Earth Day – unabashedly female

April 22, 2013

Can we listen to Mother Earth, open heart to the ground? Are we willing to feel what we discover?

Today is Earth Day.

When we say, Happy Earth Day!, what are we really saying? We seem to be able to commoditize anything here in the West, especially the US, so the question seems very important.

Are we wishing each other a great day of celebration? A day to celebrate that we live on this amazing planet?

Are we attempting to remember the Earth in a way that brings awareness to our Mother’s plight?

Are we wanting to begin to live more in harmony with Her, attempting to be more conscious of how we treat Her, of how we see Her, of what we do to Her?

Is it just about us, to help us feel better because we, as a human whole, really don’t give Her much thought nor appreciate just how reliant we are on Her for our lives?

Is it for a Happy Earth? If so, maybe we need every day to be Earth Day for a long time, ’cause I’m feeling our Mother is not so happy.

About seven years ago, I was hiking on Mount Shasta with my partner. We’d had one of the most beautiful days of hiking I think I’ve ever experienced. If you’ve never been to Mount Shasta, it is a remarkable mountain. I know I am not the only one to feel or experience the ability to feel Mother Earth when you are on this mountain.

As we were headed back from our hike, we walked into Panther Meadow. Suddenly, I could feel the pain of the Earth. I could ‘hear’ her song and it wasn’t a song of lightness. It was a song of pain. I began to weep and I could not stop for quite a while. My partner just held me. He completely understood the depth of my feeling, even if he wasn’t feeling it himself. The feeling of grief seared my body, for it is through my body that I feel Her body.

If we stop and pay attention, if we really feel and listen, if we open our heart to Mother Earth, what will we feel?

What will we come to see?

How will we be touched?

How might it change our relationship to Her?

It is our relationship to Her that matters so much right now. We humans have threatened OUR existence as a species. It can be easy to brush this off because we’ve lived our whole lives on Mother Earth and it can feel like we, and future generations, will always live life here, especially a life where the majority of people have their needs met.

But if we keep going the way we are going, if we do not stop to really pay attention to Her, it seems pretty clear that we’ve already altered how we are living, as well as the kind of life that future generations of human beings will live. And, we don’t have to look far to see how we humans have altered life for other species.

What does it mean to be in relationship with Mother Earth?

In many, many ways, especially for women, it can be likened to how we are in relationship to our own bodies. For Mother Earth is where our bodies come from. She is where we receive our sustenance and nourishment. She offers us her waters and oxygen. She is where we will return to when we die.

I know, personally, how difficult it can be to remember to pay attention to Her and what is being done to Her in my day-to-day life, making ends meet, taking care of my needs and those of my family. I know how easy it is to take Her for granted, just as I take my body for granted and the wonder that it is.

Our love affair with thinking and logic and reason keeps us up and away from a conscious, feeling relationship with matter. We’ve made reason and science and logic our Holy Grail. And, we’re told God is the one who sits on high, away from Earth. But, that just isn’t so. The divine is in everything, including matter. And, yes, the word matter and Mother have the same root, linguistically.

We can begin to remember Her every day, when we begin to touch our own bodies with attention, our full awareness. We can deepen our relationship with Her when we deepen it with our body.Â

Can we come down fully into the body, fully into our cells with awareness?

Can we know we belong here in these bodies, here on this planet?

Can we feel ourselves holding ourselves with great affection and compassion?

Can we just be willing to feel, period?

Can we listen to Mother Earth, open heart to the ground? Are we willing to feel what we discover?

I have a sense that we don’t realize just how deeply Her pain affects us. How could it not? She is our Mother.

A few years ago, I wrote this post for Earth Day in which I shared a wonderful practice to help bring you and your body in closer relationship to Mother Earth. I hope you’ll take a moment to try it.

Happy Earth Day!

April 21, 2011April 23, 2011

Something Different for Earth Day

The task for women is to consciously live their unique connection with the earth. The earth needs to stay connected with consciousness. Matter is so dense, and consciousness vibrates at a much finer frequency, and matter needs consciousness. You can look at it as women providing a way for the earth to be conscious. ~ Angela Fischer, shared by Hilary Hart in The Unknown She

Last year, the United Nations designated April 22 International Mother Earth Day. I didnâ€™t know they had inserted the word Motherâ€¦nice.

I’ve spent a fair number of hours in these past weeks taking walks in the park across the street, a park filled with redwoods, creeks, a lake, all sorts of furry, scaly and winged creatures, and even a merry-go-round.

