Earth Meditations

Today was quiet, and with my family off doing their own things, I had a free couple of afternoon hours with nothing planned.  For starters, I pulled out my guitar and played the old John Denver song, "Sunshine on My Shoulders."  There's nothing like a song like that to kick you outside.  The rest of my time, I spent emptying pots of plants that froze the other night and sweeping leaves off my front porch. 

For a moment, carrying a pot to the front yard so that I could re-pot geraniums to move them indoors, I could feel the timelessness of this one little act.  I was just one little pair of feet and hands among centuries upon centuries of women and men walking through the seasons with the crops -- planting, harvesting, emptying flower beds and fields for the winter, then planting once again in the right season.

There are so many ways to let the mind relax into the greater secret of life.  Being with the dirt and the pots and the dead plants, I feel a belonging to the earth.  I feel like a real inhabitant, a participant, a sister to the soil.  What better meditation than to sweep off the front stoop and stop to breathe in the cooling autumn air.

The point of meditation is to focus the mind so that the normal soundtrack of the mind can fade into a greater composition.  Meditation does not have to be cushion-sitting.  In my twenties, I lived next to my grandparents on a rural hill in Bally, Pennsylvania.  They had a profoundly meditative life without ever having sat in lotus position.

Their love for the land and people were their meditation. For my grandmother, that meant sewing quilts for charity sales, cooking for family who lived nearby, and tending her flower garden.  For my grandfather, it was taking walks, helping my grandmother string green beans or peel apples, and tinkering with electrical components in his shop.  Granted, they were retired.  But they understood quietude not because they practiced it but because they offered their lives in love and gentle service to those around them.  Their religion dictated that they serve as the the hands and feet of Christ.  They were humble servants.

When I was cleaning the pots today, I was reminded of how meditating is a state of mind.  It is the state of mind in which one is in love with the earth and the beings in it.  In that love, we are the hands and feet of the greater Consciousness being expressed through us.  If we understand the profundity of that, we can relax.  Who wants to be a small, whiny human being when you can be the hands and feet of Divine Consciousness?

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Do:  Ask yourself:  who do I love?  Who am I serving in this life?  When I die, what will I be remembered by?  Create an intention for your days. How would you like them to be filled?  Write this somewhere so that you can be reminded of it.

It is the love that we remember -- the moments when love takes hold of our hearts and reminds us of who we are.