Jitterbugging for Jesus

Photo from Tricycle, the Buddhist journal

The Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh was asked, “What do we most need to do to save our world?” His answer was this:

“What we most need to do is to hear within us the sounds of the Earth crying.”

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Mountain Pine Ridge, BZ

“What does it feel like to be alive?

“Living, you stand under a waterfall. You leave the sleeping shore deliberately; you shed your dusty clothes, pick your barefoot way over the high, slippery rocks, hold your breath, choose your footing, and step into the waterfall. The hard water pelts your skull, bangs in bits on your shoulders and arms. The strong water dashes down beside you and you feel it along your calves and thighs rising roughly backup, up to the roiling surface, full of bubbles that slide up your skin or break on you at full speed. Can you breathe here? Here where the force is the greatest and only the strength of your neck holds the river out of your face. Yes, you can breathe even here. You could learn to live like this. And you can, if you concentrate, even look out at the peaceful far bank where you try to raise your arms. What a racket in your ears, what a scattershot pummeling!
It is time pounding at you, time. Knowing you are alive is watching on every side your generation’s short time falling away as fast as rivers drop through air, and feeling it hit.”

― Annie Dillard, An American Childhood

Belize’s endangered Ocellated Turkey, an endemic species in the tropical forests of far northwest Belize, has refuge at the Chan Chich Eco Lodge and the neighboring wildlife preserve at the Gallon Jug Estate

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

— Wendell Berry

Jaguars are spotted weekly at the remote Chan Chich Lodge and the closely guarded wildlife preserve on the Gallon Jug Estate in BZ.

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

— Wendell Berry

Young bush farmer heading to town alongside the George Price (Western Highway) in Belize. He and his grandfather raise cattle, goats and lambs and grow fruits and vegetables on 55 acres along the Mopan River.

“The primary motive for good care and good use of the land-community is always going to be affection, which is too often lacking.”

— Wendell Berry

Pig feed time.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,

to front only the essential facts of life,

and see if I could not learn what it had to teach,

and not, when I came to die,

discover that I had not lived.”

— Thoreau

Back to the wilds of the bush.

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Night on the beach playground at San Pedro, Ambergris Caye, BZ