"The Order of the Sacred Earth, I hope, will provide the container we need to incubate each of our visions for our healing and evolution. If this still seems insurmountable, like the peak of the Himalayas seemed to W. H. Murray from his house in Scotland, let us look once more to the wisdom of the Earth for guidance, and contemplate how a little seed becomes a strong and thriving tree.
"A seed falls from a living tree, perhaps is carried on a wind or in the belly of an animal to a more distant land. It is buried in fertile earth and in its first phase of growth it sprouts roots and feeds itself from the nutritious soil. Only then, after it has rooted itself in nourishing land, will it be ready to grow its first stem that will become the sturdy trunk and canopy of leaves over centuries.
"So may the Order of the Sacred Earth, our seed, plant itself in the fertile soil of loving and dedicated minds and hearts, sprout its roots of ritual, community, and activism, and grow and spread its branches of prolific and sustainable new culture, society, and life for all.
"I write these words at a tender time, when (for the first time in my life) a new being is growing inside of me. It is an extraordinary thing. I have always sensed my creative ventures as lifelike beings that grow from within, birthed in the form of a poem or a song. But this creature, this human growing in me now uses and creates more energy than my most divinely inspired prose ever has. And the big question looms ahead of me in a foggy and uncertain future. What world am I co-creating for this child? What will this boy grow up to know about life, and the earth, and all of its beings? That the world is a kind, just, and wildly beautiful place? Or will he live in a world, still, where men and women assert themselves as the omniscient all-powerful creators of things, and societies, and philosophies and ideas, where we each stand alone in the forest, trying to absorb the most water and nutrition and light from the world around us?
"I do not have control over the trajectory of our human condition, nor the tides of the sea, nor the hour of the setting sun. But I do have power over my energy, my century or so of life on this beautiful planet, and what I devote that time to. As do you. As do we all.
"Clarissa Pinkola Estes says that asking the proper question is the central action of transformation. So the question is, what kind of world do we want to create? What do we value? What do we stand for? And how might we come together, to reorder ourselves and our perspectives in a new way that will thrive and prosper all life for generations to come?"