On my walks, I’ve been noticing how the earth is so alive, so available, so nourishing. As I walk, I feel the same aliveness is me, in the body, and I notice how deeply connected I am to her. I notice that as I am acutely aware of my own consciousness in the body, my awareness of her deepens. and vice versa.

Something Different for Earth Day

What is this deep connection women have with the earth?

Friends left some beautiful comments on my last post, Earth’s Embrace:

Colette: This is the most important thing we can do for Gaia today…simply engage with her.

Marjory: The Earth comes even more alive when we truly see and feel Her.

She comes alive, and we come more alive. There is a deep relatedness between women and the earth.

I’m feeling something different for earth day could truly bring us all more vibrantly alive.

Coming to know the earth in this manner, woman to earth to woman, can help us all to awaken.

Rainer Marie Rilke wrote:

“Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves.”

Immediate.

Fruitful

Riper.

Pulled down beneath the surface.

In our depths.

In our bodies.

Open and receptive to life.

Surrendered to life entering.

Creating and birthing new life.

As of the earth,

so as of women.

The old Irish saying, “May the road rise up to meet you” is a wonderful experience when you can really feel the earth meeting your foot.

When I consciously walk on the earth (in the happiest moments, I am barefoot), it’s as if the earth is meeting each footstep, meeting the foot, coming into relationship with each step. The earth is not just a lump of dirt…it is alive. It meets us, especially if we meet her, giving her our love with each step. I’m not sure the Irish meant that, but then perhaps they did.

One practice I give my coaching clients is that of ‘Lotioning’. I want to share it here, because it is such a lovely way to awaken the cells of the body with awareness and love.

Lotioning Practice

Find a nice lotion, one you really love the fragrance and feel of.
For a generous amount of time, at least 10 minutes, give yourself complete time and space to silently apply lotion to each part of your body, in this particular way. You can begin with any part of the body, but for example we’ll begin with the thigh.
Apply the lotion with your hand to your thigh, with awareness in your hand as it touches the thigh. Be aware that you are the lotioner, applying lotion to the leg.
Switch, and allow your awareness to be in your thigh, so you are the one being lotioned, aware there is a hand applying lotion to you. Feel the experience of being lotioned.
Switch back and forth, from lotioner to lotionee. Feel each sensation of applying lotion, and each sensation of being lotioned.
Repeat with your entire body, area by area.
As you lotion, notice if there are areas of the body where it is more difficult to be aware. Be kind to yourself as you enter these areas. Lotion lightly, yet continue to invite awareness into the cells there. If emotions arise, feel them, and let them move through you.

Take this awareness outside

You can take this same awareness outside to the earth.
Find a soft place to walk barefoot.
As you walk, become aware of your feet, each foot as you step on it. Feel the ground underneath each foot.
As you become more aware of the earth beneath your foot, be curious about any awareness you experience in the earth beneath your foot. Allow yourself to be surprised.

While to many, these practices may not seem as important or practical as what we’ve been taught to do on Earth Day, and everyday, anything that brings women into closer communion with the earth may be some of the most important ways we pay reverence and respect to this beautiful home that provides for us day in and day out.

I’ve discovered a direct correlation between how awake I am in my own body and how aware I am of the earth’s aliveness. The more aware I am of how little respect and love I’ve had for this body, the more aware I am of how unconscious I have been of the earth and all she provides.

May the earth rise up to meet you and may you come to know her as vibrantly alive and awake, and may we all come to know, in the cells of all matter, how sacred life is.

April 20, 2011April 20, 2011

Earth’s Embrace

Yesterday, as I do most days, I walked in the woods across the street from our house. But before I set out, I took a moment to capture some of the sights in our own yard. This one picture speaks to me in so many ways.

The heaviness of fruit is, many times, how I feel. My hips, my thighs, my belly all weighted down, pulling me close to the Earth’s embrace.

Just as these gorgeous fruity globes display, I, too, am imperfect. Blemishes here, spots there, a not-quite-symmetric fleshy shape enrobes me.

And while I can feel heavy and weighted, if I am willing to be vulnerable, I notice I am bathed in a light that is tender and fragrant. If I open toÂ the nourishment available to me in any moment, I can feel it enter my skin and bring sustenance to the cells that crave its touch.

All around me I am reminded of how the Earth provides. And, all around me I am reminded of how I take from her, almost always without any conscious gratitude of what she offers up without hesitation.

