The reverberations of the Gulf spill are showing up as grief, despair and futility. What can we do with an issue so immense? How can any individual have an effect when the people in power are scratching their heads and hoping at this phase?
I think we should get past whether we will destroy the Earth. While I do believe we are damaging our environment, I really think it’s the human species that is in great danger of destroying itself before it completely destroys the Earth. I feel the guilt of belonging to a species collective that seems to be repeating blunders of the past, such as when Native tribes lost their vision and started driving whole herds of buffalo over a cliff to have their hearts.
Now to modern times and how we are currently rampantly opportunistic as a species. If we don’t re-envision ourselves more as a collective, then I feel we will fold into the 99% of other species experiments that no longer exist on the planet. I could even wax philosophical about this except for one thing, I believe if we blindly destroy our ability to live on this planet, then we have really missed the point of owning our divinity, of seeing the magnitude of our individual, let alone the collective synergy of greatness that we could enjoy if we were to switch from all these power play win~lose scenario games that we’re addicted to and find out what it is to play well together and see what could happen as a result.
Heyoka Merrifield is a visionary artist, writer and Crow medicine man. He once made the comment that he feels that something happened in our history as a human species and after the last Ice Age, something was triggered in our collective consciousness that remembers lack and believes in it. Underneath all these power games is a sense that there will never be enough to go around and some people are more driven by this coding than others who still do their best to share and expand to embrace more of a collective expansion. For me, experiencing the volume of green life offered each spring by the planet is enough to believe that there is a foundation of abundance here for us all.
The resurging community garden movement is one of the most transformative events of this era in the U.S. because people are having an experience of the fertile power of the planet and learning to develop a relationship with the great Mother again. Through it there is more collective community developing around the real currency that is important in our lives, learning to relate in harmonious ways and developing a sense of esteem about what we are capable of while with the Earth. Its a win~win scenario and its no wonder that it is spreading through schools to change learning patterns through better nutrition and interaction. It is having a positive effect in economically challenged communities to address major health issues that people don’t have funds to alter. Yet here is the Earth, providing us the opportunity for sustenance and learning much deeper respect for its innate intelligence in offering us all a place to call home.
When we are disconnected from the Earth, from our very life source, we often begin to live quite anxiously. We’re so used to doing this as a group that we don’t often stop ourselves to notice that we’re living in our heads and not very grounded. As Valerie Andrews wrote in her wonderful book, A Passion for the Earth, the cure for this “as for all other woes attendant on material life, is to sink one’s flesh back into the flesh of the Universal Mother.” Re-connecting to the Earth is the way to remember what it is like to be supported and sustained.
So to begin my series on ‘Caring for a Change,’ and come back to the serious ecological challenges that we are in the midst of, whether we’re close to the Gulf or any other area currently bleeding from reckless and careless activities, I suggest that we allow current science to inform mystical activism. Quite simply we should allow that as we practice being in our hearts wherever we are, we consciously realize that we can send this resonance wherever it is needed. As we act with enlightened compassion and care in our locale, that we are waking up to realize more unity on the great globe that we all inhabit and all have a stake in.
Last week I was reading a dreary and despairing piece on how an economic advisor would, if asked, suggest that BP officials consider bankruptcy proceedings because after all, their responsibility was not to anyone but their shareholders. I took these words as my own call to a revolutionary tea party for the Earth. It’s time that we all realized that whether we want to be or not, we’re ALL Shareholders of the Earth, we all have a big vested interest in keeping this planet as a place that we can live and thrive and learning, through using our imagination and intelligence, that there are far more interesting things to do than using our life force recklessly to destroy other forms of life.
So I invite you now to join me, and many others with many different approaches, yet with the theme that we can do something and there is a collective energy that we’re working to meet, to find that synergistic threshold where we have a big gestalt together. Trust me, it will be a big party that we’ll all enjoy to join together and create something that we can enjoy participating in.
I have people that bring a smile to me now, even if a day feels bleak, I know these others being points of light around the globe. As well, I feel kinship with the flowers that bloom with abandon, showing their beauty for a short time. They are for me, the fondest reminders of what we’re really here for, to express our divine majesty in life.
It is time to join in, to have the courage to show heart and trust without knowing. When you express your own form of caring for a change, I hope you will smile, knowing that someone in another part of the world is stepping up, as you are, to champion life through compassion and care and expanding awareness. As we do, we can expect wonderful surprises from spirit. Enjoy the collective evolutionary expansion, it’s what we’re really here for.
Harvest of the Heart
A Harvest sf the Heart
Even in SoCal, the feel of fall is palpable. It is a time of pumpkins and marine layered mornings that call for something warm to meet the Earth’s move into a cooler season. In this land of evergreen palms, there are trees turning color here and there to remind us of the cycling of seasons. In this harvest time, I feel a pull to pay homage to both the Earth and the heart, sources of sustenance and renewal for our lives.
