I've been your Mother for almost 5 billion years. I hear your grief and fear while the lives you have known are shutting down. Your jobs are gone, your hospitals are full, your shops, streets, beaches and aisles are barren. Your monies are becoming scarce. Many of you are sick. And some of you are dying.
Always during times of planetary sorrow, I have held you. This period of learning has been building for decades, while you have fought religious wars, bombed towers, judged others according to their skin color, the God they worship or the person they choose to love. I have held you while you based success on the shifting sands of money, clamored for power and even while you disavowed those among you who have little access to water, food, education or health care.
I have watched you run drugs through your tunnels and into the veins of your youth. I have sighed deeply while fortunes have been made by convincing you that life's issues can be solved one purchase at a time. I wept while you raped my lands, bulldozed my trees, drilled into the sides of mountains, polluted oceans with plastic and poison.
Your disregard for nature's way has been costly. Where you once lived beside streams of clean water, worshiped the sacredness of mountains, sunrises and sunsets, you now have buildings towering high above people who stay connected for hours via technology but who fear eye contact and heart connection.
Many economies have been built on the hierarchical principles of power and greed. Happiness should be linked to the scope of your caring hearts, not to the size of your bank accounts. You don't take time to admire a Sugar Maple or stop long enough to listen to birdsong; you jog beside a Banyan tree with buds in your ears which obstructs nature's own music. You walk quickly by people living with misfortune; their tents don't have rooms like your houses, so you choose not to feel their stories. You equate quality with shiny and wealth with ownership.
COVID-19 is chasing all people, regardless of how much you shine or how much you own. The virus has crossed all lands, all races, all genders, all socio-economic levels. I hope you are listening. I invite your eyes to see and your hearts to appreciate each human story. Each inhabitant of this planet---north, south, east or west---holds a story. And each story holds deep meaning.
While countries become quiet and continue to mourn their dead, priorities are shifting. You are one world. No country stands alone. There is a wealth of high-spirited, noble, kind, intelligent, wise and creative people who are rediscovering the importance of healthy interdependence. Humanity is capable of turning the earth back into the Place of Grace it was meant to be; you are beginning to love and live differently.
But you must stop plundering, politicizing and polluting. Your life assignment includes slowing down. Be the tortoise not the hare. Learning to be content with watching sunlight stretch over the grass, the plains and the sandy beaches. Reach across aisles and across continents, celebrate your uniqueness, your innate wisdom, your ability to become better stewards of planet Earth and of one another. And above all else, remain faithful to things you cannot yet see.
Love,
Mother Earth