Father Thomas Berry died in June at the age of 94. He was considered a leading ecological thinker and wrote a wonderful book titled The Dream of the Earth.
Throughout his life he conducted an ongoing study of the ecological nature of Earth, the way everything affects everything else. He realized then that human beings are part of a larger natural order.
“The catastrophe of our time is the loss of any real human connection to the natural world,” he told a reporter in 2005.
“Trees, birds – all living things – have rights”, he wrote. They require that people treat the natural world not as an object, but as a living being. “If nothing has rights but humans, then everything else becomes a victim,” Berry said.
As a global community we have been working together to honor “the spirit that lives in all things”. And we have been honoring our connection to nature and recognize everything in nature as alive.
It is so important to continue practices to maintain our connection and to honor nature. And we must get to a point where this goes beyond performing practices to just being a way of our minute to minute life.
This month let’s incorporate into our daily practice sending love to the natural world.
Find a spot on the earth where you can send loving thoughts that spread throughout the entire earth. Blow your love into the air which circulates throughout all the airwaves. When you drink some water give thanks to all the waters of the world. And when you go outside give thanks to the sun for all the life it gives. These living beings help us to thrive and not just survive. As we continue to thank the elements which are alive we bring harmony and balance back into the environment.
Continue this work by honoring the trees, plants, the birds, animals, reptiles, fish, insects, rocks, etc. These beings are part of our global community and when we give them respect we honor the web of life.
Each day I take a short walk in nature. And I know all the trees where I walk. I am a real tree lover and spend time relating to the trees I meet along the way.
There is one tree I visit with each day. As I touch the trunk of the tree I ask the tree to send a message of love to all the trees on the planet.
All beings are connected and when you send love to one you send love to all. As we connect to nature with love on a daily basis we receive the gift of love in return. This should not feel like work but rather a way of being in the world. Just as you breathe in and out air you can also send loving thoughts to the spirit that lives in all things.
The changes that keep happening on the planet are intensifying all over the world. These changes are happening on all levels – the weather we are experiencing, economical changes, political and religious unrest. We are seeing increasing health challenges that are impacting all of life.
As we are being asked to wake up and evolve there are different reactions to wanting to keep the old versus moving forward to the new. And this is being reflected in many different planetary events.
It is important to keep observing how we are reacting to situations in our local communities and in our world community. We must continue to do the inner work to transmute our negative states of consciousness so that we are beings of light and we are being conscious changemakers.
As we approach 2012 there are a variety of predictions that we can be exposed to. I know when I celebrated my 40th birthday I was shown a vision for the future. I am 56 years old now and keep being shown the same vision.
There is a part of me that would love to write about this vision. But everytime I start to do this a voice inside of me says “no”. For my own guiding spirits keep telling me the future is created by what we are doing in the present.
And as we read or hear about prophecies for the future this can actually be a distraction from our present. It is so important to stay in the present and keep up your transfiguration work and also your creation work as I wrote about in Medicine for the Earth. We must use all of our senses of seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting to create the world we want to live in now. We must bring all our work into the present and that is how we impact our future.
It is easy to get distracted by all that is going on personally and globally. It is important to contain your energy and not scatter it. Last year I suggested doing a meditation or a journey to merge with a star in the night sky. The purpose of this was to really experience how solid a star is and how it shines from within. It does not shine from the surface but rather from its depths. And by doing this the light of a star reaches many millions of miles in sharing its light.
We also want to make sure that the light we share emanates from a solid core from within. Take some time to repeat this meditation or journey to merge with a star. If you have not done this before it is a wonderful and powerful experience. Just set your intention to merge with a star in the night sky.
This experience will bring us back to a center of strength and light that cannot be damaged or depleted and that has the power to light up the world.
During this wonderful month of July go outside and find a park or place in nature where you can lie on the earth. Connect with the earth and feel yourself becoming one with the heartbeat of the earth. And dream the world you want to live in creating a world of balance, harmony, peace, love, light, and abundance for all of life.
The full moon is July 7. Let’s together share our light and breathe love into the web of light that we continue to weave. And let’s share our light with all in the global community who need some healing help. For those of you new to our monthly ceremonies please read the instructions in Creating a Human Web of Light on the Transmutation News page of this site.
Together we can create a healthy and loving environment for all of life. Our earth garden needs some work. Let’s commit to gardening our earth garden together. We all have gifts we bring to the work. Allow yourself to feel empowered by the knowledge that you do have skills that you came here to share at this time. Do your work and as each of us works in the way we are guided we do become master gardeners of our great earth garden.