As the ‘word’ has been said to make the ‘world,’ it is a continuing koan for me to consider why these two key elements of life have the same letters in different arrangements. There is some divine alignment with these same letters of Earth and heart being used to point us to the center of our existence, of caring and cultivating life. A higher recognition of the Earth home and being at home in our hearts are both meant to point us in the direction of oneness, of unity–to realize an inclusive place where we all belong.
With this I would like to introduce more signs of caring for change and of a growing measure of compassion and kindredness among the populace of Earth creatures. I would like to highlight a wildlife sanctuary in Idaho, initiated by Susan B. Eirich, Ph.D., and Jean Simpson, who founded the Earthfire Institute. This sanctuary’s name is inspired by a “passionate earth-mother wolf with a fire in her belly to protect anything vulnerable.” This is also the fire that is in a good human mother’s belly to protect the young and affirm life. The work of this heart-strong group of humans is exactly the point of what is leading edge at this time, to realize a greater perspective in how we define kinship and belonging and it is doing evolutionary work to expand our connections of the heart on Earth.
Founded on 40 acres in Eastern Idaho, this ancient land is home for wild creatures who have been rescued for one reason or another. Earthfire serves as a portal, either physically or through the Internet, to allow an opening for exchange between species, and for new ways of interacting and communicating.
In their words, it is a “unique model of ecological advocacy {that} begins with a personal awakening and leads to a renewed commitment to protect planetary systems on which all life depends.” These are words that really resonate with me. It is time for there to be cross species communication that calls us to explore and expand our shared sense of community and come home to a greater understanding of our true nature personally and as a species.
As a species, we are presently caught up in economic and social systems that are poisoning and polluting the environment in a massive manner that is putting many other forms of life at risk, not to mention many of our own kind. There seems to be some heretical idea that nature is devoid of God or the Big Unity Factor in the Universe. I say someone’s genes seem to have gotten cross wired along the way. Nature expressed in the myriad forms of intelligent life upon the planet has existed for eons before we came upon the scene as a new form of creation. Whatever form we recognize as some higher intelligence, it is woven throughout all the fabric of life that makes up this spinning orb called Earth.
It is time for us to wake up and see the intelligence in plain view on the faces of other creatures inhabiting the domain known as planet Earth. For this reason, Earthfire Institute is a place to recognize and celebrate for its expansive and inclusive initiatives to live together, to push the edges of what we humans recognize as the known world of what is intelligent, even if differently oriented than the set of filters we have as humans to organize useful sensory information. It is definitely time to cross the aisles among the different kingdoms of life on this planet, with the recognition that creation neither began or ended with us, and that there is a vast community of sentient intelligence and this time is a bright opportunity for us to awaken to belong on this planet in a way that we have forgotten. Our ancestors knew what it was like to live among the other members of creation and recognize their contributions to life. It is time that we heard the call in a way that is appropriate for our perilous time on the planet that is also ripe with opportunity for expansion.
If we can quiet a bit, take the time to be present and look without too many layered judgments, there are ample animal beings that are willing to communicate with us and extend our awareness of life. Even gazing in the eyes of your cat or dog will begin a new journey. Animals are so much more aware than most of us have allowed ourselves to consider and we need to become more open in this time to all the intelligence of creation. Nature is not devoid of God or unity. It is our species that needs to take steps in the direction of reuniting with the chorus of creation. Caring and opening and being curious and inclusive are qualities that are much needed among humankind. Indeed, we should do our best to cultivate the kinder side of our nature, following words of wisdom from the Dalai Lama, who has said “my religion is kindness.”
In this season of celebrating the abundance that the Earth provides to sustain our lives, may we pause and give thanks. Humans have lived upon this planet for a short time compared to the diversity of intelligent forms of nature that provide us sustenance. It is time to wake up to the great gifts we have been given from the divine and recognize that we are citizens among the community of creation. Through care and compassion and right action, humanity will keep the sacred trust that is ours to accomplish as a collective. The wise action on this planet now is to turn away from the prevalent paradigm of suffering that abounds.
We live in times with great tension of the opposites. As the old crumbles and dissolves we are hurtling into a new era, and it is our work to bring forth a new currency upon the Earth, a new medium of exchange that is sustainable and expansive. The currency of a fluid open heart is among the best forms of abundance we might experience, and the greatest gift that we can share.
May we connect with the inner sacred fire that is clear in its role to protect life. May we use the sacred light in our hearts as a beacon, and share our intelligent light with others of our ‘kind’ as well as those of other kindred species who are doing their best to live and thrive and know some form of bonding and care for their members as well. May we make peace and harmony where we go by joining through the heart and letting this light our way. The revelations of understanding could change the course of our lives for the good as we learn to share life on Earth, realizing a harvest of the heart. This time is a ripe opportunity to find new meaning in the words ‘All our Relations.’ May we become celebrants of the sacred as we find a new way of relating to the world that honors the diverse forms of creation that inhabit this planet.