2017/2018 Winter | Earth-Love Newsletter
December 2017
COMPOSTING AND “EARTH’S SECRET MYSTERY”
Sharon Bard sent me an article, Dirty Mind: thoughts while composting, some months ago. It was originally published in Resurgence Magazine. She recently lost her home in the Santa Rosa fires. Here are her opening and closing paragraphs:
I am a compost fanatic on a dead end road in Sonoma County California. Dirt under my fingernails, I caress rotting materials, smell rich odors as food scraps and spent leaves turn slimy and powdery. My fingers frolic through rose petals, pruned branches, bits of corn cobs. I join in the conduit of earth and sky, apprenticing with nature as she breaks down and heats up, tempers waste materials, refines and reuses them. By eating herself up, this matter, from the Latin “matrix,” or “mother,” creates fertile soil using water, air and sun in an elemental disappearing act, perpetually becoming.
I am the garden and the gardener. The compost, composition and the de-composition, witnessing a miniature universe perform its ongoing dance of amassing and disintegration, of gathering in and releasing. Small rocks, cool and resistant, will become sand grains long after I expire. But today, under a still redwood sky, I offer finely ground, dark smelling, porous loam to the tender green shoots in the vegetable bed. My modest acts as a sorcerer’s apprentice reimburse our planet as I turn and re-turn this “dirty,” “soiled” resource. And I am riveted even more passionately to Earth’s secret mystery: making life out of the dying.
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It’s hard to explain the staggering beauty of fall, so I turn to poetry. Here is the closing stanza from a piece named Judas-tree.
Do we look to see —
do we dare be—
this stark beauty
all about?
January 2018
THE SUBTLETIES OF WATER AND LIFE
I’d like to start off the year by affirming that sharing your experiences of love for Earth and Earth’s love for you, is central to this newsletter. Whether it’s a glimpse of sky on a city street or making tea at home, I believe it’s our loving awareness that counts. So please make time to send in something.
We are a very busy, “doing”-oriented culture. Here are two contributions with which you may well be familiar, that I always find refreshing.
Three years ago, David Spangler, shared this New Year’s experience with a Water Spirit:
I had just filled a glass with water from the tap, and as I was lifting it up to drink, there suddenly appeared in the water in the glass a small being that identified itself as a water spirit. It spoke with great urgency and passion and said, in effect, “When you use water, please send loving, healing, and uplifting energy (Light) to the kingdom of the water spirits for many of our kind are suffering and are under siege from the continuing and increasing pollution of water by humanity. We need your support and blessing from which we can draw strength.”
I’ve never had an experience quite like this, and I wanted to sit with it for awhile before sharing it to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. I’m not an alarmist, but the appeal of this being was so heartfelt that now whenever I pour myself a glass of water or take a shower or bath, I tune in to the realm of water spirits and elementals and offer my Light and blessing and strength.
I’m passing it on should you like to do the same.
The full version is at https://lorian.org/water-spirit-message/
The astonishing work of Masaru Emoto with water is described on many sites and in his books. Here is an excerpt from http://www.masaru-emoto.net/english/water-crystal.html
This world is filled with wonders and mysteries that get more incomprehensible if we try to think of a reason. In a familiar situation, for example, why do dogs exist and why do cats exist? Why do mice exist and why do snakes exist? Why are there cherry blossom trees and why are there willow trees? What is a human being in the first place? As such, there are so many incomprehensible things that we cannot understand at all.
Thus, except for some of truly basic things, no one disagrees that there are still so many unknowns. Probably we understand 3%. in other words, I think 97% is unknown. The reason why the number is 3% is that the research of geneticists revealed the level of our DNA activation is 3%.
I believe the original idea of creation by the creator of this universe was “the pursuit of beauty.” Everything is combination of energetic vibration. As vibration resonates, it makes some tangible objects.
Combination of non-resonating vibration can result in destructive energy, and nothing can be created out of it. When some vibration and the other resonate each other, it always creates beautiful design. Thus, most of the Earth is covered with beautiful nature.
That is why scientists, philosophers, and religionists pursue for unknown facts. Is it presumptuous to suggest them taking paths with “the pursuit of beauty” in mind as a means to confirm their right paths?
There are approximately 7 billion people exist on this Earth now. I think there is one common standard we share although our skin colors, languages, religious beliefs may be different. I think that is the standard of “beauty”.
However, the deep pursuit of beauty is slightly different depending on experience, age, and personality. That is why many types of wonderful artists who pursue the secrets of beauty always appear in the human history one after another.
Therefore, the photograph of crystals is neither science nor religion. I hope it is enjoyed as a new type of art. Nevertheless, the world it shows is truth, and there is no doubt that many messages essential to our lives are hidden in it.
These two photos; “You Fool!” (top) and “Eternal” (bottom), are taken from ‘Water and Words’. You will also find ‘Water and Music’, ‘Water and Prayer’, and ‘Natural Water’ among Masuro Emoto’s many photos.
February 2018
EARTH’S POWERS
So, you may be thinking, what have Water Spirits (see January 2018 Newsletter at this link) got to do with helping us overcome the terrible effects of our ignorant actions on our one and only home?
There are many kingdoms waiting to help us once we acknowledge them. Here is a link to a fantastic talk R. Ogilvie Crombie (ROC) gave in the early 70’s at the Findhorn Foundation, Scotland. The folks at Findhorn have been working with nature beings and devas for over 50 years. ROC describes in a very sober, rational way his extraordinary meetings with nature spirits and his conversations with the great Pan himself. This link was kindly sent by Findhorn’s archivist, who had added accompanying photos in the 80’s that illustrate the many places and images to which ROC refers.
Taking a broader context, once you and I realize the sacredness of all life, it changes us and it changes our relationship to Earth. Earth can give us access to her power.
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee in For Love of the Real describes how, “As we awaken to this sacred unity at the core of the world, life itself awakens, because we are not separate from the whole. This power within life gradually becomes available, and we can learn how to use it. It belongs to the magical nature of life, life’s ability to change and evolve. It carries the ancient wisdom of the archetypal world, an understanding of the energy patterns within life, the grids of power within the Earth.”
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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.
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!
One of Spain’s great poets and playwrights, Federico Garcia Lorca (1898 – 1936), hints at our most tragically under-utilized faculty, in this poem, Curve. Born near Granada and killed there by Franco’s fascists at the outset of their Civil War, Lorca had roots extending back to Moorish Spain that are still palpable in his work.
Curve
With a lily in your hand
I leave you,
o my night love!
Little widow of my single star
I find you.
Tamer of dark
butterflies!
I keep along my way.
After a thousand years are gone
you’ll see me,
o my night love!
By the blue footpath,
tamer of dark
stars,
I’ll make my way.
Until the universe
can fit inside
my heart.
You can see more of Sally Sweetland’s work at this link.
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 Fall 2017<< >>Read Spring 2018
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