Mother's Day

Sunday, 14th March is 'Mother's Day' in the UK. It is a special day for marking the love and respect we feel towards our own mother. It is also a fitting time to celebrate the beauty and richness of the mother of all ~ Mother Earth.

Tennessee Mountains, USA

Earth mother, star mother,

You who are called by

a thousand names,

May all remember

we are cells in your body

and dance together.

You are the grain

and the loaf

That sustains us each day,

And as you are patient

with our struggles to learn

So shall we be patient

with ourselves and each other.

We are radiant light

and sacred dark

- the balance -

You are the embrace that heartens

And the freedom beyond fear

Within you we are born

we grow, live, and die -

You bring us around the circle

to rebirth,

Within us you dance

Forever.

(Starhawk)

Ireland

"I am of the family of the universe, and with all of us together I do not fear being alone; I can reach out and touch a rock or a hand or dip my feet in water. Always there is some body close by, and when I speak I am answered by a plane's roar or the bird's whistling or the voices of others in conversation far apart from me. When I lie down to sleep, I am in the company of the dark and the stars.

Breathe to me, sheep in the meadow. Sun and moon, my father and my father's brother, kiss me on the brow with your light. My sister, earth, hold me up to be kissed. Sun and moon, I smile at you both and spread my arms in affection and lay myself down at full length for the earth to know I love it too and am never to be separated from it. In no way shall death part us."

(David Ignatow)

Loch Garry, Scotland

There is religion in everything around us,

A calm and holy religion

In the unbreathing things in Nature.

It is a meek and blessed influence,

Stealing in as it were unaware upon the heart,

It comes quickly, and without excitement,

It has no terror, no gloom,

It does not rouse up the passions,

It is untrammelled by creeds.....

It is written on the arched sky,

It looks out from every star,

It is on the sailing cloud and in the invisible wind,

It is among the hills and valleys of the earth

Where the shrubless mountain-top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter,
Or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind,

With its dark waves of green foliage,

It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of an unsleeping ocean,

It is the poetry of Nature,

It is that which uplifts the spirit within us.....

And which opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty

and holiness.

(John Ruskin)

The Rocky Mountains

Grant me the ability to be alone,

May it be my custom to go outdoors each day among the trees and grasses,

among all growing things

and there may I be alone,

and enter into prayer

to talk with the one

that I belong to.

(Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav)

St. John's Chapel, Weardale, England

O our mother the earth, O our father the sky,

Your children are we, and with tired backs

We bring you gifts that you love.

Then weave for us a garment of brightness;

May the warp be the white light of the morning,

May the weft be the red light of evening,

May the fringes be the falling rain,

May the border be the standing rainbow.

Thus weave for us a garment of brightness

That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,

O our mother the earth, O our father the sky!

(Tewa Pueblo Prayer)