Becoming with the Sacred Earth
ICN Living Lineages Series – Beloved Community
This week’s rhythm of loving evolution: Becoming
We engage in processes of becoming to deepen the transformative work and play of evolution, participating in our growth from divine being, as God is beckoning us here and now.
The Becoming offerings below invite us into personal and communal deepening in our divine becoming. They can be practiced in WeSpace groups and our daily lives today and throughout the week ahead. Rather than one-time experiences, we encourage ongoing and repeated practice to better support our growth and evolution.
If you missed it last week, we encourage you first to read the Beckoning article informing these processes:
“The Cosmic Christ in All Her Glory Among Us”
Keeping Sabbath as a Practice to Rest with the Mother
Offered by Martha O’Hehir
Sabbath is an invitation to enter a portal of timelessness, of the eternal now. We “set apart” time to stop and remove ourselves from the hectic busy-ness and noise of modern civilization. Our intention is to allow the Presence of Christ in Creation to speak in the silence. It is to rest in the arms of our Mother, upon the earth. It is to witness the ever present but unnoticed interconnectedness of the True Beloved Community which includes all that is, and perhaps to become consciousness of our oneness with all, in the Body of God. Oneness with the elements, the grasses and trees, the animals, birds, fish, and insects, the plants and lichen and fungi… Oneness with people of colors and genders, with the indigenous ones who have long mastered the ways to live with the rhythms and regions of earth.
The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightening and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, — all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.
– Thomas Berry
Perhaps, on a Friday evening, using the gift of the sun and the moon as timekeepers, we stop and light a candle a few minutes before twilight, and commit to commune with nature, the ever-present backdrop of loving structure that we often take for granted to hold our world together while we do something “more” or “better” or “required.” Now, Life becomes our focus.
We might light a candle and say a prayer. We could leave the electric lights off and allow the natural fading of the sky, with its daily extravaganza of sunsetting, to fill our senses with awe and majesty. We open ourselves to the quiet, resolute Presence Within. We may follow the traditions of our Jewish companions and drink 2 ounces of wine before rising. We might set aside a whole day to spend in nature, with family, with G-d in prayer.
Keeping Sabbath is an act of resistance. We refuse to give ourselves wholly to the workplace, the market, and the news. We keep something back, by our own agency, and we claim our choice to be self-defining. We move into Deep Time, ecological time, G-d’s time.
The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong. To be alienated from this community is to become destitute in all that makes us human. To damage this community is to diminish our own existence.
– Thomas Berry
Sabbathing is an act of healing, not just for our weary psyches and bodies, but for the earth herself. Remembering the lockdowns of Covid-19, did we not see how earth healed from our labors and extractions? When we stopped, the Himalayas could be seen again for hundreds of miles because air pollutions plummeted. Fish could be seen swimming in the canals of Venice, the River Ganges pollution dropped by 30%, and some sections were deemed drinkable. Animals roamed back into populated areas. Ecosystems can rebound very quickly once human intervention subsides. Might we consider intentionally giving our Mother Earth a chance to keep Sabbath, too, and heal?
When we Sabbath, our natural and spiritual eyes are opened together. Our blindness to the beloved community ceases; we sense our own belonging and find we are like the bubble in the sea of life, in the sea of consciousness. We observe the wisdom of God, feel the embrace of Divine Mother, grasp the magnetism of Christ energy, and touch the Gift that breathing in and out, together, provides- the NOW of LIFE.
Resources:
You can be notified of the candle-lighting time for your location through Chabad.org
You can experience one woman’s communion with nature in this video:
Earth Prayer, Love letter for Mother Earth - Janice Diederichs
Or here: A Prayer For Nature: Our Mother Earth (Based on an Ancient Aztec Spell)
Classic Books about Sabbath
The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel
Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now by Walter Brueggemann
Reflection/Journaling
The Inspiring Power of the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address
A Sensory Practice with the Sacred Earth
–
Touching into Nature through Tactio Divina
We are each wired in different ways. Some of us respond best to the written word, some to the spoken word, some to music, some to art, some to dance. We can connect to God through each of these ways. Though we may have a preferred sense through which to pray, the richest prayer life will come through experiencing God through all our senses.