The Earth is alive. I hear her in the breeze. I feel her in the redwood trees outside my house. I taste her in every meal I eat. I know her as I know my own body – sometimes acutely aware, sometimes completely unconscious.

I hope to come to know her body through mine, to give back to her in some way for all she continually offers up to me, to my children and their children, and to all the world’s children.

April 17, 2010April 24, 2010

Listen Up Well

Roots, by Patti Agapi

The female human being is being born anew. She is coming into existence and we are midwifing her birth. Our ways of wisdom and powers of mystery were hidden well. They’ve been buried treasure for centuries. Now, it is time to listen, to remember, to recognize, to join together the vast humanity of woman. It is time to listen to the sacred sound that is uttered when we remember as the One that we are.

Rilke spoke of this new female human being. He spoke of the humanity of woman in letter seven of Letters To A Young Poet.

“This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it.”

I love to bring the brilliant work of many women together, in one place, to be savored, allowing the flavors to enhance each other, the poignancy to fill our hearts and wake us up.

I discovered the beautiful work of art above on Twitter. The artist is Patti Agapi. When I saw Patti’s drawing, I cried. I know this feeling, well, the feeling that Roots inspires. Head down on the warm Earth. So much a part of her that there is no distinction between where I end and where she begins. Held by her. Listening to her. Knowing there is no difference between the divinity in her and the divinity in me.

When I listen to her, I hear her anguish. And I feel her love. I feel myself as part of the Big Mother, and the home she offers up in every moment.

My last post, Life is Erotic, was met with so many lovely, rich comments. Your comments meant so much to me as that post came from such a tender place within me. One comment in particular, by Holly Friesen, spoke to this connection between the earth’s body and our bodies:

“The more deeply I feel the earthâ€™s body, the more I realize my own bodyâ€™s deep connection to herâ€¦we are one and the same being, both pulsing with a rhythmic life force that is flooded with eros. It is only when we strip away all this beautiful entangled life force that we are left with a trivial, vulgar view of eros. Eros in her full beauty is entwined throughout ALL of life; the flowers, the buds, the rivers, the rocks and our own bodies. It is only when the deep rift between sexuality and spirituality can be reunited that we will be fully whole. We feel this beautiful flow of life force most fully in the spring when the cyclical awakening and birthing is in full force!! Ah, what the spring does for the cherry trees is a joy and a miracle to behold!”

We are one and the same with the earth. The same divinity that looks out your eyes flows through her rivers. The same divinity that hears the birdsong in the early morning light flaps its wings to ride the waves of the wind. The same divinity that longs to remember its own wholeness opens its petals to receive sunshine, rain and the bee’s love.

The following, by Zsuzsanna Budapest, is from her book, The Holy book of Womanâ€™s Mysteries.

This is God, children, listen up well.

The beautiful blue planet, our mother, our sister.

She moves with 200 miles per second, yet imperceptible; she moves with the quiet of the lakes and the
rushing of her rivers, the vast expanse of her oceans, the echoes of her mountains.

This is God, children… listen up well.

Lift your eyes to the heavens, and you behold her sisters, the stars, and her cousins the suns and nebulas, and fill your senses with her infinite beauty.

This is God, children… and she has made no other heaven but the heavens where you already reside, and she has made no hell except the one you insist to create for yourself.

Here is paradise. Here is destiny. Here is infinite grace. This is God.

When you seek her she is beneath your feet.

When you seek her, she is food in your mouth.

When you seek her she is love in your heart, pleasure in your body.

You share her heartbeat.

Earth Day is upon us in a few days. But rather than seeing earth as something we celebrate once a year, perhaps we might open to what she offers to us in each and every moment, meet her with reverence, listen to what she is saying.

Her wounds are our wounds. Her delights are our delights. Her ability to regenerate is our ability to regenerate. How we feel about our bodies and what we say to them, she ingests. How we treat her, we ingest.

I have spent a lifetime saying very mean things to this body, my body that provides me with life. I have spent a lifetime worrying about how I look, with occasional silent wishes to slice some flesh off here and there, hoping to achieve some ideal that I can’t achieve. I am no different than any other human being, I suppose…at least any other woman that grows up in this culture of female objectification. And I know men don’t escape the pain of this either.

Objectification of any sort just keeps us believing in the dream of separation, the dream that is at the heart of the pain we all experience. And what is waiting for us when we awaken out of the dream of separation?

Here is paradise. Here is destiny. Here is infinite grace. This is God.

You can see more of Patti Agapi’s work at here.