There is holiness in the soil beneath our feet.

Do you feel it?

I do each time I plant my body down on the Earth to sit in easy pose for daily meditation. Or when I kneel to I gather herbs and work the garden. I feel the ground beneath me caress my flesh, its wild wisdom seeping into my bones. It pulls a part of my essence deep into the core of the Great Mother so that I know that I am held.

Did you know that warthogs kneel down when they graze the yellow stubble of grass? They must know of this holiness for them to come to their knees as if in honor and gratitude of the sacred meal that the wild Earth offers so freely. They remind me that there is no shame in being brought to your knees because being humbled releases our attachment to what doesn’t serve us. It brings us closer to our inner truth and reminds us of the sacred thread of Spirit woven through all life.

Somehow reflecting on idea of holiness in the earth makes me think of a recent blog post by Sophia Rose at La Abeja Herbs about gathering pine nuts that I stumbled upon. I found my heart inspired by her poetic writing and thinking of how the ordinary ways in which we interact with the Earth can become a meditation when we honor the sanctity of it all. Sophia wrote:

“Harvesting just about anything from nature falls into the category of the unspeakable pleasures of living on Earth. Harvesting tangled roots, windblown seed, fallen nuts…this is another thing entirely. To gather these things we must, first humble ourselves.  It is necessary to sit, to crouch, or best of all, to squat as our eyes and fingers search out nuts amongst the duff and aging needles.  Squatting constitutes a meditation all its own.  It is a stance so native to our human form–the position from which we birth, from which we tend fires, and I’m sure you can conjure a few more, quite obvious, examples on your own.” ~ Sophia Rosa, La Abeja Herbs