I wake and forgive the slightest thing. Our world crumbles everywhere and yet there is all this light. The plight of the starving polar bear climbing through muddy water breaks hearts on Facebook, while the greedy take aim with their green, villainous hearts: They seem hell-bent on stealing everyone’s future to stockpile with more than they’ll ever need or use.

Can’t afford to focus there. Net neutrality could die. I want a free and open Internet!! Do I give more money to the cause, having just bought health insurance that scares me enough to know I can’t get sick? Our country is so f– up. But it’s the women and men who step forward and say enough is enough who will turn this tide.

I’m glad for Alabama, but cannot gloat in any victory. I won’t ever again. Because redemption comes with mercy and humility. If we emerge, all I can do is thank Jesus, and God, and mother Nature, and dumb luck, and all the allies working to support healing in this bitter and catastrophic world.

A Coast Guard reservist lights off a flare during his survival swim at the Reserve Boatcrew College at Station Curtis Bay, Md., Friday, April 3, 2009. All of the students had to successfully swim in open waters and use a flare during their survival swim training. (Coast Guard photo/Petty Officer 3rd Class Ayla Kelley)

I take my time and eat chocolate. I breathe and I trust myself. How are we off-grid? How are we helping heal the Earth and getting off the gerbil wheel of dependency on fossil fuels? My goal is to use no carbon by 2025. I’ll turn 54 that year. I’ll still be strong, and I can sing along. Where the world’s got no use for me, I’ll still show up and hum. We can do this. We’ve got to stop giving the big cheese to our predecessors and up the ante by being the change we wish to see. Women have been giving away our power for centuries. But now I’m thinking only our wisdom can get this world on the right path. This will be women coming forward to reclaim all our power, not as dominatrices, and yet so much healing and stepping up and calling out and being truth needs to happen to restore balance to this broken world.

Photo by Maria Merkulova, Free Press. Net Neutrality activists gather outside American Enterprise Institute to protest FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and the Trump administration’s attacks on internet freedom. Sign the petition→ bit.ly/nnetition2017

We’ve all been rising into what we’re capable. Recently for me it’s been tons of work preparing for the universal health care rallies and then the denouement (today): I bought expensive, crappy health insurance. It’s the best plan Kaiser offers. It will cost me $590 per month. While it will be affordable to see the doctor, if I’m hospitalized I’ll pay 35% of everything—an outrageous number. But that’s up to a 6k lifetime limit. So a few gates are in place to keep me from falling off the edge, but God forbid I should actually need my health care. It’s crazy.

Our rally Tuesday blew my mind. The speakers, each in turn, shared personal stories and candidate after candidate stood for universal health care and the working families of this fine nation. The republican middle or lower classes who vote against themselves over and over, were they listening? Someone is trying to do the people right, and it’s not your bought mouthpieces for the 1 percent.

I think it’s time for our own local George Lakoff book group. I could use the practice. I know others could. I want to weep. How am I helping the polar bear? The factory farmed animals? My brothers and sisters in our nation? How are we saving our democracy and a free and open Internet? Thank you for showing me the way.

I work with nature intelligence to garden my life—in all my projects and in the garden—to balance the whole kit and caboodle. It’s a life saver. And if more of us do this, it could save many lives. Human and nature intelligence working together seems to me the only way to restore healing and balance in time to save all of us. Or some of us. Or maybe some reduced Sum Of Us. Thank you for listening.

Amen.

P.S. Curious to learn about co-creative gardening with nature intelligence? Check out: www.perelandra-ltd.com

Also, thanks for your work and for letting me use your name: www.SumOfUs.org