• Skip to secondary menu
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Gaia Blog

Gaia’s Blog: Seeds for a Resilient, Earth-Centered Future

  • HOME
  • GAIA’S BLOG
  • ABOUT MARY JANET
  • CONTACT

Gaia’s Blog

Our Deepest, Greenest Spiritual Task

April 18, 2023 by Fowler

What is necessary for us humans to cultivate a sustainable, creative, optimistic relationship with all life on our Mother Earth?

The underpinning of this task is our inborn but often disregarded love for Nature, for the Green World. Inhabiting this love requires our hearts to get bigger, to hold more, and to expand into the infinite, living field of love that originates in the Earth herself. In this field, we each know our own heart as a welcoming, caring container for all beings and places on our beautiful planet, and not as a discriminatory tool for sorting out who we love and who we don’t or can’t or shouldn’t love. [Read more…] about Our Deepest, Greenest Spiritual Task

Filed Under: Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy, Home Featured Right

Nature Magic for Everyone

March 22, 2023 by Fowler

That’s the name of the book I’ve been writing since last summer!

Here’s the subtitle: Ways to Become Wiser, Happier and More Useful to the Sacred Land.

In these times when it’s hard to know how to even face what’s happening on our planet—much less have any faith that we can really help—this book offers a unique and optimistic perspective.

It’s partly a compendium of the basics of Earth-Centered Spirituality, based on my decades of study of both Native American and Celtic/Western practices; partly a primer on Deep Ecology, the contemporary discipline that challenges us humans to change ourselves rather than “fix” outer things, by, first, recognizing the inherent value of all living beings and ecosystems; partly a Memoir of my profound, illuminating, sometimes delightfully shocking encounters with the more-than-human world and its inhabitants; and partly a no-punches-pulled Critique of the modern world’s catastrophically destructive, human-centered, patriarchal beliefs, values and actions. [Read more…] about Nature Magic for Everyone

Filed Under: Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy, Home Featured Left

Joy, Sorrow, and Standing for Life

October 23, 2022 by Fowler

 

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.” –Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1945.

A few weeks ago, I began hearing chain saws across the creek from my house. Even though this unoccupied land isn’t mine, I’ve been going there regularly for the last 3 years to walk, pray and leave offerings, and have been delighted by many wonderful Nature beings there, both material and spiritual. I remember reflecting just recently that I bet no one else alive right now loves this humble little stretch of pinyons and junipers, cactus, desert grasses and bright spring wildflowers like I do. [Read more…] about Joy, Sorrow, and Standing for Life

Filed Under: Earth-Centered Practices and Ceremonies, Home Featured Right

Magic Beckoning

August 2, 2022 by Fowler

Hello, friends of Gaia! Climate scientist James Lovelock, the central developer of the Gaia hypothesis back in the 1970s, died last week at 103 years old. An obituary in The Guardian states: “He warned, in clearer terms than any of his peers, of the dangers humanity posed to the extraordinary web of relations that make Earth uniquely alive in our universe.” I recently returned from a 2-½ month pilgrimage to Scotland and Ireland, where my appreciation of this magnificent, mysterious “web of relations” deepened considerably.

Now, back at home, I’m beginning to write a book! It will incorporate earlier writings in this blog, along with revelations and instructions I received on my recent journey. The book will recount my own ideas and experiences with what I call Nature Magic.

Here is a draft of the Preface:

In April 2018 I took part in a powerful 5-day retreat in which we explored the deepest parts of ourselves and worked to reclaim our most profound greatness and uniqueness. During our time together, I contacted and released an enormous amount of energy and power that had been suppressed inside me all my life. I returned home with this personal mantra: “I can have whatever I want.” I had never completely believed that before, and, with awe, I felt my deep Self empowered and enlarged. Here is what happened a few days later:

I drive to a place outside Santa Fe to go birdwatching. It’s along the Santa Fe River, downstream from the sewage treatment plant. The river—emblematic of many rivers in the drought-plagued American Southwest—flows for maybe half a mile through the town’s tourist areas, and then, except temporarily during thunderstorms, becomes a dry, sandy ditch for most of its length. Southwest of town, it is temporarily rejuvenated for a few miles by the treated sewage effluent released from the plant, before it again goes dry, all the way down to its junction with the Rio Grande.

