Our Great Mother

It's Mother's Day! Happy, happy to the great nurturers in the world. <3 Whether you are taking tender care of your child/ren or other family, your fur babies or avians, your plants, neighbors, community, students, projects, or even your own tired/stressed/lonely self, you are doing important work in the world. Imagine if everyone was consciously focused on caring for Other; I venture to say the world would look pretty different.

Who's the greatest "mother" you know? They may not be a mother at all, or even a female or human. If TikTok is any indication, there are plenty of cross-species cases of loving behavior: dogs snuggling with ducks, mules nuzzling goats, apes feeding kittens. And what about trees? High up in the bough of a nearby eucalyptus, a red tailed hawk family makes its nest; the 120-foot tall tree offers shelter and a great view--just one example of countless. In my life, my most nurturing "mother" figures were my paternal grandmother and aunts, my stepfather (who later adopted me), a theater teacher, and several friends' mothers. As an adult, I have more than once been that figure to both adult and youth clients; in fact, decades later I am still connected to two young men whom I've known since they were 10 and 13 years old, respectively. I carry them in my heart like second sons.

Many of us don't all get dealt the happy loving family hand in the card game of life. That can make it hard to let love in, or to recognize genuine love when it's offered. But if we're paying attention, love and its related expressions--kindness, a smile, gentle touch, generosity, warmth-- is everywhere. In fact, it's the nature of the universe. If we could "feel" the air around us, we'd realize that every single thing is alive with the spirit of love, and all we have to do is be receptive.

The most perfect example of this is Gaia herself. As our Great Mother, Gaia is perfectly designed as an immensely complex system of endless growth and re-generation whose "nature" is to nurture the innumerable lifeforms that she is home to. Without the devastating effects of humanity's choices, Gaia could maintain a perfect, cyclical balance of global nourishment into perpetuity. Even despite all the harmful things happening to the planet currently, growth keeps happening in the ways it can. During the pandemic, I remember reading that the canals in Venice were again clear and full of fish after being heavily polluted for some time. If given the chance, Gaia always moves towards healing and recovery. I wonder what would happen, if only on Mother's Day, everyone did one thing to honor her and all she gives?