Grounding Sustainability

Mother Earth Practices Series

Friends,

I’m writing to you from the Chautauqua Institution where I’ll be speaking at the end of the week.

What I repeatedly realize when I travel across the country for speaking events is how diverse we are as people in all sorts of ways—in cultures, beliefs, ethnicities, identities, personalities, in so many of the different categories.

And yes, even within those categories we find more diversity. Not every introvert is alike, not every Enneagram 8 is the same, not every Christian or Black woman or Buddhist or Indigenous kid follows a cookie-cutter life, and we shouldn’t expect each other to.

So, too, our practices shift and change and show up for us in different ways throughout our lives, and that’s what I’m thinking about today. What works for us now may not work for us tomorrow, and that’s actually what makes something sustainable, a live that produces beauty for a long, long time.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

So, let’s pause a minute and remember our 5 Mother Earth-based Practices for this summer:

1. Practicing holistic connection

2. Letting your relationship with Mother Earth drive your politics, social dynamics & beliefs, and not the other way around

3. Grounding yourself in practices of sustainability

4. Embracing childlikeness

5. Infusing spirituality into your daily life in respectful ways through Indigenous wisdom and earth-based care

Today, we’re exploring the third, grounding ourselves in practices of sustainability.

This sounds complex, right? Multi-layered and perhaps hard to find, like a hidden gem we don’t know where to dig for. I’m here to remind all of us to take a deep breath and recognize that we ground ourselves in sustainability in the everydayness of life.

It happens in the mundane spaces, where we notice it and where we don’t notice it.

So here are three explorations of this practice, of grounding in sustainability:

tenderness

a way to process anger

land-based care

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Remember, sustainability is the ability to maintain a process over time. So, in connection to Mother Earth, we are grounding ourselves in practices of sustainability—we are trying to make sure that the ways we act and care and embody love and beauty in the world lead us, indeed, into deep relationship with the whole world!

So, let’s consider tenderness. We desperately need tenderness right now, and in the ways we least expect it. Close your eyes for a moment and think of something that feels tender—a child you know, a flower, a person who gives you feelings of tenderness.

I think in the harshness of our world and the quick necessity of actions we have to take to keep our world in tact on a daily basis makes us feel like we can’t also tend to our tenderness, and I want to remind us that this isn’t so.

Staying tender is one of the best ways to stay grounded in a sustainable way.

But, we don’t stay tender in order to avoid the world, do we?

Let’s also get angry. Let’s get angry at injustice, at war and hate, at the status quo that upholds a young Black mom getting murdered by police for simply calling out for help.

It’s what we do with our anger that matters.

When was the last time you thoughtfully took your anger and did something with it, felt the anger rush through your body and into something else—a piece of artwork, some activism, some care or other form of expression? And I don’t mean that you processed it poorly and lashed out at someone, I mean how have you recently taken that holy anger and transformed it into subversive beauty?

You know what I do when I’m angry? I journal. I write poetry. I go rock climbing, which helps me find the words to write these books. I think and pray and practice embodiment so that this work is sustainable, so that I can show up to my books and my speaking events with that anger and not despite it.

I think about people who have been through hell in their lives, who live as people who are constantly policed and oppressed by the societies they live in, those who find ways to create art from that reality. I’m thinking about Afro-Indigenous farms, where the lands are being tended to with so much generosity.

This is essential in our relationship with the earth: to stay grounded, we must practice this again and again to keep the work sustainable.

Photo by Adele Payman on Unsplash

And lastly, we keep returning to land-based care.

I share in my book Living Resistance about the work of The Alliance for Intergenerational Resilience or the AIR, who remind us that resilience is built in our connectedness to Mother Earth, in the ways we return to land-based practices and care.

So, how do we build this resilience, and what are examples of land-based care?

Maybe it’s your garden, or your daily walk. In the wonderful spirit of Bo in Summer’s Magic, maybe it’s a river cleanup in your community. Maybe you’re reading books that help you care for the earth more. When you listen to music, close your eyes and let you body connect to Mother Earth as your heart connects to every note.

Maybe you show up to protests because you want to care for the earth. Maybe you support grassroots organizations who are doing climate care work, demanding a better world for future generations.

The point is that we are aware of a disconnect from the earth, and that we do something to repair it, that we bring our awareness to that relationship.

Photo by Axel Holen on Unsplash

The question of sustainability cannot be more important. If we want to care for future generations, and even begin healing now, we have to brace ourselves, pace ourselves, move and act in ways that will truly last.

The world isn’t getting lighter and brighter, not right now. Things are hard, and they will continue to be hard. Let’s not just brace ourselves for the impact, but care for ourselves and Mother Earth in ways that will keep us going for generations to come.