Pines in the Woods Out Back
I want you to consider Nature and your body as being one thing. Gregge Tiffen (Learning Without Experience is a Bell Without a Clapper – September, 2008)
What if we totally embraced and acted from this place? Today I’m visiting a reflective place, not looking back to explore the meaning of recent experiences, rather looking ahead and asking ‘what if?’
Gregge’s quote strikes me as catching the essence of, yet going beyond, the concept of ‘oneness with all things’. It inspires me to experiment. I want to carry it in my heart into the woods. Discover the feeling when I speak ‘I am you; you are me’ to the pines in the woods out back. How will that differ from the peace I feel when I offer them daily thanks?
Surely I won’t deepen my connection with Nature, since I am it and it is me. We aren’t merely connected. We are one. How will my awareness shift? What possibilities will open? What changes may spring forth requesting consideration or, perhaps, demanding action?
The power of the planet is the power you have available to you in totality. Your body is representative of the planet, comes from the planet and belongs to the planet. Gregge Tiffen (Learning Without Experience is a Bell Without a Clapper – September, 2008)
Our planet is demonstrating her power to restore balance. Weather extremes, flooding, storms, earthquakes, raging fires are part of her modus operandi. Like the mother giving tough love to nurture and guide her child, Mother Earth speaks. How well will I listen? And, more importantly, how will I respond? After all, my Mother and I, we are one.
Your body’s relationship to nature is to give fidelity and protection to Mother Nature, the very mother that birthed your body. Fidelity is your first action, your first commitment, and that is the law you recognize at the instant of your birth. Gregge Tiffen (The Language of a Mystic: Completion – September, 2009)
How might I deepen my devotion? Which of my daily habits support systems contrary to exercising dominion and loving kindness to the planet/to me? What’s possible if we collectively ask, not from guilt and fear, but from love?
Much of the wisdom you seek comes from taking the responsibility to care for your own body. Gregge Tiffen (The Journey Continues: In Search of Wisdom – September, 2010)
Home. Come home. Come home to me, to my body that is of this earth, a microcosm of the macrocosm that is the planet, Mother Earth. What does this body need, not to survive but to thrive? What ‘less’ becomes ‘more’ in caring for the planet/for me? What does truly thriving look like?
We each have a role to play on the stage of our planet’s well-being, for her well-being is our well-being, yours and mine, our children’s and our grandchildren’s, our neighbors, our friends, and those with whom we disagree.
Whether we are activists demanding change or scientists and technologists developing solutions or simply individuals going about this thing called life, we are impacting our planet/ourselves. Every thought, every word, and every deed impacts Mother Nature’s well-being/our well-being. How will I collaborate with her/with myself today? How will you?
The Planet, My Home, Me