Wildwood Ecoforest, near Ladysmith, BC, is an 83-acre patch of old-growth Douglas-firs. These original coastal giants now stand among western red-cedar, bigleaf maple, arbutus, and a profusion of dogwood, on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish First Nations. I was a volunteer caretaker of this parcel of woodland, and on my work days I’d always hear woodpeckers. I began trying to identify them by their drumming, and by sight when possible. I only managed a few, so here’s my (divergent) research on the lot.

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i
To find a Northern Flicker, look under a picnic table, or better, a spreading elm; watch for a yellow shaft of sun, hammering at the ground.

ii
Hairy Woodpeckers are mercenaries gone AWOL. Wary and needy, and like all of us, a little traumatized. Their therapy is taking down rotting utility poles—watch for curative chips of light flying up.

iii
The Downy Woodpecker? A bit of a hipster. Likes Bebop but favours fusion. Jams like Buddy Rich and Ginger Baker but doesn’t mind some downtime with Charlie Pride.

iv
Check out the plumage of Pileated Woodpeckers, wouldn’t they make fine pirates?  Of course that’d make them qualified for Parliament.

v
Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers are champions of misdirection; they’ve been documented drilling into the brains of over 1,000 species of lobbyists.

vi
Lewis’s Woodpeckers love a Pride Parade: splendiferous with green back, pink body, silver collar, and a red face patch, ready to mock any orange-faced insult.

vii
The Red-naped Sapsucker has a taste for sugar, likes life in the Bay Area; remembers you as a flower child and later in that disreputable bar dancing a credible Bump and Hustle.

viii
Williamson’s Sapsuckers are endangered. They are losing their veteran larch habitat to chainsaws, ironically, through ‘conservative’ policies.

ix
American Three-toed Woodpecker is a stand-up with a quick tongue, able to speak the monosyllabic sap of a Dictator Tot and his sycophantic senators.

x
Red-breasted Sapsuckers are allies of trans-hummingbirds. Their call is a pleasing “mew,” or a harsh, slurred “whee-ur”—they do no harm, they take no shit.

xi
You’ll find the Black-backed Woodpecker among the embers of extravagant burns. Praise this dearest rehabilitator of our blackened valleys and fire-scarred hills.

xii
White-headed Woodpeckers appear to be tiny Cistercians. They are lovers of all they survey: squirrel middens, sap wells, sugar-pine mountains—even you and me, failing their old-growth ponderosa home.

 

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    is not a new insight.
Still, don’t we hold on like granite to visions of the perfect,
the prospect of our celebrated fulfillment, our plans for pleasure,
our precise house, set like a gem in a princely neighbourhood,
with neighbours to match, and a carousel of days
with just the right amount of thrill and tranquility,
in a city, in a country, ruled by fairness and mercy?
But when the root of that fantastic flower hits the shale of reality,
the ideal dies quickly, petal upon petal.
So let’s give up on our Eden (which was an apparition),
and accept the wilderness of the world outside our door.
It’s the wilderness of the real we must work with, or,
be forever drowning in waves of disappointment,
consumed by rivers of bitterness.
Let’s brace ourselves with the bones of resolve,
scaffold ourselves with scraps of hope.
Do little things: walk into a crowd of trees,
grandly vent to those trusted ears;
collect a few rocks and build a fountain, make an icon
to drive the mind’s cynical swine over the cliff,
then cast a loving little spell on our trampled bouquet, and say,
I choose gratitude over hatred,
       honest, abridged anger over venom and violence.
Pray too (no harm in it), pray to the universal Unnameable,
to help withstand the death of our dreams,
the rigor mortis of our faith, and wait, — O stabilitas —
like one of the Theresas, or the desert mothers.
Such waiting is like loving, like trusting.
It’s risky, it’s bloody foolhardy — unscientific? certainly,
to believe, to trust, that what’s being built within,
and beyond, will be better than what would have been.
And so, my lovely friend, may I be bold to say,
nothing is what it seems, really means:
that the darkness we’re in, is of a kind that helps us see.

