Gaia Blog

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

Gaia’s Blog

Becoming “Woke” on Behalf of Gaia

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These days we’re being confronted on all sides with a wide variety of human grievances. We’re even being urged to re-examine the very words we use, to become more “woke” to systemic discrimination and oppression.

As a relatively privileged white woman, I can’t imagine the trauma of centuries of oppression and mistreatment of Native and Black people, and their justified outrage about that. But one way I can get close to understanding it is when I contemplate the violence and aggression long perpetrated by men on women and girls. I can certainly resonate at times with the temptation to dismiss all men as arrogant, destructive, and hopelessly ignorant, if not downright complacent, about the vast male-supremacist ocean in which we all swim. (This despite the fact that in my own life, I enjoy close and respectful friendships with men who honor the Feminine in the world and themselves.) [Read more…] about Becoming “Woke” on Behalf of Gaia

Standing Firm in Gaia

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Back in the 1990s I participated in a weekly psycho-spiritual therapy group. During one session, while sobbing in despair about all the human assaults on the natural world, I let it slip that I considered grizzly bears to be at least as important and deserving as human beings, if not more so. This didn’t seem to be an unwarranted opinion: at that time, there were about 55,000 wild grizzly bears in the world, and over 5 billion human beings. But I was confronted for being in my “lower self,” and the group leader said that I would need to “work on” this belief if I wanted to progress spiritually. At the time, I was so wrung out that I acquiesced in this perspective, but I’ve always regretted that moment when I assented to something I knew was fundamentally untrue. [Read more…] about Standing Firm in Gaia

The Flowing Green Love of Autumn

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One day last year, walking along a nearby mountain stream, I entered a place that felt sacred and mysterious. Shaded by a grove of willows, the creek’s waters gently flowed and purled around some stepping stones, evoking a sense of quiet, of waiting. I felt the presence of a water spirit and started singing to her. Very soon she began to sing back. She ended up giving me a beautiful song, which I was fortunately able to echo and record, line by line, as she sang it. When it was over, with great gratitude I inquired, “is this a song from the Mother of the Waters?” And I heard very clearly: “No, it is a song from a Mother of the Waters.” [Read more…] about The Flowing Green Love of Autumn

Allying with Orchil the Weaving Goddess

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In the Celtic spiritual tradition, some speak of Orchil, the Weaving Goddess. She sits in the Underworld at two looms. On one loom, the warp extends down into the fiery heart of the planet; on the other loom the warp goes up to the blazing stars. Poised between Earth Light and Star Light, partaking of both Up and Down, Orchil weaves the weft on Her two looms, connecting every star to every other star, generating the infinite fabric of our planet and ourselves. [Read more…] about Allying with Orchil the Weaving Goddess

What is Natural?

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The other day a friend and I were having a discussion about the future of this planet and of humanity. She asserted that since humanity is of Planet Earth just as much as any other lifeform here, all the human-caused disasters that are happening—forest fires, floods, droughts and heat waves, air and water pollution, even extinctions and climate disruption—are “natural.”

Well, on one level that’s hard to deny, unless humans were dropped off here long ago by an alien spaceship (a theory that I don’t find so far-fetched sometimes!) But, nevertheless, I felt myself resisting the idea that the heartbreaking mess we’re in right now, with the biosphere near collapse all around the globe, can be excused as merely natural. If natural means acting according to our true nature, can we really say that humans are “naturally” unconcerned about our impact on the planet; that we’re naturally uncaring and even hateful toward our fellow creatures? [Read more…] about What is Natural?