Election Aftermath: Good Intentions, Interdependency, and Peace

During the afternoon before the critical 2024 election, when I was cautiously optimistic about Kamala Harris being president, I visited one of my favorite places in Madison, the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. I was hoping to add a jingle to an interactive outdoor sculpture entitled "Good Intentions", designed by UW–Madison art student Mariah Skenandore. It's on display in Longenecker Horticultural Gardens through November 18.

The interactive sculpture is co-created by visitors who obtain a jingle from the Visitor Center and place it on the designated tree. When hanging the jingle you keep a good thought, prayer, or intention in mind. The jingles move with the wind releasing the projected thoughts, prayers, and intentions into the world and beyond.

A dance of the Ojibwe people inspired the sculpture. The dance involves a dress with 365 jingles and each jingle holds a prayer or good intention. During the dance, the jingles strike each other sending out what are considered healing prayers and intentions.

All the 365 jingles were taken and on the tree. I still enjoyed the sculpture with its red ribbons and silver jingles. I offered the following good intentions to all beings: 

"May all beings everywhere be safe and protected.

May all beings everywhere live their lives with ease.

May all beings everywhere be healthy and strong in mind, body, and spirit.

May all beings everywhere be happy." 

The "jingles" hardly moved in the calm air. As I turned to leave the tree, I once again noticed the blooming lilacs, which I saw for the first time a few weeks ago. Yes, lilacs still blooming in November. Wondering why? The short story is that a blight in spring, plus unusual weather, as a friend stated, caused the lilacs to be drunk, thinking it was spring again in the warm autumn. For a more scientific explanation go here.  

I just about finished reading Suzanne Simard's book "Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest." It's a good example of the power of intentions coupled with action. Suzanne was born and spent her childhood in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia. Her family for generations were small time loggers as she grew up in the woods with a lake near her home. She eventually earned a forestry degree from the University of British Columbia and a doctorate in forestry from Oregon State University.

As one of the first woman scientist in forestry, the young Suzanne began challenging predominant forestry practices that viewed trees as independent from all others and who competed for  resources with all other trees and plants. Her early research showed that trees were interconnected through an underground  network, that included fungi, was not popular with policy makers within forestry. She was considered naïve. Nevertheless, Susanne persisted following her intentions by observing the forests and doing peer reviewed scientific experiments. Years later and now it is widely accepted that trees are interdependent and form complex and cooperative communities. Interdependency is now widely recognized as the hallmark of a forest with trees and plants connected through underground networks. At the center of the networks are Mother Trees who are major contributors to the health of the entire forest. Even when dying, Mother Trees send out important carbon to nearby offspring. 

The book's lessons of intentions and interdependency apply to our lives. Especially now, I keep these lessons in mind as I try to absorb the enormity of a second Trump administration . For now my intention is to gain emotional balance when fear and grief arise in me.  The following poem by Alfred K. LaMotte helps me. It reminds me to be grateful that I am part of a marvelous interdependent world.  

Election 

I voted.

I voted for the rainbow.

I voted for the cry of a loon.

I voted for my grandfather’s bones
that feed beetles now.

I voted for a singing brook that sparkles
under a North Dakota bean field.

I voted for salty air through which the whimbrel flies
South along the shores of two continents.

I voted for melting snow that returns to the wellspring
of darkness, where the sky is born from the earth.

I voted for daemonic mushrooms in the loam,
and the old democracy of worms.

I voted for the wordless treaty that cannot be broken
by white men or brown, because it is made of star semen,
thistle sap, hieroglyphs of the weevil in prairie oak.

I voted for the local, the small, the brim
that does not spill over, the abolition of waste,
the luxury of enough.

I voted for the commonwealth of the ancient forest,
a larva for every beak, a wing-tinted flower
for every moth’s disguise, a well-fed mammal’s corpse
for every colony of maggots.

I voted for open borders between death and birth.

I voted on the ballot of a fallen leaf of sycamore
that cannot be erased, for it becomes the dust and rain,
and then a tree again.

I voted for more fallow time to cultivate wild flowers,
more recess in schools to cultivate play,
more leisure, tax free, more space between days.

I voted to increase the profit of evening silence
and the price of a thrush song.

I voted for ten million stars in your next inhalation.

