Earthprayer, by Molly M. Remer

The Earth is my teacher
I shall always want
I witness her still meadows
She leadeth me to green pastures
She restoreth my soul
On tree covered hills
She reminds me I am home
and, yea, I walk in her valleys
and I fear no suffering
She is with me
Her mountains and rolling rivers
they comfort me joy bubbles through my veins
and enlivens my footsteps
my cup runneth over
truly I stand
in mysterious awareness
all the days of my life
and She holds me
in the palm of her hand
forever.

I was raised in a non-religious home with some mildly pagan elements, but my mom did also have a Bible from her own childhood years (also non-religious). This Bible had an elaborate endpaper with a painting of the Psalm 23, the text of which was also printed in the interior near the beginning, and I remember being fascinated by it, attracted to the notion of a book of wisdom as well as the lyrical Psalm itself. When I read Annie Finch’s post here on FAR (the Goddessness Prayer), it made me think of one of my own older pieces of writing, a rewrite of Psalm 23, reflecting my own earth-centered understanding of spirituality and meaning. I wrote it in 2010 or 2011, as an articulation of my own living thealogy. It was later published in my first book of poems, Earthprayer. In 2016, I wrote a post here on FAR in which I shared two of my favorite quotes:

“Earth is a mystery school complete with initiations and discoveries that you only experience by living with your feelings, touching the earth, and embracing the fullness of your humanity.”

–Queen Guinevere

“Let the beauty we love 
Be what we do
There are hundreds of ways
to kneel and kiss the Earth.”

–Rumi

(note: amazing song version of this by Reclaiming is here)

Sometimes I describe my work and writing as “a love song to the Ozarks.” I am deeply embedded, body and soul, in this land that I come from, my bloodland, the place where I belong. Seven generations of my family have called these wooded hillsides and stony ridgetops home. This is my mystery school, where I explore hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the earth.

In 2021, I created a daily practice I called 30 Days of Goddess, which was originally intended to be a practical, simple way to help people bring devotional practice into their days in a way that helped to carve a space for the sacred and for oneself at the center of the day, instead of relegated to the edges—to someday, perfect, or later—instead to inhabit the fabric of life’s unfolding, connected, rooted, intentional, and aware. As time went on, I added many more components and options to the core practice, which means it hasn’t necessarily remained as “simple and sacred” as my original idea. Now, in June, we reach the 2000^th continuous day of 30 Days of Goddess and I’ve been exploring the idea of going “back to the roots.” For me, the roots are in the Earthprayer rendition of Psalm 23 shared here, in the idea of learning from Earth’s Mystery school, in kneeling to kiss the earth in hundreds of ways.

I came to goddess-oriented, feminist spirituality from a root interest in feminism, women’s stories and women’s rights, and in ecospirituality. From here grew an interest in the sociopolitical significance of the goddess (as deity, archetype, or ideal as Karen Tate would say). From here, grew an interest in the personal, process-based experience of a living spirituality, rooted in the earth, the body, and the cycles of life. Another root for me was my own experiences with mother blessing ceremonies to which I was introduced as a child when my mom’s friends held these rituals for one another when they were preparing to give birth. I carried this practice on into my local community and one day had the epiphany that we could hold rituals, circles, and ceremonies whenever we wanted without any needing to be pregnant! This root took hold and bloomed into retreats, rituals, rites of passage, and Red Tents, all right here in rural, south central Missouri.

As I make plans for celebrating the 2000^th day of shared practice with my community, I have also been considering what I mean by back to the roots.

Your roots can be:

• Your own past self, a time at which you felt free to be who you really are, an original self. (Can also be ancestry, heritage, legacy, and place—ancestors of bone and ancestors of stone.)
• Newness when starting out on your path, the early days, your beginner’s mind.
• Core realities and knowings that anchor you and bring you back to center in the present moment.
• What is stabilizing and supporting you and centering you right now and what you want/need to tend to.
• What nourishes you, what holds and supports you as you bloom.

How about you? What are you learning this summer in earth’s mystery school? How are you kneeling to kiss the earth? What are your roots?

I am sinking,
settling,
softening,
and slipping
into the roots,
into the belly,
into the bones,
into the heart,
into the loam,
into the wild current
of this sacred world,
my home.