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Margaret Jarek

Tenant

mjarek Saturday April 1, 2017

Tenant 512
It would not be overstating it to say my primary relationship is with the earth.

It is the earth and all her life forms to which my being is wed.

While the local government has given me a piece of paper that grants me title and ownership to this diminutive plot of land on which I dwell I do not claim to own it. No one can own a parcel of the great Mother. I am as much a tenant here as are the birds who nest in the trees and the squirrels who play tag among the branches of the old cottonwood.

While I have brought in many forms of vegetation that were not here when I moved in, that only means I have simply welcomed back plants that were here in the time before the coming of the Europeans who believed they could do with the land as it pleased them with no thought of the life forms who had thrived here for thousands of years.

My role is to be a care giver of this urban plot who serves it faithfully and with reverence for the time in which I am here. It is the role to which I have been called and it is the role with which I am the most at ease.

I am at once custodian and celebrant of this small corner of the world and beyond its perimeters my presence makes small difference. And yet how much more hopeful the future would look if each of us made being the caregiver of a piece of land of any size our foremost priority and in doing so provide for the future health of our planet.

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