Another intention that helps me cope is to cultivate peace which is not always easy to feel. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poem provides some helpful hints.

Toward Peace (June 10, 2024)  

Perhaps some part of me still believes
peace is a destination,
a place we arrive, ideally together.

I notice how shiny it is, this belief,
like a flower made of crystal,
beautiful, but lifeless,
 
devoid of the dust and scuff
that come from living a real day.
Meanwhile, there is this invitation
 
to grow into peace the way real flowers grow—
in the dirt. With blight and drought,
beetles and hail.
 
Meanwhile this invitation
to live in the tangle of fear and failure,
to be humbled by my own inner wars
 
and wonder how to find a living peace
right here, the peace that arrives
when we take just one step through the mess
 
toward compassion and notice
as our foot rises our heart also rises
and in that lifted moment
 
still scraping along in the dirt,
there is a peace so real we become light,
become the momentum that is the change.

Unlike the night of November 5th, for me, November 2nd was a peaceful day. Thirteen volunteers voted to continue maintaining Prospect Gardens. Here's the crew: (starting on the left and going clockwise), Marcel, Sheila, Alice, Becky, me/Jake, Gaon, Rajeev, Ryan, Gregory, and Ann. N., to the left of Gregory with the red pullover is Jim.  Thank you all for your good work. Not pictured are Ann B. and Laura.

This was my last session as crew chief. Becky, Ryan, and Gregory have stepped forward to form a management team. Thank you. I, like Suzanne Simard's old trees, will find ways of supporting the team.

Here are a pictures of  some of the November crew.

Rajeev and Gaon putting up orange snow fences; hopefully preventing city snow blowers from pushing snow into the Gardens. Both are seniors and members of the Leo Club. They are now busy applying to universities. This is the second year these two put up the fences. They worked so well together while exhibiting their problem solving skills. They didn't even need the ladder. 

Sheila and her friend Marcel pruned the raspberries and then cut back the upper section on the Regent side of the Gardens. The old faded picket fence is once again visible. 

Sheila and Marcel working together represent the support of both neighborhood associations. Sheila lives in the Dudgeon Monroe Neighborhood and Marcel lives in the Regent Neighborhood.

Here is another example of the long time support of residents from the two involved neighborhoods: Ann N. (with the hat) from Regent Neighborhood and Laura from the Dudgeon Monroe Neighborhood.  Both have been volunteering for years; Laura is from our original group of volunteers beginning in 2010.

They are on break which we always have. Time to talk and connect is an important part of our work sessions. 

Ryan tugging away at a vine while clearing out a Regent side section. In early summer Ryan returned to the neighborhood from working in South Sudan. He and his wife live nearby the Gardens. Ryan wants to ensure Prospect Gardens continues into the future. 

Becky and her great smile. She, like Ryan, wants to ensure that Prospect Gardens continues into the future.

As I already mentioned breaks are an important part of our work sessions. Here's Jim resting during a break when we enjoyed chocolate chip cookies, peanut butter cookies, and apples. Once again, Ann B, my wife, made sure we had treats. Thank you Ann.

I end with another Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer poem. More messages that allow life to flow through me as I adjust to the new political reality. Actions on my part in the continual struggle for justice, peace, and equality will emerge.

Because

So I can’t save the world —

can’t save even myself,

can’t wrap my arms around

every frightened child, can’t

foster peace among nations,

can’t bring love to all who

feel unlovable.

So I practice opening my heart

right here in this room and being gentle

with my insufficiency. I practice

walking down the street heart first.

And if it is insufficient to share love,

I will practice loving anyway.

I want to converse about truth,

about trust. I want to invite compassion

into every interaction.

One willing heart can’t stop a war.

One willing heart can’t feed all the hungry.

And sometimes, daunted by a task too big,

I tell myself what’s the use of trying?

But today, the invitation is clear:

to be ridiculously courageous in love.

To open the heart like a lilac in May,

knowing freeze is possible

and opening anyway.

To take love seriously.

To give love wildly.

To race up to the world

as if I were a puppy,

adoring and unjaded,

stumbling on my own exuberance.

To feel the shock of indifference,

of anger, of cruelty, of fear,

and stay open. To love as if it matters,

as if the world depends on it.