Month: April 2023

As promised, a poem arose from time spent in the middle of a clear-cut forest and I wanted to share it with you.

The Bone Tree
El árbol de hueso

Our greed
Nuestra codicia
Our need, for more, for more, for more
Nuestra necesidad, de más, de más, de más
Our numb blindness
Nuestra ceguera entumecida

This devastation
Esta devastación
This empty shattered forest
Este bosque destrozado vacío
This lone swallow lamenting
Esta golondrina solitaria lamentándose

These ghost stumps rotting
Estos tocones fantasma se pudren
These alien bushes thriving
Estos arbustos alienígenas prosperan
These bare bone-white snags reminding
Estos enganches desnudos de hueso blanco que recuerdan

Still the rainbow
Todavía el arco iris
Still beckons at the edge of the
Todavía hace señas en el borde de la
Still live returning forest. Amen
Todavía vive el bosque que regresa. Amén

~ Wakil David Matthews – April 2023

It’s been awhile beloved friends. It seems that much of what I’m called to now is spending time with loss and lamentation.

In today’s post I’ll share these moving and profound thoughts from Fr Richard Rohr’s most recent blog. Soon, I’ll follow that up with a poem that arose during a silent meditation retreat in the nearby forest.

“When we go to the place of tears, it’s an inner attitude where when I can’t fix it, when I can’t explain it, when I can’t control it, when I can’t even understand it, I can only forgive it. Let go of it, weep over it. It’s a different mode of being.”
—Richard Rohr 

Weep for the World

We invite readers to listen and lament with the song Weep for the World, written and performed by Brian McLaren to express our human desire to both grieve and heal from the harm we have caused.  

Let us weep for the world 
being broken apart 
by humans,  
foolish humans. 
Let us grieve the desecration  
of forest and stream, 
of glacier and ocean and humans,  
like us.  

Let us be mindful of the children,  
being born today,  
in a world torn apart 
by humans.  
Let us show our children  
a more excellent way  
to walk on the earth and be human,  
truly human.  

Let us love this world  
we’ve been breaking apart  
and let our love bring wholeness.  
And let us love one another  
with a compassionate heart  
for it is love that makes us human, human. 

Let us weep for the world  
We are breaking apart,  
so we can love it back  
to wholeness.  
Let our hearts be stretched  
by great sorrow and love,  
so they will never contract  
to being less than human.

Brian McLaren, Weep for the World.