Mother
Earth
“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.”
Thich Nhat
Hanh
Our concepts of Mother
Earth, or Mother Nature, are all over the place—a jungle to be
subdued by humans, a gentle, fertile entity from whom all beings are
birthed, an angry, raging woman bent on revenge. Certainly, the
creation story from Genesis, in which God creates Adam from the clay
and then takes a rib from Adam to create Eve, clearly suggests that we are earthen vessels. Our words for burying our dead—ashes to ashes,
dust to dust—are drawn from Genesis 3:19: “for dust thou art, and
unto dust thou shalt return,” explicitly state our origins. We are
not ON the earth, we are made FROM the earth. Sometimes, in our
modernity (and sense of entitlement), it seems we forget that. And, it feels as though we don't
honor our dependency on the gifts of the Mother.
This piece is called,
“Blessings of the Mother,” to remind me that I am not separate
from the earth. She provides everything from the air I breathe, to
the food I eat, to the water that I drink. I am—and you are—totally
at the mercy of the earth for my very existence. This portrayal of
the Mother is a happy one, with only the good aspects of nature
depicted. I will one day make a quilt to show her shadow side, but we
humans are living with it right now, with earthquakes, fires and
extreme weather, so I don't believe anyone needs a reminder.
There was a meme
circulating on Facebook yesterday that I found truly offensive. It
depicted God the Father punishing California with wild fires,
suggesting that is because Californians displease him. We humans are
responsible for our environmental desecration, but to suggest that
God would intentionally burn down people's homes to punish them is
simply...well, Old Testament barbarism.
Today, I hope you will
contemplate your relationship to the Great Mother Earth, and find a
way to honor and thank her for your existence. She continues to
support us, her renegade children, with all the love she can muster.
We should do the same.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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