“You carry Mother Earth within you, She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.”
–Thich Nhat Hanh
I cannot get enough of Mary Oliver right now… her words are buoying me, reminding me of the earth’s deep sustenance and peace.
The earth does remember me and my heart is full of gratitude. I am deeply embedded in her peaceful embrace today with the rain sweetly softening and nourishing…
Softening and nourishing and sweetening everything including me.
“I thought the earth remembered me,she took me back so tenderly,arranging her dark skirts, her pocketsfull of lichens and seeds.I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,nothing between me and the white fire of the starsbut my thoughts and they floated light as mothsamong the branches of the perfect trees.All night I heard the small kingdomsbreathing around me, the insects,and the birds who do their work in the darkness.All night I rose and fell, as if in water,grappling with a luminous doom. By morningI had vanished at least a dozen times’into something better.”-Mary Oliver
“You are comprised of: 84 minerals, 23 Elements, and 8 gallons of water spread across 38 trillion cells. You have been built up from nothing by the spare parts of the Earth you have consumed, according to a set of instructions hidden in a double helix and small enough to be carried by a sperm. You are recycled butterflies, plants, rocks, streams, firewood, wolf fur, and shark teeth, broken down to their smallest parts and rebuilt into our planet’s most complex living thing. You are not living on Earth. You are Earth.”– Aubrey Marcus
“Nature is not matter only. She is also spirit.”– Carl Jung
What a perfect joy to have these lovely, moving, soothing words, this poetic offering, in my inbox this week – so unexpected and appreciated. Thank you Susan!
Notes on a Pandemic
“What stories shall we tell
past knotted fear:Of touching without flesh
of Winter-seeded faith
of viral music trumpeting
imagine all the people
of hands sounding gratitude
of words looped over metered space
threading a collective
of parked tyres, dusty tarmacthe exhaling earth
the constancy of sun
a pink crescent moon
the usual light on
all our faces”-Susan Waters
(“Imagine all the people” credited to John Lennon by Susan Waters, author.)
I loved Susan’s words. “The constancy of sun”, as shown at sunrise here over newly fallen April snow. “The exhaling earth” as she prepares for Spring’s unfolding, the new soft snow blanketing her with the promise of fresh seeping water to nourish the roots of all that is pushing forth.
And when next I find a crescent moon, I will add it to this post…
“I was born to walk the Earth, experience the amazing beauty of this planet, and witness the splendor and magic of all things—to be overwhelmed by a ray of sunlight, touched by an encounter with a frog, mystified by the texture of a rock wall.
I was born to splash through the creeks, sing through the canyons, laugh with the squirrels, just as I did as a small child in the woods behind our family’s home.
I was born to be a kid, and not take life too seriously, or get sidetracked by a career, a project, or anything that ties me down to the life of bills, shiny new toys, status, and pavement.”
-Scott Stillman
“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke
Awakening, illuminating, unfolding, empowering… Spring begins in all her glory today! Every day new and glorious, seen from new eyes like those of a child instills wonder and awe. Like a poem. Like the heart itself.
“I walked on, talking in my head. In all the miles no silence lived. Inside my thoughts, I realized finally that, more than in wind or cold or Breakup, the power and absoluteness of wild earth resided in its huge uncompromising silence.”
-Seth Kantner (from my favorite book of this year, Ordinary Wolves)
“Forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet
and the winds long to play with your hair.”
-Kahlil Gibran
“The earth is what we all have in common.”
-Wendell Berry
“How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us.
If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?
Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore, every mist in the dark woods, every clearing and humming insect is holy in the memory and experience of my people. The sap which courses through the trees carries the memories of the red man.
The white man’s dead forget the country of their birth when they go to walk among the stars. Our dead never forget this beautiful earth, for it is the mother of the red man. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters; the deer, the horse, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadows, the body heat of the pony, and man — all belong to the same family.”-Chief Seattle
