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Joy, Sorrow, and Standing for Life

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“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

Green Hearts, Green Love

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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

The Path of Gaia

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garden pathAfter writing Gaia’s Blog for over a year, I’m circling back to the most central questions: Who is Gaia? How can we understand and unite with Her as fully as possible?

In mythology, “Gaia” typically refers to the Goddess of the Earth, the ancestral Mother. Indeed, another way to refer to Gaia might be as Mother Earth, the entirety of the physical planet—the waters and forests and prairies, and more fine-grained manifestations like the plants and animals.

To the visionary scientists who developed the Gaia Hypothesis 50 years ago, “Gaia” means the total, measurable physical/chemical/biological level of the planet, which, they proposed, is an intelligent, self-regulating system perpetually seeking homeostasis—even, or especially, in response to the ongoing breakdown of the biosphere. [Read more…] about The Path 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

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