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Art by Favianna Rodriguez. Her organization, The Center for Cultural Power (@culturestrike) partnered Earth Day Network (@earthdaynetwork) to commission art pieces honoring the power of Indigenous communities and communities of color to protect our planet. Image description: Colorful drawing of a femme figure embracing the world, graced by butterflies and the rising sun. The background is shades of pink. Text reads: Apart but connected. 50 Years of Earth Day. April 22, 2020.
To celebrate and commemorate Earth Day today, I’m offering a 5 minute guided meditation on our interdependence, including a short original poem.
Get comfy, click “play,” and feel your roots connect to the earth.
If you’d prefer to read the meditation, the text is below.
The music is “Vegetable Stew,” by Rolando André López Torres. You can follow him on Instagram (@nocolornocontrast, which will be active again soon!) or email him at rolando.andre.lopez@gmail.com.
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Earth Day Meditation
April 22, 2020
Sit so that your feet are touching the floor if you can, and so you can straighten your spine. Close your eyes or soften your gaze.
Take a deep breath in. Exhale and let your shoulders relax.
Take another deep inhalation, and a long, slow exhale, softening any part of your body that might be holding tension.
When you take your next inhale, feel the air in your lungs, bringing life-giving oxygen into your bloodstream. Now exhale, letting go of any part that might still be gripping, including your brain.
Keep breathing. If this is an easy process for you, breathe into gratitude, acknowledging that for millions of people right now, this most essential act of life is a struggle. Breathe into this struggle, breathe in solidarity, breathe with love. And if breathing is a struggle for you right now, for whatever reason, feel the love and connection in this moment of all of us breathing with you.
As you inhale, remember that the oxygen entering your lungs comes from plants: the trees, the grass, the flowers around you. The carbon dioxide of your exhale is being absorbed by your houseplants or the grass outside, and your inhale is an absorption of the oxygen released by these very same plants. Breathe into that interdependence.
And here, I offer a small poem I wrote:
A seed is a metaphor
until it comes
in a small, white envelope
with hundreds of others, and you press
each one carefully into the damp earth.
Whisper grow to the radish seed, thrive
to the sunflower. Ready a bed
full of dirt and microbes and love.
Soon, stems and leaves as tender
as hope will sprout: tiny prayers
in these strange times.
The Buddhist master Thich Nhat Hanh often talks about how we all have many seeds within us. Seeds of love, compassion, gratitude--as well as seeds of negativity, anger, fear. Part of the practice of living is watering and nourishing the seeds we want to flourish within us and in the world.
So choose a seed inside of you that you want to nourish and grow--love, peace, compassion--whatever is calling to you. Imagine that seed beginning to sprout, sending the tenderest shoot out. Now imagine it growing, unfurling, climbing up your spine.
Imagine, too, the roots that this seed sends down. Imagine the roots sinking down, through wood and concrete to burrow into the deep, rich, dark earth. Now let those roots spread out, drawing nourishment from the earth and deep water sources--and nourishing the earth in return.
Feel how you can be rooted right here where you are, in compassion or love, or whatever aspect you chose, and feel your roots intermingling with the roots of the trees and plants around you. Feel how all of us are reaching our roots out to each other, how we each can be blossoms and fruits of love and compassion, understanding and joy, and more.
Feel into what it means to be interconnected, interdependent with every being on this planet. Then let it go, with trust and gratitude. Slowly open your eyes.
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Breathe into interdependence: an Earth Day meditation