Earth-based spirituality – Page 15 – Feminism and Religion

For the Children by Sara Wright

“What you make from a tree should be just as miraculous as what you cut down”.

Richard Powers

November is the month of endings and beginnings – I am keenly aware of all trees as they prepare for winter sleep, and this is the season during which I begin to celebrate evergreens. Most deciduous trees are a tangle of sleepy gray branches, but the conifers are still breathing life. Herein lies the Deep Forest Green Religion of Hope. Many trees, both thin barked deciduous trees and conifers are still photosynthesizing.

I love gazing into the woods beyond my brook lush with balsam, fir and hemlock knowing that the animals and birds that are left will soon be nestled in thick undercover finding nourishment and protection from winter winds and snow.

Legacy of Carol P. Christ: As It Might Have Been: Ancestor Stories in the Dreamtime

This was originally posted January 9, 2017

In the middle of the night in waking sleep, I asked my great-great grandmother Annie Corliss to tell me the story of how she met and married James Inglis. This story came through me in a place I have come to call the Dreamtime. The Aboriginal term feels right. As I understand it, this is not a place where the dead speak to the living but rather a space where boundaries blur as the ancestors speak in us.

Annie Corliss’s Story: As It Might Have Been

Shifting Landscapes by Sara Wright

(Written on Oct. 27)

Adjusting to earth changes is as much of a personal challenge as is my aging process… The earth and I are both struggling to survive the age of the Anthropocene. Hard times.

It’s late October and the next turning of the wheel will soon be upon us. The Days of the Dead. Honoring the Ancestors, those who came before… I think of the Sandhill cranes flying south in loose family aggregations and believe some of my ancestors must be these birds… I missed seeing them this year due to an accident, but say earth prayers for their safety on the wing… I remember my Grandmother.

Witches in the Weeds by Sara Wright

There she is in flight,

a shooting star on fire.

There she spirals eyeless

her blue wind births chaos.

There she moans bitterly

churning up dark waters.

There she plows fiercely

heaving up mountains.

Her Datura pods explode,

broadcasting black seeds ..

Fire, Air, Earth and Water –

Old women stir the cauldron.

Shapeshifting into birds

they stalk fish in every marsh.

Black crowned night herons?

Owls with second sight?

Ah, these are the women with wings…

soaring through the night.

Listen to the reeds applauding.

Brown Cattails are humming.

Bitterns sing love songs to

Witches in the Weeds!

A Thealogy of Land and Roots by Kelle ban Dea

I am my Mothers
My Mothers are me
I am the Goddess
the Goddess is within me
As blood
as bone
as the spirals
of nuclei
as ova
as tears
as breath
I carry my Mothers
as my Daughters will carry me

And the Goddess carries us all

The Scarlet Runner Outside My Window by Sara Wright

I have grown scarlet runner beans ever since I can remember. I have heirloom seeds that I collect every fall to dry and store for the winter. During the last few years as the weather began to shift planting became tricky. The deer were also decimating my plants before they could produce seeds pods so eventually after sharing seeds with others, I gave up growing my own…

Last winter I had an opportunity to look at lichens, molds, and stones under a powerful microscope at the Mineral and Gem Museum (MGM) and since I had one old seed from many years past, I took it in along with some slime molds because I wanted to see the colors. To my utter shock when I opened the damp packet the seed had produced a big fat white root.

Label or Be Labelled Part 3: Toward Embodied Presence

In Part 1 of this series on labelling, I highlighted the difference between naming and labelling, and the search for a personal label as ‘participation ticket’ for life.

In Part 2 on professional and spiritual identity, I looked at what we can learn from the autoethnographic practice of disclosing various selves in research situations. I also discussed the effects of Christianity on the suppression of pagan traditions in northwestern Europe, and nature-based spirituality as part of our generic spiritual DNA.

Today I share a few final reflections including what groups celebrate their differences with ‘prides and games’, and which ones remain invisible? What are the effects of woke ideology on fear of expression and loss of voices, and an invitation for embodied presence as one characteristic of our shared humanity.

THE SKELETON TREE by Sara Wright

Moderator’s note: Our long time writer Sara Wright fell recently and broke her hip. I am writing this with her permission. Here is how she describes herself on our contributor’s page: Sara Wright is a naturalist, ethologist (a person who studies animals in their natural habitats) (former) Jungian Pattern Analyst, and a writer. She publishes her work regularly in a number of different venues and is presently living in Maine.

Sara is always reminding us to listen deeply to the earth, the animals, the plants and all of nature. Her revelations are always poignant, instructional and helps, encourages, pleads with to the re-member that we are the natural world and we must cherish our “roots.”

To Sara, heal quickly and continue to write for us.

Here is what she wrote about her accident.

Label or Be Labelled Part 2: Professional and spiritual identity

This post continues from Part 1, where I situated this essay as a reflection on Xochitl Alvizo’s article Human, Just Human. There, I questioned the difference between the power of naming versus the pressure to label. I then described my search for a personal identifier as ‘participation ticket’ to life. This feels important nowadays to join the conversation and not be dismissed by default. However, I wondered whether looking for things that set us apart emphasises otherness rather than shared humanity.

Today, I question what can we learn from autoethnography about the many selves we bring to different professional situations and how they might hide more than they reveal. I also describe the challenges of naming nature-based practices in a geographical area where 2000 years of Christianity forced our pagan traditions underground.

Monarch Magic, by Molly Remer

When my father was a boy in the 1950’s, he had a butterfly collection. His friends would bring him dead butterflies to add his collection and ask him what they were called. He got so many monarchs that his reply would be, “Thanks! That’s a ‘common sicker,’” secretly meaning they were so common he was sick of them. Now, my father is 70 and his grandchildren rarely see a monarch butterfly, the population of them having declined by 85% or even more in just two short decades. This rapid change is one of the most clear and alarming, observable indications of the massive changes wrought by both climate change and industrialized farming in our very own lifetimes.

Each year, I watch for monarchs from my Missouri home, during their migration season that carries them over our heads and on their way to Mexico. Each one I spot feels like a brush with magic on the wing, a testament to endurance and to hope. I watch them careen along in their delicate and determined way across highways and rooftops, across cars and parking lots, across my own house, and across open fields. I watch them alight on thistles, on goldenrod and oak trees, vine and bush. I see one above the Atlantic Ocean at Daytona Beach. I see two above the weeds in the Dollar General parking lot in Alabama. I see one above the sunflowers by the overpass in Kansas City. I see two coming over the Walmart roof and into the Staples parking lot in central Missouri.