Elemental

"Morgan of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day 

when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods."

That sentence plunges me into a world of wind, stone and jeweled towers, deep forests, wizards and vesta, riddles, crashing waves, and people who fiercely love and learn.

When I first read Patricia McKillip's series, sometime in middle school, her characters and land fell into place in me as I recognized a deep sense of also being made of bone and flesh, rock and water, earth, sun, breeze. I fully believed a world in which we live connected to all the elements in all forms. That belief stayed with me through the next 40 years of becoming my own person. It remains through multiple iterations of man-made structures, theologies, descriptions of how the world might be and what it's all about.

We are flesh and blood in a place of warmth, cold, stone, water, stars. This good world holds myriad beauties and horrors, moments of flourishing, peace, and good mixed with moments of power and greed run amok. And the river runs on, with us joining in or watching it pass as we choose or are able, creating possibilities for the spirit of healing.

This particular moment feels like one of work, one of choices, to let the waves of power and greed grow or to learn how to counteract them and overcome. Plenty are the people looking out only for themselves and theirs; the spotlights on them make them feel overwhelming some days. I am heartened, though, by the hosts I see marshaling, whether neighbors strengthening connection in order to care for the vulnerable, women - as Audre Lorde did - creating places for words and action in place of silence, business owners prioritizing well-being of their employees and communities, permaculturists and homesteaders nurturing their own spaces and their virtual networks, the medical community rising up, Michelle Obama doing anything, urban non-profits learning from and working with their neighbors, people of all generations around the country and world joining together for better.

The gathering of the land rulers at the end of McKillip's series is one of grieving, sobered relief, and of love. Their hope is in the continuation of life, in the strength and grounding of the sun, tides, and winds, their experience of seeing love and faith chosen, the reality that choices matter.

Choices toward faith matter. Choices toward good, healing, embrace, toward creating spaces for our souls to flourish, toward building - not breaking. Choices matter.