I have come to realize more and more the importance of our link with the natural world.  This isn’t just about the peace we might find walking through the woods, or sitting by a stream.  And it isn’t just about the changes we hope to see in the planet as more of us learn to care. 

It grows out of the fact that the living world is one.  This is the essence of Gaia, that we are all interrelated and connected.  It is the essence of what science now shows us, that there is a unified nature to reality.  All things have what might be called consciousness at some level – in fact, consciousness rather than matter is what we and the whole universe fundamentally are.  This doesn’t just define us individually but is like an energy field linking us with everything – unity in the midst of a huge and wonderful diversity.  It is not just science but has been experienced by many mystics.

The culture and world-view here in the West has been one of separation, seeing us as separate from each other, from our planet, and from God.  So even if we take this concept of unity on board, it can be difficult to see and experience it.  But if we did live like this, what a difference it would make, to our planet and to us.  Many are saying that for humanity to survive it must change, and for me a loving relationship and sense of unity with the earth is an important part of what would enable that.  We are linked, so change in one will reflect change in the other.

This is a piece that talks about that living energy of the universe, the essence that links all together.  I have called it God but do use your own words or concepts.

Open

There are times when it seems the whole world lies open like an oyster’s shell, its surfaces shining instead of dull, revealing instead of hiding.  Each face and leaf and shape and colour is charged like an ocean of spirit, like a thumbprint of the Divine.  All are painted with the same brush, the same loveliness, and I can feel the same life rising up in me to meet them.  As they open I open, or perhaps the other way around. 

They offer so much more than a back drop to my walking, they are the pattern of my thinking, they are beauty in my soul.  They all know each other and I am part of the knowing, we are strung together like stitches in a garment, like waves finding shore.  And the ocean, the secret smile that filters through, is an essence of joy, of completeness, of Spirit.  Each of us is an echo of glory, each of us traces the love lines of God.

As we live we create, making portraits of God, for God.  We take our little part of the Universe and wrap it in words or gesture, in paint or clay, in steel or brick or paper, and unfold the Divine in the picture of our days.  The Source of all Being shining through light and shadow, through shape and colour, through leaf and face.  The world is open and God is within.

Here are more spring thoughts as it is such a wonderful season of change and new life, and who cannot be moved by it, feeling the joy as the outside world opens up ready for us to respond.

On the cusp

A new start for spring.  That means for awakening and unfolding and new colours and shapes and thoughts and sunlight shining and rain clouds storming and animals coming alive with passion and foolishness in all their mating rituals.

We are at the beginning of spring now so we are on the cusp.  The nights can bring frost and the days warm sunshine.  We are like deserts, like mountains.  The crocuses have gone, and primroses, violets and celandines take their place while the bluebells are just opening.  It is quite glorious.  The lawn is newly mowed and is a carpet of bouncy green to walk upon.  It invites your feet and your heart into its open space.  The trees are still bare but the buds are bursting.  A bird is singing.

This is the time to take internal skis or surf boards and launch off on the swells that are all around.  It is time for trimming, tying and mending so our feet and our heart are ready.  New dreams are waiting to be born, new friends to be found, new pathways explored, new ways of living lived out.  It is time to open the cupboards and bring out the good and sweep out the stale and the old.  And it is a communal dance, gathering together under friendly skies, working together in the gathering days.

This is from Where the Birds Sing: Wild Places for the Soul.

For more information see http://janeupchurch.co.uk/where-the-birds-sing/

Spring

I could fill a whole book
with spring.
Everywhere I look
life is bursting out,
such flowers, such scents,
and new-born leaves
so delicate and perfect.

I cheer as I see them,
stopping to look, to touch,
to smell.

Beauty calls forth beauty
and I blossom with them,
both of us offering
a hymn of praise
with our smiles.

This is from A Leaf between my Toes: Finding Wonder

For more information see http://janeupchurch.co.uk/a-leaf-between-my-toes/

This is the time of the Spring equinox.  We are moving from winter to spring, from dark to light, from cold to warmth, from bareness to the vibrant flush of spring flowers and new-born leaves.  Let us also move from anxiety and dismay at world events and the state of our planet to love and hope.  Let us sow these seeds into the thirsty soil.

Equinox

This is it, the official beginning of spring.  Oh, the long awaited date and season and sun.  The sun is white, sitting over the tops of the houses to the East, diffused through the thin cloud that heralds the start of a glorious day.   It is still cold from early evening to early morning marking the hours of the sun’s absence, but it builds to a warmth you can live in during the day.

I love this day, the changeover from winter to the early train of summer.  I love that everywhere today is the same, we all have twelve hours of day and night, equal night, equinox.  And as we sail smoothly into our opening light and new season of warmth, so the south tilts into its fall, into darkness and the call of winter.  Today is a magic day, yet most people won’t notice it save perhaps a smile at the new-found warmth of the sun.  We live on our planet like strangers, not recognising its journeys or its moods, sheltered from the weather and with a ready light to hide the dark. 

