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the Wise Earth

SPEAKS TO YOUR SPIRIT 52 LESSONS TO FIND YOUR SOUL VOICE THROUGH JOURNAL WRITING

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

MUD BODY (mud)

"Oh mud mother, sister, aunt, where are your white gloves and tiny shoes?"

JAN ALICE PFAU

A sculptor friend says that making mud pies is the closest she ever got to cooking. I know that following footprints in the mud when playing Sardines or Hide-and-Go-Seek is the nearest some of us ever got to becoming a private eye. There is something about mud that begs fun.

Mud was always considered a feminine material, sacred to women because it was their substance—earth—out of which their babies were made. Pottery has always been considered a woman's art because of this time-honored association.

In ancient myth, it was said that we emerged from mud. Tom Chetwynd tells us in A Dictionary of Symbols, "Mud is the malleable substance of our being, full of potential for growth and transformation."

Photographer Cindy Sherman often creates still lifes from objects found in the natural world. Her Untitled #173 is a 5 × 7 ½—foot photo of dark and glistening mud. Look closely and what do you see in its deep brown body but mud, sticks, candy wrappers, a potato perhaps. It is gorgeous in its shine and detail and size. But is it garbage? Is it just mud of the earth with human life nearby? Is it a statement of beauty and ugliness living together? What she does is ask us to think of the symbolic meanings we associate with the little worlds she creates. It's as if she's asking, what does all this mean to you? Of course your particular associations with mud will make all the difference to how you answer that question.

I have always thought that my spirit lives closer to the mud than to the heavens. So many times as I live my life as a woman in this culture, I have wished to shed all the images of what I am supposed to be and just wallow in the mud. After many good rolls, I would shower outside and forget the uncomfortable shoes. I would be the woman I want to be: more authentic, comfortable, natural.

As a therapist I can see this desire to get down in the mud as part of owning the various aspects of ourselves—our need to be clean yet be "earthy" our need to be strong and accept weakness; the knowledge that we are both good and bad, wrong and right. To be mature, we must learn to integrate these aspects into our unique selves. When we are honest with ourselves, we are aware that we hold these contradictions within us. Perhaps you can remember a time when you were aware that a wrong deed could have been done by you but for a bit of grace. This is an example of understanding the contradictions that live inside of you but are not necessarily acted on. It is a compassionate way to understand that any evil act could have been committed by you but for the grace of your wholeness and your ability to set boundaries with shadow impulses. That self-compassion shows that you honor your "mud self."

Mud is the part of us that can be shaped or molded. When we look at our life and see how difficult it is to change our patterns as we move toward more spiritual living and thinking, we can rejoice that we come from the shapeless mud and still have the potential of shaping within us. We can leave limiting and unkind beliefs behind and ask our spiritual self to help us live in flexibility and generosity.

Mud is often used as the symbol of the unaware man and woman. This is the self that comes from the earth but does not know sophisticated ways. This is also the self that is often seen as base and closer to an animal nature. We can incorporate the best of the self that links with the earth and animal ways.

Let us enjoy dirt on our feet and our instinctive nature. Let us enjoy a healthy lust expressed in sexuality. Let us be at home in the world of mud and earth and animal ways.

Exercises:

* Imagine life being spun like a potter's wheel. What shape would the mud of your life take?

* How do you envision holding "mud knowledge" as you develop on your spiritual path?

DAUGHTER OF THE CLOUDS AND STORM (rain)

"Rain knows the earth and loves it well, for rain is the passion of the earth."

ESTELA PORTILLO TRAMBLEY

I love the smell of the earth after a rain. The smell reminds me of new beginnings and fresh starts. That's what rain has always been about for me—new life for the garden, for crops, a time of tucking in to reflect. I like to use the sound of rain as a prayer, the sound a bridge between my body and nature.

The sheen over the pavement and the silver dew on the trees help the world show off its beauty. Outside our window rain may fall into the tin gutter, dirt softening the sound. Or, as we awake to the steady beat of rain, we might be reminded that we are part of nature and that nature is everywhere.

Rain is also a dance as beautiful as the one in Swan Lake where the ballerinas portray the swans in formation, their long, slender arms held high, bent at the elbow, fingers high, looking for all the world like swans' necks.

Rain's dance comes to me as the light under the swimming pool catches drops of rain like stars sprinkling souls over the water.

