A Prayer to Earth Mother

Good morning, Earth Mother. I give thanks to you for my life and my journey. I give thanks for the abundance you have provided. I give thanks for the fruits and the vegetables. I give thanks for the nuts and berries. I give thanks for the roots and tubers. I give thanks for the grains and grasses. I give thanks for the herbs to heal and the herbs to flavor our food. I give thanks for the animals that give of their lives so we may eat. I give thanks for the aquiferrs, rivers, lakes, and streams, that provide our water to replenish us, especially after a hot summer day. I give thanks for the trees and bushes that take the CO2 we put into the air and filter it and replenish the oxygen we need to breath. I give thanks for the shade they provide and the building materials for our shelters. I give thanks for all that you have given to us and ask your forgiveness for the way we have treated you. I pray that our hearts will open and that we will come to see that the damage we do to you, we are doing to ourselves, as we are all related. I pray that our hearts are open and we have realized the world we will leave to the seventh generation, may very well be a sparse, poisoned world in which their children may not survive. I pray that we open our hearts and come together as one voice to bring change to the way we live so that we may once again live in harmony and balance with all that is. I pray that we will open our hearts and see the way we have squandered all you have provided to the point where we feel we need to manufacture animals in order to feed the many, while our landfills grow deep with the refuse from spoiled foods. I pray that we will once again find balance and harmony and we will live taking only what we need to survive and giving back to the land. I pray my heart open, to your guidance and wisdom, my heart to your heart, one heart, one spirit.

I was supposed to write this a couple of weeks ago, and I apologize as I allowed little things to take me away from doing so. Maybe I have ADHD or something like it, but I would come online with full intent to write, but then get caught up in emails and go from one thing to another and never really getting anything done. So I apologize to Earth Mother for being late and pray that the message will still come through as strong as the day it was given to me.

I say that prayer as part of my morning prayer every day. I say a similar one to Sky Father. Always giving thanks for all they provide, and praying that we will wisen up and see how we are destroying them, and in doing so destroying ourselves. Oh, there are some, like one coworker, who believe that all of the talk of global warming and the effects on our environment is junk science. They say that the Greens have manufactured all of this and that in reality it is just earth going through her cycles. And in truth, they may be partly right. Yes, Earth Mother goes through her cycles and there are climate changes, but maybe this time, we may have just exacerbated the process? The Earth will survive us, there is no doubt, but the real question is, will we survive the Earth?

In the past, I have likened us to either spoiled children, who continue to take and take and never give anything back. I have likened us to locusts devouring everything in our path, tearing down acre after acre of woodland to put up another Lowes or Target, or Super Walmart.  I have also likened us to fleas, parasites feeding off our host. Harsh, I know, but how close to the truth is it? A few years ago, I had a vision of great destruction. Earth Mother, fed up with the parisitcal fleas that were stripping her bare and giving nothing in return, got angry and shook us off like so many fleas. The Earth trembled and earthquakes erupted everywhere. Volcanoes blew. Tidal waves flattened coastal cities. Cities like Boston, New York, and others with their massive sky scrapers were leveled. It scared the bejeebers out of me. My wife and I live inland and have talked about moving closer to our familes, which means closer to the coast. I am leery of doing this. I drag my feet. Is it a knowing?

Disturbing news today was that the FDA has approved cloned animals. We have gone so far beyond being wasteful, that now we feel the need to manufacture even live animals to waste! Of course, this is the same FDA who approved of Monsanto's genetically modified products saying they were safe. Of course, they were taking Monsanto's word on it. Some European scientists have found that these GMO's are leaving toxins in our livers and kidneys. To further ensure that they can push this stuff on people, it has been made illegal to label foods as containing GMO's despite the people wanting to know that their food supply is pure. I heard that Iowa and a few other states have filed class action suits against Monsanto because their crops are infecting other natural crops. Oh, and why are their seeds modified? So that they are impervious to Round-UP, another Monsanto product. There is also a push to loosen the requirments for organic labeling so that anything can be labeled organic. At least the Europeans have it right in forcing the labeling of GMO foods, though they are under pressure to change that by the US who is run by these corporations.

Now I want you to think about that for a moment. Okay, got it, now let's take a walk into your local grocery store. Of course, it isn't the mom and pop shop that once was the norm. Rather it is now a Super Stop and Shop, Super Shaws, Super Walmart, super, duper. Go in to the store, and stop for a moment. I know you are rushed and just want to run in and grab a few things and get out. Please, stop for a moment. Look at the plethora of food that is in these places. Now ask yourself this, where does all that food that is out of date go? Go take a look in the dumpster. Waste.

