If the flap of a butterfly's wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado. ~Edward Lorenz

No Wind, No Rain

These words from the first line of a poem of the same title by Jane Hirshfield reverberates in my head as I walk the trails among an unseasonably dry forest of redwoods near my home, noticing a number of already dead trees. It also reverberates today from hearing the poet recite it in the workshop on Poetry and Climate Change Waking up to the Climate Crisis through Poetry that I led last week as part of the Climate Coaching Alliance Festival of Coaching (a recording of the workshop is available with this link). And it continues to resonate as the heartbreaking events of the past weeks unfold in Eastern Europe.

(No Wind, No Rain)

No wind, no rain,
the tree
just fell, as a piece of fruit does.

But no, not fruit. Not ripe.
Not fell.

It broke. It shattered.

One cone’s
addition of resinous cell-sap,
one small-bodied bird
arriving to tap for a beetle.

It shattered.

What word, what act,
was it we thought did not matter?

From Ledger (Knopf, 2020)

I am struck by the final words of this poem, just as the poet and teacher, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, interviewing Jane Hirshfield in March 2020, was struck : “What word, what act, /was it we thought did not matter?”.
Jane Hirshfield :

“The butterfly effect is what I had in mind with that poem. Something minute must have altered for that large pine tree to shatter so suddenly on a windless, sunny day … but what?

I think often how much harder it is to solve a problem by the time we recognize it is a problem. How many catastrophes have never happened because of choices made long before, perhaps hundreds of years before? The catastrophes that do happen are equally the sum of many unknowable choices made perhaps hundreds of years before—to which the added weight of a sparrow, a sentence, a decision, arrives and becomes this moment’s seemingly precipitous fracture…. It says of geology, evolution, terrorism, the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean: “This did not have to happen. None of this had to happen.”

To that list, I want to add the war in Ukraine, the human caused climate breakdown, COVID.

“This did not have to happen. None of this had to happen”.

The “butterfly effect” is this concept from chaos theory, the American mathematician and meteorologist Edward Lorenz’s famous metaphor for the idea that a change as imperceptible as the flap of a butterfly’s wings can result in an effect as grand as a hurricane, far away, several weeks later. What I retain from the “butterfly effect” is that small things matter, and that we are all connected to a bigger system. Our action in this moment is the result of previous actions in the past, and in turn, it could lead to a future action.
With one small gesture, you can change somebody's life. Our actions, no matter how insignificant they may seem to us, matter.

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous,
or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular,
but because it never forgot what it could do.
~Naomi Shihab Nye

Let’s not forget what we can do.

Warmly,
Anne-Marie
March 14, 2022
418.69 ppm of atmospheric CO2 (safe level 350 ppm)

Japan- You Are In Good Hands With Us

For those of you who have traveled the Sacred Paths of Ancient Japan for the women’s pilgrimage with me in 2018 and 2019, or those of you who were planning to do so in 2020 and 2021, and every one else who may be interested in doing so in the future, I want to highlight an article published this month in Tricycle- The Buddhist Review titled Shugendo Everywhere- How two women ascetics practice outside the limits of a sacred mountain and the gender barriers that forbid them access. One of these women ascetics is no less than Alena, the mountain guide whom we travel with on the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route.
So please know that you are in good hands when traveling with the two of us. Alena is also a travel writer and has her own website Kii Monogatari where she writes extensively about her experience in the Kumano Kodo area. (For more on Shugendo, check Alena’s writings on buddhistdoor.net).

At the time of this writing, Japan’s borders are still closed to tourists but they just reopened to business travelers and international students last week. The COVID testing and quarantine requirements have also been relaxed. There is hope, but no certainty, that Japan will open to tourists again in the summer. As soon as we get enough visibility into the situation, we will work on planning our next pilgrimage. Simply be in touch if you want to be added to the list of interested parties.

Next Elemental Contemplative Walk: Sunday May 22

The first contemplative walk of the year was held on Saturday February 12, we focused on the element of water which was inherently missing from the landscape we were in, another instance of “No Wind, No Rain”.

On Sunday May 22, we’ll explore the element of air, and then the elements of fire in August and of earth in November (exact dates to be announced later).

If you’d like to join me on this exploration, please register below.