Justice and the Care of the Creation

Farewell for a While

Dear friends,

I will be dropping off of the internet for the next month or so, but I am not dropping out of the struggle to create a just, merciful, harmonious and sustainable nation and world.   I am taking the next month to improve my ability to contribute to the struggle, as I will describe below. 

The quote from Gus Speth that I have included here is central to my understanding of what we need in order to survive our current polycrisis and emerge into a healthier civilization.  It also is central to my calling as a poet and spiritual writer, contributing to inner and world transformation.  Part of that work is promoting “the emerging ethic of the environment” and “the old ethic of love of neighbor,” with the recognition that everyone and everything on earth is our neighbor, explicitly opposing exploitation or oppression.

Gus says that to make the transition to a new society we need a new consciousness.  He has identified six ingredients to make that change:

1. raising awareness of the unfolding calamity;
2. cultivating wise leaders;
3. articulating a new narrative and positive vision;
4. building a unified social justice and environmental movement;
5. putting out effective social marketing; and,
6. developing models of a new way of living.

We each can contribute to one or more of these.  I am excited to be part of it, but I need to add a precursor in order to be most effective, which is pursuing my own new consciousness and reorientation of life. 

The word for this in my spiritual tradition is “metanoia,” an ancient Greek word that means to move beyond where the heart, mind and spirit have been to a greater level, or as the spiritual teacher, Mark Kutolowski, puts it, to expand the vision of the heart. 

I will be spending the next month or so in retreat with Mark at Metanoia of Vermont, a lay Catholic homestead and community that he and his wife, Lisa, founded.  The mission of Metanoia is to help people grow in lives of prayer, contemplation and care of the land.  Mark is a trained teacher of Centering Prayer and a spiritual director.  He will be accompanying me through the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, a retreat experience that I hope will be a path of metanoia.

I can’t know where this path will lead other than into the place we each have within us where we meet the spirit of life that flows through all the earth and makes us one.  The way I understand it, that spirit sparked life into being and inspired every step of evolution, so it must still want life to survive and thrive.  I believe that if we each listen to that spirit’s guidance and let it lead us, we will find a way to contribute to its evolutionary cause—we will discover the individual contributions we each can make to help create the major cultural change that we now need.

That’s what I hope I will be doing over the coming month— practicing listening for that spirit and letting it lead me.  Thank you for your part, however the spirit moves you!  I’m with you all the way.

Peace, joy and love,
Tom

Poem of the Week 4/4/25 “We Can Be Sure That Love”

Here is the Poem of the Week, written on April 2nd. Our nation’s government was admittedly flawed before January 20, 2025. Forces of greed held us back from closing the obscene income gap, from legislating a livable wage, from reversing climate and other environmental catastrophes and making the super-rich pay taxes as a form of paying back what they have stolen from the poor, the middle class and future generations of life on earth.

Yet we can now see how much love shaped our government. It’s really extraordinary if you think about it. Our love was compromised, but it was there in our care for the poor–food programs and heat assistance and medicaid and more.

We loved our elders enough to provide social security and medicare. We loved humanity enough to do research to safeguard our health and heal disease.

We loved the earth and all interconnected life enough to regulate, however insufficiently, the polluters and extractors and abusers of the earth, and to fund the scientific research that gave us needed information about our impact and learn how to live on earth harmoniously and sustainably.

We loved our neighbors around the globe enough to offer at least some help when they were suffering, and enough to try to prevent wars and cooperate on global economic and all other kinds of well being.

We loved our neighbors enough to make sure they could have the right to think and speak and vote, at the same time as limiting freedom responsibly, just enough to protect everyone from harmful actions.

I could go on and on–so much love!

And now that imperfect but virtuous government is being torn down to the ground, and will love guide those who are doing the destruction as they govern? Will they create a more loving government for all? We may not know what is coming, but we do know, because history and personal experience have proven it, that love is the highest power on earth. We can be sure that love will rise again.

Poem of the Week, 3/28/25, a Hai-net

Here’s the Poem of the Week for March 28, 2025. It’s another hai-net, seven loosely linked sort-of haiku that take on some of the characteristics of a sonnet. I have several other poems from this week that I hope to share as well. The struggle of this time is calling forth all our voices. Right now it is crucial that we respond. Courage and love are indeed contagious. We have the power we need if we will use it! Please do!

