Earth-based spirituality – Page 37 – Feminism and Religion

With Beauty Around Me by Carol P. Christ

When I moved from Lesbos to Crete, I decided to take some 30 large and medium-sized handmade terra cotta pots acquired over the years along with me. As I had been living part-time in Crete for several years, most of the plants had died, but I managed to salvage freesia bulbs, chives, and cuttings from nutmeg-scented geraniums.

My friend Mavroudis helped me empty the soil into feed bags provided by a neighbor who keeps sheep. I decided to move the dirt too, as I didn’t fancy carrying numerous bags up to my apartment. The movers were not too happy about this, and by the time they were deposited higgledy-piggledy on my balconies in Crete, several of the pots were broken and the bags were leaking.

I mended the broken pots with trusty epoxy glue before I got sick, which was lucky, because, since then, I would not have been able to do it. A few weeks after arriving, I felt tired and had trouble eating. I was diagnosed with cancer and began chemo-therapy. I have little physical energy and spend much of my days resting in bed or sleeping. There are still many boxes to unpack and they can wait, but I felt the need to tend the balconies. Continue reading “With Beauty Around Me by Carol P. Christ”

Sacrificial Gathering in the Long Covid Desert by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

I am a fairly private person; but I do like nice hugs. I grew up in a home that involved so much intentional love and affection that I came to see it as a normal part of any loving relationship. I’m pretty sure I startle my friends sometimes by saying such affectionate things; but they endure, and many of them claim to appreciate a nice hug, too.

I know there are plenty of people who have experienced unhealthy or abusive touch; in fact, I’m one of them. I also know that the way to heal those wounds is usually through healthy touch, in relationships of trust.

Morning Meditation by Sara Wright

I have just returned from the brook where I offered up my Toad Moon prayers to the song of the Hermit thrush and to the rippling waters – first honoring my body with a poem written just for her, and then by repeating my hope/belief/intention that the search has ended and my house will get the structural help she needs without invasive machines scarring my beloved trees and land… I release my doubt – a plague that has incarcerated me for months.

I felt my body rooting into forested soil… I belong here; I am loved here.

Peace filtered through the green – trees, seedlings, lichens, mosses, grasses and the clear mountain waters. Silence, except for thrush’s morning benediction. Continue reading “Morning Meditation by Sara Wright”

La Llorona Musings by Sara Wright

In Abiquiu New Mexico I walked down to the river and Bosque (wetland) communing with trees, leaving in the dark and returning before dawn every morning. Red Willow River is a tributary of the Rio Grande. I didn’t need to see; my feet knew the path by heart, so I was free to let my other senses take precedence. Listening to the sound of my feet, the first bird song, I moved into a still place, while first light gathered itself around me like a luminous cloak under the cottonwood trees. On my return the curves of the river and the dazzling painted sky held my rapt attention … I didn’t realize for a long time that this daily meander was actually a walking meditation that helped stabilize me in a place that I loved but could not call home.

In the mystical magical twilight, if the conditions were right, I witnessed the mist rise over the river and whenever this happened it seemed to me that I ‘sensed’ a figure emerging from that cloud… this apparent apparition never ceased to pull me into her ‘field’. The woman was always weeping and I called her La Llorona, believing that she wept for the Earth, my precious Earth, because her animals and trees and plants were dying. Extinction was concrete reality, a daily occurrence. Cultural denial made it impossible for me to share my grief, but here, with La Llorona, I was witnessed and free to mourn… Continue reading “La Llorona Musings by Sara Wright”

In Sight (Part 2) by Sara Wright

This post follows In Sight (Part 1).

Yet, I was content enough here wasn’t I [living part of the year in Abiquiu, New Mexico]? The desert was starkly beautiful, and I loved the place I lived, doing my best to create a home, planting trees and creating small gardens. I had escaped the too long winters, the heavy physical work associated with them. Yet questions gnawed at me. What did it mean to feel at home? Why the profound feelings of emptiness and lack of clarity? And what about the light?

I couldn’t escape the problem of light. One of the reasons I set out for the river in the dark was because I wanted these walks to end before sunrise. There was a quality of intense light present during the day in the too thin air that I found disturbing. Too much light, air, wind, and on the other extreme, too much stone. The crust of the earth held little in the way of new life in the desert. Survival of any plant species was precarious and dependent on the rains that rarely came. Almost everything I planted ended up dead. The desert had little to offer in terms of containment for people or plants. The sky gods ruled the desert, and did so with an iron will. Stone doesn’t surrender; it is incapable of receiving. This was not a forgiving place. Continue reading “In Sight (Part 2) by Sara Wright”

In Sight (Part 1) by Sara Wright

Four years ago I made a radical decision to spend a winter in New Mexico. Maine winters were long and I was 71 years old. An unfinished experience 25 years ago had left me with a longing to spend more time in the desert. Although I had formed a deep and abiding relationship with my land in Maine over a period of almost 40 years and had constructed a small log cabin on this beautiful piece of property that has a brook on three sides, woods and fields, I wondered if at this stage of my life I should consider moving….

