Annie Bananie

 

This weekend I found myself sitting in a canoe navigating through lily pads and portaging over beaver dams.  The autumn sun kept us company.  Our adventure was on private land so very few people paddle these waters and it felt like we were explorers. I love that feeling of being surrounded by trees and being humbled by natures presence.  For me it's a mediation.  As I paddle through the calm waters and gaze at the beauty around me a calmness envelopes me and I feel strong within myself.  Stress leaves me and I become boundless and free.

Our destination was a very special rock which we have visited before.  It is south facing and the sun caressed our skin as we swam in our birthday suits.  The water was cold and invigorating. 

There is no denying that we are connected to the very soil we walk upon.  In the city it is so easy to loose that connection as we are surrounded by our jungle of cement.  At night the stars are dulled by city lights.  When is the last time you immersed yourself in the presence of nature?

 

She vibrates with colour and light.  She pulses with the very life force that we draw upon.

She surprises us with colour and beauty.

I am reading this most amazing book called the Fifth Sacred Thing by Starhawk.   The very first page had me captured and inspired.  Here is the excerpt. I hope you are as struck as I was by it`s beauty and truth.  Love to you and yours...

Declaration of the Four Sacred Things

The earth is a living, conscious being.  In company with cultures of many different times and places, we name these things as sacred: air, fire, water and earth.

Whether we see them as the breath, energy , blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of a Creator, or as symbols of the inerconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them.

To call these things sacred is to say that they have a value beyond their usefulness for human ends, that they themselves become the standards by which our acts, our economies, our laws and our purposes must be judged. No one has the right to appropriate them or profit from them at the expense of others. Any government that fails to protect them forfeits its legitimacy.

All people, all living things, are part of the earth life, and so are sacred.  No one of us stands higher or lower than any other. Only justice can assure balance, only ecological balance can sustain freedom. Only in freedom can that fifth sacred thing we call spirit flourish in its full diversity.

To honor the sacred is to create conditions in which nourishment, sustenance, habitat, knowledge, freedom, and beauty can thrive.  To honor the sacred is to make love possible.
To this we dedicate our curiosity, our will, our courage, our silences and our voices.  To this we dedicate our lives.

Walk this Earth with purpose.