Composter

I just assembled and installed our new solar composter. (It involved an actual power tool and digging a huge hole in our garden) I am exhausted and very excited.

We have a 4 x 8 herb garden, and a lawn that's only slightly bigger. But last week as I was scraping vegetable peelings into the trash I just couldn't wait any longer. The ground is thawed, I thought, and it's time to do some urban composting.

Sources

Unitarian Universalists have adopted 6 official sources of their tradition. When the most recent was adopted (Earth Centered Taditions) I got to witness the process first hand at our general assembly, and hear both sides of the issue. Now it's hard to imagine our tradition without acknowledging that source.

But recently, as I was reading Wisdom Sits in Places I realized that a new idea has been emerging slowly in my own consciousness. The UU sources are all people, or traditions created by people. We may lift up the Earth Centered traditions which teach us to honor "the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature", but we don't list the earth herself as a source of our wisdom. We list science, but we do not list trees, or stars, or the other beings we share our eco-system with.

And frankly, it's not currently a commonly held source of our UU tradition. But I am finally able to articulate that it is a source of my own.

Irises

The irises I planted last fall are up. They are quick little guys- from no bud at all to full bloom in one day. There are so many metaphors wrapped in those little 4" plants, about planting for the future, about the faith in spring after a cold winter, about the strength of the small.

The landscape is still very stark- very beige and gray. Not one tree has yet to bud. These first little flowers are like harbingers of things to come. A little color that brings joy to the eye.