Earth-based spirituality – Page 39 – Feminism and Religion

Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright

I awakened this morning to frozen raindrops hanging from trees – jeweled beads, snow capped hills, and a cacophony of spring songs – I was serenaded by robins, chickadees, phoebes, goldfinches, and nuthatch tweets as I walked out the door into the early morning sun. I listened for the cardinals, who for the moment were absent. It was cold! 28 degrees at the end of April speaks to anomalies, or more realistically, Climate Change.

Yesterday we had rain, and working in the still damp air is literally a healing experience. The fragrance is a combination of chemicals released by soil-dwelling bacteria, oils released from plants during dry spells and ozone created when lightning splits oxygen and nitrogen molecules that then turn into nitric oxide.

I dug in baby trees that I had rescued from the side of the road the day before. Salt kills tender cedar seedlings if the road crew misses slaughtering them. Around Maine trees are worthless except as an economically viable product, a heartbreaking reality for someone like me. Continue reading “Earth Day Reflection by Sara Wright”

Persistent Beauty by Molly Remer

I knelt beside a sprinkling
of deer fur
dotted with delicate snowflakes.
Don’t take a picture of that,
my husband said,
people will think it is gross.
I don’t find it gross.
I find it curious.
I find it surprising.
I find a story.
Sometimes I feel like
I have to battle a horde
of demonic trolls
before I can take care of myself,
I tell him,
and yet somehow,
I say,
always,
always,
I find my life is still a poem,
in the quietude,
in the battling,
on my knees in brown gravel
to better see this spray of fur
and how the frost
glows like white stars.

I sit on a stone in the pines and let the winds come, sweeping my hair back and lifting my lamentations from my forehead, where they have settled like a black cloud.

I let the air soften my shoulders and my sorrows, sunshine bright on thick brown pine needles, slickly strewn across the steep hill. Continue reading “Persistent Beauty by Molly Remer”

Coronavirus: The Villain Is Not Mother Nature: It Is Ourselves by Carol P. Christ

Over the past few weeks of lockdown in Greece, I have asked myself numerous times: if we can shut down the world economy because of a virus, why don’t we shut everything down until we end war or find real solutions to global climate change? In my mind the horrors of war are much worse than the horrors of disease and dying and the threat and reality of global extinctions pose a much greater threat to humanity (not to mention nature) than the Coronavirus.

Why is it that we are willing to take extreme measures to defeat the Coronavirus but we are not willing to take extreme measures to end war or to stop global climate change? A thought keeps creeping into the back of my mind: the fight against disease and death is (understood to be) a fight against Mother Nature and (sadly) we are well used to fighting against Her. If we recognized that human beings have brought the Coronavirus upon ourselves, we would have to face up to our responsibility for it. Continue reading “Coronavirus: The Villain Is Not Mother Nature: It Is Ourselves by Carol P. Christ”

The Healing Aspects of Ritual by Sara Wright

I have been writing and celebrating ritual for half of my life. The equinoxes and solstices and the cross quarter days (May 1, August 1, All Hallows, and February 2) comprise the eight spokes of the year. What I have learned from my research is that virtually every Indigenous culture follows this calendar in a general way – What I have gleaned from personal experience is that during these ritual periods my body is opened to the Powers of Nature in very specific ways that can be positive or/and negative.

Often I experience uncomfortable physical symptoms – feel an intense buzz, am struck by severe headaches, the feeling that I am walking on air without solid ground; I have unusual experiences with animals or plants; I am blind sided by radical insights in waking life or through dreaming. I have come to expect that usually there will be some kind of sign and if there isn’t one my body/mind isn’t in tune ritually and something is amiss – either my intentions, or the letting go (death) of some aspect of myself. The older I become the more I attempt to move through these periods with increased awareness that I am a receiver and need to be paying even closer attention… Continue reading “The Healing Aspects of Ritual by Sara Wright”

The Mountain and the Goddess by Judith Shaw

Mother Earth does not discriminate. She cares for all her children in all their varied forms. Our ancient ancestors considered Earth and its many geological elements to be feminine and/or associated with goddesses – from caves, to rivers, lakes and seas, to forests, to agricultural fields, to mountains.

Continue reading “The Mountain and the Goddess by Judith Shaw”

A Lovely Self-Imposed Isolation by Deanne Quarrie

With everyone talking about it – I won’t. Let’s just say that I am in the “at risk” population and have decided that staying home is my best protection against “it.”

Staying home is what I do most of the time. I am perfectly happy with that. I live on my computer and in the evenings, I take a break as a “couch potato” and indulge in serial watching! I only have one neighbor who comes over and I am keeping him outside and at a 6-foot distance, as he has no sense and is exposing himself in many ways, even though he too, is high risk.

