A Letter to Earth
To the dearest - my dearest - Earth
Photo by Sergi Kabrera on Unsplash
Dearest Earth,
It feels silly to ask if you remember my feet in the grass, because I know you do. I know you remember my joy and my comfort in being able to touch you. Thank you. Thank you for every slithery earthworm, thank you for the peach seed that I planted but never grew (even though I checked all the time...for years!). Thank you for the rain - it is one of my favorite ways to be with you. Thank you for wild blueberries and cherry tomatoes plucked off the branch. Thank you for the awkward beauty of brussell sprouts and broccoli. Thank you for sunflowers and lavender, for the way the water meets the shore and the way the trees are the breath of our life. I could thank you for 10,000 years, and it still wouldn't be enough.
How do you do it? How do you put up with....with us? Between the garbage and the bloodshed, the blatant disregard and the utter forgetfulness, why? Why are you still nourishing, still giving, even forgiving? You betta than me. I would have cut us off a long time ago. But I guess that's why you're you and I'm me. You are slow to anger, quick with second chances. But if I am of you, maybe I can learn those traits too.
Slow. Slow is a hard thing for me to hold on to. But you don't do anything with speed. You move slow, you grow slow, your seasons take time. May I learn slowness and rhythm from you.
I am of you, but now I want to be more like you.
There is a difference, right? Can I be of you but not like you? I mean, some stuff must just be in me, like there are some things of me in my kids. They can't deny it or undo it, it just is. What of you is in me? What of you is undeniable and irreversible in me? And how can I embrace that in a society that seems uninterested in being earth-like, earth-ly, earth-y... you know, they not tryina be like they mama?
I kind of get it. You go through this stage - like a teenager/early twenty-something - when you think you know better than mama. But if your mama mama'd from wisdom and authenticity, then you realize mama knew more than you gave mama credit for, loving from a place of care, wise caution, of ebb and flow. Earth, you have known so so much more than I - we - have given you credit for. Who has already learned this lesson? What older siblings know that you have always known?
I learn from the trees, the waters, sunflowers, butterflies, sea horses, seashells. Ladybugs, ants, bees, and countless variety of birds and fish. The rocks, the dirt, the moss, the grass - so many stories and lessons for me, for us.
Can I say I'm sad too? People have done horrible things to you and to each other. Often people have used you to do these horrible things to one another. I have a bewildered sadness that we would turn a life-giving tree into a tool of death. The same trees by which you allow us to breathe are used to snatch our life-breath away. You know more about this than anyone could ever document. How do you survive the sadness and grief and horror and abuse? How do you continue to Love when people are bent on anti-Love?
I do wonder what would happen if we return to rhythms, to rituals, like the ones you keep. If we returned and relaxed into rhythms of seasons, rituals of slowness, lives that breathed deep. Not "in defiance of" only, or even primarily. But mainly because we are of you. And because slowness, rhythms, rituals, and rest are like you. And in addition to being of and like you, belonging is the blanket you offer to us. And really, I just want to stay curled up in the blanket of belonging, perched on your lap and wrapped in your arms, listening to your voice singing over me and over me and over us over and over and over...
I love you. You are big and beautiful and exceeding abundantly more than enough. Thank you.
“Belonging is the blanket you offer us” - love that!
I love "Can I say I'm sad too?" So profound!