To pray with a praying mantis

Folded forearms is how you got your name ‘praying mantis’.

We meet eyes.

I know you are looking at me when I look at you.

I see you look at all the young eyes in awe of you.

Your kind are found worldwide, just like our kind.

And here we are, on this day, in this place, sharing a Life-moment ~where Life stares at Life and it seems we feel more alive…

You are bright green and brilliant.

Like a lush sprawling green meadow, or tiny delicate fiddlehead unfurling, you are a beautiful green earthly being.

‘Green’ not in color per se, but in blueprint, in membership; you are as part of this place as the most ancient green moss, echoing the stories of life’s beginnings.

You are ‘green’ in earthly essence and in spirit. Although only a young member of this place, you are wise at heart, with our ties to all life still intact in the stories of our cells, skeletons and backbones…

How long has life cycled through these little safe oval capsules, with everything needed tucked inside?

When we graciously receive eggs from the chickens, we are bowing to our dinosaur earth ancestry…

Before my son could write his name, he could communicate something I only really grasped in graduate school.

I was astonished by the words scribed in the corner by his preschool teacher -his description of his drawing:

“This tree grows from the whole earth”.

I felt the words echo through my whole being, as he showed me his work with his usual bright-eyed smile…

The young trees on the land talk to me.

As I crouch down, for a moment I feel their whispers of aliveness. I sense they feel me too.

I’m in good wood company.

I respond with a smile, them, with a refreshing bouncy energy, as I free up space removing the smothering grasses at their feet.

Sometimes I wish I could peak under their dense soil skirt to see what’s happening down beneath with their symmetrical other half…

We exist in relationship. The world could not be for one day without a constant give and take.

We feel our relationships with those close to us, and often forget everything else we are in constant close relationship with like air, water, food soil, and other life.

Reciprocity. It is truly an amazing thing, especially when honoured and felt in the everyday moments of our lives and the living systems we are a part of.

Reciprocal relationships are the very fabric of existence…

How are we Leaf? How are we Butterfly?

We carry a deep earth kinship. We are kin to all life, including those who fly and those who stay rooted in place.

Nature is decadent and astounding in her variation and endless exuberant expression of life, which we too are descendants of…