In a recent poem, I wrote about the effects of change and falling rain:

The wind and rain fly to the cape and bonnet of earth. With sticks of rain like thread flying away from the scissor-cut spool, she sews moisture to the cloth of life. Everything is on its way to somewhere, the rain whispers, and like a youngster sharing wild cherries with summer birds, she enters the green grass of the world, her body a sail in the breeze.

Sometimes even with the desire to hold on to something nourishing, change comes and brings something different but nourishing!

A client once told me about losing her oversized boots in a fast-rushing creek after a downpour. She was so delighted she threw her socks in after them. If we're lucky, we still remember the excitement we felt about rain when we were kids and how much fun it was to play in warm rain and in the deeper creek beds it made. We may remember running back to the truck and eating a picnic in the cab, holding cups out the window to catch the glistening drops. I remember letting a rain shower take me in its arms and simply enjoying it. I also remember shrieking with laughter as we bundled up blankets and afternoon playthings.

As a child, I made a study of rain in different situations. There was rain that was like someone walking toward our playground all dressed up in light. There were pavements that were drowning, with small worms wiggling up from the earth to live. There was the rain that brought a rainbow, which made me dizzy with excitement because the colors beckoning felt like part of a magic story. Finally, I remember the torrent of rain beating the clothes on the clothes line my mother had hung out back, the clothes poles falling in the wind, reminding me to believe in ghosts and the power of the unseen.

In the language of symbols, rain is seen as life-giving, a blessing from the heavens. It has always symbolized divine favors and revelation or grace coming to earth. Once I gave an aqua-tinted jar of rainwater to a friend, Val, who was about to give birth to twins. The water was from a soft rain that fell several days before the twins' births. I wanted to give her a new way of baptism, and I wondered if the rainwater might hold a blessing for her babies.

I had a client who would light a candle to pray when it rained. She would pray for the grasses and crops and all that needed moisture. She would pray that there would not be so much rain that misfortune would come. She felt that a deluge of rain might be the wrath of the goddess asking us for better care of the earth, which is another ancient symbol of the rain. Most of all, she felt rain symbolized a time when the heavens were open to prayers from the earth and a time when prayers would be heard.

Hans Biedermann writes in the Dictionary of Symbolism, "The saintly abbess Hildegard of Bingen likened rain to the vital energy of the soul, which makes the body flourish and 'keeps it from drying out as the rain moistens the earth. For when the rainfall is moderate and not excessive, the earth brings forth new life....' Hildegard also compared tears and rainfall. 'The spiritual person is so shaken with fear of the Lord as to break out in tears, just as clouds draw their waters from the upper reaches and pour it forth as rain,' thus the gift of repentance irrigates, fertilizes the soul, 'washing sin away'"

Hopi Indians have their own special rain rituals. "The Hopi say that events are prepared and emerge from deep within the heart of all things, which is the heart of nature, of human beings, of plants and animals. This heart is not the physical organ but a subjective, inner realm.... Before events happen in the objective world of the senses, they dwell in the heart, along with thoughts and desires. The preparing may involve singing and dancing and/or other community ceremony events such as ceremonial smoking. Such acts serve to focus the thoughts and desires so that they can act as very real forces affecting the crops, the clouds, and the formation of rain. For a cloud is not a thing external to the human mind. It is an event that is in a state of getting later or growing, of transformation," writes James N. Powell in The Tao of Symbols. Rain is always in process: raining, about to rain, or living in our heart.

How enriched would our spiritual path feel if we believed that nature starts from within us, the weather simply an outside manifestation of that? The green growth after the rain a part of us? The rain itself coming from a need in us? Why shouldn't it be true?

Since rain is vital to life, much time in ancient cultures was spent summoning rain, often, as in Africa, by sympathetic magic. "The rain maker, magician, or shaman performs a ritual which imitates the effects of rainfall, in the hope that rain will thus be encouraged to fall. Examples of such methods include spraying a mouthful of water into the air as a fine mist; beating a victim until blood flows on the ground; quenching a fiery torch with water; or drenching member of the tribe with water. Other methods are to arouse the compassion of gods through the suffering of innocents," writes Alison Jones in the Dictionary of World Folklore. "If all else fails," she continues, "the folk may endeavor to force the divinity into sending rain by intimidation or abuse. When long prayers and sacrifice before a fetish or idol have come to nothing, the image may be torn down and exposed to the sun so that that the deity might feel for himself the agony of drought."

In Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant write about rain as a symbol of fertility: "Rain is regarded universally as the symbol of celestial influences which the earth receives. It is self-evidently a fecundating agent of the soil that gains its fertility from rain, and countless agrarian rites were devised in dance form, in offerings to the sun, in Cambodian 'sand-mountains' or by using the smithy to summon a storm to send down rain.... Indra, the god of the thunderbolt, brought rain to the fields, but also made animals and women fertile. What comes down from heaven is spiritual fertility, light and spritual influences as well.... In India, a fertile woman is called 'the rain,' that is, the spring of all prosperity."

We use rain as a charm the world over by wetting, splashing, and pouring water over people. It was once thought that witches could slap wet rags on stones to make the drops fly. Some Native Americans regard rain as a form of their ancestors whose spirits have gone into water or air, coming to visit or bring a message. Which of these myths do you respond to, and how does that empower you?

Here is a poem I wrote about rain and lightning that I named Cathedral. I thought it seemed like a myth of sorts. See what you think:

Cathedral

On the shell-like ruins of old foundations,
we built a lighthouse.
We hoped to grow old, keepers of rain and lightning.
Rain came first, the daughter of clouds and storm.
We fell in love with this wandering
daughter, called her Shiny Ropes, Sparkling Girl.
With her long strong fingers, she coaxed
fields into flax, crumbled rock into sand.
She brought illumination to watch over us
while she washed valleys and forests,
flat lands with her slanted pencils of hope.
Illumination kept vigil
signaling Shiny Rope's return
with a zigzagged flash across the sky.

Exercises:

* Write a magic story about rain and why it comes.

* How have you been a rainmaker for yourself, making things happen that you longed for? For loved ones?

ONLY GOD CAN MAKE A TREE (trees)

"Trees is soul people to me, maybe not to other people, but I have watched the trees when they pray, and I've watched them shout and sometimes they give thanks slowly and quietly."

BESSIE HARVEY, BLACK ART, ANCESTRAL LEGACY

Trees are part of the life cycle. We breathe in oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while the trees breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen. They are the link between our soul and the earth. No matter where we live—city or town, farm or forest—we can have a favorite tree. I have had many: a maple, a willow, a dogwood, the avocado tree under which I first wrote poetry, and now a large pepper tree on the edge of the Emeryville Bay where I live. Each day, I walk north just far enough to touch its bark. If its leaves changed with the seasons, I would be blessed with that reminder of the earth's cycles. As it is, I study the pepper tree with reverence in the rain, with sunlight on its limbs, at twilight. The changes are there in more subtle ways than the seasons; perhaps that's similar to what has happened in my life as I mature.

For those of you lucky enough to live in a part of the world where there are changing seasons, the tree shows its gown in many ways: the thin twigs of winter or its ghostly skeleton covered with snow like cotton, the green silk of spring, the bloom of the summer's heat, and the flare of the rainbow leaves in autumn. To watch a tree transform in the natural cycle of seasons is a magical event in life.

I heard a shaman from the jungles of Ecuador speak the other night. He was asking us to help save the trees in the jungle by sharing in a ritual to call for protection from oil drillers and loggers. He called the forests in his homeland "the lungs of the land."

I often tell a tree to let me learn how to better be in the world, just be myself and let things alone. And I'll pray awhile. It's easy to talk to trees. Maybe that's because trees seem to be so at peace being themselves, with their deep roots and sweeping branches.

"It is such a comfort to nestle up to Michael Angelo Sanzio Raphael," writes Opal Whitely, "when one is in trouble. He is such a grand tree. He has an understanding soul. After I talked with him…I slipped down out of his arms."

Several years ago there was a show at the Legion of Honor Art Museum in San Francisco of Australian Aboriginal art that showed their sense of culture and spirit through their belief that all life and death is dreaming. The spirit of all things is in the dream. Their patterned bark paintings depict ancestors from the dream time. The tree is sacred, the land which holds its roots is sacred, the bark is sacred, and all are used for the messages of the spirit coming from the dream.

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Excerpted from the Wise Earth by Janell Moon. Copyright © 2002 Janell Moon. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
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