ANU, Great Mother
Reprint from Life Unplugged Column, Tucson Green Magazine. Aprilby Susan L. Feathers
Sundance frequently became ill because she channeled the pain of the “Earth Mother,” she explained to me, and she thought many women felt it also.
Living with uncertainty was not new to this Iroquois spiritual teacher. Her people held five hundred years of experience when I became her student in Yuma, Arizona.
I had become a student at the Traditional Indian Medicine for Peace Institute that she and her husband directed. When I began my formal studies, Sundance asked me, “Do you want the truth or a pretty picture?”
I chose the truth, and for the next four years I walked a rocky path toward greater self awareness.
Lost in what seemed an insane society, I found sanity in my studies of Native American spirituality, and gradually I regained sure footing on the earth… a grounded way of being that sustains me through the uncertainties of our time.
The Earth is feeling the human footprint. The human community currently uses one third of the natural resources available for all living species on the planet. Scientists have renamed our epoch “Anthropocene.”
Our presence is unsustainable. We know this with certainty - which at least is a starting place for action.
Many people live in limbo between the truth of our connectedness to other lives and ecosystems, and what appears to them to be a separate life. Our culture, which promotes individualism, has forgotten the essential truth: we did not arrive here alone but evolved with a host of other species that make our existence possible.
For readers who are aware and concerned about the declining capacity of the earth to support life, it has become an art to live well in the face of so much uncertainty.
Yet by following natural principles a person can thrive and even find joy:
- Use nonpolluting forms of energy as much as you can; work for policy change on a national and international level;
- Recycle and reuse everything you can and help others to learn how;
- Consider how much is enough: be creative about enjoying simple pleasures;
- Provide native habitat around your home and join a local conservation group;
- Live as if every thing you do affects every other thing – because it does!
A sixth principle is conveyed in the name of the oldest earth goddess - Anu. Her name means a melodious relationship with nature; delight and pleasure. Find that impulse in yourself—joy and gentle nature, the long-suffering of a mother.
A lasting lesson from Sundance may prove the most important: Stop, wait, consider. Applied to important decisions this simple advice leads to prudent action.
These, then, form solid footing on the earth—a way forward in an uncertain future.