EarthLove

Sharing Songs of Earth and Sky

Your Gods

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“When they ask to see your gods
your book of prayers
show them lines
drawn delicately with veins
on the underside of a bird’s wing
tell them you believe
in giant sycamores mottled
and stark against a winter sky
and in nights so frozen
stars crack open
spilling streams of molten ice to earth
and tell then how you drank
the holy wine of the honeysuckle
on a warm spring day
and of the softness
of your mother who never taught you
death was life’s reward –
but who believed in the earth and the sun
and a million, million light years of being.”
~JL Stanley

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Image: Soil, Root and Fern
by Nancy L

Celebrate the World

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“Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy. The birds still remember what we have forgotten, that the world is meant to be celebrated.”

~Terry Tempest Williams,
When Women Were Birds

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Image: Linocut by Robert Gillmor

Last Night As I Was Sleeping

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Photo by Gavin Mackintosh South Molton, United Kingdom

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.

Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.

Last night as I slept,
I dreamt—marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.

-Antonio Machado
Translated by Robert Bly

Earth Teach Me

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Earth teach me caring
as mothers nurture their young.

Earth teach me courage
as the tree that stands alone.

Earth teach me limitation
as the ant that crawls on the ground.

Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle that soars in the sky.

Earth teach me acceptance 
as the leaves that die each fall.

Earth teach me renewal
as the seed that rises in the spring.

Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.

Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.

~Ute Prayer

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Image: Aspen Light
by Nancy L

Thunderous Beauty

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When we listen and take in the astonishingly sensuous earth, we come awake to the thunderous beauty that surrounds us. We are literally inundated with the world pouring through every opening and in this awareness, we recognize a fundamental truth: we are of the earth.

In fact, as cosmologist Brian Swimme suggests, humans were put on earth to gawk. That is our cosmological destiny! To be astonished, amazed, delighted in the intricate weavings of the cosmos is to listen fully and to send out our sigh of appreciation is what is asked in return.

~Francis Weller

Image: Garden of the Gods
by Nancy L