Blessing What SUSTAINS

This is Jo, writing from the old, round hills of Appalachia where I’ve lived for nearly twenty years. This month’s spell is the essence of my prayers to this land: Thank you for sustaining me, my family, my loved ones. Thank you for always being here, like a note with endless sustain. 

For the first five years of living here, I wanted to leave. I couldn’t commit. I felt unsettled for reasons I couldn’t fully name and I longed to return to the quiet, ferny woods of Vermont—the first green place I’d ever known. What I slowly came to realize was that my life was being steadily nourished here. I was planted like a weed in these mountains and I have never stopped growing. Even when I wanted to leave, this land was bestowing blessings upon me, one after the other. 

It has been one month since Hurricane Helene ravaged Western North Carolina and changed the lives of everyone I know here. There is so much grief. There is fear and exhaustion. It’s quieter than any other fall I’ve known, but it feels more intimate, too. We are all stripped down like the quivering trees–vulnerable, beautiful, and intrinsically connected. It’s impossible to know what to expect from the coming months, locally and globally. But my hope is that we can sustain this intimacy. 

May this spell be a guide for us as we walk into the dark of winter. No matter what happens, let’s nourish one another and be nourished, support one another and be supported. Whatever endures the storms, whatever sustains us, may we bring out attention there with blessings every day.