Good Night, Mother Earth
“Nature, nature, I am your bride! Take me.” from the movie Orlando
These were the words uttered in desperation by the main character Orlando (played by Tilda Swinton) in the movie of the same name as she flung herself facedown onto the ground. The spirit of the age had finally taken her and broken her, as she roughly put it, by taking away all of her earthly posessions; because she had not married, bore a son nor had a brother to claim it, she was a non-entity and could not own property. I try to watch this movie about once a year, for several reasons; based on the writing of Virginia Wolfe, the main character lives through many lifetimes, hundreds of years, and experiences herself as both male and female at different points, learning firsthand the vantage point of both. She comes to the ultimate conclusion that she is the soul, not the personality or gender that is represented by the body nor dictated by the culture. However, the age in which she was a woman only saw her as her gender and it was at this time of cruel disregard and oppression that she flung herself to the place from which she came. There is more to the movie, although I won’t be a spoiler–but I love that moment of complete longing to be taken back to that from which you come, where the aspects we experience as most dominant in our world–gender, religion, nationality, political persuasion, profession–are the very aspects which fall away, leaving only what we began with, what is real.
We recently went into the mountains of east Tennessee to one of our favorite places with some of our best friends. I was spent, it was just after Christmas, and I was feeling the emptiness and disconnectedness that always comes when I have not spent enough time out of doors, surrounded by beauty and open spaces. Over a period of 24 hours, with four adults and 5 children, we hiked many miles. We climbed trees, frolicked and skipped, sweated, touched rocks with their mossy coats, and soaked up all we could. I felt the ability to breathe deeply returning, and my awareness of my being, along with my ultimate perspective, was coming back as well; I felt as though I live in this unnatural habitat of concrete, noise and schedules, and had suddenly been returned to my natural habitat; the one in which I belonged and would flourish; the one from which questions of the meaning of life and my place in it do not present themselves–I simply AM. Nature had done it again for me, as a mother nurses a sick child, soothing her, singing to her, holding her, my Terre Mere had found me and made me whole again. As we left, I was filled with gratitude that such an available and reliable resource is waiting for me at all times.
