Environmental Spirituality – Page 3

A Creation Narrative Leads to a Surprising Equinox Encounter, part 1 by Sara Wright

Walk lightly
pay keen attention…
practice gratitude
but not at the expense
of truth
take sparingly
share

an Underground Web
writes the Story
my roots
belong to Earth

‘Listen to
feathered voices,
seek mushroom clouds
keep breathing deep
into the forest floor
feel that luminous Light
rooted beneath my feet’

(my fall equinox prayer)

During these days of mindless violence and fearful political upheaval, I feel driven to enter the woods on a daily basis. Lately, I haven’t even left my property. As I cross the bridge over the brook, I brush by the first lacy hemlocks and lovingly touch a branch of witch hazel whose lemony fingered flowers reach for mine. I am on the trail of mushrooms, but not as a forager.

I am drawn to these fungal fruiting bodies because I am trying to learn more about the complex relationships between certain fungi that emerge as mushrooms and their relationship to the trees around them. Some fungi that are in a symbiotic (or mycorrhizal) relationship with one tree or many, do fruit above ground but there are only about 20,000 mushrooms in all. The rest (which is most of the fungal world) fruit underground.

Lowlands: Who Will Answer the Call? by Sara Wright

I live under a steep craggy mountain that is gushing with the sweetest mineral rich water that pours out of an old spring. On this piece of land feeder brooks stream down the mountain feeding hemlock and cedar before silvery clear water slides into a rushing brook (miraculously) still filled with trout. Sadly, the main artery of my brook comes from another mountain that has been brutally logged, dammed up for someone’s pleasure and is currently running amok. Silt ridden water floods this lowland routinely not only changing the course of the stream now riddled with dying trees, (collapsing trees must have soil to stay upright) but creating unusual vernal pools that are beginning to mature. As a result, this has been the best frog and toad year that I have had since my first magical year spent on this land before all the surrounding areas were chopped into parcels. Once I roamed free up and down this mountain through unbroken forests fields and fens, marshes, seeps, bogs and springs. I have never lost that feeling of belonging to this land not just the area I ‘own’ (oxymoron) but all of her.

It doesn’t surprise me that in most pre -christian traditions the Original Mother of Us All was and still is a mountain! When the other mountains all around me were first being raped by dirty yellow machines someone remarked to me quite sagely, “the bones of the mountains are still here”. And so they are, and so is She.

Summer Steeping, by Molly M. Remer

“It was one of those days so clear, so silent, so still, you almost feel the earth itself has stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.”

—Katherine Mansfield quoted in Meditations for People Who (may) Worry too Much

The editor of this anthology, Anne Wilson Schaef, goes on to say:

“When we do stop, many times we look around and realize that we are the only ones rushing around. We realize that the roses, the trees, even the clouds seems suspended in space, and it is as if the universe has paused for a breather. Life has time to experience itself.

Often, when we stop and let ourselves take in the beauty that is around us, we realize there is much more than we originally imagined. Our eyes begin to see beauty in the cracks in the sidewalk, the crookedness of tree limbs, the cragginess of faces, even the color of cars.

We don’t have to travel to see beauty. It is everywhere.

How much more alive we are when we can feel those times that the earth has ‘stopped in astonishment at its own beauty.’”

Do you have time for beauty? When was the last time you stopped in astonishment? What is astonishing you lately? Where are you discovering beauty?

Chloe’s Shadow by Sara Wright

Gently nibbling seed
a bear bird’s
hind legs
charcoaled nose
glimpsed
through
shade fogged
windows…
Imagining…
Standing
where you just stood
matter is
frozen light
yours
a golden circlet
emerald star
circling
above us all
a beacon of
Cosmic Light
I weave a
crown of grape leaves
round and
round crafting
Prayers
for body soul –
Your
Protection
and mine…
Standing in your Shadow
One.
Still, Earth’s Keening
keeps us
awake at night.

After Words: A Reflection on the Fourth of July by Sara Wright

This morning, hummingbirds, hummingbird moths, honeybees with a thousand eyes, brilliant orange fritillaries are capturing nectar from my wild bee balm, butterfly weed, and milkweed. Bee balm stalks are almost as tall as the five-and-a-half-foot Guardian cedar – the latter only planted four years ago.

