Earth Day Journaling by Lynda Monk

Earth Day Journaling by Lynda Monk

The following is a journal entry I wrote in the pages of my journal today, Friday, April 22, 2022 on Earth Day… it appeared as a love letter to the earth.

Please note, this is an unedited journal entry and therefore is not written with grammar, punctuation, etc. in mind.  It is simply free flowing writing from the pages of my journal that I have copied as is here…

Happy EARTH DAY.

Dear Earth, I love you.  I love your smell, your shape, your colours – they all flow into and around me.  Thank you for so freely sharing all of who you are with me.  Your waters, branches, roots, soul, air, your rotted and tired parts too – are also used, composted, to feed something new.

Each day I walk over you, feel you beneath my feet with each step, appreciate your beauty moment to moment, place my spine against the bark and trunks of trees. I feel them pulse, while I remember my own.

I breathe, you breathe. You are the Great Mother.

I give wholeheartedly to mothering my boys.  I draw on your energy and vitality when I am having a hard time accessing my own.  I step outside and breathe in the air you so freely give me, step into the cool ocean waters that you bring to the shore.

I step naked into your rains out on our deck, I feel your coldness touch my skin. I fight the urge to run inside, grab a towel and feel the warmth; but I stay in your rains, let you wash away the dust of daily life that accumulates on me and in me, dust that sometimes weighs heavy not light.

You shine your light as the sun rises over the slope of Reginald Hill across Fulford Harbour. I close my eyes and feel the beginning of a new day rising in you, rising in me.

Rising. Rising tides carry us home, to each other.  Let us meet on the edge of the ebb and flow of possibilities. Great Mother, you teach me everyday that anything is possible.  I’m listening to your heartbeat, it matches my own, it is my own.  We are one, not separate.

Your life is my life, our lives.  Your clean waters, clean air, your ideal climate – your vitality, sustainability and health, feed my vitality, sustainability and health.  And you feed all people, everywhere, and the trees, the great heron, the blue whale, the ferns and farms, and salmon, eagles, my sweet Sadie girl, our children, butterflies once moths, all transform and thrive because of you.

You are our lifeline. May we save you, honour you, treat you like our lives depend on it, because they do.

With love and devotion, L.

_______________

Lynda Monk is the Director of the International Association for Journal Writing, http://IAJW.org