Dear Friends,
Each morning I greet the trees around our new home. Late spring the gypsy moths denuded the white oak, their choice of foods. Early summer I watched in awe the trees pull forth energy enough to releaf. Now those miracles leaves are thinning, trading their limberness for a crispness, change of color, and a return to the earth out of which they rose, soul, root, sap, trunk, branch, twig. 

 In gratitude I ground this day in the long journey that has created such magnificence.I ground this day in the profound goodness that so many humans are bringing into this sorrowing world. I ground this day in Anna and all our children with their splendid array of colors and languages and their freshness and possibilities of heart and mind.  I ground this day in you, good women, dear good beautiful women, who fill me with love and hope and a limber resolve to stay with the dream. . . I hope you are well and in touch with your strength and love.

My heart and song fly with the sun across the continent to ground with those of us gathering in Vancouver, first as Sacred Web, and then moving into a larger circle of people as a summit to affirm, nurture, and give shape to our profound capacity and responsibility to be a conscious part of the creation unfolding.  For two years you have planned with summit dreamers and planners.  We are with you, so many of us who would choose to be there in the circle. May you be "the interdependent release of fresh potential." Joanna Macy names as synergy.

We are all reeling from the ongoing tragedies of violence and disregard in our world.  Here we are seeing the this pain so close at hand - ordinary people, neighbors, firefighters, children . . .the search goes on for more lost, families stricken with knowing and not knowing.  The face of violence is not new.  In this horror I think too of all the other families in the world who have known such excruciating loss and the many ways that violence takes a toll - hunger, poverty, loss of land, culture, rights. I think of the ways our lives are connected, how we affect one another's everyday existence.  This is no isolated terror.  It ripples out from the violence before it, rising and returning to the churning of cause and effect. . . each one reminding us that it will not stop until we bring forth something different among and between us. . .

I lean with you into this curve of purpose and heart.

with gratitude and love,

Carolyn

Council of Grandmothers
Hello friends - want to pass on something - last summer in the writing group, I read a couple of stories I'd written, visioning a government system where the central decision-making was done by a council of grandmothers.

These stories were written when I was living in Yellowknife, part of a writers' group there, when the territories were dividing - birthing Nunavut.  I was inspired by some of the songs we sing and the powerful mystery we create together, by my Quaker community, by songs I've sung with women over the last dozen years, by wise women I've known.

One of the other members of this writing group later became an 'advisor' of the current government in Yellowknife.  He had been describing the stories to Cabinet Members and they'd expressed an interest in reading them.  He wrote to ask my permission which I gave with great delight.  This I had also shared with other writers at Circle of Relations.

Last week, I read in a newspaper from the NWT that a council of Grandmothers is indeed being created there, and later received the  following e-mail. I'm so sorry I can't be with you in May in Alberta - a prior commitment - offer this as my way of connecting with the Web from the far north.
Sue Starr

Hi Sue.

I wanted to take a few moments to tell you about the reaction to the Council of Grandmothers.

I have been hearing from various potential "Grandmothers" who have been approached about it, and the reaction all seems to be the same - a sort of hesitation, as if they're not sure people really want their wisdom and value their knowledge, and then a lot of excitement when they realize that's indeed what government is doing. I think they have been so used to "doing" for so long that the idea that someone wants them for "being" rather than "doing" is a new idea.

Thank you so much for having this vision, and for sharing it. We truly do create the world as we see it.

The Grandmothers Council is going to be a powerful force in the North, I know. I can feel the strength of the idea growing, like an animal that has been asleep for a long time and is only now stretching and flexing its muscles again. It's a restoring of an older way of doing things, a
natural order.

Hope all is well with you.

Rosemary