extreme balminess of summer, the frigid winters, the don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it falls, and the tender, dewy springs. Weather bonds us. Why else would we be so neighborly?

So this summer, I’m wondering. Was it summer for you? Was it Global Changing? Did your skin feel the summer the same way it always did?

– MGB

The year was 1986. I was 16 the first time I saw Cory Aquino on television. She was leading a seemingly endless parade of prayerful, frightened, but determined people in Manila, calling for the dictator Ferdinand Marcos to step down. This event has been called “The People Power Revolution” and also “The Bloodless Revolution”. She has led a life of public service and last Saturday that life ended. I wanted to commemorate it here with a poem I wrote some years ago — about the experience of being a young Fil-Am teen seeing, for the first time, nonviolent and collective action in Manila. I have never been prouder of a historical event that a woman of my own heritage led. Maraming salamat sa inyo Tita Cory. R.I.P.

“Cory in Yellow”

by Mary Grace Bertulfo

Here on EDSA

there is a statue

of Mama Mary,

her hands outstretched

in blessings over Manila.

It is to help us

remember

the place

where peace won out.

Cory in yellow,

I saw her on TV,

she looked like my mom,

short, permed hair

and glasses.

But she marched

in front on EDSA

making an “L” with her fingers.

“Laban! Laban!”

Fight! Fight!

She led her people

to walk and face the police

who guarded the dictator.

Her people swarmed

behind her,

Cory in yellow

who fought greed and killing

with peaceful marching

and prayers

instead of guns and fists.

They stormed Malacanyang Palace

The police gave way

the dictator fled.

Cory in yellow

made the victory sign.

Cory in yellow.

Aquino.

They called it

the Bloodless Revolution.

I’ve added a couple of links to “Natural Heritage”, two films I saw recently and highly recommend. The first is Milking the Rhino which is a documentary about the “community conservation” practiced by the Massai and Himba communities in Kenya and Namibia. This film is tremendously thought-provoking. When I was doing research in Cebu a couple of years ago, I learned that fishermen from local barangay, villages, sometimes fought over fishing rights and raids while the reefs were being depleted. Their plight opened my eyes to the need for a kind of conservation that dealt practically and compassionately with people, animals, and sustainable economics. I once heard a journalist interviewing Native Americans on a Res who said (and I’m paraphrasing here) that they felt very hurt and bewildered at how American environmentalists cared more about the butterflies and animals, but never once lobbied for their community of people who live (on a subsistence level) on the land. I’d add that the land rights were originally theirs. It’s so complicated.

Milking the Rhino shows just how complicated it can all be — the tangle of race relations, colonial history, poverty, women’s place in traditional society, and conservation. This film is honest. It interviews Himba women, Massai men, European eco-tourism business owners, African conservationists like fiercely eloquent Helen Gichochi, European tourists, and an expatriot who started his own wildlife preserve. It shows all the rough edges and also shows people (from all parties) being challenged, undergoing transformation as they figure out how to change their relationship to the wild ecosystem and their natural resources. I really dig that it’s raw and that people, in the end, seem to learn how to work with each other despite not always agreeing. Can there be win-win-win solutions? Yes, I think Milking the Rhino shows there can.

The second documentary I’d recommend is Arctic Dance, narrated by Harrison Ford. (Okay, ya got me – I’m still an Indiana Jones fan at heart, pulpy and antiquated as it is.) This film chronicles the life and impact of Margaret (“Mardy”) Murie, who is known as the Grandmother of the American conservation movement. She and her husband, Olaus, worked tirelessly to establish the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She was riding dog sleds and trekking across Alaska’s tundra, punting on rivers (baby in tow) when it was unheard of for a woman to be doing these things. Mardy was the first woman to graduate from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She often worked as Olaus’ secretary, and seemed, by nature, to be a behind-the-scenes kind of person. But after he died, she gently took to the microphone to lobby in Washington, D.C. for the wilderness they both explored and loved. President Clinton awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.

What’s touching about Mardy is how humble she was about her own role making environmental history. It’s as much a love story as it is a piece of American history. She truly makes the personal political — it seems to me that she loved the land and terrain of Alaska where she grew up and she shared this with her dearest love, Olaus. There’s a solitude, and solid peacefulness to their existence. And the humility she shows is the mark of a truly great spirit. A gentle strength — I love that. Plus, come on, now, she shows that elder women rock. What a role model.

Milking the Rhino and Arctic Dance, two really different takes on conservation. Check them out if you can!

~ MGB

One of the things I love about being on assignment and covering conservation in Chicago is that I get to learn more about the prairies, savannas, riverways, and the conservationists working to save and restore them. These are often humble, tenacious people. They can be thorny, usually full of humor, ready to lobby local politicians, and always, always ready to get their hands dirty. My kind of people. They inspire me to do more.

Last week, on Earth Day, I took my son’s class on a nature hike. Where? Somewhere remote and pristine? Nope. Right in their own backyards, literally 1 block from their school. We’re near a freeway. We’ve got cars, we’ve got paved streets. And, yes, we’ve got some pollution. We can see the Sears (no, not ready to call it the Willis) Tower from our neighborhood bridge.

But we’ve also got 2 hawks nesting high in a tree-top near the school. I’ve seen loads of kids – grown-ups, too — walk right past the tree and never once look up while the hawks are lining their nest. Perhaps it’s better for the hawks that no one notices them. Certainly, they’d rather be under our radar. But this was also, I felt, a teachable moment. A great chance to teach some very sharp and naturally inquisitive 8-year-olds that there’s a little bit of wilderness in their own neighborhood.

Most everyone in our neighborhood walks to school. And this is a great chance for them to look up every once in a while. Or, while tree branches are still bare in the spring, they can catch a glimpse of the myriad nests — twiggy, feathered, encrusted with mud, abandoned and taken over by squirrels, papery wasps nests, nests in lamp posts. It’s an awesome opportunity.

So that’s what we did. We walked the neighborhood, sat quietly a safe distance away from the “hawk tree”. They managed to glimpse the male hawk swoop from tree to tree. They saw the female ensconced snugly in the nest. I introduced them to field guides and the idea of becoming stewards of the land and the prairie gardens that are springing up in our neighborhood. Kids nowadays hear so much about global warming and the loss of habitat, endangered species, melting polar ice caps, and drowning bears. They need a future they can connect to, care about, something they can see with their own eyes. Otherwise, saving the Earth is one big abstraction. But hawks nesting in their own hood? Yeah,  that’s something they can get with. So here’s what they saw, right where they live:

Hawk guarding nest from across street

Their faces lit up. They began to look at their neighborhood in a whole new way. On the walk back, they were whistling for cardinals, excited (EXCITED!) about the American robins, looking for squirrel tracks in the concrete. In other words, nature didn’t seem so far away.

I took them to their school’s prairie garden, talked to them about how there are plants taller then their tallest teacher. And that the roots can go down 3X as deep as the plant is tall; how lightning and prairie fires actually rejuvenate the land. The ecosystem that’s in their own city — these glorious prairies and savannas and wetlands — are rare and to be treasured. No, we don’t have rainforests. But every ecosystem on Earth is unique, every home special and worth cherishing. At least that’s what I hope they took away from the walk.

Their teacher checked-in with me after school. What did they remember? What did they get out of it? Turns out the thing they liked best was when we whistled like cardinals. Cool. That’s a start.

~ MGB