This week’s Sunday Soul Soliloquy is about our planet, given that it was Earth Day this week. The above is an excerpt from a book I am writing, in free-verse poetry, about a young Cherokee woman. She walks into my mind during meditation and moments of quietness, when I allow my mind to wander, and tells me her story.
These two stanzas are from early on in the book when she first hears ‘the drums’ – the calling of Mother Earth and the Great Spirit, not really knowing what it is she feels, but understands somewhere, deep in her soul, that something significant is stirring and awakening.
The Awakening Seasons
Here in the UK spring has been very late; Nature has been very reticent in revealing the shoots of new life (you can see this in a couple of my recent ‘Song of Gaia’ poems).
I do wonder if we, in our civilised worlds, were more connected to nature and the rise and fall of the seasons that we would live a little more peacefully than we do. As the story of my young Cherokee unfolds, she remembers much more of her inherent connection to Mother Earth and her life rolls along with a kind of smoothness – one that comes from the feeling of being fully in that moment, each moment.
I find I can write more in the winter. Without being consciously aware of it, for the past few years I have echoed the reflective and withdrawing nuances of the season and written a lot of inward-looking and cathartic poetry, more so than in the summer months.
The Calling Moon
Although we may not sometimes see the effect that the seasons have on us (and this would be true for those who live in places that are less seasonal), we are certainly affected at a more micro level by day and night: sleeping, dreaming and rejuvenating during darkness, ready for our awakening as the sun rises with her light. As the planet sleeps, we sleep. We are connected.
For me, writing has also fell into this pattern where I prefer to work at night time, when nature goes to sleep and we naturally withdraw – the twilight and early hours of darkness seem to be a time for me to reflect on the day and bring my creativity to the surface.
The Power of Nature
A lot of the talk about our connectedness to nature is often labelled as kooky or New Age, but take, for instance, the practice of gardening by the moon. It may sound a little out there to some, but with understanding, it all makes sense. At full moon, the tides are pulled higher and also the water table in the land. This brings moisture closer to the surface and helps to effectively germinate seeds that have just been planted. This is more favourable than having seeds in the soil for three weeks before they receive that life-giving moisture.
I don’t know too much about gardening by the moon, and I may have the moon phases wrong, but it sufficiently illustrates the point. And, of course, that’s not mention the energy from the moon itself, but that’s probably for another post 
.
Echoes
Nature gives us clues and signs, through the large and small eco systems on the planet, on how to live; to heighten our awareness, existence and contentment. We are hard-wired to live peacefully and at one with the land and Mother Earth, just like the Cherokees and countless other tribes of our ancestors – it’s in our DNA, just like the rest of the animal kingdom.
Those great gifts she gives us – like walking barefoot on a beach, touching great trees that have lived for hundreds of years in breathing forests, feeling the gentleness of a breeze on your face, or swimming above reefs of stunning colour and life in the oceans – are when Mother Nature sings her song the loudest to us.
When we are connected. When we are awake.
The Canadian Redwood
I give up myself
to the Canadian Redwood
majesty enveloping
as I meld
and my mind touches the echoes
of the ancient sapling
and the journey of storms,
sunlight and dappled voices.
Wisdom through the ages
hangs in our aura.
Gaia’s energy bleeds
into our being
with a cry of need
to be understood
and yet with an acceptance
of the way it is.
- Angela Hickman
Wishing you a beautiful week of peace and connectedness. May you touch, and be touched by, the soul of our beautiful planet, for she is as alive as you or I.
Angela
Related Posts:
Prayer for Tomorrow – Poem/Song Lyrics for Earth Day 2013
