It’s almost Mother’s Day.  Besides remembering my own mother, I am thinking of Mother Earth.  I owe them both my life.  To the Incans of South America, Pachamama is goddess of the Cosmos.  A toast is made to her, “the good mother,” at all manner of festivities.

For chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist Lynn Margulis, Mother Earth is considered to be a complex, self-regulating system known as Gaia, from the Greek’s poetic term for our planet.  The Gaia Hypothesis proposed in 1979 provided new reasons to cherish and respect the Earth and her processes and not mess with them!  Good advice.

What advice would Gaia give us human types walking around among her beautiful hills and valleys?  I think it would be pretty much like this prayer from my Wampanoag mentor, Manitonquat (or Medicine Story) who is still going strong at 82 (see http://www.circleway.org).

Rainbow over Bay Lake, MN

MANITONQUAT’S PRAYER

Hear, oh Humankind, the prayer of my heart..

For are we not one, have we not one desire,
to heal our Mother Earth and bind her wounds
and still to be free as the spotted Eagle climbing
the laughing breath of our Father Sky,
to hear again from dark forests and flashing rivers
the varied ever-changing Song of Creation?

Oh Humankind, are we not all brothers and sisters,
are we not the grandchildren of the Great Mystery?
Do we not all want to love and be loved,
to work and to play, to sing and dance together?

But we live with fear.
Fear that is hate, fear that is mistrust, envy, greed, vanity,
fear that is ambition, competition, aggression,
fear that is loneliness, anger, bitterness, cruelty….
and yet, fear is only twisted love, love turned back on itself,
love that was denied, love that was rejected…

And love….
Love is life ~ creation, seed and leaf
and blossom and fruit and seed;
love is growth and search and reach and touch and dance.
Love is nurture and succor and feed and pleasure.
Love is pleasuring ourselves, pleasuring each other.
Love is life believing in itself.

And life….
Life is the Sacred Mystery singing to itself,
dancing to its drum, telling stories, improvising, playing.

And we are all that Spirit,
our stories tell but one cosmic story that we are love indeed,
that perfect love in me seeks the love in you
and if our eyes could ever meet without fear
we would recognize each other and rejoice,
for love is life believing in itself.

A toast to all the mothers out there!