If we didn’t have a perception system that prioritized the one male sky god, would we be capable to hearken to Mom Earth?
When I used to be 13, my mother and father purchased a home within the nation; it was, a minimum of as I understood it later, a compromise. My mom had by no means wished to maneuver again to the town the place she’d been raised. She wished to reside in Berkeley, the place she and my father went to graduate faculty, in a home with a yard, a spot the place she might be outdoors and put her arms within the soil. However my father wished to reside in New York Metropolis, and their life was there.
So my mother and father purchased a modest saltbox home, subsequent to a stream, down a mud street, in Columbia County the place they might go on the weekends. The home was nothing spectacular; it sat in a clearing amid modest-sized bushes and didn’t have a view, however it was decidedly totally different from the concrete and metal of Manhattan, and after dinner on Friday, we’d drive by the night and arrive, the moon there to greet us, and the scent of humus, pine leaves, the dew on the petals of the flowers.
The very first thing my mom did that first autumn was plant bulbs—a whole bunch of bulbs round the home and below the bushes. Crocuses, daffodils, tulips. She’d get up within the morning, go outdoors, and spend hours digging holes, putting bulbs, pulling up roots that have been in the way in which, reducing again overgrown bushes.
The following spring, earlier than the bushes have been crammed out with their inexperienced leaves, we had yellow, white, and purple crocuses; then, amid the brand new grasses, daffodils in several styles and sizes that we’d choose and put in espresso tins to take again to our house within the metropolis, their scent filling the automobile; tulips in sensible reds, pinks, and oranges got here subsequent.
Through the years, my mom made the modest clearing within the woods right into a spectacular backyard with perennial flowers and grasses; she put annuals in terracotta pots across the patio and continued to spend hours of every weekend digging within the grime, planting, watering.
I loved the flowers, appreciated them even, however didn’t actually perceive why my mom was spending a lot time on this of all issues. In truth, I felt annoyed by my mom’s gardening. I wished her to do one thing totally different, wished her, in her free time, in her inventive endeavor, to not domesticate her little private backyard, however to domesticate her voice.
My father was the author within the household; he was the one who talked to me about books, the one who talked about concepts at our dinner desk. I by no means doubted that my mom was as good as he, however it was he who steered the dialog about something mental, something political, something having to do with the bigger world.
I liked eager about the world, liked studying, liked making an attempt to know the massive image of what it meant to be alive, and it confused me that my mom, so robust and chic, so stuffed with power and so succesful, my mom to whom I appeared as much as as a mannequin, appeared to depart it to my father to take the lead in these areas of the thoughts.
It additionally confused me that my father, when there was any main choice or any altercation, would say, That is my desk, my home, my household. What did that imply? Why was it his greater than my mom’s? Why have been we, my mom, my sister, and I, his greater than we have been all my mom’s? Or our personal?
At 13, I didn’t fairly have language for these questions, however they bothered me, and when my mom would placed on her boots and her outdated denims and go dig within the backyard for hours, it made me offended.
It’s maybe not a coincidence that I grew to become a author. I wished to say my voice.
In a current interview I hosted with the environmentalist Paul Hawken, the founding father of Challenge Drawdown and Challenge Regeneration and a longtime hero of mine, Paul reminded us of how widespread it’s in cultures throughout time and cultures to consult with Mom Earth.
Though there are some exceptions, in nearly each tradition it’s Mom Earth and Father Sky, the mom that tends to the physique and the daddy that tends to the thoughts. In nearly each tradition, Mom Earth and Father Sky are each seen as crucial.
However in Monotheism, within the historical past of the West for the previous 2,000 years, we now have a system that prioritizes the sky god, the God of the thoughts, over the physique, the male over the feminine. We’re schooled within the thoughts, however not schooled within the physique. And we prioritize the human over the pure.
To know myself, to know the place I got here from and my very own story, I wanted to say my voice.
However I additionally wanted to reclaim my physique, and to do this, I wanted to sink into silence, drop down beneath the top and pay attention. The extra I paid consideration, the extra I wished to get out of the town myself, go into the woods, put my arms within the soil and contact the earth. I considered my mom getting down on her knees, planting bulbs, weeding. I started to know why she did this.
I’ve a higher respect and appreciation now for my mom’s gardening. The earth grounded my mom. However although she had a pointy tongue of her personal and was very good, her voice in the end remained dominated by my father’s. It remained my father’s home, my father whose phrase was supreme.
I don’t discuss to my mother and father now. Who was allowed to have a voice, what was allowed to be mentioned, the truths of my physique that I wanted to silence as a way to hold these relations have been an excessive amount of. However I can’t assist questioning: if the divisions between sky and earth, voice and silence, female and male weren’t so polarized, if there have been house for all of these elements and no single one was supreme, would my story—my household’s story—be totally different?
Once I was younger, I wished to have a voice like my father, however I see now that each my mom and my father have been reduce off from components of themselves. My father’s want to manage additionally got here from not solely a tradition but in addition a self that was not complete.
These points could appear summary, however they’re pressing. The polarization of earth and sky has led not solely to hierarchies and splits inside households and the self, but in addition to violence inside our political and social material and to our whole ecosystem.
The rise of autocracies and dictators, the rising inequality within the U.S. and around the globe, the devastation of our surroundings—these are all based on a perception system that divides the world into synthetic energy constructions and that basically reduce us off from our personal sense of belonging in ourselves and right here on this earth.
If we didn’t have a perception system that prioritized the one male sky god, that didn’t prioritize the urge for management and the domination of the thoughts, would we be capable to hearken to Mom Earth and to ourselves and each other? Would we be capable to forestall the facility imbalances, the facility grabs, and the environmental destruction which will threaten all our lives?
Nadia Colburn is the creator of two poetry books, most just lately I Say the Sky. She’s the founding father of the Align Your Story Writing College, which brings conventional literary and artistic writing research along with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement. Discover her at nadiacolburn.com.
Header photograph of Earth Goddess at Atlanta Botanical Backyard by Nicholas Lamontanaro, courtesy Shutterstock.
