A Gaian Potpourri

By Mary Reddy

Lorian’s first Gaianeering conference ended just over a week ago. The gathering grew into a lovely collaboration among new and old friends—both physically visible and subtly present ones. It was like an exercise in midwifery, offering wisdom, support, and sustenance as we humans labor to give birth to an emerging Gaian awareness. To sustain us through the labor pains, let’s celebrate the new.

How to appreciate Gaia, to feel the thrumming resonant life of the planet, to see the spinning globe wrapped in stars, to hear the singing in many tongues? It’s beyond words, right? Yet here I offer a collection of words that have inspired me. See between the lines and let them transport you.

Gaia—the Wild, our heart’s beating

“As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight.” —Thoreau, Walden

Gaia—life within and criss-crossing cities

“Waters infinitely full of life move along the ancient aqueducts into the great city and dance in the many city squares over basins of white stone and spread out in large spacious pools and murmur by day and lift up their murmuring to the night, which is vast here and starry and soft with winds.” 

—Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Gaia—whispering through all life

“A crow 
has settled on a bare branch.
Autumn evening.” —Basho, haiku 

Gaia—love rooted in beauty

“Oh give us pleasure in the flowers today 
And give us not to think so far away …

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard …

For this is love …” —Robert Frost, A Prayer in Spring

Gaia—even in sorrow

“You mustn’t be frightened … if a sadness rises in front of you, larger than any you have ever seen, if an anxiety like light and cloud-shadows, moves over your hands and over every thing you do. You must realize that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands.” —Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Gaia—oceanic movement distilled into miniature

“lapping of the little waves
breaking of the little waves
spreading of the little waves
idling of the little waves” —Thomas A. Clark, Coirre Fhionn Lochan

Gaia—home inside

“The house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” —Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

Gaia—home outside

In the forest, I am my entire self. Everything is possible in my heart just as it is in the hiding places in ravines.” —Rene Menard, Le Livres des Arbres

Gaia—us! 

“Dazzling and tremendous how quick the sun-rise would kill me, if I could not now and always send sun-rise out of me.” —Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass


Views from the Lorian Community publishes essays from a team of volunteer writers expressing individual experiences of a long term, committed practice of Incarnational Spirituality (and the general principles shaping such a practice.) Views expressed do not necessarily reflect the sentiments or thoughts of any other person in Lorian or of Lorian as a whole. If you would like to subscribe, please visit our website and click on Follow Our Blog Via Email. Or email the editor:drenag@lorian.org.