“For Countless Generations” A Hymn

For a copy of the hymn set in the music email rev.thomas.cary.kinder@gmail.com
For Countless Generations
Tune: Llangloffen  7.6.7.6.D.
(tune of “O God of Earth and Altar” and other hymns

For countless generations
Saints dreamed Christ’s reign of peace,
Love ruling hearts and nations,
Compassion without cease,
When laws of human kindness
Will overrule cruel greed,
And truth of oneness bind us
To serve all earthly need.

We gather here still willing
To dream like saints long past.
But time for its fulfilling
Has come to earth at last.
We hear the cries of science
And those who suffer wrong.
We rise with faith’s reliance.
Christ makes us wise and strong.

We rise to fill Christ’s vision,
To build God’s realm on earth.
No church has ever risen
To serve more urgent worth.
God’s power brings transformation
Like Christ’s baptismal dove.
It drives our generation
To give our lives for love.


copyright 2018 Thomas Cary Kinder

“Even Short Scraggly Pines Whisper”

The poem text is below. It is a first draft written during the week of March 10, 2025. It is another hai-net, seven loosely linked strictly syllabic sort-of haiku that together have some of the characteristics of a sonnet. Please “use your voice, earthlings!”

even short scraggly
pines whisper heart longing songs
with gods breath in them

ravens on tall pines
sound alarms protest loudly
silence condemns us

yesterday the stream
sang joyful spring snowmelt songs
today ice is back

the old activist
sings out we shall overcome
dying in the wind

nevertheless she
persists a grouse hen gives all
to save what she loves

estonia rose
singing as one for freedom
beauty to die for

as long as earth breathes
wind will lift her song back up
use your voice earthlings

3/12/25

“Speeding Blindly Toward Doom Down a Dangerous Road” Poem of the Week 3/10/25

The poem text is below.

Please honor the Tao or Spirit of creation and use your voice and actions courageously to build a wise and loving world.

Speeding Blindly Toward Doom Down a Dangerous Road

Out here, immersed in nature, we can see
inherent worth in worms and trees and birds.
We see as well our shared humanity,
despite our different views, behaviors, words…
so those who out of greed dehumanize
the poor they rob or all who block their way,
and who treat earth as if it is their prize
for being rich, so nature must obey,
sound stupid, dangerous, like utter fools
who lack the common sense of any child
who learns hot stoves will burn and other rules
of higher powers that must be reconciled.
Out here, we see our doom when we don’t know
to honor Tao on roads of mud or snow.

3/10/25

How to Thank Al Green

Thank you, Honorable Al Green,
Congressional Representative from Texas,
for daring to stand up and speak truth to power,
saying “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid,”
as you waved your cane at the president,
making what the Honorable John Lewis,
would call “Good trouble.”

Thank you to all who stood with Al Green
in that deep dark well of the House
where he was censured, all together
singing “We Shall Overcome”
not letting him stand alone,
not letting yourselves be silenced.

Thank you for an act of
nonviolent civil disobedience
for the sake of the millions who will suffer
because the Republican administration
and congressional budget
are cutting billions of dollars from
taking care of the poorest Americans
when they need help most,
when they are sick and cannot afford care.

The sickening question is,
why did every other congress person not
stand up and join the protest?
Why did they not feel sick themselves
over the suffering of the people they represent,
sick enough to demand
that the most vulnerable be protected
and the most greedy be denied?

And what about us?
When that suffering comes to us,
when it is someone we love who is sick
and cannot afford care,
or when we get cancer and the research
that could have saved our life
has been cut,
or when we are injured by a shoddy product
made by the richest in the world
because they intentionally destroyed
the government agencies
that protect the American people
from their own corporate irresponsibility,
or when we suffer because the health care
for the climate has been cut and storms
and fires and droughts and floods rage,
creating refugees with nowhere safe to go,
will we be thankful for the Honorable
People who have dared to stand up
and protest along the way?

If you want to thank the Honorable
Al Green, or those who are
taking to the streets and
speaking out wherever they can,
then join them.  Use your voice.
The more of us who do, the more
other people will wake up
to the suffering coming their way,
and do something about it.

The more you use your voice,
the more joy you will feel,
and the more you will overcome
those trying to keep you silent
out of fear, despair
or powerlessness.
We the people have the power,
and all we have to do
is use it and keep using it.

Thank you for choosing that joy!

“Ancient Taoist Poets Flight and Fight” Poem of the Week 3/5/25

The poem text is below.

This sonnet refers to ancient Taoist poets who fled their corrupt empire. I highly recommend David Hinton’s excellent book Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China. You can find a link for it below the poem text.

