Connecting with Nature, Giving Gratitude for all the gifts we receive from the Earth

by Timothy P McLaughlin

I waited and waited a great while
before I knew enough
about listening
to hear the bright ones
speak,
and only faintly at first,
so I wasn’t sure if anything
had happened at all.

We have made the walk from water to earth many times as humans, yes? I think about how we came from the ocean as a species. We grow in a fluid inside our mother’s wombs similar in makeup to the ocean before we ever take our first breath. And we walk the Medicine Wheel each and every year from the water of the west in autumn to the earth of north in winter, until our very last breath. 

I grew up just blocks from the Ocean in San Francisco where I walked the beach nearly every day and was lulled to sleep at night by the sound of fog horns.  Sometimes, when in the water – I could feel these wave pulses of energy moving through my body and sometimes, at the shore, I could feel life forms moving far off inside the ocean.  I knew they could feel me as well and were communicating.  

My mother was holding me looking at the waves when suddenly a huge wave broke over us. The shock and sound of the wet spray gave me a baptism I never forgot. I grew up on two islands, one urban,the other rural, and at a very young age I was diving into the waves and buoyed up on their crests, or watching reckless teenagers jump into the East River trafficked by tugs and cargo ships headed out to sea. 

We offer gratitude to Ocean, the one great Ocean of the world, whom we call by so many names. Grandmother Ocean, thank you for Life! For the lives of our most ancient ancestors whom you cradled and fed, For the lives of all who came after, who stayed in your waters or ventured on land. For the lives of all the plants whom you water through the clouds, and for the  tiny phytoplankton who give us breath. We thank you Ocean, for the lives of all our relatives.

By Laura Williams

We all have a longing for the wild but we are trained by our industrial consumer society to consider ourselves separate from Nature.  We are taught from the beginning of our lives that we, humans, are both dominant over and in danger from the wild. 

By Lauren Valle
To My Enlightened Self

Silent self, self made of stone
Self that witnessed the birth of the ocean and
bathed in the torrents of mucus and blood
Self that melts the boundaries between her own beauty
and the beauty of the world

We offer gratitude to the Wild. For the rare and sacred places on earth where true wilderness reigns. Forthose edge places on the borders of our gardens and our consciousness where the wild interlaces with the tame, awakening us with inspiration. For the indomitable Wild that creeps or flies or pushes up through the pavement even into our cities, reminding us of Lif

In all their shapes, sizes, colors, the seeds have granted us sustenance, flavors, art, craft, and most importantly story and song. The life-giving mystery in a handful of seeds has inspired the many stories and songs that create the sacred dance between people and plants. These seeds share insight on the alchemy of transformation of sunlight to food, one kernel into many. 

For hundreds and hundreds of year the Abenaki People lived on both sides of the Connecticut River in what are now called Vermont and New Hampshire in the United States around the villages called Haverhill and Newbury. By the time European settlers arrived in these areas, the Abenakis had been growing sweet corn on the oxbows of the river for centuries.  It was very different from the sweet corn of today. Abenaki corn grew only about three feet high and produced one ear per stock, that ear being about four inches long and containing 8 to 12 rows of kernels.

One long-ago September at age nine, I created a science project for school---a large and neatly labeled seed chart composed on poster board with scotch tape.  How thrilling it was to discover each beautiful and highly varied specimen, as Earth bejeweled her autumn cloak with seeds of hope for the year to come!

Recognizing the growing global threat to the diversity, integrity and sanctity of seeds, we would like to honor a few of the organizations which have taken significant steps to  protect seeds and to preserve our rights to save seeds.

We give thanks for the brilliance of the tiny Beings who carry the code of new Life. We give thanks for the immense rich diversity and adaptability of seeds, for their responsiveness to weather and land