Okay, now lets take it down to just the produce section. Yes, there is organic, which for the time being is somewhat better for you. I would bet that the organics have more vitamins and minerals than other produce. Think about it. Which vegetable or fruit do you think would be more nutricious? Produce that is produced in harmony with the earth, using compost, and natural pest control to grow it. Fields that are rotated so that they have a period of rest. Or is it the produce that is produced on the mass market farm on land that is so depleted of nutrients that they have to spray chemical fertilizers on them to get them to grow?

What about variety? When I go in to the market, there is usually about four types of apples, maybe two or three types of green beans, and a couple of varieties of squash. There are maybe three or four types of potatoes to choose from. Corporate farms are more interested in having a consistent product. They have narrowed down our choices so they have less variety to plant. So we have less choices. Earth Mother had provided an abundance like you wouldn't believe. Get yourself a seed catalog, preferably one that has heritage seeds. Many of your mass produced seeds are neutered so that you can't use the seeds from this years crop for the following. Heritage seeds allow you to propagate the seeds year to year. Open the catalog and look at the variety of potatoes, green beans, tomatoes, squash. I have a recent catalog and am amazed at the variety that is there. But that is what Earth Mother provided, variety and quality. Why is variety important? Well think back to the 1800's and the Irish Potato Famine. The Irish had developed a single strain of potato. When that strain was hit with the blight, it wiped out the whole crop. The blight hit other countries as well, but some of these were cultivating a variety of potatoes so that when the blight hit, they only lost the one variety and not all of their food supply. Besides survival of the crop, another thing lost is the variety of flavors and textures. Maybe it is time to move back to local farming and do away with corporate farming. Think about it. With local farms, you can grow crops that work better in your area and increase the variety of crops available. You cut down on the CO2 by having local farms instead of trucking or shipping crops from who knows where. The food is fresher because it is local.  The key is that the new farms have to be working in harmony with nature, not against it.

Another thing we need to consider is the unbridled development. It just seems like if we aren't tearing down woodlands to get at the resources, or put up another strip mall, or shopping village, or housing development, then we see the land as wasted. We forget the importance of those trees and bushes as CO2 filters. We increase the population in areas, increase the motor traffic, heat plants, shopping centers, and take away the trees. Then we wonder why the kids are suffering more allergies, asthma, and other lung ailments. We wonder why we have to continously pour more chemicals into our water supplies to make them safe to drink. We don't stop to think for a minute the impact on the environment in what we do. There is a lake near me called Turnpike Lake. I was reading an article where a person was complaining about how the lake was just about unusable anymore. The water level was down, the algae and plant growth was high, so high it was choking out everything else. For most of the summer, it was a mud flat, where in years past many went there to fish or canoe. How did this happen? Well, environmentalists will tell you that the nitrogen from the fertilizers we use to make our lawns greener or grow the food on depleted land gets carried into the water supplies. This causes the algae blooms that choke out everything else. The quantity of water goes down because development has change the flow of water so that it is not making it into the lake anymore, rather what is getting there is the runoff from the parking lots. It is amazing how over in Freetown, the government was saying how it was okay to build a new Home Depot/ Walmart shopping center right on the Assonet River. The site they were going to put it on had been a dumping place for ash. This ash would be kicked up into the air around that place. Once the shopping plaza was in place, the runoff from the parking lots would go into the Assonet River further polluting it.

I think about that water pollution and I am reminded of the time I had taken my kids out to the Wampanoag reservation in Fall River. We had stopped by the stream to take pictures and my daughter reached down and scooped up a handful of water and drank. I went bezerk. I told her that she was never to do that again. I reminded her of how most of the streams and rivers in Massachusetts were polluted. We don't know what the source of that stream was and that it could have passed by any one of the manufacturing facilities that allow runoff to go into the streams. I never see any wildlife around the stream, no frogs, no fish, just bugs. Is this where we have come, where we can't reach down and scoop up the water and just drink? Why is it that municipal water supplies have to be so chemical laden that we can smell the cholorine when the tap is opened? Why is it that signs have been posted on the Cheyenne River warning people to stay out of the water and not use it for irrigation because it is contaminated by the runoff from uranium mines. Is this the way we want to live?

Earth Mother is growing tired. We have outstripped her ability to provide for us. We have stripped the land of its nutrients and push chemicals back into the ground to suppliment. These chemicals then get into our streams and rivers and cause untold environmental damage. We have gotten to the point that we no longer depend on Earth Mother to provide, but rather we clone animals so that we can manufacture them. We have become so disconnected from the Earth and each other, and yet we still buy into the ads that say we need this or that and we need more and more and more and more.... When will we come to realize that all we need has been right before us? When will we stop trying to grab that brass ring that always appears to inch just slightly away from us? When will we say that we have had enough of corporations telling us that they will feed us and that they can do better than what Earth Mother can provide? When will we say that we want our streams and rivers to be safe to drink or swim or fish?

Go into that supermarket and look around? Ask yourself, with all of this, why is there hunger in the world?