Home Planet

We fondly refer to her as Mother Earth. This place of beauty and joy, of hardship and sadness. Our home for a few years or many, where we take things for granted and forget to say thank you; where we rejoice in gratitude and appreciate the gifts.  She’s been called by many other names, like Terra Firma, the Big Blue Marble, Gaia; I like to consider her Mother.

Everyone could use another Mother, right?  No matter how you feel about your earthly mother, Mother Earth is a universal source of nurturance and care.  The more mothers the merrier, I say!  (Just ask my brother, who grew up with five older sisters and a mom – on second thought, maybe it’s still too soon  . . .) Mother Earth brings us food, and presents us with materials for shelter.  She steadfastly revolves around the sun to bring us Day and Night, Summer and Winter. Even when we strew trash around like we tossed clothes on the floor of our adolescent bedrooms, Mother Earth doesn’t desert us. She may not be thrilled, but she just shakes her head (earthquake!), sheds a few tears (flood!) and hopes we learn someday to clean up after ourselves.

I don’t actually think Mother Earth quakes and floods to punish us, but it is a nice illustration. We take it personally when Mother Earth overwhelms us with her changing moods, but truly, she is neutral.  She turns and churns, creates and destroys, nourishes and starves with impersonal regularity. 

Even when we become a planet populated by peaceful, loving citizens, Mother Earth will still have her earthquakes.  She will still spew lava and spill too much rain. Oblivious to the despair she has wrought, she will then bless us with sunshine and soft grass beneath our feet, and be a source of much joy and wonder. The advantage we will have then is the ongoing care and love from our neighbors, when neighborhoods stretch across the entire planet.

And I like to think that would make Mother Earth smile.