After the hottest summer in recorded history, the world needs some September salve.
It’s not just the heat, hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes. It’s back-to-school time, show-up-in-the-office time, COVID-surge time, and national-budget time. The autumnal equinox, when day and night are in balance, is celebrated as the peak of the harvest season. But it’s not just in our gardens that we reap what we sow.
As a Libra, I like balance. It’s where I find solid footing, literally and metaphorically. But the earth is out of balance. Mother Nature is vehemently complaining. As the old saying goes, “If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.” How can we soothe her and be soothed? Our Graceful Mischief must be for the Common Good.
I recently opened a meeting with a poem by Ayisha Siddiqa, a Palestinian American who lives in New York. A human rights and environmental justice advocate, she is a Climate Advisor to the UN Secretary General and Co-founder of Polluters Out. She is 24 years old and has been named Time’s 2023 Woman of the Year. This is the way she ends her poem titled, ON ANOTHER PANEL ABOUT CLIMATE, THEY ASK ME TO SELL THE FUTURE AND ALL I’VE GOT IS A LOVE POEM:
“Gamble on humanity one hundred times over Commit to life unto life, as the trees fall and take us with them. I’d follow love into extinction.”
With all that seems wrong in the world, Ayisha counsels, “Love is still the only revenge.” I find my salve this September in young people who are doing what they love for the common good, a bountiful balance.
Last week, I met with a young woman who leads a nonprofit organization devoted to equitable education and youth voice. Their work is transformational, systemic, collaborative, and intergenerational.
I work with a young man who volunteers for his local conservation commission. He is the youngest person on the committee by decades. His partner serves on their local school board.
I met a young man in June who is a sophomore in college. He wants to major in public health and then go to law school in preparation for a career in international public health. He works during vacations serving seniors.
I had a long phone conversation the other day with a young woman who is in her second year of law school in Florida. Her legal interests are in helping abused children and migrant farm workers, and in conservation. She misses Vermont’s fall foliage.
The leaves are changing and beginning to fall in Vermont, the trees wisely storing their carbs and creating spaciousness between bare branches for whatever winter brings. How will you find balance and salve this September?