A Prayer of Apology to Mother Earth

The sun is setting and I am on a windy mountain top in the open space behind our house. Since very few cars are on the road these days, the air is clear and I can see the entire San Francisco Bay.

Music plays through my earbuds, a spontaneous prayer of apology comes flooding forth and my body begins to dance. Cold wind blows as warm tears roll down my cheeks. My chest heaves and I sob with a mixture of grief and gratitude.

The spring hills of California winter, speckled with purple, pink and yellow flowers take my breath away; my heart breaks open. I am shedding layers of emotion like a snake shedding her skin. My tender heart feels the pain of what humanity has done to the earth and consequently to ourselves. I offer this up as a prayer of apology and as a call to action.

Now is the time to surrender to love.

Now is the time to step in, to allow yourself to show up in ways that you never have before because my dear friends, this is the moment for us to rise up as agents of love. This is the moment for us to be generous, sing, dance and express ourselves nakedly. Take no prisoners. Your voice is needed. Your soul needs to breathe.

Now is the time to pray and pray often, to enter into the sacredness of what this messenger, COVID-19 is telling us. It is time to surrender all of your self-judgment and doubt, to relinquish all pretense and stand tall as your own beautiful self.

It is a time for forgiveness.

Can you forgive yourself for all the moments you have forsaken yourself, bitten your tongue rather than spoken up in the face of injustice, for the times you have casually walked by the homeless person in soiled clothes sleeping on the sidewalk or instantly deleted the solicitations for help that arrive daily in your inbox?

Can you forgive the parent who harmed or neglected you? Can you forgive the lover who has carelessly trespassed on your vulnerable heart without so much as a backward glance?

Let us forgive generously, for our withholds block access to love and love is what will shepherd us through this moment and whatever is to come.

Our human family has disrespected mother earth in ways that are unfathomable.

She is talking to us and talking loudly. Let us listen with a soft ear and grieve the ways in which we have raped and pillaged her and the ways we have taken her abundant gifts for granted.

Let us prostrate ourselves to mother earth and beg for forgiveness.

Let us humbly apologize with every cell and fiber of our being.

How much worse does it need to get before we act, before we honor everything as sacred? Each blade of grass and every gloriously resplendent ray of sun as it shines through the majestic clouds set upon the backdrop of this incredible vastness which we call our world.

May we walk gently and recognize that it is a privilege to be alive.

May we tend to each other with kindness and compassion as we share our vulnerable hearts and our gifts. My friends, your gifts have been laying in wait for eons and it is time to let them out, to shine your light into the world. What have you got to lose?

We are living in the vast unknown and it is a brand new time. This is a shakedown. The template of what we have known is being re-patterned as we slow down and interrupt our frenetic pace to be with ourselves and those we love in-person, or through the blessing of the technologies we have created.

You are not alone.

We are in this together. Please know this.

Breathe these words in: You are not alone, my friend.

We are in this passage together. In my experience, the opportunity for intimacy is even more palpable than usual. Let’s not fall back into the usual. It wasn’t working.

Let us jump into the icy cold water of this unknown moment with both feet or better yet do a swan dive, take a deep breath, dive into emptiness and discover yourself. Let yourself be seen.

This is our time. If we had not needed such an intense wake up call, we wouldn’t have gotten shaken so hard by life. This virus is a catalyst for us all to live more fully. Many are sick and many will die. There is much to feel and love can hold it all. Welcome the waves of feeling. They will pass and you will be cleansed and awaken ever more fully, align with your heart and walk on our sacred planet with radical integrity. It’s time to let love lead.

Let us grieve the error of our ways and make a real shift. Let us be steady in our hearts. Let us embody love.

We got ourselves into this by mistakenly thinking that we were up to the task of being in charge and clearly, this has not been the case. Let us humbly recognize that the accumulation of houses, fancy cars, expensive clothing and gadgetry does not bring with it true happiness.

I know you know this and have simply forgotten. I have too. It is time to remember why we came here.

My prayer is that we will wake up and live in right relationship to Mother Earth and all of her creatures and that this moment will deliver us into the fact that everything is sacred.💜