I was very fortunate to find a place to live In Abiquiu, NM, and eventually I was able to move into a friend’s newly built casita that bordered a tributary of the Rio Grande, which also abutted another friend’s property. This abutting property included a Bosque (river wetland). I was blessed to have a beautiful place to walk through without having to get into a car. Most hikes required driving somewhere, a practice I disliked.

I discovered over time that New Mexico was a land of extremes – and not the paradise I had expected. The one torturous summer I spent there under 100 plus degree heat made it clear that I could not live in this stifling sauna with its bloody burning sun year round. Wildfires burned continuously. The west winds roared churning up clouds of dust that choked the air, sometimes for days on end; and the winds were relentless, especially during the spring. I remembered fairy tales that spoke to the malevolence of the west wind; I imagined I could feel that power here. Continue reading “In Sight (Part 1) by Sara Wright”

Lammas after Lockdown by Laura Shannon

Today, August 1, 2020, is Lammas, the Celtic festival of late summer, the ‘feast of bread’, time of harvest and of golden grain. Here in the UK, Lammas arrives just as we are emerging from our coronavirus lockdown. It’s hard to feel a personal sense of ‘harvest’ when most people’s lives have been on hold since the spring.

Confined to our homes, many people could throw themselves into tending their own gardens (if they had one), but most of us could not cultivate the symbolic gardens of our lives and work in the way that we wanted. Many have faced deep loss, the withering of seeds planted in the past which could not now come to fruition.

Despite the tragic times, the earth continues to dance to the sacred rhythms of sun and moon. The trees are full of fruit, the fields are full of grain. Although I too have had my share of sorrow and grief in recent months, today I feel moved by the season to look at what we can harvest from our experience of the coronavirus pandemic.

Continue reading “Lammas after Lockdown by Laura Shannon”

Ecocide and PTSD by Sara Wright

The fierce light of the white star pierced her thick white fur as the mother froze. She was trying to imagine how her cubs could make the jump from one jagged ice flow to another in the cracked deep blue waters.

Just a few months ago she had birthed them on solid well frozen ice – cubs who knew nothing but nurture – feelings of safety, love, rich abundant milk – trusting their mother implicitly – the solid blue ice that supported them was home. Now her children faced the threat of death by drowning… A mountain of despair flooded the bear’s mind and body. Blind fear slammed through her young. To lose her cubs was more than the mother could bear. All the accumulated bear wisdom – 50 million years of bear knowing – could not help her now. Her children were helpless. Continue reading “Ecocide and PTSD by Sara Wright”

Midsummer Meditation by Sara Wright

It is past “midsummer” and we are moving into the hottest time of the year without a drop of nourishing, healing rain… When I walk around outdoors I find myself focusing on the many different ferns that grace the forest edges – ferns that hold in precious moisture creating damp places for toads and frogs to hide, places for young trees to sprout, places for the grouse and turkey to hide their nestlings, ferns whose lacy fronds bow low as if in in prayer. Sweet fern covers the hill above and around the brook.

The Ostrich ferns are giant bouquets that sprout up around Trillium rock shielding tender wildflower roots. Maidenhair is being devoured by insects, sadly, the only fern having difficulty here. New York ferns are stiff with ladder like fronds and the few cultivars provide soft shades of dark red, blue and green. Along my woodland paths the tall pale green bracken stalks have to be pulled although I leave all that I can around the edges to protect the mosses. All the ferns are forever unfurling in a state of becoming, spiral gifts for any discerning eye. Continue reading “Midsummer Meditation by Sara Wright”

The Song of the Forest by Sara Wright

When He comes
I forget who I am.
My story vanishes.
Boundaries dissolve.
Emerald green,
leaf filtered light,
clear mountain streams,
trees, lichens, moss –
become ‘all there is’.
In the still dawning
animals speak.

Nature’s ultimate gift is that given the chance S/he dissolves the artificial socially constructed boundaries that humans have erected to separate themselves from the Earth who is burning in the Fire, unable to breath, as many of us are beginning to do now.

We have a choice to re-establish interconnection – to become part of the original family that birthed us into life 500 million years ago… regardless of outcome.

Developing an intimate connection with Nature allows us to disappear into the whole. Ironically, dissolution of self is where peace is found.

Sara 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.