Early this morning on my daily walk I noted with pleasure the conversation between Yellowthroat and Indigo Bunting (yes they communicate across species) so absentee birds are once again singing after a week of diminishing song which began the morning after the first night of mindless explosions that split the night into fragmented shards of metal, raining down deadly particulate matter and adding even more pollution leaving our air choking with poisons. This kind of noise pollution damages all human cells. This is but one example of an early ‘celebratory’ 4^th of July bombing, machine gun fire, and were there fireworks too? I have no idea. The dogs and I left immediately. I always keep the car ready for instant evacuation for us even if I am at camp. A comfortable puff and pillow offer us a bed and netting stretched across the back of the open car making it comfortable to sleep no matter how hot the night is or wherever we end up.

After the Crowning by Sara Wright

Emerald and lime
chartreuse lemon
burgundy
burnt umber
leafy green
breath
transformer
palms and
needles
raining light
magic bean
spirals skyward
star gazing
ferns feather
paths
pearls
at my feet
wild lilies
woodland
valley brook
scarlet
roots
hug
weeping
fruit trees
conversing
underground
pollinated
rose petals
nourish
moist earth
each tear
slips away
bowed
deep
gratitude, a
grieving moment
a thousand
bees hum
as One.
This cycle
ends even
as
another
has begun.

Mayflower Crowning by Sara Wright

I sit under the snowy crabapple as fragile flower petals drift one by one to the ground, covering my hair in white butterflies, soon to become the first mulch of the year. Our Lady is always nourishing new life…

The hum of a thousand bees is deafening – bumblebees – glorious golden rotund bodies swarming from one tree to another with so many relatives – everyone seeking sweet nectar.

The scent is beyond description – intoxicating – a poignant perfume lasting only a few days and keeping me rooted to my bench every single morning to soak in the sweetness under impossible heat. Heavily polluted air is thick and metallic but here I inhale a plethora of fragrances so intense they drown out poisoned air.

The Circle of Giving and Receiving by Sara Wright

Yesterday my Vet and I created our version of the Indigenous Tewa Seed Ceremony, something I have not done since living in New Mexico (except to honor the Seed Moon). We didn’t plan to make an exchange of plants and seeds on earth day because neither of us believe or thought about it – (either do Indigenous peoples) – every day is earth day – so it just ‘happened’ on the day before the Seed Moon becomes full.

After giving Gary a very special heirloom scarlet runner bean sprout of mine (and seeds) along with the rest of ‘his’ plants that I had been nurturing for months, we also split up a sedum to share, one that he had given me in the hospital last fall, closing another circle of giving and receiving.

It wasn’t until after we parted that I was struck by lightning. Visceral memories surfaced as I relived the Tewa Sacred Seed Ceremonies I had attended in NM, gradually coming to the realization that we had unwittingly participated in an ancient ceremonial exchange that may have originally extended back to Neolithic times.

Embrace Fearlessly this Burning World by Sara Wright

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity”.
Barry Lopez

The older I get the more I realize that being able to pay attention is the greatest gift especially in what Lopez calls ‘this burning world’.

Every day there is an opportunity to engage with some aspect of the rest of nature, no matter how despondent I might feel. Because early spring is a difficult time for me, I try to discipline myself to open nature’s door daily because it is in these timeless moments, I get caught by the ephemeral Now.

Last week before the storm that would later drop another two feet of snow at my door I decided to visit and feed the two geese thinking that they might appreciate extra food. I also had a nagging sense they might be calling me.

Saving the Mother Trees by Sara Wright

I am submitting this essay on March 25^th, the original Mother’s Day according to some pre – Christian mythology. It seems important to be writing about the ‘Old’ Trees of Life, today, of all days.

Sixty years ago, Suzanne Simard intuited that the trees in the forests that she and her family logged (with horses) were all connected and operated as a complex cooperative living organism. Trees, understory plants, flowers, insects, animals, fish, and fungi were all parts of one integrated whole.

Suzanne was a trailblazer, one of the first females to graduate from the University of British Columbia as a forester. Her first job seemed daunting. It was up to Suzanne to determine why some newly planted tree seedlings kept dying.