Connecting with Mother Earth

I invite you this summer to take some time to connect with the Earth. You are the Earth. Your bones are made out of particles that were once a part of mountains. Your cells are surrounded and penetrated by the ocean. The breath that moves through you once moved through mighty cedar trees and baby pandas. To connect with the Earth is to remember that we are a part of this magical, mysterious, and awesomely creative process that is life. To connect with the Earth is to be invited to live from the awareness of the sacredness of all.

If we really think about it, most of the time we never even touch the ground. There are shoes and floors and concrete between us and a full connection with this sacred planet. We may, every once in a while, smell the Earth and we may actually pause for a moment here and there to truly see its beauty, but we rarely truly touch it. So take off your shoes and find some grass to wiggle your toes in. Be like a child and allow your feet to play with the Earth!

And if you want to take this further, lie down on the Earth and take a few moments to look at your world from this position. Open to the beauty of the sky above you, and if there are clouds, watch them dance with the eyes of a child. When you are ready, close your eyes and allow your imagination to move down through the Earth below you, all the way out to the other side, and discover an amazing thing…the Earth is being held by nothing other than space! She is not stuck on a stick or hung by a string. She is resting in vast oceans of space. Then extend your awareness out to the left and the right and then above you and discover there too are vast oceans of space. Feel how solid the Earth is below you. Then, just as deeply as the Earth is allowing itself to be held by space, allow yourself to be held by the Earth as you dance through the cosmos. Melt into her embrace.

From this grounded place, open your ears and listen to the Earth. There are all sorts of sounds arising and passing away all around you and within you. This is the music of life, and you are listening to it the moment it appears out of mystery. Now open your eyes again and look into space. Because the Earth is moving 65,000 MPH around the sun, you are now looking at a different part of the universe than you did just a few minutes ago. Allow yourself to be awed by how vast and yet how supportive life is.

If you are inclined to take this one step further, find a place to lie down on the Earth under a starry night. Again, melt into the embrace of the Earth and open to the vast oceans of space you are dancing through right at this moment. We can see around 10,000 stars when the night is clear but there are more stars in the universe than grains of sand on every beach of the Earth! Can you open to the magnitude and the grandeur of the universe you are living in? Can you allow yourself to be held by the Earth as you dance through space and recognize that you are a small but integral part of this awe-inspiring, unfolding that is life?

May we lift ourselves out of our ordinary awareness and open to life. May we allow ourselves to be so moved that we finally recognize we are all a part of a creative unfolding that is mind-boggling in its precision, its intelligence, and its beauty. May we understand that we are all together on this tiny blue-green jewel that is dancing through oceans of space. May we discover that whether our skin is dark or light, our sex is male or female, or whatever our religion is, we have so much more in common than we do in differences. And may we, as we move throughout each day, become aware that we are a thread weaving this world into the tapestry of sacred oneness that it truly is.