As part of my commitment to Praying True which I wrote about here I am joining with women all around the world to turn up in simple prayer or any act of love we are drawn to create, which will offer nurture and succour to the planet.

And I mean simple.  Like a daisy simple.  I want it to not seem complicated or ornate,

Only me and what comes up - being able to turn up to what is there for both the world and me in that moment... This is in an attempt to antidote myself from the introjected belief that i can KNOW stuff about this... that there is a technique or a tool or a process that will make me "right" to do this.


I think what is required from humans right now is to stop all of their "i know best"s and turn up and listen.

And then act in partnership with the earth.

So i tried to do that on Saturday.

I was tired having walked for 2 1/2 hours in the hot sun with my daughter on a horse trek.  It was late.  The girls had been fighting.  I was done with people.  And the thought of driving somewhere - like to a significant river or the ocean felt wrong. I have been thinking that the best way for me to join others healing the world is to turn up in my world, my neighbourhood and do what is in front of me. So i went over the fences and into our neighbour's farm.

This farm is fairly poor soil - "unproductive" (like mine), farmed lightly with sheep,wild cattle and a flock of wild peacocks.  There are lots of weeds - gorse, thistle.  There are a few unprotected trees.  There is a creek which is fairly overgrown with weedy plants.  This is where i went.  To the waterway that runs nearest my house.  It is the reality of water where i live.

I sat down on the boggy ground at the edge of the river, centred myself a little and joined my energy with the earth's.  I felt recieved and connected.  I sang my song to the river and felt a swirling in the water but i was distracted.  By the busy-ness of the day which was still there with me and there was a smell.  And flies.  And to my left i saw a drowned sheep.

Many reactions all at once.  "Poor sheep.  It needs to come out.  I can't get it out.  Imagine not being noticed when you were gone.  That will be poisoning the waterway.  What a statement about our New Zealand Rivers.  What a symbol of how we don't act as stewards on the land.  We just take and take and do not responsibly manage our gifts..."

All this and more.  

So my act of prayer became an apology.  'I see this legacy we have here water.  I see that this damages you.  I am sorry.  Forgive me.  I love you." Mirroring Dr Emoto's prayer for Fukushima (Waters of the nuclear reactor of Fukushima, we are sorry that we have caused you suffering. If you please, forgive us. We thank you, and we love you.)


An act of contrition.  But one of turning up.  Of seeing what has occured.  Of expressing my human sadness and witnessing what is  the truth of what our earth holds for us.


So i go home and ring the farmer who comes the next day to get the sheep's body.  


And i will sing out to the water my song and my prayer and i will keep turning up to this - listening to the whispers that come to me because i will keep acknowledging the the earth and sea and water and sky are my family just as much as my relatives with two legs. The elements nourish me in a way that I only barely understand.  But that i need to begin to show gratitude for.


Oh and as a synchronicity which i want to mention i took a flower from my garden  to lay by the creek as a gift.  But what i found at my feet was a tiny patch of forget-me-nots.  


I will not forget you water.

i have always been a bit of a pacifist.

Long time vegetarian (from 16-46) who at one stage could not harvest her own growings for fear of the trauma of hurting the plants.

It is spring here and i have been raising some seeds for my garden  cleome, hollyhocks, sunflowers, cosmos.  Flowers that make my heart sing and link me back to another time.

To participate in the miracle of life that close at hand - to see something green and alive sprout bravely up from the darkness with the potion of light and water and its own predestined life force- is humbling

It makes me think of Dr Estes saying "It is a miracle we make it here at all"

And it is in acknowledging this miracle that i get hard-hearted.

I am now on alert for snails and slugs.  Pay my girls 10 cents per plant munching arthropod.  I squash them under my foot (after saying a little prayer of blessing sure but make no mistake they are not alive after i find them) 

Yes, i would rather the starlings and thrushes would come and eat them as the cycle of life dictates, but it seems my strawberries are all the fair those little head- twisting beauties are after.  The crushed eggshells seem like they are a purpose build snail amusement/obstacle course only "Hey Larry, come over to the cleomes tonight - wicked new course laid out" they say to each other.


Yes i would rather not be crushing life under my feet.


Snails are little slimey miracles, with their  stalk eyes swiveling and their soft walk on razorblades feet.


But i have to choose.


The snails or the plants.


And life is like that too.  I see the right people in my community have to demand more and more of my time and money.  I don't deny that they are worthy and important to them. 


But just like snails who have a right to life and nourishment they eat up the new tender things that are growing in me.


And if i don't make boundaries or stamp them out then my precious new life will be eaten clean away.


So i take the snails in my life and in my garden and i dispatch them as painlessly as i can.  Just as i am working to weed out the people and obligations in my life that don't serve my bigger purpose.


Because i want my garden to flourish. Metaphorically and literally.


What is it that you want to flourish.


And what are your snails?