I have been working for a few years on the creation of a group practice that honors Hekate and occasionally Her companions, in ritual. In my seminary, I have developed a Master of Divinity degree program with studies based on Her. All throughout this active work, most has been in researching but also a great deal in writing. I seem to be even more productive in this isolated state. As I am not isolated online, I have been communicating with others and we seem to be “triggering” each other’s creativity. The term “falling down a rabbit hole” has taken on new meaning. Not only am I falling down my own rabbit holes, I am falling down rabbit holes started by other people! Continue reading “A Lovely Self-Imposed Isolation by Deanne Quarrie”

Trees Sleep? by Sara Wright

This post follows last week’s post: The Forest Has a Heart?

In 2016, Zlinszky (Zlinszky/Molnar/Barfod) and his team released another study demonstrating that birch trees go to sleep at night (now we know that all trees – at least all the trees that have been studied so far – do sleep at night).

Trees follow circadian cycles responding primarily to light and darkness on a daily cycle. The researchers believe the dropping of birch branches before dawn is caused by a decrease in the tree’s internal water pressure while the trees rest. With no photosynthesis at night to drive the conversion of sunlight into simple sugars, trees are conserving energy by relaxing branches that would otherwise be angled towards the sun. Trees increase their transpiration during the morning, decreasing it during the afternoon and into the night. There is a change in the diameter of the trunk or stem that produces a slow pulse. During the evening and the night tree water use is declining, while at the same time, the stem begins to expand again as it refills with water.

When trees drop their branches and leaves its because they’re sleeping. They enter their own type of circadian rhythm known as circadian leaf movement, following their own internal tree clock. Continue reading “Trees Sleep? by Sara Wright”

The Forest has a Heart?** by Sara Wright

Scientist Diana Beresford Kroeger proved that the biochemistry of humans and that of plants and trees are the same – i.e. the hormones (including serotonin) that regulate human and plant life are identical. What this means practically is that trees possess all the elements they need to develop a mind and consciousness. If mind and awareness are possibilities/probabilities then my next question isn’t absurd: Do trees have a heartbeat?

According to studies done in Hungary and Denmark in 2017 (Zlinszky/Molnar/Barfod) trees do in fact have a special type of pulse within them which resembles that of a heartbeat.

To find this hidden heartbeat, these researchers used advanced monitoring techniques known as terrestrial laser scanning to survey the movement of twenty-two different types of trees to see how the shape of their canopies changed.

The measurements were taken in greenhouses at night to rule out sun and wind as factors in the trees’ movements.

In several of the trees, branches moved up and down by about a centimeter or so every couple of hours. Continue reading “The Forest has a Heart?** by Sara Wright”

Frozen 2: Can the Christian Church Hear its Gospel Song? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir

The first time I saw Frozen 2, I was impressed by the ecofeminism and the efforts to respect the Sami culture. The second time, I thoroughly enjoyed the superb music and the character development. The third time… was a religious experience.

Other contrubutors have written wonderful reviews of Frozen 2, and I agree wholeheartedly that its animation reinforces the sexist idea that females should be tiny compared to males, except for our eyes, which should be larger than our wrists. These disempowering representations saturate today’s media, and I regularly spend a whole lot of time deconstructing them with my daughters.

However, there is a lot to love about Frozen 2, and as a Christian, I found myself resonating with several of the symbolic truths the film offers. I spent some time looking into the Sami religion, to see how much of it was incorporated into portrayals of the Northumbra. I knew that Disney had consulted with Sami representatives to portray their culture with respectful accuracy. The Sami history is an all too familiar tale of violent imperial conquest allied with Fundamentalist Christian Dominionism. The wounds of Sami history certainly give me terrible grief as a white American and a Christian, and I hope that the anti-colonialist messages of the film spread awareness of such violence in my country. Continue reading “Frozen 2: Can the Christian Church Hear its Gospel Song? by Trelawney Grenfell-Muir”

The Portal: How Do We Know What We Know? by Sara Wright

Every morning I walk to the river in the velveteen hour between the vanishing blue night and the coming of the first scarlet, pink, lavender, purple or golden ribbons that stretch across the horizon. Sometimes clouds with heavy gray eyelids mute first light. Either way all my senses except that of sight are on high alert; a deep peace embraces me in the dark. My body knows the way. I murmur to the willows as I pass through the veil and under their bowed bridge. Their response is muted, a song beneath words.

At first my footsteps are barely audible on the narrow serpentine dirt path but as I pass by the river I note that she too is singing; and my senses quicken. If the Crane spirits are with me I hear the first brrring of Sandhill cranes as they take flight. “Freezing” I am crane struck; the involuntary need to stand still is overpowering. Body -mind viscerally absorbs Oneness as I breathe in a multitude of crane songs or perhaps only that of a few. Now my eyes are suddenly open, straining to see the familiar brrring materialize into startling graceful heads, necks, and stream lined bodies…. I note the shimmering waters beginning to mirror blushing pastels or the gray smoke that stains the horizon. Sometimes these hues deepen into rose, blood orange, or scarlet. Continue reading “The Portal: How Do We Know What We Know? by Sara Wright”