One of my winter web members and friends, Richard, sent us this Ute prayer which I now find myself reading regularly. I want to share it with you. Also, I would like to encourage you to send me (susanknilans at yahoo dot com) prayers, poems, and quotes that I can post for all. Photos, too!
Earth Teach Me
Earth teach me stillness as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me caring as parents who secure their young.
Earth teach me courage as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain.
Thank you Susan for posting this! I am going to write this out in calligraphy and have it framed, it’s absolutely exquisite. I believe that the Earth can teach us all we need to know, the Earth can heal us and release us back to wholeness, the Earth is our Mother and She will care for us if we let Her……
I am very grateful today for the healing I have just experienced….healing from anger, fear and resentment. Last weekend when we had a most achingly beautiful day of sunshine, I laid down on the Earth and listened to Her heartbeat. I felt grounded and strong and nourished. A few days later I was able to withstand a maelstrom of emotion as I was released from the snares of a long standing fear….finally.
I am humbled…..
Hi Susan, This is a lovely very deeply spiritual prayer and thank you for sending it out. Like cindy, I felt overwhelmed by the spring warmth and beauty of these past several days and stayed in my gardens for days, wanting to be nowhere else. Watching closely all the natural life. I learned so much about myself and my cravings and attachments, and found solace in just being with it all. Now we are receiving lots of rain bringing great quiet back to the earth after the festivities of colors and fragrances of the past week. Redbuds are falling everywhere, forsythias turning green, woodland dogwoods white with blooms. A lot of going out and coming in right now!
Susan, what is that orchid (?) which you have included today?
Hi Kathey: I’m told that lovely little flower is a trout lily. We have thousands of them coming up in the forest. I have no idea how many may actually bloom, but this one did, and I was just enchanted!
I’m reading the posts here, and heaving an envious sigh… It is Spring here too, but it looks and sounds very different from the others. We still have lots of snow.
About four days ago the river ice pack broke up and cleared on the north side of the bridge across the Yukon River, literally overnight. As I drove across the bridge in the morning I looked to the right and my mouth hung open at the wide expanse of water which hadn’t been there the evening before. It happens this quickly every year, but it is no less amazing each time. The ice on the south side still covers half of the river, is several feet thick, and will take several more weeks to recede to the shore.
There are other signs of Spring too. The migrating gulls rest on the frozen river ice and occasionally go for a swim on the open water. Fred and Ethel, the eagle pair, have returned to their nest downtown and hopefully will mate. The trumpeter swans are blowing through on their way North, though they’re not resting here in the numbers that are usual – the daily count was only 466 two days ago, and there commonly are 700 or 800 at this time.
So, I don’t have trout lilies, (though the prairie crocuses are soon here), and I’m not lying on the thawing ground anytime soon, but there are compensations! In the meantime, I’ll live a warm, green spring vicariously…..
I’ve not been reading the posts in a while. Life takes hairpin turns at times and pushes us in directions we didn’t know we would be heading. So it is happening here once again. My husband’s cancer is back (no I didn’t say anything about it before on this site and why I’m speaking of it now, I don’t know) but it has returned.
I had wanted time off work and I have an open LOA for an extended amount of time, if I so wish. Nice to have employment allowing that to happen but not nice for the reason I do have this option.
But all of this holds a lesson of some kind for my husband and myself. A medicine man, my husband knows, told him the dis-ease is a spiritual thing and he (my husband) has a lesson somewhere in it. this I knew but for him to hear the same thing from the medicine man, one other person and myself, to us, confirms it. A lesson.
I spend my time working on my pottery and contemplating what life is and what this ‘lesson’ could be and mean.
I like the poem you posted.
This is all for now.
To quote John Lennon: Time wounds all heels,
Valerie
Valerie: I am so very sorry about your husband’s illness returning. From experience, I know what health calamity is like, and my heart goes out to you in this very challenging and painful time. Yes, it is all lessons, but even knowing that does not lessen the hurt and the upset. Many prayers to you, Val, and please keep us all posted.
Susan, enchanting, indeed, to see those little beauties in the woods. What a sight to behold. Valerie, many blessings to you and to your husband as you experience together this occuring of dis ease…I will hold you both in prayer. Thank you for sharing witih us what you are going through right now.
Thinking of you and your husband, Valerie. There is strength in community. We’re all here saying a prayer for you.
Valerie…
Amen…..and so it is.
Cindy
So beautiful! I can’t wait to share these beautiful words with those that I love! Have a blessed day!
In light and love,
Aubrey
Your blog is so informative … ..I just bookmarked you….keep up the good work!!!!
Wow, thanks Bill!