🌎
#SacredNature
#Soul
Reciprocity
“We haven’t been in right relationship with our Mother Earth and our fellow creatures for a long time. Even worse, we’ve believed we had the right to dominate Her, cut down Her trees for our entertainment and comfort, over consume Her resources and mindlessly fill Her body with trash.
… As we give, so shall we receive. There’s no punishing God or Goddess here. Just a simple instruction that our ancestors once knew, but that we’ve neglected to follow.
~Liz Kelly
~~~
Mama Earth is our HOME.
May we learn to live in reciprocity with our Earth
and all her creatures.
May we live for the mutual benefit of All.
Aho.
🌍❤️
#MutualExchange
#GiveAndReceive
#Reciprocity
Reconnect and Remember
“Ceremonies large and small have the power to focus attention to a way of living awake in the world. The visible became invisible, merging with the soil. It may have been a secondhand ceremony, but even through my confusion I recognized that the earth drank it up as if it were right. The land knows you, even when you are lost.
… That, I think, is the power of ceremony: it marries the mundane to the sacred. The water turns to wine, the coffee to a prayer. The material and the spiritual mingle like grounds mingled with humus, transformed like steam rising from a mug into the morning mist. What else can you offer the earth, which has everything? What else can you give but something of yourself? A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home.”
~Robin Wall Kimmerer,
Braiding Sweetgrass
🌎❤️
We can reconnect and remember.
And the act of offering thanks to Mama Earth and Papa Sky for this life changes everything.
#WakeUp
#Grateful
You Know Her
You don’t have to connect with Mother Earth.
You have never been disconnected from Her.
Before you even knew what it meant to know, you have known Her.
You know Her in you, as you, as your very own breath.
Before She turned into “other”, an abstract concept, something you would have to evaluate, deserve, miss, awaken to, or even “return to”,
She has birthed you, nursed you, fed you; She has held you close;
She has never—even for a moment—let you go.
~Chameli Ardagh
We Are All Related
“In Lakota culture, we give thanks, always, for everything. We wake up, greet the morning and give thanks for making it to another sunrise. We look out and give thanks for Unci Maka (earth) and all her beauty. When it’s time to eat, we give part of our breakfast and Wakalyapi (coffee) to the spirits with a prayer of thanks. We then offer up prayers for the gorgeous day we are about to embark on. By the time I’ve ingested my food and am ready to start my day, I’ve already offered up thanks for so many things.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Being aware that the creator is responsible for everything we do, we see, we experience, is innately part of us; it’s the fabric of our culture. It helps us to stay grounded, humble, Ice Wicasa, or Ice Winyan: common man or common woman. It reminds us we are no better than anything around us, we do not rule over the grass or the pebbles just because we are larger than them.
I feel this is a lesson for all human beings, Lakota or not. This is what seems to have been forgotten in wasicu society, or perhaps they never had it. Based on their past and present history with women, and other nations, I imagine the latter is probably true.
See, in our culture Lakota women didn’t have to rise up and have a feminist movement, because we were never discriminated by our men. We are sacred in our culture. We are rulers of the roost, literally. There are issues now, between women and men, but that is due to acculturation — and that is a whole other post for another time.
Back to what I was saying, this issue of equality between human beings has always been a dividing line between our cultures and it continues to be one; manifest destiny did not, and does not, mean the same thing for everyone .
For Lakotas one of our common mantras is “Mitakuye Oyasin” — we are all related. All of us, no matter who you are (person), or what you are (grass, trees, rocks), are the same. No one is better than anyone else. Our lives really are circular, and yes, everything REALLY is related to everything else…”
~Mary Black Bonnet
∞
excerpt from Mitakuye Oyasin – We Are All Related