Healing Our Mother Earth
By Michael Ketterhagen, PhD
“…the human being becomes whole through the practice of meditation and the practice of all the other steps leading up to that one-pointed experience of our divine nature. Let us meditate more and more, so we can heal humanity.”
That statement sounds like the only action we need do is sit and “navel gaze.” That is the furthest from the truth when it comes to making humanity whole, when it comes to healing humanity.
When we develop a deep relationship with the divine within, we begin to learn the secrets of the divine. We begin to understand that all of life—the trees, the birds, the water, the air, the bugs, wild animals, the microbes in us, the fungi, all human beings, everything that has life or that stores life, like our rocks and soil--is one. We learn that our Divine Mother within wants us to live and act in a way that demonstrates that all of life is sacred and created for the joy and pleasure of the Divine, not for our use alone.
We begin to learn from this deep encounter with our divine Source of Life within that in order to heal humanity, we have to mend the brokenness in our relationship with other humans and with the Earth itself. We learn that this Earth is truly our physical Mother, the physical Source of our biological Life.
We learn, as Francis of Assisi said, that the sun is our brother and the moon our sister. What we do to the sun, the moon, the soil, the air, the water—everything—we do to ourselves, we do to sacred beings.
So, through meditation we are driven to be activists in the face of our potentially destructive human interaction with the water, the air, the soil, as well as all the people that we don’t feel connected to—like the gay, the lesbian, the immigrant, the criminal, political enemy, etc.
During these next 40 days, starting today, The Center has chosen to take a very positive and active role in making our human relationship with our Mother Earth. Today, in the Christian Tradition, Lent begins. Wednesday, February 26th, is the beginning of a 40-day period of preparation for the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ, from a cruel death. We are calling our program “Lenten Earth: 40 days of Caring for Mother Earth.” https://www.fcsh.org/lenten-earth
The program includes a Thursday evening speaker series, featuring experts from different religious and spiritual traditions, each presenting that tradition’s understanding of Mother Earth, and Friday Family activities at the Fond du Lac Public Library, focusing on child projects that will help protect Mother Earth and her creatures. You can see the details in Lenten Earth Calendar https://a9297c61-dbdd-4f9b-b1f5-f6ef540b1f15.filesusr.com/ugd/cd4841_f46ced078ab843108f11b49804d3f806.pdf
Meditation has provided the spark and the drive to involve The Center in these actions that care for divinity not only in our yoga, meditation and T’ai Chi students and in our massage, Healing Touch, Reiki and reflexology clients, but also in our Mother Earth.
I encourage you to check this out and join us in our program in whatever way your divine inner voice suggests.
Namaste!