 

 

The nations are in an uproar; the kingdoms totter; the earth melts. – Psalm 46

and may we recall: the earth has no political party, the winds have no government, the oceans have no left or right, the tectonic plates have no allegiance to kingdoms, the planet’s mantle has no thought of empire;

the nations are echoes in smoke, the great cities are incinerating their names, the silver statues and gilded plaques in palatial plazas and oxygenated patios are sinking in ash;

life is not bought—there are no stocks that uplift the spirit, no bonds that enhance the soul, no banks that augment the heart—no security in celebrity;

once, well, occasionally, we made movies about the fleeting gleam of diamonds, the hidden treasure of charity, the morning dew of truth, the kiss of justice and peace in the garden of community;

today, our outsized liars are leaders; and our bets are on the greed of plutocrats and a supporting cast of jesters, fawning senators, and limp diplomats;

today, our money’s on the amygdalas of Superheroes—the religion of revenge with its benediction of battling to end;

Where’s Daddy, Lavender, and The Gospel, are actual names for AI algorithms—field-tested and bundled for resale—to assist in the elimination of a people and their past;

and now it’s midnight, and the only dawn left to us, should we find the vision for it, is humility—the superpower to change one’s mind: teshuvah, come to our senses—become poor-in-spirit, become mourners, and comforters, and rain-bringers.

 

 

New Year’s day is only one important day among 365 important days.

Understandably, the first half of life is spent anchoring ourselves; imperatively, the second half is spent unmooring ourselves.

The heart is a spotted pear — there’s no getting through without some bruising.

The mind is a sea star — moving its brilliant purple rays in multidirectional ways, and clinging, so often, to the same facade.

The soul at peace is paradise.

Beneath the surface of an ordinary day lies an infinite wellspring of meaning—this untold depth is what we may call God.

It’s been said you can’t get blood from stone; but today, the fallen heaps of rubble won’t stop bleeding—and they will not stop accusing.

Tempting, in this climate, to trade the callus-building requirements of reality for the passive comfort of hoping.

Tend well your Brown-eyed Susan, it is the only flower that symbolizes justice.

To laugh at yourself is to deinstitutionalize your ego.

The individual is a phantom — in wonder and blunder we receive our selves through the eyes of others. Meaning, dear reader, my personal fulfillment is in your flourishing.

Should you want to find God, which is to say, should you desire meaning, learn a way (not unlike the cruciform path of Jesus) to love the earth and her array of inhabitants.

Our favoured assumptions should routinely be set on fire to see what rises from the ash.

A tincture of cynicism is emancipating, but a full-meal is constipating.

The crushed grapes of relinquishment can sometimes be Beaujolais for the soul.

If you press your face against a keyboard, canvas, soapstone, it sometimes opens a door.

Art enlarges our being and bearing, which is why despots of commerce de-fund it.

What seemed unthinkable is now obvious—both science and religion are converging on the essential fire. It’s time they had a heart-to-heart.

Every birdcall beckons, “Unveil your hearts!” “All creation cries for love!” is every cricket’s song.

Of course we are falling, let us pray for companionship in the descent.

Death and dying — hard, hard, hard — and any kind of bromide, unfitting.

To counsel hope can sometimes be malpractice.

To discount hope is human dereliction and spiritual delinquency.

The twin sister of praise is grief.

Aging changes chores into privileges and anxieties into prayers.

Don’t vomit outright; some poisons need to pass through so you’ll know what to hate, what to tolerate.

Despite the crazed magnificence of our vanities, our true longing is to be each other’s joy.

The Big Bang is God’s dancing body. The shimmering fallout is yours.

The Second Coming, if we have the eyes for it, is us, in our unfolding inclusiveness.

Regarding global warming: time, now, we let the spruce and salmon vote.

There are over 25 flowers that symbolize peace, this coming year, pick one and join any nonviolent earth-affirming, life-liberating, protest march.

Put your love where there is no love and you will find love—the only religion worth practicing.

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Wishing you a beautiful New Year of unfolding love and renewed purpose.