The ancient Taoist poets did take flight
from empire’s deadly storms to mountain’s peace.
That does not mean that they gave up the fight.
In truth, it made their influence increase
both there and then and through all realms and ages
until today when evil has returned
and persecutes descendants of those sages
who still pursue the world for which they yearned,
the all-inclusive love of Christ and Tao.
Resistance rises in its timeless forms,
and each of us who love are asking how
we best can fight such fierce, enormous storms—
some on the barricades, some underground,
and some where peace and power of Tao are found.

3/5/25

You can find David Hinton’s book Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China at your local bookstore or at Books a Million (still has a DEI policy!) at https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Mountain-Home/David-Hinton/9780811216241?id=9413125460217

Two Sonnets Calling for Nonviolent Engagement on the Side of Love

The poem texts are below.

These sonnets are first drafts written the week ending February 28, 2025. In the past I have always put poems through many drafts before sharing them, but I believe the relevance and urgency of the poems written in this time of crisis compensate for the roughness.

My friends, we have heroic work to do.
The highest meaning life can have is ours
if we lay down our lives to fight the few
amassing wealth and using all their powers
to bribe or brainwash or intimidate
or crush or kill to stop the side of love
for all who live. Our enemy is hate
in any form that places one above
and others far below an equal worth.
We fight not for ourselves but what is right.
We fight for all who share this fragile earth.
We fight the darkness with the tools of light,
not harming just as we would not be harmed,
armed with a love that cannot be disarmed.
2/23/25

Our fear at how dehumanizing hate
now has the power it needs to kill at will
is urging us to run before too late,
but love is whispering, “There is hope still.”
Our rage at how hate treats the earth, the poor
and all not Christian-hetero-male-white
sparks thoughts of vengeful sabotage and war,
but love is whispering, “Stay in the light!”
We need to find a way to fight this wrong.
We need to stand with all who are oppressed.
At threat of death, may courage keep us strong
to speak and act to show that we protest,
to model worlds of love we seek to build,
by force of light no hate has ever killed.
2/25/25

Poem “The Long Fight”

I need to rebuild strength before I fight
because the last long struggle took my all.
My father fought against the fascist right.
Two ancestors helped bring about the fall
of slavery and white supremacy—
one lost an arm, one was imprisoned twice.
They nearly died so strangers could live free,
and now the stakes are worth far greater price—
the fate of every creature on this earth,
the fate of billions whom the few oppress.
What is this loveliest of planets worth,
its lives and loves beyond count we can guess?
As soon as I can rise from my sickbed
I’ll fight the side of death until I’m dead.

2/17/25

Poem “Savor/Resist”

https://youtu.be/aVgxHeRv6VE
The poem text is below.

This is a sonnet first draft written on November 26, 2024, a few weeks after the election and a few days before I got covid, followed not long after by the flu. The long stretch of illness and recovery derailed my “Poem of the Week” series. This would have been the next in line, and it still speaks to where I am and what I feel called to do. Does it speak to you? If so, please leave a comment. I would be glad to hear how you are responding to this time.

I see two Scrabble signs at home each day:
one “SAVOR;” and the other one “RESIST.”
I see now they are callings to obey
to fight totalitarians’ fierce fist.
They suddenly have bought complete control,
brainwashing innocents with hateful lies,
exploiting fears, empowering every troll
to swing its club until the nation dies,
and sweet earth, too. So I am called to fight
by savoring and loving what they’re killing,
by letting that love guide me by its light,
by quieting to sense what it is willing—
love’s Tao or Spirit that wants life to thrive.
Savor. Resist. It’s why I am alive.
11/26/24

Poem of the Week, November 22, 2024

The poem text is below.

T. S. Eliot wrote, “…a poet’s mind is…constantly amalgamating disparate experience… [it] falls in love, or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes.”

This hai-net series of seven loosely linked haiku “amalgamates disparate experiences” including these:
a late fall walk in very dry woods;
the election aftermath in our nation;
accelerating climate chaos and the possibility of extinction;
retirement, aging and not too far out there now, death;
John Peck’s poetry teaching fifty years ago;
Brian McLaren’s must-read book “Life After Doom: Wisdom and Courage for a World Falling Apart;”
Robin Wall Kimmerer’s classic “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants;”
David Hinton’s book “Mountain Home: The Wilderness Poetry of Ancient China;”
a love of Taoism;
a daily meditation practice;
Philippians 4;
the ancient Christian contemplative and mystical path of self-emptying (kenosis) leading to transformation of consciousness (metanoia) leading to an increased capacity for seeing oneness and acting with unconditional love (agape) leading to building the beloved, peaceable community of all creatures on earth (koinonia);
and separation from a beloved.

