Fresh Thinking, Inspiration, and Vision on the Process of Spiritual Transformation

Do you want to increase your capacity to encompass the people and the events of your world? That requires compassion—not just sympathy, not just resonance with what someone else is feeling. Real compassion is the capacity to hold with love. For a person to bring the gift of loving encompassment, they have to know that their world is not only outside of them but also within them.

It is the Spirit of Truth that holds all of creation already. It holds all people and all the natural world. It is the spirit of Planet Earth itself, and the intrinsic nature of humanity. When that spirit is present through a person, that person encompasses their world and the people in it.

That Spirit is sometimes depicted as a woman. Lady Liberty, Mother Nature, and Mary, mother of Jesus, are all personifications of the Spirit of Truth. I honor that spirit wherever it appears.

Praise to the Queen of Heaven and Earth;
She in whom all things are conceived, born and nourished;
All the creatures who walk on the ground,
The fox, the deer, the ants and all,
All the birds of the air and the fish of the sea,
The sparrow, the cockatiel and the salmon,
The fierce hawk, the gentle dove and all;
She in whom the grass grows,
And in whom the apple tree, which gives its fruit, is nourished;
She who receives the lily petals when they fall from their stems,
And who receives the baby’s tears,
Who hears the prayers of the poor and the rich alike,
And who receives all as her own.

Praise to the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
Our hearts are carried to You on the wings of our songs,
And in our labors of love,
Sanctified in your rich heart which is our own,
In your work of love which we carry out in our days,
Carrying your blessing
As a kiss on our forehead,
As violets in our hair,
As a golden locket over our heart
Reminding us of how precious You are.

Praise to the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
You walk among us in our children,
In our closest friends, and friends unknown;
In our lovers,
And as our mothers,
In those who know You and serve You above all else,
And in ourselves,
Shining as bright as the noonday sun,
Or hidden like the sliver moon behind a cloud,
You walk among us as we have eyes to see.

Praise to the Queen of Heaven and Earth.
All is given to You.
All lives in Thee.

It seems hard for us sometimes, as human beings, to hold the creative process with all the wonder of what’s being born and also what is passing away. There are the living forms that eventually die, and there are cycles of life that change. There is also the damage that human beings do to the forms of life on Planet Earth. The Queen of Heaven and Earth holds all of that in her great heart. As we honor her deeply, we inherit that same gift from her. Her spirit is in us.

Her spirit brings blessing to all of the creative process—all that is being born and growing and all that is passing away. She does not object, no matter what it is. And we would have to admit that she has done an amazing job at letting life show itself in all its glorious ways. As a person discovers her spirit within them, they receive her capacity to hold the creative process. But for that gift to be received, a person must release the common human tendency to say, “No, this shouldn’t happen. It should be like this.” A person can embrace the whole creative process when they discover that spirit within them that is already doing that.

Currently, there is a giant oil spill in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. When you see it on television you may want to change the channel. You may not want to see it or think about it because it is so sad that many life forms in the Gulf are dying, and this event is greatly impacting people’s lives.

You could view this event as something happening outside yourself. Somebody else did it. Somebody else is to blame. And somebody else needs to fix it. We might ask our Congress to vote for a law that could prevent such a catastrophe from happening in the future. We might ask our executive branch to institute tighter safety regulations. That is one way to encompass the events of your world—to see them as outside yourself and to attempt to impact them. And that is a very valid way to operate in the world.

How does this event seem to Mother Earth? This oil spill is not something that is happening outside of her. It is happening in her body. If we share an affinity with that spirit, it is something that is happening within our body. It’s certainly something happening in our conscious awareness. It is present in our thoughts and feelings, and it is something happening in us.

It can seem more powerful to hold these events as something outside ourselves, something we could rail against and fight about. There are times to confront people and events on that basis, and perhaps this is one of those times for you.

Mother Earth has a different approach. I am confident that Mother Earth will find a way to cleanse herself of the oil leaking out into the Gulf, in her own time, in her own way. There may even come a time when she finds her own way of cleansing herself of human beings who dishonor her. We put a lot of store by our own human efforts, but Mother Earth seems to have her own way of dealing with these things. When people stopped polluting the Hudson River, they thought it would take a very long time for the river to deal with the toxins that had been deposited in it. They were shocked when, very shortly, the fish began to run again in the river. The river had a powerful way of cleansing itself of what didn’t belong.

We have that power in our lives if we bring that great spirit of the Mother which holds all things. We can hold the creative process with the same grace and assurance in which the Earth Mother holds them, knowing the reason for it all.

And what is the reason for the creative process? It’s all for the pleasure and the fulfillment of the Creator. There is something wonderful that is coming out of it all. That’s what someone who is masterful in life knows. Yes, there are things coming into form and there are things passing away. But there is a greater glory showing itself here that is bringing the pleasure and the fulfillment of the Creator, which we share as we honor the Spirit of Truth, which is the spirit of the Mother within ourselves.