cedar_grove | Dig Deep

O spring, beautiful season!
O goddess, beautiful goddess!

Come with joy to us now,
with goodness and plenty.

Come with tall flax that
roots deeply in the field.

Come with corn, lots
of corn, lots and lots of corn!

Look, we have sent girls to you
bearing gifts to make you happy:

Look, we have sent them to you
bearing cakes made with fried eggs.

--Russian folksong

The earth will bear for a long time with no return. She will keep on giving and giving, providing us with food and water and air. But even the goddess cannot go on giving without getting. If we only take from the earth and never give back, we will eventually deplete even her vast energy.

This is especially relevent on so many levels, and as I sit here, meditating on this in relative darkness after a day in the sun, with charity events at the school carnival, I find myself thinking about this on each of those levels in several different ways.

I've spoken elsewhere about the whole issue of recycling in this country - and the lack of it... and have honestly been trying to reduce... reduce my waste that cannot be recycled. And to reuse where I can. I can fill the water bottle I bought in the canteen from the fountain in the school corridors as many times as I like and still have fresh, safe water... and to recycle - for example. I have no vase, so when one of the children in my class brought me flowers for Mother's Day, an old plastic tub that used to contain snacky-crackers, has become my vase. I try to do my part to 'give back' to Mother.

Then there's the whole energies thing... as practitioners of a nature based faith we draw on the energies of Earth all the time, tapping into the Mother when we do any kind of working. We are taught to 'ground' ourselves, but how many of us truly do that in a way that creates a two way flow? Or even how many of us engage in a little exchange of energy simply as part of a regular meditaion. There used to be a meditation that we would do as a regular thing in one of the groups I used to go to, called 'the tree' by some. It's a meditation in which grounding and centering becomes a visualisation of a willow like tree - with branches flowering out of the top of the head and sweeping back down to touch the earth once more... and the energy we draw upon from our base flows in a circle back to earth. Many use this as a kind of cleaning meditation, as well as one meant to energise - and that's all well and good, but how about we do this meditation when we too are already energised? Would it not then help, even in some small way, to return some of the energy we take, daily, from the earth; from our Mother?

I try to do so as much as is humanly possible - as much as is possible for me that is. If there is one thing that I have observed of here, this place - this essentially spiritual land, is that Her energies here are buried deeply. One has to reach for them - open heart and mind with honest and reach deeply to connect with them. Haven't yet worked out why that should be the case - perhaps to distinguish the casual seeker from the serious, perhaps because other faiths here are so faithfully wrapped around the collective psyche of her people. Islam and Coptic Christianity certainly have their own influence over what could be considered the 'native' (and ancient) faith of this place... and all of these like a blanket, strangely protective, over the earth energies of this place.

Interesting...