The Columbia City Yoga on-line Moving into Meditation class met this morning. We contemplated our relationship with Earth as giver. Our body is a gift, given by Earth. We are Earth’s dream and she is our dream. Our natural response is gratitude. Gratitude arises in a field of abundance among inter-related beings. We can sense this in our bodies, feel it in our hearts and imagine it into being with our minds.
We heard from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s writing, The Serviceberry. You can read her Emergence Magazine interview, Practical Reverence. Robin describes her imaginative model for embodying a “practical reverence: an ethic of care, reciprocity, and gratitude for the Earth and Her abundance.” It might change your ideas about the possibilities of economy.
We heard Valerie Hope Cherrin’s poem EarthDreamBody. The poem is from an on-line journal, The Work That Reconnects. The poems are contributed by members who are doing this work of grieving for and advocating on behalf of our beleaguered and beautiful world.
Guided Reflection
Welcome. Last week we heard about Planetwalker John Francis’ 50 year walking pilgrimage. John received many kindnesses along the way. He entrusted himself to the world and recognized our interbeing. In meditation, we explored befriending our bodies and minds. John’s story inspired us to entrust ourselves to the world.
The kindness that John experienced was non-transactional. People were moved by their concern for John’s well-being. Their self-less caring made the world a better place. John’s story made me reflect on all that we’ve been given and what we have to give. We have been given life: the air, the sun, the rain, the nurturing soil, the songs and the stories. With these gifts we flourish and our flourishing is mutual.
In her article, The Serviceberry: An Economy of Abundance, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes:
. . . In the presence of such gifts, gratitude is the intuitive first response. The gratitude flows toward our plant elders and radiates to the rain, to the sunshine, to the improbability of bushes spangled with morsels of sweetness in a world that can be bitter. . . .
. . . Gratitude is . . . the thread that connects us in a deep relationship, simultaneously physical and spiritual, as our bodies are fed and spirits nourished by the sense of belonging, which is the most vital of foods. Gratitude creates a sense of abundance . . . In that climate of sufficiency, our hunger for more abates and we take only what we need, in respect for the generosity of the giver.
We experience gratitude for all that we’ve been given and all that we are able to give. We are in relationship with Earth as giver. Our body is a gift, given by Earth. We are Earth’s dream and she is our dream. Our body is a the realization of dream. A dream that includes all our relations. The essence of the dream is held in Valerie Hope Cherrin’s poem: EarthDreamBody.
You Are a Dream of the Earth
Remember, Earth has Dreamed you into Being.
Given you this EarthDreamBody.
Her longing to roam around on two feet, conscious of herself,
is fulfilled in your very aliveness.
Feel her rivers your veins,
her air your lungs,
her rocks and stones your bones,
her animal nature your flesh and muscle.
Deep fiery volcanic stirrings your gut.
She has dreamed you into being and you are bound to her by the force of love.
Your sweet life given to you by eons of creation and your only job here is remembering who you really are; a product of love more powerful than you can imagine.
Honor your mother, Earth. Remember and hold her love for you in the very core of your being for these few short breaths of aliveness.
When your time is done, your body will return to give more life.
Remember, Earth is dreaming you.
Filled and sourced by love.
Created to witness the beauty of creation.
Stand in this each day.
This is your task, to reawaken to the love that is patiently waiting for you in your EarthDreamBody.
Let us reawaken the loving awareness of our EarthDreamBody. Our bodies are fed and our spirits are nourished by belonging. Each of us belongs to this circle of caring. Our circle of caring belongs to Earth. Coming together in this way we affirm and express what we hold dear: awareness, compassion and presence. We breathe, we move, we rest. And in the space we create together we are grateful. If in gratitude we breathe in, it is in our giving we breathe out. In giving and receiving we are whole.
We sit at the threshold of loving awareness. I invite you to enter the stillness of Earth’s dream. Feel EarthBody as your Body. This is a good time to regard ourselves with love. I invite you to adjust your posture so you can let go – let go and feel elemental being. You might begin by feeling Earth in your bones. Sense the firmness and weight gradually settling. You might take a deeper breath and sigh – drawing in the out-breath of plants as you inhale. Your out-breath nourishing the green life around you. You can relax into the gentle letting go of out-breath, the easy pulse of in-breath.
You might imagine this easy, natural flow of quiet changes: the many tree leaves capturing bits of sunlight and giving them to living roots. Composting leaves becoming food and finally living soil. You can feel winter slowly emerging in EarthBody and in your Body.
Like Earth rivers, inner rivers flow throughout your Body to nourish and sustain, to clear and cleanse. Let your awareness be carried by the inner flow from your heart throughout your body and then back again. The gentle letting go of out-breath, the easy pulse of in-breath, the pulse of life continues.
You can sense inner fire metabolizing all you’ve taken in through eyes and ears, nose and tongue, the sunlight, wind and rain bathing your skin. Notice where your awareness is drawn: tissues of muscle or bone, perhaps a dispersed sense of feeling as emotion or mind states making themselves known.
How do you sense EarthBody: her breath, her living waters and metabolizing heat? Notice where imagining takes you: mountains and rivers, fields and forests, primordial forms slowly evolving, slowly moving, pulsing and settling.
Notice how you can feel the subtle flow of energy within beings and between them. Recall how you are given sun, water, soil. In these precious moments of stillness we can also sense how we relate to all our relations: how we inter-are with all our relations.
We might sense ourselves as EarthDreamBody. What thoughts grow while thinking as a tree? What dreams flow while dreaming as a river? Can we let the pulse of life guide us into the shared mind of a flock of birds, a pack of wolves, a school of fish? We can start with the familial creatures that we love unconditionally: the cat purring in our lap, the dog gazing up at us with big dog eyes. Our EarthDreamBody might savor the water we drink; taste clouds and rain, sense pollinators and many hands in the food we eat.
We can come home to our EarthDreamBody in the still moments of our day.We can slow down and soften long enough to sense the pores in our skin releasing and absorbing the inner and outer worlds by which we live. This dream like intimacy inviting more curiosity and space into all our relations. And upon our journey’s end:
When [our] time is done, [our bodies] will return to give more life.
Remember, Earth is dreaming [us].
Filled and sourced by love.
Created to witness the beauty of creation.
Stand in this each day.
This is [our] task, to reawaken to the love that is patiently waiting for [us] in [our] EarthDreamBody.