Earth Day 2022, Daffodils and Mindfulness Meditation

Squeezed in between the showers of late April and the greening of early May we celebrate Earth Day as a day to bring kind awareness to the wonder of this blue-green orb which is our home.

learning to sketch daffodils--re-use of envelope--on daffodil yellow blanket from my mother

I have not written as I usually would have of the latest IPCC report or the awfulness happening to try and stop Basic Income from getting through or the ways that obscene wealth and oil and war pave pathways of destruction and dis-ease. I have stopped myself from sharing these due to the high degree of grief many of us are already suffering under and due to having to allow myself processing time with so much of this all.

Yet--

I can't let Earth Day go by without sharing a few thoughts.

There is much I am heartened by and many are doing the good work of bearing witness and raising their voices in support of Earth caring, though we still have a way to go.

For my part on this journey to Earth honouring, I simply want to say:

I LOVE this blessed Earth, our only home. I LOVE it with all my heart and being.

I LOVE Earth the way I LOVE my parents and the way I LOVE my own family; the vein and vine of people I’ve come from and those sweet few whom I’ve begotten.

I LOVE Earth this way because I do not see us as separate from Earth. We all are one and many, both.

And because of my deep reverence for Earth with its great beauty, its wondrous regenerative capacity, its voraciousness for life and its usefulness for death, I bow to the mysteries we have and have yet to unfurl beneath microscope or via telescope. I bow in humbleness at all the ways we think we know what we are doing and all the ways we more likely do not.

I honour those rhythms and pathways of the natural world that we are part and parcel of.

I welcome myself to let Earth’s healing powers enter into my being so that I can truly remember that we are woven of the most wonderfully balanced intricacies as Earth beings in a great wide universe filled with so many wonders.

There are so many things I want to share. So many books I want to read. So many things I’ve thought about on walks. But I will spare you that today and share my humble wish that we may truly know the importance of sharing this planet with all beings.

This Earth Day 2022, may we take a moment to honour what it means for something or someone to have the right to exist without being manipulated for profit or for human gain.

A tanka poem for you on grief for what has been lost of the beauty of the Earth.

After the Rain

The weight of your form

falling on moss causes limbs

of Spruce trees to shake.

Quivering, I hear the trees

weeping after rains have passed.

Jill

Thanks for reading and I wish you wellness and peace in these times of great upheaval when so many have been cleaved from their beloveds and so much havoc has been wrought upon the goodness and the beauty of this world at the hands of humans. May we find our way to peaceful and sustainable interactions with each other and with this beautiful world. There truly is so much at stake.

Please also remember that times of great instability welcome us to realize that changeability is the truest shape of all things.

Thanks for reading!

From Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes:

"Nature and human beings are not separate. You can be sure that when the land and creatures are wounded by humans, that those humans are copying their own psychic wounds into the earth and animals as well; what is wounded and without thought, wounds others..."

- from essay "Massacre of the Dreamers, in Untie The Strong Woman book"

http://www.elder-activists.org/blog/we-were-made-for-times-like-this

And as a pathway to help heal our collective woundedness, I welcome you to join my husband Paul MacCormack in his generous offering of a free Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation on Monday April 25th, 2022 @ 7pm AST. From his facebook page:

Hi everyone! My name is Paul MacCormack and I am an MMTCP Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher. I’m super excited to announce that this Monday April 25th I will be hosting a free virtual introductory session on mindfulness meditation. This will be a soft launch of my new business “Mindful Island Consulting”. The practice of mindfulness has so much to offer and I’d love it if you’d join me. No previous experience required. Register via this link…. https://us02web.zoom.us/.../tZErcO...

Hope to see you there!

Be well,

Jill