Monday Meditations: Mother Earth and Father Earth

The earth is alive. It is not alive is some supernatural sense of course, not thinking in a way that a domesticated human would understand as thought. But nonetheless, it lives and breathes, it eats and defecates and gives birth to all life on this planet.

And though it may not think as a domesticated human would understand, the earth, the Whole Earth, acts as though it thinks and as though is suffers when harmed, as though it nurtures when loved.

The earth is an ancient thing built with the bones and bodies of every ancestor that you ever had. Every thing that hunted you or was hunted by you lies within the earth, and so too for those things that hunted and were hunted by your grandparents- and on down the ages past until your ancestors were amino acids and not even alive by the standards of a domesticated human.

The earth is your mother, it birthed you and nurtured you. Everything that you have eaten to dampen your hunger, everything that you have wrapped yourself in to keep warm, everything that has sheltered you from the storm and the snow and the flood- all of it is a gift from the earth. Do not speak to me in metaphors, there is no metaphor here. You are made of earth, you have eaten earth and you are clothed in earth.

The earth is your father, it taught you and disciplined you. Everything that you know now, you know because of lessons that you or some other child extracted from the earth through observation. The earth taught Marie Curie about radiation. The earth taught Isaac Newton about gravitation. The earth taught Mercator of map making. The earth taught Polynesian chiefs of astronomy and seafaring. The earth taught Ancient Kings in the Near East about irrigation. These things are not given by gods, but come from diligent study under a rigorous taskmaster- Father Earth.

Do not put masks upon these ideas and make them into false gods. These ideas do not need hollow legs to run around on in the dreams of men. Earth is our father and our mother, it is ancient and so deep and dark and unknowable that even if we could stay here past the Super Nova of our sun, we would not understand even the topsoil completely. If you wrap this great unknowable Father/Mother into the image of a hermaphroditic god/dess you will blind yourself to the truth of the thing.

See it completely as it should be seen. You will not understand it all. It will test your sanity. We are not gods and we have never found or made a true god. Our gods are puny next to the depth of meaning that is our earth, our Father/Mother.