Tactio divina is translated as “divine touching.” It’s a practice of praying with the sacredness of a physical object or the sacred earth. By incorporating nature and the physical world into prayer, tactio divina invites us to bring our sense of touch and embodiment into relationship with earth as incarnate divinity.
The earth and the physical objects in our lives are not just dead matter, separated from spirit. But rather, they are alive both with the energy of spirit and in our engagement with them. It is a living relational dynamic we can enter more fully and consciously into—especially with nature, of which we are a part. Our sense of touch brings us into physical contact and can be a circuit of deep connection and spiritual knowing.
We are letting the richness of the textures, smells, plant medicines, clean air, soil, and flesh become layer upon layer of the richness of God…surrounding us, birthing us, nurturing us. Tactio divina embraces our incarnational nature, affirming the goodness of how we encounter the world differently when we touch into the flow of our divine participation in and as nature.
“The Divine Mother” – Artist unknown
Here are steps you can take to enter into a practice of Tactio divina:
1. Find a time when you can go outdoors. If you’re able, choose a place of nature you feel particularly drawn to for this practice. This might be your yard, a nearby park, a body of water, a grove of trees, or any place accessible and resonant with you. As you go, ask God/the Divine to enter into this time of contemplation with you and to speak to you through this time.
2. Begin by grounding yourself to the Earth of this place through your feet center. Open your heart and mind to receive. And welcome the embrace within the womb of Mother Earth, the Divine Mother holding you in this practice.
3. Walk or move through the space with a posture of deep receptivity. You may even feel an inner guidance to go in a certain direction. As you traverse, be open to the draw of Christ energy through nature toward something calling for your touch. It may be a tree, a patch of soil, a flower, a flowing stream, a bed of pine needles, a holly bush. Whatever it is, go toward it and touch it with your hand (if you’re wearing gloves, remove them to have your skin in direct contact).
As you touch, receive the energy and spirit connecting in your body. You may feel an arising of spiritual knowing coming to your mind or heart. Or it may take the form of deeper felt intuitions that reside underneath our conscious thoughts. Or simply your body knowing in the immediacy of direct contact. We can welcome any way of spiritual knowing, which may or may not include mental recognition, description, or emotion.
Give yourself as much time with the touch as you like. Let yourself embrace the connection, savoring it, treasuring up and pondering in your depths.
4. When you feel ready, release the touch. As you make your way back to where you came from, open to any inner response in prayer as you savor the physical sensations, thoughts, and/or emotions that have surfaced.
If you’re alone, remain in silent contemplation afterward for as long as you like. Or if you are sharing this practice with a group, come back together to offer what has come forth from your experience.
If you like, you can also end the practice by opening to any action or intention arising in you from this practice.
A Blessing of Earth as Original Saints
The following blessing is shared as an invitation and an offering. As an invitation, for us to receive and to be blessed—and, as an offering, for us to become this blessing ourselves. Welcome it first for yourself, today. Then, throughout the week, look for ways you might inhabit this blessing and offer it to others through your actions, words, and presence.
Our Beloved Community, in divine reality, welcomes more than solely humans in this field of love.
We embrace the whole of the earth, nature, and the cosmos.
Commitment action step:
As you sift through these rich offerings, to which practice does the Mother call you?
What new awareness is stirring in you?
What possibilities are sprouting anew?
How might you feel drawn, here and now, to commit with us, in this community, to open to greater interconnection and interflow with the earth, with nature, with Mother?
Join WeSpace
WeSpace is a small-group experience where you'll explore spiritual growth, authentic connection, and transformative practices in a supportive community. Whether you're new to ICN or continuing your journey, WeSpace offers a welcoming space to learn, reflect, and grow together.
Enrollment is now open!
Statement of WeCreating Authorship
This article was WeCreated with authoring by Martha O’Hehir and Luke Healy.
All of the wisdom, creativity, and spiritual emergence in ICN comes from the communal field of wisdom and spirit speaking in and through the “We.”
All text in this article is human-authored without the use of AI, according to our AI policy: 0 out of 10
All Images are open-source, used with permission, or created by ICN using AI