2016 Fall | Earth-Love Newsletter

October 2016

WHAT DOES EARTH-LOVE LOOK LIKE? 

Dear friends,

I’d like to say a little about how Earth-love looks and feels. Indeed, with your help it could pass into daily usage, not as some trendy phrase, but a simple daily practice that we model for each other.

For me Earth-love starts with the breath. For you it may begin with a footstep, a bike ride, cooking, washing, gardening, any number of daily activities that you engage in.

At 28, while on holiday, I developed asthma. I didn’t know it was asthma. I only knew that I couldn’t breathe easily. Eventually, it dawned on me that I couldn’t even control a single breath. Much later came the realization of the absolute wonder of each and every inhalation and exhalation given to us so freely by this great Being who supports us every microsecond in so many ways.

How can I express my deep gratitude and appreciation to Her trees, sky, water? It may be with a sigh. It may be with a joyful word meeting a neighbor on a walk. The ways are countless and unique to each of us, and we can expand them!

Earth-love doesn’t require us to change what we do, but to simply bring some loving awareness to those moments.

Now, I would like to hear your contributions or questions, so that, if you are willing, we can together enrich our response to our Mother, our friend.

I feel that I’m one of thousands of seeds sprouted by the Earth in this time of need.
You, no doubt, are another such seed.

To Her Loveliness

each crinkly leaf
each trailing yellow shamrock
or clover crown

each floating spore
swallow swoop
canopy of thousands dancing to the wind

each set of see-through humming wings
open-throated quaver
bright-spiked shoot

each fledgling oak
tottering on
its slender stem

scarlet neckband
draped round
golden poppy

each pair of gold-rimmed coupling beetles
sunbathing mottled rock
swan-winged scented iris

binds us to her loveliness.

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November 2016

WHAT DOES EARTH-LOVE LOOK LIKE?

Dear friends,

Please share your experiences and insights. This is Mary Johnson’s contribution from Australia.

I like the idea that I am in conversation with the world in all kinds of ways. So, as I would with a fellow human, I try to notice ‘what is’ and then observe what arises in me in response. Here’s an example:

Birds and butterflies, this garden is full of both. A young scrub wren came into the house this morning with such a calling from parent to child – ‘I’m here, I’m here!’, ‘I’m here, I’m here!’. Eventually he is out of the house and sitting on the veranda rail in full sun, stunned, mouth open, exposed to predators. I am quite close before he flies into the cool and relative safety of the magnolia. I heard the wrens around there ‘pee pee pee, tut tut tut’. I hope they find the little fellow.

The coming together, the nest, the egg, the wait of brooding, the hatching, the feeding, the right time to leave, to fly, the feeding, the chivvying, the loss…

I put water in a shallow bowl in the shade where they might come. A rock to perch on in the centre. I cannot know the outcome.

It gives me pleasure to revisit this little moment and I’m reminded to make the effort to be present in this way more often. This tiny drama involved and moved me and, because I wrote it down, I am helped to remember how strongly I felt for the parent bird and the conclusion that I would not have the satisfaction of knowing that my efforts were of any use at all. Which is how things are often. Just responding to need and letting go of the outcome. So there was a lesson there for me too. It was a good conversation.

I also made this very simple drawing of the fledgling and cropped it so the bird faces the corner – why I wonder? I can see the picture on my dresser now and value it somehow – perhaps something to do with remembrance… because it reminds me of the vulnerability and distress of this tiny creature and how significant that was for me at the time. And we are all tiny creatures of course…

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Read Earth-Love Winter 2016/2017