As I’m greeting the arriving spring warblers and tanagers, I feel again my love for the birds, and my commitment to these winged ones who have enchanted me all my life. I affirm once more that I don’t work for myself—I work for the birds. I want what they want. And, I ask myself, what do they want? It’s very simple. They want water, trees, cover, food, nesting sites. They want their patch of ground where they can keep living and prospering as they have for millions of years. The birds, like other wild creatures, don’t have it in their nature to “want” anything beyond the necessary conditions for life and its continuance.

And, I suddenly see, that’s exactly what I can’t give them, and neither can anyone else!

Here they are, my precious bird friends, living along a couple of miles of treated sewage water, with the river dry and lifeless above and below this small, faintly reeking green place. While the birds steadily decrease in number, the county still grants building permits for 20 new homes here and 100 new apartments there, when everyone knows that there’s not even enough water for the present population. And there’s seemingly no end to this destructive short-sightedness, here, or anywhere else in the Southwest, or, really, anywhere else in the world.

So—no! I can’t have what I want! None of us who love green Nature can ever have what we want: a fertile, diverse world whose robust living web generously supports all life, human and non-human, where all beings are respected and live freely in their home place, and know that their descendants can too.

I’m stunned. I feel like I’ve run full tilt into a stone wall. I cry and cry. And, finally, a calm inner voice says, “Now it’s clear. The only thing I can do is learn to work the strongest Nature-based magic I possibly can until the end of my days. Magic that can plant good seeds for a beneficent, rooted, green future that I’ll never see. That is how I can truly help.”

This book is one of those seeds.

Filed Under: Ancestral Spirituality, Home Featured Left

Green Hearts, Green Love

February 16, 2022 by Fowler

When I was about 9 years old, another girl and I were discussing what our favorite color was. My little friend, in a burst of childish patriotism, dramatically declaimed that her favorite colors were red, white and blue. I replied unhesitatingly that my favorite color was green—and that it was “underneath” all the other colors. We wouldn’t even have red, white and blue, I declared, if we didn’t have green.

Recalling this conversation more than 60 years later, I’m amazed that my 9-year-old self knew this. Yet it’s something I’ve always believed: The color Green gives meaning, grounding and life to everything—from the sustaining, microscopic green of plants’ chlorophyll, which, directly or indirectly, feeds all planetary life; to Gaia’s vast, exuberant, ever-ramifying life-web that exists around and within us, and gifts our hearts, souls, and senses with endless beauty and vitality. [Read more…] about Green Hearts, Green Love

Filed Under: Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy, Home Featured Right

  • Go to page 1
  • Go to page 2
  • Go to page 3
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Go to page 9
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

The Latest from Gaia’s Blog

Our Deepest, Greenest Spiritual Task

What is necessary for us humans to cultivate a sustainable, creative, optimistic relationship with all life on our Mother Earth? The underpinning of this task is our inborn but often disregarded … [Read More...] about Our Deepest, Greenest Spiritual Task

Nature Magic for Everyone

That’s the name of the book I’ve been writing since last summer! Here’s the subtitle: Ways to Become Wiser, Happier and More Useful to the Sacred Land. In these times when it’s hard to know how … [Read More...] about Nature Magic for Everyone

Joy, Sorrow, and Standing for Life

  “One of the penalties of an ecological education is to live alone in a world of wounds.” --Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 1945. A few weeks ago, I began hearing chain saws across … [Read More...] about Joy, Sorrow, and Standing for Life

Magic Beckoning

Hello, friends of Gaia! Climate scientist James Lovelock, the central developer of the Gaia hypothesis back in the 1970s, died last week at 103 years old. An obituary in The Guardian states: “He … [Read More...] about Magic Beckoning

Green Hearts, Green Love

When I was about 9 years old, another girl and I were discussing what our favorite color was. My little friend, in a burst of childish patriotism, dramatically declaimed that her favorite colors were … [Read More...] about Green Hearts, Green Love

Blog Topics

  • Ancestral Spirituality
  • Deep Ecology and Earth-Centered Philosophy
  • Earth-Centered Practices and Ceremonies
  • Gaia and the Divine Feminine
  • The Sacred Land’s Wisdom

ENews Sign Up

Join my mailing list and receive an occasional short email from me with my latest blog writings.
—Mary Janet

Gaia-Blog.com • ©Copyright Mary Janet Fowler, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.
Reproduction of this material in whole or in part is strictly prohibited without written permission.
Web development: EJ Communications