2017 Fall | Earth-Love Newsletter

September 2017

GOOD GRIEF

After the harvest, we know full well the leaves will drift and drop leaving the trees bereft, and that this natural cycle of loss takes place in us, too. Do we enter these spaces willingly when memories of so many losses may haunt?

The leaves replenish the Earth. Can their demise be welcomed or avoided? Death – my pain, my friend, breaker of old patterns, renewer, transformer.

“Pay attention, feel what is happening to the Earth in your own neighborhoods and cities. Allow your heart to ache. Only when we fully face and truly feel our loss and our grief can we open the way to the new life that awaits us.” Llewellyn Vaughan Lee and Hilary Hart, Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life.

 

---

 

October 2017

BREATHING

This newsletter opened exactly a year ago, and is blossoming thanks to your contributions and responses to the Earth. It began with, “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 engage you.

Earth-love doesn’t require us to change what we do, but to simply bring some loving awareness to those moments.” (You can read the newsletter and past ones at my Earth-Love Blog.)

I shared how at age 28, while suffering with asthma, I realized that I couldn’t control even a single breath, and how over the years, I’ve come to appreciate a little of what I’m given by this great Being who supports us every microsecond in so many ways.

*****

In Spiritual Ecology: 10 Practices to Reawaken the Sacred in Everyday Life, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and Hilary Hart in their chapter, Breathing, relate, “Because you are always breathing, you always have access to the sacred; you always have a refuge in the Real.” The first suggested practice is:

“Wherever you are, whatever you are doing, you can pay attention to your breath. Listen to your breath, feel your breath, be aware of your breath. Sensing how the breath infuses the body, you attune to a tenderness and quietness within life. In today’s over-stimulated world, most of us need access to this refuge that is gentle and rhythmic, simple and alive.”

 

---

November 2017

COOKING

I love cooking. Chopping vegetables gives me joy. I peel a carrot and smell its sweetness. The cross-sections of cucumbers, tomatoes, broccoli, asparagus amaze me. My fingers patiently persuade a clove of garlic to slip out of its outer skin. Ah! Now come the squashes: butternut, delicata, kabocha — baked, warm, and full of goodness. What storehouses of color, texture, seeds, and energy! As I chop, I thank. And then there are the Earth’s herbs, fresh or dried, to sprinkle in the pan, pot, or dish.

Please share your cooking experiences.

*****

A friend from Sweden sent this communication she had with the Earth two summers ago.

She, sweet and all embracing as always, makes me feel loved and cared for at the very core of my being.

When I asked if she had a message for my human friends she told me these words:

I gift you with all of me,

as all of you is gifted in me.

Love me, feel me, be with me!

Would you, could you…be my song?

To the drumbeat of my heart

dance the rhythm of freedom into your World,

to the drumbeat of my heart…Dance!

We are currently accepting submissions of your Earth–Love experiences to be published in an upcoming issue. Perhaps you could take 5 minutes to jot down one of your experiences or send a photo with a short commentary to this link. Thank you so much.

Read Summer 2017 << >> Read Winter 2017/2018