Hello, just sharing a little piece I wrote in honor of Earth day.
WHO SPEAKS FOR THE EARTH?
The answer is simple. Those who first have “listened”,
Then somehow, in their own way, they convey that connection.
By
“listening”, I mean a deep sensing and receiving more than any one of
our physical senses. A listening with our whole being. Those who have
listened inspire us to remember it in ourselves. Those who listen and
notice where she has been hurt and like a mama bear, rise to her defense
and advocate for her. Those who understand their life depends on her clean water, air
and soil and who has a home where that is threatened. When we are hungry or
thirsty, we are forced to speak. All of us could be in line for that
woeful cry. It is when listening ends, suffering begins.
Those
who listen come from many walks of life, most notably indigenous
communities across the planet who have held onto their connection to the
natural world despite the tremendous onslaught of the profit-driven
enterprises who see their resources only in terms of gain. The
historical oppression of Indigenous populations is a tragic reality. Yet
the earth itself is in their voice and hope emerges out of the pain:
those rising to say ‘enough!”, the youth who are still close to the
earth in their hearts are listening…and the elders who guarded their
knowledge and share it, are listening. They keep sacred the connection
they have. They protect their listening. Those that have been able to rise through the trauma are teaching and defending
and leading everywhere about this. One could say that they are the
Earth’s own immune system activated. Look beyond the usual cacophony of
news, and you will find these voices struggling to be heard.
We
are all indigenous to the Earth, but many have forgotten this because when you don't have a connection with the land you live on, its hard to have a connection with the Earth as a whole. Even when
we don’t have a history with the land we directly live on, we can learn
about it and build a relationship of respect by getting curious about its watersheds,
its plants and animals, its weather patterns, etc. We bring to our homes our
own history--our genetic heritage and draw from our own unique blend of strengths and lessons, which may
include a lineage of those who colonized the land and its
first people. When we learn about our history and make new, healing
relationships—we can transform the violence to become part of the Earth’s
immune system too. We are invited into the reparations. And as long as we do what is vital to keep this
relationship alive, the earth’s message can be in our voice. And if we keep listening. We will know what the Earth is saying.
But listening
is not something we see practiced everywhere. We often don’t even know
that we are not listening. So when we hear someone who speaks for the
earth, our inner ear may be stirred and a memory invoked. It is an
invitation. But how do we follow it?
That memory invoked is one we all have,
because we came in with the ability to feel our connection to life, we
are all born with the ability to listen. As a child, I remember going
out into nature with my bare feet and sensing deeply. I felt so
connected. I felt I could hear what the birds were saying, what the
mountains were teaching. What hurt another life hurt me. I could feel
this web so strongly. The magic of this experience stayed with me into
my adult life, as I did activities to nurture it. Creativity in the form
of singing, dancing would weave into my nature excursions. I believe
that all humans have this natural way of expressing, and when we are
connected to nature, it erupts spontaneously. We are close to it as
children and we keep it close by staying in touch with that creative
spark within us. And it makes sense that creativity would keep us
connected, because Nature itself is that creative energy.
So go out on the earth, sing, dance, play and remember you are her child always.
Yet
in this age of information overload, multi media overwhelm, competing
world views, propaganda offered as news, aka ‘fake news’, its no
surprise that we are damped down and saturated to the point of no longer
being able to stop, and if we can’t stop, we most certainly can’t
listen.
Lately I have been feeling this acutely.
I’ve
found myself slowly pulled into this vortex of information, even despite
my best intentions and now I have been experiencing a ‘brain-ache’, a
term I came up with to describe a persistent feeling of a pressure,
confusion and heat in my prefrontal cortex area, something I believe is
due to my brain working overtime to process all the input from my
computer and smart phone and just all the busyness of life. It became so
bad, I worried my head would explode. I experimented with limiting my
exposure and have time away and do heart centered practices—and lo and
behold, the ache went away!
Time to stop. Time to not be so busy.
When did being busy become a status symbol? I have been longing for a
stillness and peace that goes beyond my morning meditation, something
that reconnects me to the web of life I am part of, the experience I
remember having as a child and trying to keep alive. But now it has
become fainter everyday I get lost and submerged in the world of human
to human information. In this world of everyone speaking but few
listening.
I long for my first mother, the Earth. To remember
the feeling of being a child. Of singing and dancing with the wind.
Where is she? A deep grief wells in my heart. I miss her so much. And,
I imagine, you do too. Even if you don’t feel it…yet.
Ah, yes. It
is this grief that leads me back home. I must cry to find her again. Let
the tears flow and become the river that leads me home.
This
grief calls for me to stop and remember, to unplug from the human made
world of too much, to the natural world still dancing somewhere in my
bones. She wants me back. She wants to sing to me again and she wants me to sing. She wants me to
listen. Ok, yes! I must answer, I must return. She wants you too. She
wants us all to listen.
And then, like the children we are, we will remember that we are her. When you remember that, you too will speak for her, sing for her, dance for her.
Now, excuse me while I leave this computer and go for a walk with bare feet.
jul bystrova
Era of Care
"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others."
- Pericles