February 2025

Seasonal Living

• Contemplating The Energy Of Winter
• Love & The Earth
• The Medicine Of Bone Broth
• Seasonal Affective Disorder

Love & The Earth

A sense of belonging gave meaning to life far more than one’s feelings and troubles but rather that of the whole.

However, it was not only communities that held people together. It was the land, too. People born in the same land as their ancestors before them for many generations had a profound experience of the land as a living being. If you talk to them, they will not call it “falling in love,” but the language they use when talking about said land expresses deep love.

A deep connection to the Earth meant a life of service to the land that filled every day with meaningful work.

A Wholistic Experience Of Being

We connect to the Earth in three ways:

• Through the senses and nervous system, we observe and think about the universe; hence, we are scientists. 
• Through the gut, we digest the world and create reality. 
• In the breathing and heartbeat, we balance retreating inward and losing ourselves in the world.

In olden times, the shaman embodied these three layers

• He was a scientist, both a botanist and a physician.
• He was an artist who expressed himself in the world by creating art (masks and sculptures). 
• He was the priest, creating rituals that expressed the sacred in nature and life.

 The shaman’s ability to weave together these three layers of wisdom allowed him to care for the well-being of the individuals within his community and the community as a whole. He was a true holistic healer.

A Fragmented Consciousness

As part of developing human consciousness toward individuality, science was separated from art and religion. This separation led to the development of modern chemistry, physics, mathematics, and Western civilization. By separating and creating specialized fields, we lost connection with the whole.

Moving to the “new world” meant that people walked lands that were not their ancestral land. The main sentiment was that of conquering, owning, and exploiting. A one-sided relationship developed where we think about land as a resource that we can buy and sell.

 In his book “The Unsettling Of America,” Wendell Berry writes:

“The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all. It is the healer and, restorer, and resurrector by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it, we can have no community because, without proper care for it, we can have no life.”

 Losing our capacity to create a reciprocal relationship with the Earth means losing a more profound sense of belonging to a place. We are lonely not just because we bury our heads in our phones but also because we turn our backs on the whole.

Finding A Place To Call Home

In her book “Braiding Sweetgrass” Robin Wall Kimmer describes her childhood memories of offering gratitude to the places where she camped with her family. She writes:

“I came to know that each place was inspirited, was home to others before we arrived and long after we left.”

 We spend much time in our heads, where reality is analyzed and reduced to what we can see and measure with our senses. The fragmented mind creates an illusion of independence and isolation that leads to anxiety and depression.

 However, everything you use comes from the Earth; therefore, you are never alone. Instead, you are part of the living tapestry of the planet we all call home.

Meaningless, lonely lives are the root cause of mental diseases; loneliness, depression, and anxiety are rampant. I would even suggest that they are a major root cause of physical chronic diseases that are on the rise, too.

What will it take to wake us up?

A deep connection to the Earth means a life of service to the land filled with daily meaningful work.

I invite you to consider how you can celebrate loving the Earth this Valentine’s Day and every day.

Although composting, reducing waste, and consumerism are ways to love the Earth, living a meaningful life where you share your gifts with the cosmos is a profound way to express your love for the Earth.