Mindstates
Every Earthen Day
By Jesse Wolf Hardin
Every April a large number of municipalities sanction what can sometimes seem like a perfunctory tip of the hat to the living planet we depend on, grow out of, and one day return our bodies to. We call this “Earth Day,” as if we had spent the remaining 364 days any other place! And to some degree many of us have been caught up in our feeling bodies, inhabiting fear, anxiety, and ambition rather than inhabiting the inspirited world. For our own sanity, we have to act at times as if the last old growth forests weren’t being cut down as we speak, or as if the evolutionary pool isn’t being depleted by extinctions caused by lifestyles and political systems that we are all one way or another participants in.
The value of these annual commemorations lies not in making us feel guilty for what we have or haven’t done, nor in the relief we might feel after a 12-hour show of green solidarity. Rather, its gift lies in the ways it reminds us of the everyday work making us the quiet and persistent heroes of Gaia we are: caring participants in the co-creative world; people fulfilling talents, assignments, and destinies through creative and committed reciprocity; folks who embrace our intrinsic, evolutionary, and moral response-ability to protect, restore, and celebrate the world of which we are a part!
As humans, we’ve evolved to be not only thinkers, workers, mothers and fathers but also feelers, empaths, artists, healers, teachers, and perpetually wide-eyed students who inevitably notice the weather, the new buds and blossoms, the differences between the tones and melodies of various neighborhood songbirds. We are beings who can each play whatever small role in repairing watersheds and reweaving communities by reaching out to the kids we know with the ethics of balance and the lessons of nature and making it real by recycling our cans, biking more or driving less, savoring every meal, saving our compost to give back to the providing ground, planting wholesome and flower-full gardens even in our tiniest of yards, and getting dirt under our fingernails in the process. In this process, we become quieted and grounded enough to hear directly from the living earth, through the land and through our empathic hearts, who we are and what it is we need to be doing next.
“Next” may mean the struggle of joining with others in the community to purchase, restore, re-wild, and re-sacrament some rural or semi-rural land for its own sake as well as for that of the folks who will then gather, teach, and share there. Or it may require taking time off of work in order to drive to a mountainside that’s being clear cut and protest its destruction, or risking our incomes by switching jobs or starting our own business that better reflects the needs of our spirits and the wellbeing of the land. Or maybe it means finding new ways to exploit our skills as gardeners, writers, dancers, singers, parents, or counselors in the service of the greater whole. It is furthered by the work we do with others of like heart, the gatherings we attend and the alliances we enjoy. It most certainly begins first and foremost with our willingness to face what is wrong, share in the pain of what is suffering, share in the joys of conscious life, and take satisfaction in our efforts to make things better. What we often hear from those coming to the Anima Learning Center is how good it feels to find others who share their concerns and hopes, and to know that they are connected to each other through the depth of their love and caring.
Our inherent calling as caretakers is to take an active interest in the health of the area where we live, take some responsibility for its problems and credit for its improvement. We can take care of the land we live on whether we own it or not; whether it’s an acre of breathing soil, or the patches of green surrounding our apartments. We can adopt and be co-caretakers of any forested areas nearby and the regional watercourse no matter how far away they are. The neighborhood park is a perfect example of just that, and its wellbeing is in the hands of a concerned public... us!
Any realistic hope for cultural, political and environmental relief lies in a radical shift — not in politics so much as in our elemental values and primary modes of perception, and in really fully responding from this place of holistic heartful knowing, walking our talk, and fulfilling our personal, most meaningful purpose. It will be voiced in songs cast to the winds, and in shouts of compassionate protest, in guarded groves and intentional community, in intimate personal contract with the forces that made us, and those places that allow us to really be, in our contract, our gifts and promise. And it is in the keeping of that promise and the carrying forth of that vision every single Earthen day.
Jesse Wolf Hardin is an acclaimed author and teacher of Animá earth-centered practice. He and his partners offer inspiring Shaman Path and Medicine Woman Tradition correspondence courses as well as host retreats, vision quests and internships in their enchanted S.W. river canyon. Events held in this ancient place of power include the May 22-27 Wild Women’s Gathering, and the June 12-17 Woman Spirit Week: Animá Wilderness Retreat Center, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830 For more info, check out
www.animacenter.org..