“The Earth is our mother
We must take care of Her
The earth is our mother
We must take care of Her
Her Sacred ground we walk upon
With every step
Her Sacred ground we walk upon
With every step we take!”
Some of us have been singing this chant for 25, 35 or even more
years. I don’t remember when I first heard or sang it. I assumed it came out of a First Nations oral
tradition in an attempt to teach the rest of us the importance of paying
attention to our Earth.
Here’s a quick history lesson…..
Earth Day began in
1970 when the Viet Nam war was slogging onwards and international student-led
protest was rising. The first publicized oil spill off of the coast of Santa
Barbara, California revealed photos of dead, oil-drenched water birds to a
horrified public. Jimi Hendrix died; the
Beetles released their final album. Our
energy was high but our focus had become diffuse when small group of visionary environmentalists
seized their opportunity to make a difference.
Early Earth Days swept the US and quickly grew to an
international movement dedicated to environmental teach-ins and actions. Towns planted trees on the commons; schools
suspended classes and took their students on nature walks. Ordinary folks, you and me, made commitments
to pick up trash; communities passed resolutions making glass bottles
returnable-for-deposit; recycling programs became mandatory. The list of concrete and specific changes initiated
through Earth Day goes on and on.
Somewhere along the way…..
Our consciousness began expanding not only changed the ways
we related to the world around us, we began awakening to something new. More and more people recognized that this
great and glorious place we call our home, The Earth, is finite. And this is a fundamental change.
Soon we noticed that we are ‘part of’ and not ‘separate
from’ and our behavior changed. In our
desire to grow our relationship with Earth we considered the role of ‘steward’. It felt satisfying as we convinced
ourselves that we were moving into ‘right relationship’ with our world.
But ‘steward’, while it might appear benevolent, still keeps
us separate. It calls on us to ‘look
after’ earth, making her The Other.
Today we are learning that we are not separate. We are part
of this earth. We are her creation. She is our host. And she speaks to
us. All the time. Her voice is within us and outside of us all
at once.
If we listen.
We can hear earth’s voice in the flowing of our blood and
the flexing of our muscles. It’s in the
movement of our bones and in the growth of our hair and nails.
We hear the voice of Earth as she calls out with the power
of tsunami, with the force of a tidal wave, with the sweep of a forest
fire. Her voice is potent and She will
speak if we heed her or not.
Her voice can also be gentle as it whistles through branches
or caresses the shore in an endless cycle of waves. She speaks in the flow of the seasons, in the
raucous voices of spring peepers and in the silence of a windless
midnight.
She always speaks.
Can we listen?
“We are the rising sun
We are the change
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for
And we are dawning!”
(chant by
Raven Geri Stanfield)
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