Recycling and Other Issues

May you grow straight as a tree.
May you dance in the spring air.
May you be washed by the rain
and combed by the sweet wind.

Dear chidlren, stand straight
as the trees of the greatest forest.
And I, your goddess mother,
will always watch over you.

--Song of Egle, Lithuanian forest mother.

Today many of our relations are in danger from the hands of humankind. As we reclaim our real place in the universe as children of the goddess, we must also redeem those other children who suffer and are lost because of us.

I was thinking today about matters environmental. One of the 'stupid questions' I asked some short time after starting at the school was: 'Do we recycle?' only to be told that no, we don't, though it wasn't put quite like that. I was looked at as if I had just grown an extra nose on my face or something. Seems like that's something that Egypt doesn't know about - certainly doesn't do... The best I can manage to do is to recycle all the sheets of paper that would otherwise be left in the trash by using them for scrap paper, making notes on, etc... and of course reducing the number of things that I print to those that I really have to in an unavoidable way. This would be where text books would come in really handy in other ways that just telling me what I have to teach and when.

So I've started Emailing notes when I can, keeping a box for all the paper that's only been used on one side, and using the whiteboard for other things that all the children have to do rather than printing out worksheets. That of course is another issue in and of itself, because doing that I'm using more electricity while trying to save the trees. At this point that feels like the lesser of the two evils. I am, of course, always looking for more options that can help to conserve energy, paper and other natural resources.

It's the right thing to do on so many levels, to try and make sure that I 'tread gently' on the Earth; to show care and concern for my brothers and sisters in nature; to be more in tune with the needs of the environment - and not just here, but everywhere. One of the things Mir has talked about on many occasions is getting a compost bin, and lately that's been on my mind as well. Perhaps soon I might be able to help with that, perhaps as soon as Easter - which doesn't sound so soon, but if I can do that as a gift for us when I next go home - I think that will be a good thing. With the gardens we want to put in as well, that will help with the soil, once the compost has composted properly... giving back to the Earth what she has given to us. We already recycle there, (in fact just about everywhere but here in Egypt seems to). I just want to do, and continue to do what's right. Maybe there's more that we can do with trash than we think.

A Gift

Mother of fields, mother of waters,
mother of mountains, we call our to you:

Whose seeds are we? To whom do we belong?

Mother of thunder, mother of trees,
mother of the world, we ask you:

Where did we begin? Where are we going?

Mother of the world, mother of the shaman's pole,
mother of temples, mother of the sky:

Where do we find you? When are you with us?

Mother of our dances, mother of the sun,
mother of fire, mother of all food:

Are you not the only mother we know?

--Kagaba people of South America

Throughout the ages, on all continents, people have worshiped the divine feminine. But for many centuries in our culture, the vision of a universal mother has been suppressed.

Suppressed but never quite gone away - just hidden - sometimes in story, song and alegory. Sometimes just in the way of calling something, (for example - the 'Mother Church'). Whenever I feel the connection with the divine feminine, or with just strongly primal energies, this is an issue that always surfaces for me somewhere along the line. I'm not a politically militant pagan, that will evangalise or push the Mother down anyone's throat... but I feel - I personally feel - the diminution of the divine feminine - like an ache I cannot ease, or an itch that I cannot scratch. And I don't suppose it's really mine to scratch. For myself, yes, but for the rest of society, no... or I turn into the evangalist pagan, which is what I'm not.

I think that's why working through this all means so much to me, because it is allowing me to reconnect with that 'lost' part, the missing disquieted piece of myself in the world. It is uplifting to read all the hymns and poems written to the divine feminine from many cultures, old and (hopefully at some point) new... or at least still in existance... from Ancient Greece to the Native Americans, from the Eastern civilisations to the Western ones - refreshing and uplifting.

And much needed. I cannot say thank you enough for this gift. Such a beautiful surprise as it was.

A Cascade of Thinking

Wisdom rested on the ark of the covenant.
From the ark she moved to the cherubim.
From the cherubim she moved to the other cherubim.
From the second cherubim she moved to the threshold.
From the threshold she moved to the courtyard.
From thecourtyard she moved to the altar.
From the altar she moved to the temple roof.
From the roof to the wall, from the wall to the city,
from the city to the mountain, and then,
from the mountain, Wisdom moved out into the desert.

--Talmudic poem, 279CE

They knew that Wisdom is never at rest for long. We find her here one day, there another. One day we find her in a book, the next day in the open sky. One day we discover her in the soulful comments of a friend; the next day a painting speaks truth to us.

I started reading The Story of Solomon Bear today, and it may seem a strange place to be starting to talk about the meditation of the day, but it struck me how much the story, meant for little children, carries a wisdom that is strong to me, for me and in me. The wisdom of love. I haven't read it all yet, but so far the book seems to be about how all encompassing, how 'holy' or 'sacred' for wants of better words, that love truly is.

That strikes me today on a day where I will confess, I feel the need of it.

Certainly, there are other strands of Wisdom at large and alive in the world, we ask ourself daily, questions such as, "Is it wise to leave that x there," or "is it wise to say such and such to so and so," and matters like that, but what guides out actions if not the Wisdom of our experience, and the experience of being a loving person is surely what guides me - at least I try to be guided in that way.

When we ask ourselves what is the best thing to do, aren't we really asking ourselves what is the 'wisest' thing to do - otherwise what do we mean by 'best?' Best for whom? Ourselves? Surely that is a very selfish approach to living life, and yet if we cannot act with wisdom in our own lives, then what?

But then, as the reading says, we find wisdom in many sources. In books - in films and tv shows (let's look at Star Trek for that one) - in music and in pictures of one kind or another... it does not pass me by that all the things that I have listed as containing 'wisdom' are, in some manner or the other, the arts. Is it wisdom we find in science and mathematics - or logic and fact? (Not exactly a rhetorical question, but one to which I don't have an answer). When faced with a choice, do we approach it with fact or with wisdom? And which would be best? Is there a point at which all of these converge and if so, what should we call that point - truth?

There's an interesting possible definition - what is Truth - the point at which wisdom, fact and logic converge.

Moving on... but why... why did I run from that? Was it too deep for me to contemplate if that was in fact the case. Many people say that the truth is subjective - what is truth for me, might not represent truth for another person, and if truth is the convergence of fact, logic and wisdom, since one two of those three things seem to be finite, and wisdom is ever changing, then is not wisdom the key to truth?

Only the vast desert is large enough for her. The desert, and the stars - for the entire universe is Wisdom's home.