Lover Earth

Earth Day is here, this annual time where we recommit ourselves to this planet, rededicating ourselves as planetary beings to the work of living well upon this planet. Earth Day also coincides with my wedding anniversary, and it isn’t lost on me that there is something resonate between these two observances that causes me to wonder: what if we weren’t proclaiming our commitment to Mother Earth, but rather trumpeting our affection for Lover Earth? 

Sit with this for a moment and reflect on the relational differences you have between your own mother and your most beloved. Personal Internal Family System dynamics aside, there is a sense that with mothers we experience a kind of unrestricted love that will pardon all affronts; whereas with a lover, there is a commitment that bends behaviors towards fidelity, respect, kindness, and support. I’ve certainly worked very hard to be celebrating our 21st wedding anniversary; being side by side with my husband today reflects investment in our interrelationship and in our mutual flourishing that looks different than the love I have for my mother. \What would change in your approach to Earth Day if you came to this day as an anniversary with your Lover Earth? Is there the possibility that we would recommit to our vows, doubling down on words that flame love, remembering that the two shall become one in this mystical union?

Hildegard of Bingen, the 12th century German mystic who throbbed with a Celtic worldview, understood the potential of this deep love affair with Lover Earth: “If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.” Passion is different than duty or obligation. A passionate response is unreserved, unabashed, palpable, and heated. Our language for our beloved is infused with love. Desire drives us towards union. This is the kind of passionate unitive consciousness that lived within the Celtic spiritual soulscape, revealing an ecstatic interrelationship that was whispered with the sacred, wild world.

Mythologist Martin Shaw encourages his students to develop a practice of giving twelve secret names to the plants, animals or ‘things’ they encounter in nature and to speak those names out loud. It is evidenced that those that are in deep abiding love for the land they live upon have a hundred names for rain or twenty different names mountains or, at the very least, three different names for the spring time daffodil. In giving something a name, we deepen our relationship with it and create conditions for falling in love for you cannot love that which you do not know; and in finding many names we find ourselves watching, listening, thinking more deeply about that rain drop in the watershed, the mountains, or the spring flower — by engaging through language, we come to know it better—love it better. 

This Earth Day I encourage you to give this 12 Secret Names practice a try. Imagine speaking the names like you would to your beloved, to your Lover Earth, and witness the enlivening force that blooms between you.