Celebrating an equinox or solstice acknowledges the birthdays of our home, enjoying the relationship we have with the earth on which we live all our days.  It is also enjoying our relationship with  the Divine, whatever that means for us, seeing God in all things – the new sun rising, the hazy air sharpening, the primroses covering the lawn in gentle yellow welcome, the quickening of spring awakening the buds, calling the call to life that echoes in our blood. I desire to be out here today but I cannot, so can I take these elements of earth, air, fire and water and hold them in a burning cauldron safe in my heart?  Can I trust as trees do, or will I always bother and fuss before I find the path?  Is it part of the human condition, part of my makeup, a jigsaw dance between the bother and the bliss, learning to carry all the bits equally well, living in memory and faith at the same time, trusting as trees dig roots into deep soil, trying to enjoy all parts of the journey and not just the destination.  Today I have things to do that will call me away.  Today I hang my needs on the wheel of the sun and let it turn me. 

Fungus is not something we normally think about beyond mushrooms for a meal.  It can seem unhelpful when we find our food has spoiled and gone mouldy.  But this function of fungi plus bacteria to break down organic matter is essential.  Not only does it help to produce soil, it also keeps our planet healthy, recycling organic material instead of allowing it to pile up unwanted.  And of course penicillin is derived from a mould.

But even more important are the mycelium networks that link the roots of plants and trees.  They were a critical feature that enabled plants to successfully move from aquatic environments onto the land.  This was a symbiotic relationship (mutually beneficial).  The fungi enabled the plants to access water and nutrients from the barren land, and they received carbohydrates from the photosynthesising plants.  It is a very intimate relationship with fungi colonizing the plants’ cellular tissue (called arbuscular mycorrhizae or AM) to maximize the transfer of nutrients.  Today 85% of plants remain in such AM symbiosis.  Trees and woody plants have developed an extracellular involvement with fungi (EcM) instead, accounting for 3% of plant species.  To quote Jude Currivan in her recent book ‘The Story of Gaia’:

While AM partnerships don’t affect the root morphology of their plants, EcM ones do.  EcM fungi can’t break through the wood-strong cell walls of their plant partners.  Instead, they form a double sheath around their roots and construct a sensing and communicating mesh of hyphae known as a Hartig net.  Increasing root branching, they expand the plants’ root systems, extending interconnectedness and signaling.  In doing so, they’ve progressively increased the distributed intelligence and learning abilities of their host plants and their ecosystems of tropical, temperate, and boreal forests….While all mycorrhizal symbioses are beneficial in boosting the host plants’ immune systems, EcM is especially advantageous.

Jude Currivan. The Story of Gaia – The Big Breath and the Evolutionary Journey of our Conscious Planet.  Inner Traditions. 2022

Threshold

The sunlight falls,
flickers off leaves and fronds
of fern, weaves
patterns in the hedgerows that guard
the garden, tumbles
and teases the edges of shade,
the glade alight with it,
the space hugging the watching
trees that are icons,
the grass between
a prayer mat
to sit and soak in the sun’s syrup
as I lose myself
in the soaring sky.

The place changes,
lifts off from the physical, visual
reality of suburban plot
to become a world charged with the glister
of new-born buds, of ants
scurrying in the dirt, of God;
the invisible vigour of life’s longing,
the myriad unseen creatures,
the roots and the fungi,
the surging push inside cells,
inside souls, tingles in the air
like incense.

Water is such a simple thing, just H2O, for most of us always there to drink or use for washing.  We are used to a world with rivers and oceans, with rain and snow, but without water there would be no life on this planet.  There used to be water on Mars, leaving behind dried river systems, but now we are the only planet that we know of with water, with life.  70% of the earth’s surface is covered with water, and 60% of our bodies consists of water.  Water is home to 78% of our animal life. 

Water is precious, yet many areas now suffer from a shortage of water, and worldwide we have problems of pollution.  Today, when you have a drink or a shower, when you walk in the rain or visit a river, give thanks.

Water

Water falls in intimate, clinging caresses,
shape shifting to cover each surface
like words
so you don’t notice how heavy it is
when lying pooled and still
(‘though always ready to tip and slide
like mercury,
like something alive),
singing the song of the oceans inside our bodies,
carrying our blood, our tears, our heat;
or out there holding
the weight of the world and its moon
in a courtship flow of dance.

Gathered
from the air as rain,
from the ground as seeping, splashing springs,
from our bodies and houses and works as waste,
flowing from one to another in anonymity,
transferring allegiance and load
then starting all over again
as if virgin, as essence of pure,
as source of cleansing.

Take me to your drink,
to your magic of everywhere invisible power
(except the oceans
where we see you storm and spray
and lift liners, and smooth sand,
and know that underneath you
tickle the tongues of mussels
and feather the fins of fish).

Take me to the fullness of holding
in wet dissolving
and of letting go, and of moving on.