The result is, I hope, something that some may find beautiful or useful or both, but it’s just a first draft and first take video, so we’ll see if it sparks anything for you! Thank you! You can find more polished poems on my website at https://thomascarykind… Here’s the poem’s text:

beech sapling brown leaves
lush earth ritual dress robe
such beautiful
death

deep leaved forest floor
trees disrobed
bare limbs raised up
naked prayer
of hope

drought makes trees exposed
one spark
then dry fall leaves
flame
ghost dance
robed in smoke

old monk
like fall oak
lives by letting go
leaves
seeds
lose life to save life

drought says
reduce need
loss means grief
heart art spark dims
hope lost
in the haze

beyond hope stands
love
charred forest
of oak loves lost
one acorn
sprouts green

if there is any
beauty
love and nurture it
let it
seed
your heart

11/18/24

Poem of the Week, November 15, 2024

The poem text is below.

The poem this week is a hai-net—that hybrid of haiku and sonnet—written well within the ten days of sitting shiva for an election that means the death to some degree of much that I have loved since I was a boy: nation and nature, kindness and peace, love and compassion for all. Still, life is beautiful and sweet, and when hope fails, love perseveres, and will not give up, I promise!

take a last look now
hard frost comes to this garden
so much goodness gone

dahlia tubers dug
sunflowers left out for birds
let kale stand and hope

hottest year ever
again and again fire ice
where does tao lead now

bless young activists
the old say bless warrior joy
our fall brings their spring

the tao wants freedom
health peace rule of spirit love
it outlives killers

we feed winter birds
we put dahlias out each spring
love and hope no end

light the cookstove fire
smell sweet garden harvest scents
rise from love’s oven

11/13/24

Poem of the Week, November 8, 2024

You can read the poem below.

Poem of the Week, November 8, 2024
First draft, first take, first day of grief

their diagnosis
terminal I can’t bear to
tell these chickadees

I walk the road north
saying sorry I’m sorry
to squirrels and deer

earth gives a sweet kiss
of dawn on our death’s forehead
goodnight poor humans

don’t tell old hermit
don’t disturb her prayers and work
stacking winter wood

ravens overhead
cluck like anxious grandmothers
who watch trouble come

han shan carves sorry
on each cold mountain path rock
only rocks will read

compassion kindness
our task always to choose tao
follow that way home

11/6/24

Poem and Gratitude for Election Volunteers

The text of the poem is below.

I am so deeply grateful for the many, many people I know who are sacrificing their time and energy to canvass and phonebank and be poll watchers and volunteer in so many ways for the sake of democracy, equality and the saving of the nation and life on earth.

I have given more of my all to this election than all the prior elections combined, but now in the final days my job is to serve as pastor to my community, so I am intentionally seeking the deepest spiritual place I can attain, meditating several times a day, and spending as much time in nature as I can tear away from my pastoral work.

Today what came to me was enormous gratitude for all you who are working so hard for this cause, and the strange thing was that I felt the gratitude was greater than just mine. I felt I had connected in me with the spirit that is in all the living things around me here, and I wanted to say thank you on behalf of all those creatures that have no vote, thank you to all my friends in swing states and working at home to make the world safe for all species.

So this poem and short nature video are for you. We are all with you. The force of nature, the will of the earth is with you. Please feel its power and joy in everything you do, and keep pushing until the polls close!

Chief Oren Lyons asked the United Nations
where was the four footed, where the eagle,
why do they not have their own delegations?
Excluding them cannot be right or legal
by nature’s law—the law that judges all
on how they treat all creatures and the earth.
Fifty years ago now he gave that call
and every day his words gain greater worth.
A bobcat crossed my field the other day
as I prepared my ballot for the mail.
Her grace and beauty took my breath away,
her powerful muscles, that mysterious tail.
It was my legal signature I wrote,
but hers the higher law, and hers my vote.

11/2/24

Poem of the Week, November 1, 2024

You can read the text below.

Friends, we are almost there—we are almost home, and that’s what today’s Poem of the Week is about (see below)! It’s really natural and even rational to get caught up in all the drama that is swirling around this election and to be feeling discouraged, disheartened or paralyzed by fear because of the fierceness of it and because of the stakes. (Read today’s 11/1/24 excellent free substack letters of Robert Reich and Heather Cox Richardson.)

