Loving Circle for the Earth

Trees from the boreal forest of Alberta, Canada, cut and stacked like matchsticks to make way for a new Tar Sands excavation.

I usually do something at this time of year around the Day of the Dead/Samhain/All Souls, toward honoring our ancestors. This year, however, I have been haunted by accounts of the dying of the ocean…the razing of the forests for Tar Sands and toilet tissue, for oil and hydropower…the massive injustices being perpetrated by the U.S. government.

I’ve been silenced by sheer overwhelm at the enormity of the social and environmental destruction…and I have heard so many others expressing similar feelings of overwhelm and despair.

The words that have kept coming back to me are: “We need to be loving them in their passing.” Not only fighting to save the beings that are dying, the species that are being extinguished, the planet herself in the vast wounding of extraction and contamination, but also sending them specifically LOVING energy in the recognition that it may be too late.

So on Saturday, while I was on a woods-walking retreat, the guidance came: to offer a Reiki/energy sending afternoon this coming weekend in an outdoor setting, specifically focused on sending LOVE via whichever healing modality(ies) we practice, to those beings/elements of our earth, known and unknown, that are so direly on the edge…or tipped/tipping already.

Part of this may look like grieving, and I suspect that some grief release may be involved for what has already been lost. But the deeper intent is to give the sort of love and cherishing that one gives a hospice patient – aware that all things end, that our species is responsible for too many ends, and loving fiercely those beings that remain.

Just that – LOVING. And who knows but that such love might make a difference?

So I’m inviting you to join me in spirit or in person on the afternoon of Sunday Nov 3, at 2:00 in the Avalon area of Patapsco State Park (see the location info below) for a meditation/healing circle for the Mother.

We’ll begin with a brief song/drumming ritual to unite our energies and intentions, and we will close with song and drumming, so please bring a drum or percussion instrument if you have one!

If you feel so called, you might also bring a small natural object (e.g., a stone, a crystal, a pine cone, a seashell, a handful of tobacco or cornmeal, worm tea, etc.) to charge with your loving intention and give to the Earth.

Or if you aren’t nearby, and want to take part at that time at a distance, please join us remotely. To register for this event, please go to https://www.facebook.com/events/175404279330553/.

Please share this invitation! For more information, email me at philahoopes @ gmail.com.

Thank you!

“Someday someone will isolate the frequency of love and build a machine to transmit it. Calling it Smith’s Healing Rays, they will charge to beam it at our injured parts. And we may forget it was ours all the time. But for now, we will call it TREE.

The fabricated TREE will not be as effective as what we can develop within ourselves. For TREE is individual, each person sending that love particular to her/his being and no computer can simulate the variety, tenderness and efficaciousness of the heart. TREE is particular, but it is also collective, not the act of one person, but of several, not exclusively an act of intimacy, but also of community. And TREE is not what we have associated with healing, the sucking into our own healthy bodies of a disease occupying another, but rather the loving saturation of the other body with the healing light originating in the heart.”

– Deena Metzger, TREE: Essays & Pieces

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Here is the webpage for the Avalon area of Patapsco:

http://www.dnr.state.md.us/publiclands/central/patapscoavalon.asp

We’ll meet at the Visitor Center and then go from there – for this reason, it’s important that you arrive at 2:00! There are two places where we could do the actual circle – at the Cascade Falls nearby, or right by the Patapsco. We’ll need to play it by ear, depending on the number of people (partiers, hikers, etc) in the area at the time and the energy of the group.

Patapsco State Park – Avalon Entrance
5120 South Street
Arbutus, MD 21227

Link: <https://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode&q=Patapsco+Valley+State+Park%2C+5120+South+Street%2C+Arbutus%2C+MD+21227&aq&sll=39.21972%2C-76.704998&sspn=0.110648%2C0.200157&vpsrc=0&ie=UTF8&hq=Patapsco+Valley+State+Park%2C+5120+South+Street%2C+Arbutus%2C+MD+21227&hnear&radius=15000&ll=39.247941%2C-76.68354&spn=0.110604%2C0.200157&t=m&z=12&iwloc=A&cid=14954589578245953755>

 

 

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