“The earth has music for those who will listen.”*

I’ll be honest: When it comes to nature, I was never much of a listener. Oh, I’ve always done my best to help preserve the earth, believing fervently in the critical importance of environmentalism – but in those hectic work and family years, I’m not sure I stopped to appreciate more than an occasional mountaintop view or sunset.

In retirement, however, my perspective has changed. My recent training to become an Extension Master Gardener – (a title I feel sheepish sporting given the many far more experienced folks in my cohort) taught me to more closely observe plants, which has in turn shifted my perceptions of the nature around me. Suddenly, while I can’t necessarily tell you the colors of my neighbors’ houses, I can describe in detail the shrubs and flowers they’re growing in their front yards. And with noticing comes appreciation, micro-joys to brighten my day.

It’s this awakening that has caused me to belatedly become aware of our lovely gardens at UU Asheville! I am deeply grateful for the work of Kate Jerome and Venny Zachritz, who coordinate the Landscape Team that is responsible for this amazing, all-volunteer effort. As a subcommittee of the Environmental Action Team, the Landscape Team practices sustainable gardening, using native and food plants to attract pollinators and support wildlife. In the last five years, the group has worked tirelessly to plant, transplant, and maintain gorgeous pollinator, wildflower, butterfly, and diversity gardens – all spectacular additions to the UU landscape. 

Kate and Venny are aided by a team of about ten congregation members, but they can always use more help! The team meets on the first and third Saturdays of every month for a two-hour work shift. If you’re interested in helping out – even if Saturdays don’t work for you – please contact them:  katejerome2020@gmail.com (Kate) or VPWZ5258@gmail.com (Venny).

I asked Kate and Venny about their inspiration for this service; after all, gardening is tough work! Kate loves the enthusiasm of volunteers for climate justice, the opportunity to share information about sustainable gardening with the community, and the knowledge that “we are making a difference in our landscape.” Venny is likewise inspired by the dedication of helpers, as well as by her ability to share “this service of dirt and sweat…with the congregation.”

If you haven’t taken a walk around our UU campus in a while, I encourage you to make time to do so before or after your next visit. I hope that, like me, you’ll find the rainbow of colors lining the sidewalks, and the lively bees and butterflies darting among the coneflowers, to add cheer to the landscape and a lift to your spirits.

Melissa Himelein 
Board of Trustees

*Attributed to varied writers, including William Shakespeare, George Santayana, and Reginald Vincent Holmes

In these times when it is difficult to express the heaviness in so many of our hearts as we witness immoral leadership making decisions that impact our communities, this story shared recently in Piloting Faith reminds me that we are not in this alone. 

“They say that long ago, when the world was quieter and people still listened with their whole bodies, a young woman named Amaru lived high in the mountains of the Andes. She came from a long line of weavers—women who threaded the memory of the earth into cloth, each design a quiet offering to the sacred.

But Amaru was untethered. Her mother had died. Her teacher had gone. The elders whispered that the thread of her spirit had become tangled. She felt it, too—like a silence inside her that had once been singing. One day, she climbed to the highest ridge. The wind was thin. The stillness vast. She pressed her back against a stone and wept—not with drama, but with that ancient kind of sorrow that lives in the bones. The kind that asks no questions. The kind that simply aches.

Then—a sound.        Whirrrrr.          A flash of color, a shimmer of wings: a hummingbird.

It hovered in front of her, still as breath, beating like a heart just beneath the surface of silence. She followed it—not with certainty, but with that soft kind of instinct that rises when words fall away. It led her over stone and through thickets, to a cave hidden behind a waterfall. Inside, the darkness pulsed. The walls shimmered faintly, as if remembering. And in that remembering, Amaru began to remember too.

She closed her eyes, and the cave became the sky. She saw her ancestors—not as names or photos, but as presence, as rhythm, as song. They were dancing and weaving and soaring, reminding her: you are not alone.
The hummingbird hovered near her chest. And a voice—not outside, but within—whispered:
We walk with you. We always have. Be still, and you will remember.

When she returned to her village, Amaru weaved differently. The stories in her cloth shimmered with new color, new memory. She didn’t speak of the cave. She didn’t need to. People felt it. In her presence, they remembered their own rootedness, their own sky. And ever since, when someone in the village is lost, they say:
Look for the hummingbird. She shows the way back to those who walk with you.”

I wonder who the ancestors that walk with you are.
I wonder how you are remembering your “rootedness” in these times.
May his story be a reminder that we are not alone.
May we resist together knowing we are buoyed by the ancestors and justice seekers that came before us.

In faith,
Rev. Claudia Jiménez
Minister of Faith Formation

PS Do you recognize where this photo was taken?