Prayer, Longing and the Earth

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Today, a friend sent me a link to this video by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee and his article, Praying for the Earth. In it, Vaughan-Lee speaks of our need and about how our need is a way into prayer. It is truly beautiful. Watch it full screen, if you can.

PRAYER – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee from Working with Oneness on Vimeo.

During my time in Hana, I could feel the land, the ocean, the air and the fire that lies at the heart of the earth. The elements are strong there.

As I slept at night, the breezes blew across my face and the smell of rain filled my dreams. In the daytime, the fragrance of Frangiapani and the sight of dolphins playing just across the street from where I was writing awakened the pain in my heart, the pain that comes when one sees so many faces of beauty and feels its immediacy.

To remember the earth, is to know her soul, to know her aliveness and our connection to her.

To wake up to our bodies and the wisdom and aliveness within them is to awaken to the same aliveness and wisdom of the earth.

As I communed with the land of Hana, I became painfully aware of how much I need the earth, of how much I long to feel connected to her, to know her, to witness her, to hold her and to be held by her. Just writing these words causes the tears of love and longing to flow.

flowers along the trail

At home here in the city, it is harder to feel the land. I find places in which to do so when I can. Yet, I feel this need to go back to Hana and I know I can’t. I must be here where I live. So I ask myself, “What is this longing?” What is this great need I feel in my body and heart to be in communion with the earth and the elements, with the rhythm and feel of Hana?”

In Hana, the earth fed me with her fresh pineapple and mango. She held me as I swam in her waters and walked in her mud, mud sprinkled with delicate beauty. I found a joy and peace, a sensuality that is born from life touching me directly, in so many simple yet profound ways. I felt an organic connection with her. Gratitude flowed up and out of me toward her. Not the kind of gratitude that is a thought, or something I should do. I didn’t do it. It just came in response to her beauty and all she gives.

Perhaps my longing for the earth, for the land is an organic recognition of the connection of woman with the earth, and an understanding that she needs us as much as we need her. To honor her is to awaken her to her beauty, to her wildness and grandeur. And perhaps, it is a way to awaken women to what we have forgotten about womanhood.

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15 Replies to “Prayer, Longing and the Earth”

  1. “To honor her is to awaken her to her beauty, to her wildness and grandeur.” Oh, that we might awaken to these three within while simultaneously to that of the earth. An answered prayer, indeed.

    Beautiful, Julie.

    1. Ronna, I know that if we offer our knowing it of her in prayer to her and life, then we will also know it within…and vice versa. We are in deep communion with her, sending her signals all the time…the question is, what do our signals say?
      Thanks for your words,
      Julie

  2. I love this, Julie. It’s so deliciously visceral. I’ve just been immersed in similar reflection, though on a much more intellectual level. (On Blueberries and Becoming Indigenous: http://t.co/fxWWTNs) Your post is the perfect invitation to seek an even deeper intimacy with the Earth. Thank you!

  3. Thank you for sharing Llewellyn’s prayer. It was truly beautiful.
    We go through our days dressed in our finest armor in order to function. All of sudden, something happens (the flu, a fight with a friend, heart break, or that unexpected video) and all of sudden the guard is down, vulnerability surfaces and you feel that NEED more than ever. You feel the need for connection, to the earth, to spirit, to each other.
    We desperately need those moments of vulnerability where we can feel our need for connection.

    1. Charlie, yes, vulnerability is an aspect of the feminine, and with the repression of the feminine principle, vulnerability was labeled as weak. It is so the opposite…it is a powerful place to be, to be truly open to life and to feeling what it is to be human.
      Thanks for your words,
      Julie

  4. Yes, exactly! I’ve long attributed my resonance with ME (Mother Earth) to the constantly repeating cycles of life we have in common: birth, life, death. And I don’t just mean that we are born, we live, we die but that women like ME can give birth, nourish and sustain life, then hold the space for dying. Does that even make sense?

    And, as you so wisely point out, there’s also “wildness and grandeur.” I read that, and it make me smile. It just feels so right – like a remembering of what I’d “forgotten about womanhood.”

    1. Yes, makes sense…and i love what you write about a remembering of what you’d forgotten about womanhood. Love that. And, you. Julie

  5. O sweet spontaneous
    earth how often have
    the
    doting

    fingers of
    purient philosophers pinched
    and
    poked

    thee
    ,has the naughty thumb
    of science prodded
    thy

    beauty .how
    oftn have religions taken
    thee upon their scraggy knees
    squeezing and

    buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
    gods
    (but
    true

    to the incomparable
    couch of death thy
    rhythmic
    lover

    thou answerest

    them only with

    spring)

    e.e. cummings

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