Yesterday, we talked about the gift of cultivation, of the ability to midwife seeds into life, to nourish and nurture growth in a manner that maintains a harmonious natural balance.
Today, it’s the very earth itself, the soil and the green — the natural map of our mother’s body, traced atop the protective shell of Grandmother Turtle.
As a species, we haven’t been kind to her. We haven’t honored her, either as a parent, an ancestor among ancestors, or as a resource, an object of stewardship. Traditionally, we are charged to do both. But human avarice has led to rapine and pillage of her body, in very real terms, to extraction of her very lifeblood and marrow without her consent, to endless squandering of her gifts and destruction of her ability to continue to give them. And now that we have altered the very spirits of sky and air themselves, changing the climate through our gluttony and greed, our carelessness and wanton wastefulness, now we begin daily to feel the effects of our betrayal of our mother in very tangible ways.
Now, it’s our task to patch up her wounds, to try to heal the scars, to work to reduce her fever and lance the infection that has taken hold of her body in too many places to count.
It will not be an easy task. But it’s one that must be done if our children’s children are to have any hope of a habitable world.
It’s why reminders of Mother Earth’s beauty, the gifts she offers, the nourishment she provides, are so important. In lives spent in concrete canyons and portable metal lodges that move themselves across hot black trails amidst smoke and smog, it’s too easy to forget her very existence, much less the importance of maintaining the proper balance.
Of course, it’s not an entirely new phenomenon. My father used to tell a story from 1939 or 1940, of a date with his first girlfriend, a white girl of Italian ancestry whose father owned the general store in the nearby town. One summer’s day, they went for a drive outside of that town, past fields that today no longer exist, but then were lush and green with crops. They passed one particular large field, stalks growing tall and strong, and his girlfriend pointed at them and asked: “What is that?”
My father did a double-take. “That’s corn,” he said, laughing. “Don’t you know what corn is?”
“That’s not corn!” she protested. “I’ve seen corn in my father’s store. It comes in little ears or in cans; it’s not big green stalks!”
Dad was flabbergasted. It had never occurred to him that someone — especially someone from a white, educated, more or less middle-class family — would not know something so fundamental, would not recognize actual food as it existed in its natural state, before the forces of commercialization got to it and transformed it into something vaguely edible.
So he pulled over, got out, walked to the field, and picked an ear. Shucked it and handed it to her. Told her to look at it. Told her to try it.
The wonder on her face must have been something to behold.
I hope it’s a memory, and a lesson, that stuck with her, one that she was inspired to tell her own children and grandchildren. It’s certainly a story that stuck with me. Less so about knowing where our food comes from, although there’s that, too, and we’re careful about it. But more, it’s about knowing how what sustains us comes to be, to what and whom we owe our thanks for this daily gift of life — and to remember to offer those thanks, and in turn to be good stewards of of the earth that supports such gifts.
To honor our mother.
When I saw the piece in the photos in today’s post, I knew instantly what the theme would be. The vibrant green color of the stone, slightly rounded and mounded, essentially feminine, traced with a map of dark earthy lines — Mother Earth, lush, fertile, verdant. The stampwork on the band, alternating symbols of love, of nurturing, of guidance and direction — all motifs of parenthood, of caretaking, of setting one’s children on the proper path and giving them the love and support they need to stay on it. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Like a parent, she nourishes and nurtures us, setting us the path of our daily lives, providing for our needs. Here, our Mother Earth is embodied in a rich green turquoise cabochon, sky and plant spirits melded together, mapped by her own paths of rich brown soil. Directional arrows alternating with symbols of love trace either side of the scored band. Cabochon is 5/8″ square (dimensions approximate); band is sizeable. Other views shown above and below.
Sterling silver; natural Royston turquoise
$350 + shipping, handling, and insurance
On the back of the setting is stamped a twelve-pointed star, the bezel edged with tiny rays of light. It’s an image that evokes her male sky counterparts, true, but also one that evokes another female spirit found in various forms across many traditions: Sky Woman. She manifests as a guiding star, whether of morning or evening or both depends on the tradition and the story. But here, the motif crosses traditions, manifesting as the multi-pointed star of the Plains, invoking a multiple of the sacred elemental number in those points of light.
It’s a ring to be worn by man or woman alike, but the power behind it is powerfully maternal — and designed to make us powerfully mindful of our own charge, to conserve and to care for, to be stewards of, to honor our Mother Earth.
~ Aji