We can’t let ourselves get paralyzed because we are almost home, and the saying is that a poll that is within the margin of error (as they all are) is within the margin of effort.

That’s what we need—we need to be giving all we have now for the next few days to get out the vote, everything we’ve got, and adding our voices to the growing joyful crowd endorsing Harris/Walz and Democrats.

In order to do that, we have to stay in the light, we have to keep positive and up, and there’s good reason to, so whatever works for you, wherever you find the light, please fill your vision with it now, and let’s take this baby home!

Here’s the poem, a stealth sonnet:






Coming home over Alger Brook
we saw, just as we crested
down from Blue Moon hill,
this brilliant yellow poplar,
like a flaw that flashes
from a gem—that radiant
thrill to see this candle flame
where all was bare, and know
our home was waiting
in its light, and now
when earth is shadowed
with despair it gives
the feeling life may yet
get right, or that at least
tonight we may find
peace, the comfort
of an evening by the fire, the quiet
darkness, letting stress
release, brief sweet fulfillment
of earth’s deep desire, reminding us
of all that we defend, the light
at this long homeward journey’s end.





10/28/24

				


	



			
				


	

							
Inscriptions of Epiphanies We Share
			


	
	
	

			






The text of this sonnet can be seen at the end of this reflection.


Epiphany comes from an ancient Greek word meaning to reveal.  When we say we have had an epiphany we mean the recognition of a truth that has suddenly been revealed to us, an “aha!” moment.  The church season after Christmas is called Epiphany because it celebrates God’s presence on earth revealed not only in Jesus but also in the manifestations of light we can see in all people and all nature.


Humanity needs both kinds of epiphanies right now as we search for a way forward through a world that has been made strange to us by our own actions.


We need to see new truths, and we need to see ancient truths anew.  We need to shape a new story out of the old, expressing a new understanding of our place and purpose in the universe.  Following our old story, our society has become polarized, our earth unstable, greed out of control.  Racial, economic and environmental injustice are bringing society to the point of upheaval.  And yet the heart of the old story has truth in it that we need to carry forward.


The violent riot that smashed its way into the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 carried signs, shouted slogans and blasted music that identified it as a white supremacist, fundamentalist, Christian-nationalist event.


The New Yorker published footage taken by journalist Luke Mogelson from the midst of the insurrection that he filmed with his phone. Continue reading →

				


	



			
				


	

							
Grace and Greatness at a Vigil at the Village Church
			


	
	
	

			






[The words of this sonnet about Grace Paley are printed below. It is closely connected to another poem and reflection on this site, “In the Shadow of Absence” that you can see by clicking here. It also relates to a recent sermon, “My Feets Is Tired but My Soul Is Rested” that you can see here.]


All Saints Day approaches.  One way to define saint is as a hero who also is a great soul.  This poem is about Grace Paley who would have laughed at being called a saint.  She was a true hero, though, and more than once she was called a great soul.  I think it honors the name “saint” to call her one.


We are at a moment of history that needs heroes and great souls.  We have no time to wait for them to appear.  We need to be them ourselves.


Some feel we need one great leader to emerge, but the world needs every hero and great soul it can get.  We don’t have to worry about being just ordinary people.  Most heroes and saints have been so only because the moment required it of them and they rose to meet its need.


What does it take to be a hero with a great soul? Continue reading →

				


	



			
				


	

							
The Harder Task, Revisited
			


	
	
	

			






[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]


We have a task that is of the highest priority.  It will take us all giving our all to accomplish it.  It will also take a cultural change of consciousness, maturing to a new Enlightenment, in order to have the wisdom, commitment and courage we need.


Elections are part of the task, Friday climate strikes and Black Lives Matter protests are part of it, the Poor People’s Campaign and all the liberation movements—they are different means to reaching the same goal, a world that is livable, lovable, sustainable and worth giving our all to save.


David Attenborough has produced an extraordinary film, David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet, that includes both his witness to the existential crisis that humanity has created and his vision of how we could still change course and reverse the damage and restore the stable planet that humanity has enjoyed for millennia. (You can see the film’s trailer below and find ways to watch it on YouTube or Netflix.)


His perspective is specifically focused on the biodiversity that we are rapidly destroying without which we may well become extinct, but the hopeful task he gives us is essentially the same in every crisis of injustice and abuse that we face, whether social, economic or environmental. Whatever issue concerns you most, listen to his words and see how they apply: Continue reading →